Problems of Global Warming

Oh, man! There is a global warming event going on in Bali and those stupid scientists over at the University of Rochester have suggested that the current global warming models are wrong! It doesn't help that one of the scientists who have published this information is also one of the "consensus" group from before that assured us that global warming at the hands of Man was a scientific fact.

Think about this. China currently has 22 million motor vehicles, producing 4 million in 2003 alone. Currently the US has 243 million vehicles. China is predicting 150 vehicles per 1000 people in the near future. (For 1.3 billion people, that's 195 million vehicles.) The US has an estimated 500 cars per 1000 people. Currently India is rising in its vehicle numbers. In 2005 alone over 1 million passenger vehicles were sold in India. Currently they are at 7 cars per 1000 people but expect to surpass the US in numbers of vehicles in the next 40 years. (For 1.1 billion people, India has over 7.7 million cars.) Apparently the US will not be the primary source of auto emissions in a very short time. The only reason that China and India are currently producing less greenhouse gases than the US is because they are only just now beginning to catch up with the US economically. China is rapidly building coal-burning power plants. The price of petroleum is skyrocketing because of the growing demand from China and India. So if China and India are to be the models of low emissions, does that mean we should return to auto-less, poor living?

The claim is offered that the US cannot sell its cars in China because their emission standards are too stringent. The truth is that China didn't even have emission standards until 2000. Currently the Buick is a top seller in China. Daimler Chrysler is selling Dodges in China. In 2005, Ford sold nearly 80,000 cars in China and Buick sold about 128,000. In fact, GM has been selling cars in China since 2003 (after the emission standards went into effect). They have a factory in Shanghai that expects to sell 1 million cars this year. That's not bad for banned cars.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the largest contributor to global warming and air and water pollution is not American factories or automobiles. It is the world's livestock. There are a variety of suggestions as to what to do about this problem, but you won't likely hear about this in the global warming cries for reform.

The Kyoto Protocol is a big sticking point. Everyone else is doing it; why aren't we? While some 172 "parties" (mostly countries, although the EU is a "party" of its own) have ratified it, only 36 actually have to do anything. One hundred thirty-seven of them only have to monitor their output. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Those 36 either have to decrease their emissions or they can do "emissions trading". The EU ETS (European Union Emission Trading Scheme) is the largest of these trading schemes. In this process organizations can decrease their output of emissions or they can pay a fine or they can pass off their emissions to an organization with smaller emissions who will take credit for the first organization's emissions for a price. In other words, there is no real reduction; it just looks like it. Bottom line: Individual companies are free to choose how or if they will reduce their emissions.

It seems, in fact, that the Kyoto Protocol approach is Al Gore's approach ... and many others like him. In any given gathering of folks concerned about the environment you'll find an abundance of ... SUVs. What's up with that? Most people deeply concerned about global warming are still driving, still flying, still producing the same "carbon footprint". Their answer for themselves is not "Stop it!" It is "Have someone else do it!" They pay for a tree to be planted somewhere and say, "There, I've made up for the fact that I won't change my ways but want everyone else to."

But the real question I have that has yet to be answered apparently is what are we to do? It seems manifestly foolish to suggest we should "Stop driving." I mean, Al Gore, with all his fervent ardor over the issue, is producing his own massive amounts of greenhouse gases traveling about spreading his message. We could stop producing cars or outlaw autos, but that makes no sense. We could cripple the US economy (since the US is the biggest offender), shut down the factories, put millions out of work, stop the need for driving about, and that might stop the US from "offending", but it won't change China (the #2 offender) or India or any of the other nations developed or developing that would be more than happy to pick up our slack. Surely we need to switch from oil dependency, but that's not a global warming problem. That's a simple matter of limited supplies. Estimates currently are that we'll run out of oil in 40 years, so obviously we need to do something about it. But simply decreasing the amount of power we use or increasing the gas mileage we get won't fix this problem if it is the problem they say it is. What are we supposed to do?

In the movie, Independence Day, the President asks the alien what they wanted. What would it take to appease them? Its one word answer was, "Die." I suppose that would appease the environmentalists in their global warming terror ... but isn't the goal to make the world better for the future generations? I don't suppose eliminating the human race would accomplish that, would it?