Outdoor Source Magazine

I’ve been involved in several on line debates regarding this actually little debated topic. A lot of people on one side of this discussion have professed that the debate is clear that humans have irrevocably harmed the environment and have caused the planet to heat up to our ultimate demise.

I was doing a little thinking on this subject, particularly since the big culprit that environmentalists hang their hat on is the amount of CO2 emitted by cars into the atmosphere as being one of the leading causes. I was thinking about this and wanted to crunch some numbers. The data that I’m using was found on the internet so there could be some pretty big errors due to originating data errors. First, let’s look at cars and some facts that I found:

• The average American drives around 12000 miles per year.
• Let’s assume that 45% of the US population drives (I arrived at this figure by backing into some other figures that were released by a department of the US gov’t under Clinton)
• Let’s assume that 40% of the miles driven in the world are driven by an American (personally I think that’s high)
• The current EU emission goal is 499 grams per kilometer.

All of these figures will calculate out to about 3,270 billion kilos of CO2 emitted by automobiles around the world every year. That’s a lot.

Now, let’s look at what our basic survival emits per year. I found a stat out on the web that the average person exhales about 1.98 pounds of CO2 per day. Now if the world population is now 6.6 billion, that will calculate out to 2,166 billion kilos of CO2 emitted per day — JUST BY BREATHING.

I honestly don’t see what the fuss is all about about what we’re doing to the environment with all of our cars. The worldwide use of automobiles only adds 50% more CO2 into the atmosphere than just breathing does.

Personally, if the environmental crowd is so hepped up on what we as humans are or are not doing to the environment they really need to start off by looking at population control as the first line of defense.

I just received my latest edition of Backpacker magazine which i plan on bringing along with me to read out on the trail.

I have to tell you, I WAS ticked. The entire issue is Global Warming propoganda.

I saw a great discussion last night between John Stossel and RFK Jr on Fox News (the Cavuto show). The discussion centered on Global Warming, since RFK has attached himself to the Gore directive and the Inconvenient Truth.

It was a very interesting discussion. What I found to be very during this discussion was just how rattled RFK seemed to get. In typical Fox News fashion, Neil Cavuto was the moderator in the discussion and allowed each man to discuss their points and to rebut the others point of view. RFK when confronted with serious (and calm) questions from Stossel became distressed to the point of stuttering over his words and just had difficulty making his counter point and defending his point of view. His entire argument was centered around the 2,000 scientists that have all but closed the debate on the issue by proclaiming that global warming is a trend and that man is the root cause. No matter what Stossel said as a response, this statement was repeated as if he (RFK) was doing yoga and that was his mantra.

Mr. Stossel on the other hand made several clear points regarding the extreme views coming from some so-called environmentalists. His point was that the last 4 or 5 points that have been made have been so extreme and threatening to all of mankind that we had no choice but to listen. The problem with each of these points is that none of them ever came true — so why listen now. Stossel went on to ask RFK “how much good would changing a few lightbulbs do in the scheme of what is happening right now”. The response from Mr. Kennedy was as-expected complete disregard for Mr. Stossels point of view, which seemingly has become the strategy of the most extreme points of view.

A final thought on this — a lot of the more extreme environmentalists who are indicating a coming calamity are beginning to become almost like the old cartoons with the homeless guy (used to be called a bum) standing on a street corner wearing a sign that read “The End is Near” with everyone walking past him laughing at his extreme (and ultimately incorrect) view of the world.

Yesterday I said that I would continue my post regarding energy.

Yesterday, the senate closed a motion to proceed towards an energy bill and will begin debate on this subject. To many citizens this is the third most critical issue behind the Iraq situation and personal finances, but in all honesty there’s no Iraq situation without our need for energy and you really don’t even HAVE personal finances without the energy to get to and from work and to move goods and services, etc.

This is going to be a very interesting process because the skeptic in me is pretty interested to see how this proceeds. The real interest (to me) is going to be who gets preferred treatment in this bill. The bill will focus on:

• Boosting domestic renewable fuel supplies in a manner that will reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions and spur regional diversity of biofuels production and infrastructure.
• Enhance economy wide energy efficiency in a way that will reduce our nations imports of foreign oil and provide significant savings to consumers.
• Invest in the carbon capture and storage technologies that will help cut back on green house gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve got a lot of fear about this. First, whatever the government is going to legislate into our daily lives is going to be thought out based on back room deals, not what is truly good for the American people. Second, things are a bit early in the whole global warming research to legislate anything at this point. The Senate is made up of lawyers, not scientists so whatever they legislate at this point is going to be based on the panic being raised by the environmental nazis.

The consensus opinion regarding any ramifications of global warming is that the oceans might increase by an inch or two, not the 28 feet of the most extreme estimates.

Just remember, only 25 years ago not only would Saccarine give you cancer, but we were also heading for an ice age. This flip flop on where the climate is forecast to be going makes me think that we will waste every penny that we put into trying to prevent something that’s going to happen anyway, but I’m worried that the senate and the house will do the exact wrong thing — forcing us to use bio fuels like ethanol will drive up the price of everything that we use corn for, like food, cattle feed which will drive up the price of beef. AND we give developing countries like India, China, Vietnam, etc. a complete pass on the subject.

 

I’ve had the opportunity to be working out of the house a couple of times a week for the last month or so. This will be continuing for a while. Some of this has to do with the fact that going to the office is depressing since the one side of the business isn’t doing well right now and spending $10 a day for the drive doesn’t sit well with me.

