Investing in Carbon Reduction

I wonder if my carbon emissions will be reduced dramatically if I burn money in my fireplace this winter season? I think it will do as much good as donating to any of these "causes" which use global warming as it's battle cry.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." Carl Sagan

One day maybe Sagan's own charlatanism--no I'm not saying he was intentionally so, or even aware of it--will be seen for what it was: well-intended but naive in many respects. The great bamboozle that he failed to recognize was that larger interests--okay, let's call it corporate interest--also permit themselves to be taken in by the popular bamboozle: that personal responsibility can somehow be passed on to a deeper pocket elsewhere. That in calling for the producers to be taxed in place of the individual, the individual, mostly out of ignorance, only cedes more power--in effect cedes his vote--to the greater--and knowing--bamboozler. All, save none, are ultimately bamboozled. Thus, abatement of atmospherice carbon must follow profit motive. Therein lies the answer to why doing little "what's my carbon?" exercises is cute, but essentially pointless.

Since I am totally convinced that GW will occur whether or not we burn more fossil fuels [ even if Al Gore gets 4 more Nobel Prizes for his efforts], I suggest the gullible people among us be encouraged to give all their money to the scammers. As a matter of fact, since Al Gore is so certain that GW is a major world problem [ I suspect HE personally invented it just like HE invented the Internet], I think HE should give HIS ENTIRE FORTUNE to the scammers to help solve the problem. Then I would feel obliged to give money to his future political campaigns.

You may be right, but to what extent? Do we simply ignore it and hope it will go away? There are things we can and should do at any level, such as plant a tree. If you live in a large city,you know there is a lot more heat than in the country! Asphalt is hot and grass is not. a few simple things by a lot of people can at least slow the effects of GW. But we can also pretend it does'nt exist, or that the GOVERNMENT will act in time to save us. GW is not hoax nor is it a castraphe yet! I would like to think we care enough to stop arguing and do some little thing to make a differance.

Johnt

Investing in carbon reduction? This--carbon reduction--seems to be a commonplace misnomer. Why not say, accurately, divesting of carbon addition? Better still: investing in carbon sequestering. Indeed, it is carbon sequestering...the means of which we already have at hand; not only biological sequestration, but also artificial sequestration. The technology to remove carbon from the air--at surface elevation--already exists. Currently it is used to make power, but that does not mean that it is the only application to which carbon could be applied. The need is to find products-structural and otherwise--to be made with carbon--as a profit driver to expand the use of atmospheric carbon removal and sequestration. As the applications for use of carbon grew in number--including applications which would supplant current products which result in net contributions to atmospheric carbon--so would the need for additional carbon removal plants...until eventually the hundreds or thousands of such plants would of their own accord come into being all over the globe. During the decades during which this might occur, could come the reversal, through alternate power and alternate transportation and living styles and arrangements, of the acceleration of atmospheric and oceanic carbon sequestration. The question is not, how much does a person emit; but, rather, how much is removed for each person.

Too many guests with no means to properly subscribe answers to replies.

Sorry but a debate in this way is not working for me.

If we all believe that we need to be transparent with our motives than we should be so here as well and post with our names.

I agree, I am not sure who said what..

If the government were truly convinced that GW was such an issue, then shouldnt they provide MAJOR tax incentives to power companies (a major creator of the Greenhouse gases) to build plants that are "friendly"? Maybe they do already.

Anyway, it just seems that if the alternative technologies were even "in the ballpark" economically, they would already be in use on a large scale. I dont know any self-respecting engineer that would purposely be involved with building something they know is a polluter when they could build something nearly as efficient at nearly the same cost. But then, I guess I may be naive on that point though.

The problem is that we have a bunch of "nay sayers" to any technology that would be appropriate (eg: nuclear - in use in France and elsewhere as well as here), but we even have nay sayers with that. Some day, the politicians will have guts enough to JUST SAY NO to lobbyists and their payola, and begin to think about what is best for the country and it's people; but I wont hold my breath.

