altivo

We're at -6°F and dropping. The "freezeless" hydrant in one barn is frozen. Oddly, that has never happened before, even when we had temperatures of -20 a few years back. The animals are not complaining much, actually, as long as they get fed and preferably extra rations.

I'm complaining though. I'm getting old enough for this to make my joints stiff. We have the woodstove going 24 hours a day, which we haven't done at all in recent years. The house is comfortable enough, but going outside to do animal chores is painful.

Supposed to be worse tomorrow, then gradually improving. No long posts from here for a day or two. It's too cold to sit at the computer (far end of the house from the woodstove.)

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Frozen oak grove

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

octatonic.livejournal.com

I think, myself, that this is an example
of scientific groupthink. When the Nazi's
announced that cigarettes promoted lung
cancer it took decades for the rest of the
scientific community to get over the "You
stupid Nazihead" thing and agree. And no,
I'm not defending them, but science should
be /science/. Politics interfered.

Global warming isn't about climate, its about
reducing Western industrial output.

Do you realy think that China or India
would sign on to any of this?

They aren't and they will not.

I admire the "get in front of the parade"
approach here. "If we lead they will follow",
but they aren't, and so we end up economically
dead. Not an attractive choice, even if I
like clean beaches and water and animals
not covered in oil.

Instead of reducing our "carbon footprint"
(note that my carbon footprint is smaller
than yours because I have tiny house and no
large animals and use all flourescent lights
and keep the heat (shivers) on 65). I think
we should be inventing new technologies. You
CAN'T get back to the garden. Unless...you
want to off 5.5 billion humans? No? Okay
so lets go full bore renewable. We CAN do
that now. Its not 1978. The current tech
we have could make us all fat and happy in
electricity with solar and wind right now.
As for cars...hybrid electric until we
get fusion.

Fusion?

If we could invent "Teh Bomb" we could
invent "Teh Generator" and have a crash
program, trillions if needed to get
fusion online.

I like that one because it also means we'd
never have to send soldiers to the middle
east again. We could, with our reactors,
go "THHHHPPPTT!" and concentrate on
yelling at each other on what domestic
program was better.

Conservatives: We need to rebuild the roads!
Liberals: We need more pre-school funding!

Wouldn't it be nice?

Its all about finding a way to get over oil,
without becoming a third world balkanized
continent.

Or we could just go to war with China, blow
up half the world and then the Germans...

Hey...how the hell...

c.c

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

We need to do all of it. Reduce the carbon footprint of course, AND go to renewable energy. The Bush administration continues to oppose and put roadblocks in the way of both of these, because neither is in the interests of big oil companies.

Now, as for our own carbon output here, it may be higher than yours but probably not by as much as you think. We replaced almost all our lights with fluorescent too. We replaced our appliances with the most energy efficient ones we could get. Our heating system is geothermal assisted, and our house is very small, actually, for this area (about 1100 sq. ft.) and our thermostat is set to the mid 60s as well.

The barns are not heated. We don't use a tractor or other farm equipment. We may still be higher than you on carbon output, but we are far below our neighbors I assure you. Some of the carbon cost of living is simply due to location. One must drive a certain number of miles a week or do without groceries, job, etc. We do have vehicles that are above average in efficiency, but not hybrids because we still couldn't afford those when we replaced our older cars.

From:

octatonic.livejournal.com

I think we agree.

But its not that "damngeorgbush" that
makes a difference.

*has to change a tire and curses
damngeorgebush, or has to make his
attic 40 not 38 "damngeogebush".

Damn George Bush!

I love your boys *hugs them* but I wish
we could make this not The New Nixon and
damn him. I wish it was about, "Um...I
think driving slower..." and "You know, we
could save enegy by putting that plastic
stuff on the windows" and, "I'm the President,
lets do something, anything, to make us
less reliant on oil..."

^_^

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

The problem is lack of leadership. You get people like my neighbor who says she doesn't need to conserve (and by goddess, she sure doesn't) because "the President" says there isn't a problem and she believes in him. When shown real evidence to the contrary, she just dismisses it all as a "liberal plot".

Even more frightening are the right wing religious nuts who believe that all this is part of god's plan and we are supposed to ruin the earth because it says in the Bible that we will and the second coming can't happen until we do. They figure we should hurry up and do it faster...