Anyway, I was watching CSpan a little earlier today and there were 2 senators (one from Tennesse and one from North Dakota) talking about renewable and other energy sources. I find it very interesting what they had to say. Lamar Alexander was going on about a wind farm that resides across a ridge in his home state of Tennessee and how it’s an eye-sore. The blades alone of these towers span 80 yards and can be seen from 14 or 15 miles away. He went on to discuss how inefficient it is when it comes to generating power. This was a classic NIMBY speech –> he even came out and said that these wind farms should all be up in North Dakota where they are having some success.

Byron Dorgan was the next speaker, the senator from North Dakota. This man actually made perfect sense. He referred to some charts in his speech — the first one indicated that 70% of the oil consumed in the US was used to power ‘transportation’, he was pointing at automobiles in particular. Whether or not the %age is correct, it’s definitely a very high percentage. His next chart presented how automobiles have significantly increased their power, but their average fuel efficiency has been flat during the last 20 years or so.

These 2 speeches really highlighted the problem with energy and the politics that innevitably follow the issue around.

Just before the turn of the century between the 1800s and 1900s, the average family in the US made an equivalent of $4,000 per year (in todays $) and worked no more than 12 miles from home. With the cheap energy supplied by oil and the use of the automobile the US has enjoyed incredible prosperity. The ‘green’ crowd has to understand that there’s no way that the politicians can point the country back towards that lifestyle again, there’s just too many of us. For example, my 50×100 plot of land will never supply what my family of 3 needs to survive.

My unobstructed view of things is that the US needs to incorporate the following into a comprehensive energy plan. This will be incredibly difficult because of personal preferences for big, fast, powerful cars and trucks (when it’s not necessary) and the special interests of the ‘green crowd’ will have to be put aside in order to get us off the arabian oil gig and supply us with what we need for economic prosperity.

First - trucks and automobiles have to increase fuel efficiency by 300%. It should be unlawful for a car to be sold in the US that gets only 10 miles to the gallon.

Second - we need to be able to drill for fossil fuels in the waters in the Gulf of Mexico (yes, new wells) as well as in ANWR.

Third - we need to construct new refineries so that if one goes off line for maintenance for 2 months, the price of gasoline does not go up by 15%.

Finally - all alternatives need to be commercialized and economized (made cheap enough to be profitable for the seller and economic for the user), even if the source of energy only provides us with 15% of our usage –> that’s a 15% cut in at least one of the costs.

I’m going to continue this in a 2nd post.

As promised, we’re going to be presenting information covering both sides of every issue that we cover here.

Right now in NY City, there is a summit on global warming will have 33 Mayors and/or governors as well as delegations from 18 other cities, from around the world, including New Yorks own Mike Bloomburg. The purpose of the meeting was to continue a series of meetings that began in 2005, designed to reduce carbon emissions within major cities. The outcome of the first meeting was to form the committee that organizes these conferences so that it is something that will continue into the future.

The summit includes the following events:

The Economic Case for Climate Action

Transport Beating Congestion & Surviving Your Next Election

Energy The Energy Revolution

Water Keeping the Tap Running without Running the Well Dry

The Business of Climate Change: Job Creation & Development

Buildings Creating Green Skylines

Communicating Change & Ensuring Action

Transport Fuelling Urban Transit Alternatives

EnergyAdopting Renewable Energy Systems

Waste Wealth from Waste

Cities Can Thrive in a Low Carbon Economy

C40 General Assembly

On the website for the summit NYCClimateSummit has some excellent case studies about how major cities around the world are working to begin to use alternative energies in order to try to reduce carbon emmissions within their city.

Personally, whether or not it does reduce carbon emissions, I think that it’s a great thing because it could (over a period of time) work to reduce the costs of alternative energy sources so that the costs of providing them can be reduced. A combination of reduced cost combined with a non-political environment actually making decisions on the future is required for good decisions to be made –> we all know that as soon as the oil companies get nervous about reduced profits, the cost will come down to keep oil the cheapest source of energy.

The biggest environmental issue over the last century revolves around this hot-button topic. We here at Outdoor Source magazine believe that all 3 sides of this issue need to be discussed and debated. It seems as though there never really WAS a debate. We went from the late 1970s where “all scientists agree that we’re heading into an Ice Age” directly to “human activity is causing catestrophic global warming”. The issue was never debated either publicly or within the world of science.

The 3 sides to this debate are:

• Global Warming is occuring and it’s caused by human activity.
• Global Warming is occuring and it’s due to natural climate or other cycles.
• Global Warmins is not occuring

Over the next period of time, we will be doing a lot of research and we will be looking for people that have done significant research to ALL sides of this issue. The purpose is to collect as much information as possible and have it all stored in 1 place. This way people that are trying to figure out the truth about the issue are not swayed by some agenda. It’s really simple, I don’t have an agenda that I’m trying to put forward. I don’t get oil money. I don’t get money from environmentalists. I only have my own personal well being and my own philosophies to worry about. Most importantly — I don’t have anything to prove to anyone on the subject.

I know that many people that see this will automatically assume that I have a position on this subject. I do — however, as I do research I am keeping a completely open mind to this argument (yes, it’s an argument). I believe that there are too many people out there that have something to gain that are trying to set their opinion as the only opinion and they are trying to profit from it. That is most definitely not my goal here.

Believe me, I look forward to a very healthy debate on this subject.