Monday, June 30, 2014

Miscellaneous 178

1) According to a recent study by the OECD, by 2025, the Chinese will be emitting more greenhouse gasses than the United States, Europe, Japan, and all of the other OECD countries combined X2....So, you still wanna deep-six the Western economy, folks?............2) According to a recent survey by the American Economics Association, the impact of global warming (if in fact it happens) on global GDP breaks down as follows; 20% of economists feel that it will reduce GDP by 5%, 21% feel that it will reduce GDP by between 1 and 5%, 36% feel that it will have an effect of between -1 and +1% on GDP, 16% feel that it will increase GDP by between 1 and 5%, and 5% feel that it will increase GDP by 5%....So, there it is, folks, more than half of the economists surveyed state that global warming will either have a negligible or positive effect on global GDP and virtually every analysis that I've seen on the topic (including the one by professor Nordhaus of Yale, an alarmist himself) says that adapting to global warming will be significantly cheaper than preventing it (and how in the hell do you prevent solar forcings, volcanoes, the PDO, etc.?). Yep, I really do think that we all need to take some of Bjorn Lomborg's advice and chill.............3) According to environmental scientist, Chip Knappenberger (you know that you've arrived when that DeSmog blog starts to smear you), the effect of Waxman-Markey on global temperature would have been a .05 degree Celsius decrease in projected temperature or a two year avoidance of warming (so the projected temperature of 2050 wouldn't have happened until 2052). This, while the cost of energy would have skyrocketed and the economy shit the bed....What a couple of idiots, huh?............4) Corn ethanol has a power density of .05 watts per square meter, approximately 1/1,000th the amount of nuclear or a robust natural gas well. Couple that with the fact that ethanol emits copious amounts of nitrous oxide (a compound which the International Council of Science says is 300 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas) and radically pushes up the cost of food worldwide and you really do have to ask yourself the question here; this is "green" how exactly?

3 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

Wasn't aware of the huge amount of
nitrous oxides associated with modern agriculture . Apparently 'collateral damage' from the extensive use of injected ammonia; solid fertilizers (including my Scotts
Lawn stuff) also add to the phenomenon. Some studies also
indicate the NO and N2O as atmospheric ozone depleters. Now, I will have to see how Ma Nature
(of which we have ideas about CO2
sequestration and fate) handles the nitric oxide contribution..if
at all.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I guess that the livestock industry emits a lot of nitrous oxide and other compounds (the methane from cow farts obviously) to the point that the U.N. is now saying that this industry emits more man-made greenhouse gasses than all forms of transport COMBINED and that the best way for a person to reduce their carbon footprint is to go vegetarian.

BB-Idaho said...

Perhaps 'Beano' for cows?