;)
Our Choice: 57% Believe In Global Warming (2009), 71% In 2008
Nov 9, 2009 
Review by Loyd Eskildson
Our Choice (Rodale/ Nov 2009) is former Vice President Gore's third book on global warming. He begins telling us that the majority of experts on the climate crisis agree that we probably have time to avert the worst of the climate change impacts. Our Choice is about solutions to the crisis, examining wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, and other energy sources. (It's an 'industrial size' problem - everybody buying a cfc light-bulb isn't going 
By contrast, China has embarked on an ambitious plan to dominate the production of solar panels, will also soon become the largest source of wind power, and is building an 800 KV super-grid as part of the most sophisticated smart-transmission network in the world. Their their new five-year plan has added CO2 reductions to the formula by which bureaucrats and other leaders in the society are judged for promotion and they've planted more trees than the rest of the world combined. Yet, they are still opening a new, inefficient, dirty, coal-fired generating plant every eight or nine days.
Gore is overall optimistic, however, about U.S. actions. Recent high-level defections from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturing over this issue, Republican Senator Graham's interest in making progress, prospective EPA regulations, the Second Court of Appeals allowing tort lawsuits against CO2 emitters, rapidly growing U.S. investments in wind farms and photovoltaic and solar-concentration systems, and initial U.S. legislative efforts to limit carbon emissions are positive developments. Gore believes businesses would be pleasantly surprised to find that limiting carbon is not as expensive as thought, and can even be profitable. Again, there is a bad news side - a recent Pew Poll found sharp declines in Americans believing in global warming (57%, down from 71% in April, 2008) and believing it is caused by human actions (36%, vs. 47% earlier). The really bad news is that 80% of CEOs and CFOs polled said they would not make factories more efficient to save money in the long run if it hurt financial results in the next quarter.
Burning coal, oil, crops, forests, and natural gas is by far the most rapidly increasing source of global warming pollution (CO2 - 43%). The next largest source (about 27%) comes from methane (main component of unburned natural gas). Methane is 75 times as potent as CO2 over a 20-year period, and is believed to have contributed about two-thirds as much to global warming as CO2. More than half of human-caused methane comes from agriculture (livestock, livestock waste), and most of the rest from oil, gas, and coal production, landfills, and waste treatment. Almost 25% comes from leaks during its handling and transportation. Potentially more serious - existing warming is beginning to cause releases from permafrost lands and nearby shallow seabeds.
The third largest source of global warming (12%) is black carbon (soot), mostly generated by burning biomass (especially forests, grasslands, sugarcane), and diesel engines. Soot is also the shortest-lived global warming culprit.
Water vapor traps more heat than CO2, but the extent of its role to-date is determined by global warming generated by the preceding sources. (Point - don't throw up your hands, get on with limiting CO2 and methane so less water vapor goes into the atmosphere.)
Our Choice goes into some detail about the advantages of a 'smart grid.' These include encouraging off-peak power use, sending energy across long distances, assisting in energy storage (compressed air, batteries, molten salt) that would help even out energy flow at lower costs, smoothing power fluctuation's created by varying wind and sunlight.
As for nuclear reactors, Gore points out that almost every one of the world's 435 power reactors has its own unique design - horribly inefficient in design, construction, and training costs. He sees limitations on reactor potential due to water shortages in many areas, fear of illicit conversion of fuel into weapons, and waste disposal problems. (France, however, already derives 75% of its energy from nuclear power.) Gore is also not very enthusiastic about carbon sequestration.
Years ago Gore voted to support biofuel generation - something that today he realizes create more global warming gas than gasoline. Ever the optimist, he also points out that new enzyme-led technologies are likely to change that, and we now have the basis of a biofuel distribution system. (Biofuels today rely on truck and train shipping because ethanol, the most common biofuel, is incompatible with standard internal combustion engines and therefore is not allowed in gasoline pipelines.) Other hopes include improved farming that could sequester up to one gigaton of CO2/year (12% of the total), though the costs of doing such were not reported.
