California vs EPA at the Supreme Court
I enjoyed the SFGate.com article form the San Francisco Chronicle on ‘Supreme Court tackles global warming‘ summary of the Supreme Court considering whether the EPA must regulate tailpipe emissions (carbon, at least, and other greenhouse gases) of vehicles and industrial sources.
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I have been skeptical about global warming. The theory that I like is that we entered the next Ice Age (the last was 20,000 years ago) about the 1200’s AD, and it has been the activities of man chopping forests and burning stuff that have been holding it off. But, still, the scenario of captive carbon almost makes a bit of sense. That is, vast deposits of oil and coal represent an enormous amount of carbon that was drawn from the atmosphere, changing the balance of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen by a significant amount. Burning that captive carbon returns it to the atmosphere. So the theory goes that we should be taking carbon back out of the atmosphere — changing the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide back into soot, or compost, or other solid forms, to keep our air breathable, and the environment including weather pretty stable.
Nature provides a couple of mechanisms to metabolise carbon dioxide into cellulose. Plants and trees do this. Even the simple plants of the sea, the algae, and the kelp help draw down carbon dioxide and free up oxygen.
Problems I keep having with the philosophy the greenhouse gas people cling to come down to something I heard on Rush Limbaugh — how much good does it do to limit Freon in air conditioners and cars, when a volcanic eruption releases thousands of tons of the same ‘problem’ fluorocarbons. And repeats every year. I can see a push for incomplete combustion — at least with soot, some of the carbon in the fuel isn’t being returned to the atmosphere. And I didn’t find any studies comparing relative release of carbon for wildfires vs. normal decay products of the same area.
The current emphasis seems to be on biofuels, using plants to generate petroleum substances, as better because the carbon released was gathered from the atmosphere recently, instead of in past ages. But if global warming is indeed going on, and because of the carbon released from coal and oil deposits, then I would thing we need to actively recover carbon from the air to restore ancient balances of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. And we keep cutting crop lands, diverting crop and wild growth areas to urban use, and destroying forests for consumer goods, urban use, roads, and crop lands.
Following is from feed back I left for the story by Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau.
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I wonder, though, how the amount of vehicle emissions, and even industrial emissions, compare to the volume of carbon from composting and uncontrolled decay of lawn grass, weeds, and forest lands, as well as emissions due to fires of homes, industrial facilities, vehicles, and grasses and trees burned in wildfires. Seems to me that whittling on the shorter stick before dealing with the longer one is Politically Meaningful, but not useful in actually affecting the atmosphere.
Strategies such as preventing the ongoing deforestation of SE Asia, and replanting the Amazon rainforests and even the old growth forests of the US destroyed since colonial times, not that would interest me as being deliberate, meaningful actions. Instead we still build highways, shopping malls, and housing subdivisions on the surface of the earth.
If the proposed subterranean habitats, the residential towers to reduce occupation of the surface of the earth, and even space colonization (lunar, low earth orbit, and near planets and asteroids) are such good ideas, why aren’t they at the fore front of efforts? Why aren’t we reinvigorating railroads, especially electric powered, over worrying about whether 42 mpg or 52 mpg is good, given the 4-6 mpg of many trucks and the relatively lower fuel and emissions that railroads contribute?
Why aren’t we pursuing low-pressure hydroelectric generation — using low head pressure generators from water source surface differences of 2 to 10 feet or less? Yes, the Hoover Dam creates a lot of power and electricity — can’t we generate useful current from farm ponds, local streams, and other lesser watersheds and flood control structures?
Why do we keep isolating residences from the workplace? Tax businesses $0.01 per mile each employee drives from home to work each day, to establish the ‘commute load’ of each company. Then establish echelons of burden for companies that don’t create policies encouraging community development of residences near the company, and encouraging employees to live close to work.
Instead of looking at Houston and Los Angeles, saying ‘your air is bad, add stuff to your gasoline!’, why not ‘Move them people and their work together to cut total commute by 60% or 80%. Now.’ Oh, and to improve air quality for commuters and near roadways, enforce the law — write a ticket to every car that approaches too close to the vehicle ahead, or that changes lanes in front of a vehicle too close to meet minimum following distance. As I recall the law is based on speed limit, not speed. Find stopped traffic, send a group of ticket writers out, and ticket every driver closer than 200 feet (100 feet where the posted limit is below 35 mph, or whatever the local law states). This should also end stop and go traffic as well as traffic congestion. Why speeding tickets are common and tickets for following too closely are rare — especially if you are concerned about total exhaust emissions per mile of road per hour — just astounds me.
Writing tickets for following too closely, building rail to ferry cars and goods more cheaply and reasonably quickly, developing additional hydroelectric resources — why, someone could get busy on this and not even need the federal government or the Supreme Court to move first.
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