First, your message suggests that you don't really believe it about the politicians just saying "NO." After all you probably realize that politicians deal in things concrete, not in abstractions. Nor is it really about naysayers. The essential abstract that must be seen in concrete terms is that when we speak of carbon emission we are speaking of waste, or, at best, of by-product. When a concensus emerges whereby carbon emissions are considered not as waste but as a usable resource, then politicians will be sure to follow. By way of illustration consider the following.

Taking the case of municipal solid waste disposal, some would hold that it was because of coercion by government and pressure by various "environmental" groups that significant portions of the waste stream are now recycled. In fact there is really nothing today involving recycling that was not under consideration by local government all over the country as far back as the 1960s--even before the environmental movement. What was needed before any recycling concepts could come into fruition was the change of viewpoint from seeing the garbage stream as waste to seeing it as viable commercial resource. When the technology for recycling had advanced to a certain point--in part because of seed money provided by government--it was then reasonable for government to act to promote recycling--to mandate reduction of the unrecycled waste stream. Did government do this out of idealistic motives. Or did that do this because there was profit to the government? The answer is obvious: local goverments make money--from both sides--from recycling. In like fashion it will be necessary for carbon emissions to begin to be seen as a resource rather than as waste before rapid advances in the reduction of atmospheric carbon are made. When there is profit in removing and reusing carbon, then politicians will quickly jump in with money. And that money should not go to power companies any more than to anyone else. Do you thing any gains would have been made in recycling of waste if grant money or tax incentives had gone, say, to landfill owners and operators?

it all depends on what you include in your term economically viable.

Money controls people who do things for profit, that includes engineers.

This question will last forever as there are as many believable and credible people on either side of the fence and anybody with a head smaller than jupiter only has an opinion.

This is the problem and nothing else. In modern society we think we all have a say and all have a valuable point of view. We than conclude that that is reason enough to hijack the process and make them listen and act upon out idiotic views. That is called political correctness and should be stamped out.

I do however believe (opinion of a head smaller than a planet) that we will not make that much of an impact as individuals or even as societies. There are scientists out there that have a better balanced view of things which incorporate facts as well that completely deny the fact that we contribute to GW in any significant amount. In view of this I believe that technology should be given the free reign to come up with a solution. Not the turning back of the clock or attempting to reduce the impact by cutting back, reducing and recycling until we see blue in the face.

Going back 50years is not going to solve anything. What if the GW is happening anyway and everything is going pear shaped. If we get ice ages or high water levels or massive migrations because of changing climates, who would you put your faith in for a solution then? Government or technologies?

Notice the name at the top? That means you know who said this and I am not afraid. Everybody who posts on any forum should put a name under their words. full stop no debate possible. (the first post on this thread about this issue was MINE and MINE alone)

I suspect that there shall be some engineered bacteria or other organism that eats emissions. Of course it will probably produce sulfur hydroxide as a waste product, but what the heck.

Hi all, I too am not afraid to be named in this scandalous debate/discussion. Seems like I saw a gadget in the back of Popular Mechanics that connected to the exhaust pipe of older cars that would fill your trunk full of charcoal cubes as you drove around, I think it's the answer As a believer in the scientific method because it goes through specific logical steps to turn theories into knowns and is peer reviewed along the way to ensure it is a reputable, self correcting system, I would hope all the noise over GW is based on this method. When I wasn't looking, has a theory turned into an established known? In this group are there people actually doing the science that can definitively say we have crossed that bridge? Having been in atmospheric research, directly and indirectly the last 20 years, I am aware of parts of the argument but not the whole complicated picture so I am interested to know who and where research data into earths warming and cooling cycles is or even if there is a repository open for review. I realize there are probably as many or more disciplines working the problem as participate on this site but I would think there is a group of scientist whose job it is to gather all the relevant data to see what shapes up. It seems I read the UN had a council of 120+ people, of which only around 30 were actual scientist and they didn't all agree. If I read this right, I hope this isn't the defining group. I know there is quite a business in buying and selling carbon shares going on in the UN which doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

My interest and focus has been on better answers to the wheelchair since that is my mode of outside transportation when not in a car so I haven't spent much time on global warming. Too much of a he said, she said with little content. I realize there is but not to be found in the short time I have each day, too many other needs that have to be met. Like who to try and team with to build a sports car I can drive my chair into and head for the open road in, since having to park the Harley.

Frank