The year 2009 will bring the Copenhagen Conference on climate control - this is the year we make our choice.
Al Gore was inaugurated as the 45th vice president of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served for eight years. He is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, and The Assault on Reason and was featured in an Academy Award-winning documentary. He was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Loyd Eskildson is retired from a life of computer programming, teaching economics and finance, education and health care administration, and cross-country truck driving. He's now a reviewer for Basil & Spice.
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Reader Comments (7)
climatechangedc.com/cause.htm
They have just reported the ocean is able to sequester more CO2 than they thought or some models calculated.
How about a big No Brainer there. Humans didn't know something for sure and might be wrong? How unusual is that?
CO2, however, still is going up so it changes nothing for me. If CO2 has peaked and now is on the decline, I'd feel better.
I also don't know if the Poles have already moved beyond a tipping point. We can speculate till we are under a mile of ice or sunning in balmy Greenland, so it is a hypothesis that there is still time to do something.
But this opinion poll only clouds reality with more hypothesis because the poll is itself hypothetical. If you polled 1 million people who live on the Gulf Coast, would the results differ? How about 1 million in Alaska?
So regional polls will vary because the impact of climate varies. Toss in a recession and two wars with near 20% unemployment and people find no difference when they are living under a bridge because the reason was bank fraud or flooding rivers.
When your children are starving you lose self esteem. Please investigate the effects of the Great Depression and the Ohio River flood in Louisville from 1925 to 1937.
An entire generation who survived an ecologic and economic upheaval. A double whammy. How did we really get out of it? World War II.
If history has ever taught me anything, it would be that WWIII may be just around the next corner. Iran takes 3 hostages today? US military bases hit by suicide shooters in America? Afghan and Iraqi military headquarters hit? Embassys around the world targetted?
Yes, public opinion polls are fun fodder for idle conversation, but not relevant to unstoppable climate destruction and and the inevitable economic collapse that follows(or preceeds).
It's an 'industrial size' problem - everybody buying a cfl light-bulb isn't going to fix the problem.
Agree
where there is a problem - deal with the problem,
rather than the energy efficiency solutions thtat are used as an excuse for not dealing weith emissions themselves 9to the extent thet is shown as necessary)
The light bulb ban is only the start,
of bans proposed in previous years, and of bans in
Waxman-Markey bill and to a lesser extent in the current Kerry-Boxer bill.
Buildings, cars, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines,
dishwashers, boilers, heaters, TV-sets, plasma screens, computers and
much else are up for efficiency based bans.
A natural reply might be
”well isn’t it good to only have efficient products?”
No: Energy efficiency is only one advantage a product can have.
Inefficent products have advantages too - or noone would buy them.
Whether cars, buildings, TV sets or dishwashers or other products,
greater energy use can mean better performance, appearance,
construction, cost and indeed savings for any given product
See examples and descriptions
www.ceolas.net/#cc2x
Energy or emission problems can and should be addressed directly,
there is no need to ban what people want to buy
(there is no energy shortage given renewable development, and
emissions can as explained on the website be dealt with directly -
besides, electrical products don't give out CO2, power stations do)
Also -while it should not be needed, and is still in principle
wrong, but better than bans - appropriate and temporary taxation on
products that would otherwise be banned not only raises funds for
relevant environmental projects,
it quickly limits and redirects consumption for the time required,
with more adaptability regarding scope and application than bans (and
sales tax on efficient products can be lowered, without revenue loss)
ceolas.net/#gg5x
.
Then should we also include a non-sustainaable import/export tax on products whose manufacture process have adverse effects on communities and ecosystems?
Glad you mention better grids (as in China example)
- since that can also mean better competiton lower prices, and easier delivery of low emission energy from a given source.