From:

octatonic.livejournal.com

"Even more frightening are the right wing religious nuts who believe that all this is part of god's plan and we are supposed to ruin the earth because it says in the Bible that we will and the second coming can't happen until we do. They figure we should hurry up and do it faster..."

Now that /does/ scare me. I might have voted
for Bush but it doesn't mean I'm stupid (
rumours to the contray XD).

I think this whole, "Jesus is going to
Rapture us out! Then the New Earth!" thing
is dangerous in a couple of ways. Its
fantasy escapism first of all, and it
leads to "let it all burn" thinking.

Neither of those is good. Well, okay,
/I/ like escapism myself, but I tend
to know when to draw the line and buy
the flourescent bulbs and recycle. I
also think that if there was a subsidy
(maybe...a tax credit?) on converting
your house to say solar energy some of
that really nifty new tech like the
black strips of solar collecters that
look nice on a roof would get bought
lots more, and if /that/ happened we'd
not have to send our blood to the
middle east.

That'd make a great bumper sticker:

"Every Extra Mile You Drive Kills One
More Soldier"

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

But bumper stickers like that are "unpatriotic" and a "liberal plot". ;p

Tax credits for energy efficiency all died during the Reagan years because the Republicans decided it "wasn't a problem any more." I suspect that any attempt to reinstate them today would be vetoed by Dubya. He's only interested in tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% of the population.

Here in Illinois, electric rates have been controlled for years, and only allowed to increase when there was real evidence of a need for increase. Those controls ran out at the end of last year, and an attempt to extend them was blocked... by a Democrat, a black man from a poverty background, who happens to chair the crucial Senate committee. The same man who also blocks all efforts to subsidize development of alternative energy resources... Consequently, the electric monopoly here is raising rates by 25% effective immediately, and another increase expected in a few months. Who will be hurt most? Poor people. Will it reduce consumption? I doubt it, because there are no alternative choices. Will it increase profits at the utility company? Absolutely, and probably by a whopping 100% this year.

From:

octatonic.livejournal.com

I do NOT "believe" in global warming
(climate change, whatever). I don't
think its due to us. The Allerood and
other climatic events had nothing to
do with humans.

But.

If the /fear/ of it can generate the
development of new technology that gives
us energy independence, and if its done
so we don't have to crash the economy...

Stay the course.

Eventually we are going to have to change,
like in the 19th century when we had
to give up whale oil for lamps. Its
not a bad thing, being able to control
our energy destiny.

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

I do believe we have done things in the past two centuries that have accelerated certain climatic changes. Any of them considered by themselves would have been insignificant, but taken as a whole, the threat exists. Whether the result will be as abrupt as some claim, I have no idea. But the consequences of the sum of the observable and measurable trends, going back as far as such measurements were possible (now approaching 200 years or so for direct instrument measurements, and thousands of years based on indirect measurements of fossil and soil strata, etc.) seems clear enough to me.

In what is sometimes termed the "Gaia effect" we may be about to see another ice age. This may not be intuitive, but the pattern in the fossil record supports the theory. In essence, the melting polar ice caps raise the sea level. This rise does not have to be huge, even 50-100 feet will do it. There is a "threshhold" of sorts across where the Alaskan land bridge used to be. It's an underwater ridge that limits the flow of cold Arctic waters into the North Pacific, or the flow of warmer Pacific waters into the Arctic. When the sea level rises enough, cold water spills into the Pacific, changing the flow of ocean currents and altering weather patterns. The "El Niño" effect is the sort of thing I'm talking about, only lots more things like that all over the place. Some areas get warmer, others start cooling off. Instead of the whole earth just cooking like a closed greenhouse, once the effect goes far enough, glaciers and ice caps start growing tremendously... Ice Age. It's a natural cycle that has repeated many times, taking tens of thousands of years. We have just hurried it along, and by how much remains to be seen.

Oddly enough, it plays right into the hands of the biblical fundamentalists who claim that the world will end in "fire and ice." Only it wouldn't be the end of the world, only the end of things as we have known them, and a major rearrangement of ecologies and priorities. It won't happen overnight or even in a decade, but over several centuries at my guess (as opposed to a couple of millennia or more on the unaccelerated time frame.)