Emission Policy Alternatives
ceolas.net/#cce1x
Introduction: The need - or not - to deal with emissions
The Overall Picture
Emission sources, land and ocean cycles, agriculture and deforestation
1. Direct Industrial Emission Regulation
Mandated reduction of CO2, monitored like other emission substances
2. Carbon Taxation
Fuel Tax -- Emission Tax
3. Emission Trading (Cap and Trade)
Basic Idea -- Offsets -- Tree Planting -- Manufacture Shift -- Fair Trade -- Surreal Market -- Allowances: Auctions + Hand-Outs -- Allowance Trading -- Companies: Business Stability + Cost -- In Conclusion
4. Contracted CO2 Reduction
Private companies compete for contracts to lower CO2 emissions
.
re Then should we also include a non-sustainable import/export tax on products whose manufacture process have adverse effects on communities and ecosystems?
In general I think taxation is wrong
The exception is user appliances that themselves release emissions
(which equates to automobiles/planes/ships)
The point there is also that emissions contain much else apart from CO2
Assuming a CO2 problem,
the other main focus (transport and electrticity accounting for 80% of man made CO2 emissions)
is electricty generasion where a more direct policy (as with mercury etc is implemented) I explain it more on the site.
www.ceolas.net/#cc1x
As for further taxation, I would say it is generally wrong but preferable to bans,
(for example the fuel/energy efficiency bans on cars, light bulbs, buildings, dishwashers etc as under current proposals/legislation )
Re products made unethically in some way,
I don't think that can be excused by duties/taxation
(which anyway gives trade problems etc -and are problems that need to be faced head on, providing proof to offending manufacturers or countries, prosecutions where applicable etc)
Atmospheric conditions in the near earth environment are strongly influenced by the sun. The observed warming of the last decades of the twentieth century can be attributed to natural influences. There is no evidence of any warming signature due to the increased presence of so called ‘greenhouses gases’. It is suggested that the greenhouse hypothesis takes little cognizance of the manner in which the atmosphere actually functions. The atmosphere cools the planet but a change in its temperature causes a change in ice crystal density and the quantum of radiation reaching the surface.
Climatic models suggest that any greenhouse effect should be strongest in the tropical upper troposphere where water vapor is in higher concentration. In point of fact warming of the upper troposphere at the equator is less likely as the globe warms because the quantum of outgoing radiation diminishes as convection and de-compressive cooling is enhanced. It is in the subtropics that outgoing long wave radiation increases and in particular in the high pressure cells where the air is descending and warming and the sky tends to be cloud -free both in terms of liquid and ice crystal density. A water vapor feedback mechanism would require an increase in specific humidity levels in these high pressure areas. The reverse is observed. If a greenhouse effect were present it would be unamplified and tiny. Any warming tendency in these areas is more likely to be due to a loss of ice cloud density than a greenhouse effect.
If the Earth enters a period of cooling, as it has since 1998, it suggests that the natural factor is pre-eminent. If there is a strong relationship between ice cloud density and surface temperature it confirms the point that moisture in the upper troposphere cools rather than warms the planet and the basis of the greenhouse feedback mechanism is negated. Without a water vapor amplifier a change in so called ‘greenhouse gas’ levels can have little or no effect upon surface temperature.
If we can rid ourselves of the foolish mantra that surface temperature is governed by so called greenhouse gas, much unnecessary pain can be avoided. We are threatened by zealous governments keen to interfere in markets, raise taxation and redistribute incomes. The absurd notion that carbon is a pollutant is daily promoted. ‘Will of the wisp’ schemes to generate renewable energy burden the public purse. Nothing is to be gained by these stratagems. Innovation has its own rewards and investment in all forms of innovation is already well enough subsidized and feverishly exploited. Man needs no urging to innovate and will do so quite happily in the absence of artificially inflated monetary incentives. The introduction of market distorting incentives and disincentives destroys rather than creates wealth. This is the tool of the central planner, the social activist, the miscreant.
Distraction and absurdity are our unhappy lot, parading as morality and virtue. Snake oil salesmen multiply by the minute. These are unfortunate times.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. The authority of ‘Science’ and the United Nations organization has been subverted to the activists cause. This is a sorry time for mankind. It is a time when belief is substituted for science and the two are irretrievably tangled and confused.