Global Warming -What are the biggest causes of the problem?
I have heard that the biggest single cause of global warming is coal mines that are burning under ground. There are several burning uncontrolled for almost 100 years in this country. In fact, one actually started a recent major forest fire in Glenwood Springs, Colorado a couple of years ago. But in China, there are at least 200 coal mines on fire deep underground that put out more global warming CO2 than all the automobile emissions in the whole world combined!
Looks like international cooperation is the immediate need to fill. Gore just got the Nobel for his Green Stand. Some think he might work well as prez and are trying to draft him. If he sponsors a fix that works, he gets my vote for another Green Nobel!
Looks like the Coal Fired Electrical Plants are get a pretty bad press these days for a 2nd place in the unGreen team. Our local IREA in Colorado is looking at building another Coal Fired plant in Southern Colorado. If so, much of the energy will be lost before it even makes there. Ever turn on your AM radio when you drive under a power line? Those zaps are electrical power wasted! I have heard estimates that 2/3s of the electrical energy generated is wasted as het or noise before it reaches the consumers. Even local lines are noisy, and the friendly power companies will avoid fixing them unless severely chastized if they don't. My ham radio receiver has a very directional antenna that I can aim at the exact area that the noise is coming from. It's spreading. About 30 years ago the power companies used a wire wrap system that is now becoming increasingly noisy on Sunny but cold days. The lines put in 10 years ago are quiet as a flea wearing sneakers tip-toeing across a marshmallow. In a profit oriented monopoly, what are the chances that they are going to replace those bad wire wraps? Yeah, that's what I think too.
3rd place in the UnGreen playoffs has to be Air conditioning. I was told that 1/2 of all the electrical energy in the Los Angeles area is used to cool down computers. At first I thought that that was just talk from someone smoking something funny. But after thinking back to all the computer centers I have seen and been associated with, yeah, I think that statement is probably conservative. For every watt a computer takes,it will take about 2 watts to cool it. and Hard drives are particularly picky about what temperatures they like to perform under. To keep a data center happy, the hard drives are maintained at 70 degrees + or - 4 degrees, always. The CPU and the other I/O components and the telecommunication gear is not nearly so picky, 60 to 90 degrees is fine. I have never walked into a data center where I wasn't freezing. A little intelligence would see that proper zoning would keep everything going better than ever, and save a heap of money in the process. Not to mention becoming very meaningfully Green.
4th place in my unGreen All Stars have to be the salesmen that are selling something new ( and always very expensive, funny how that works!) Look at all the dumb ads about these cars called Hybrids. "BE GREEN!", reads the advertisement. Bull Feathers! My '97 Toyota Camry gets about 25 MPG. Suppose the Toyota Prius gets 50 MPG. OK, thats 25 MPG better, right? I don't drive that much, so I use about a tank (16 gallons) every 3 weeks. So this would mean that I would use about 8 gallons of gas. Isn't that a nice saving! Except for one thing that is NEVER mentioned. How much CO2 was expended by the Toyota factory and its suppliers to make each Prius, and how much CO2 the workers driving to and from the factory expend/Prius, How much CO2 the boat that brought the thing all the way over here from Japan expended, How much CO2 was expended by the car hauler and/or train transporting the Prius to Denver, not to mention all the hot air coming from the local salesmen. If we really worry about Green, stop the world, we want to get off! Hybids sound neat, but there would be vastly less amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere if we just kept that old beater of a car longer. If some old beater got 5 MPG, it would still be better than all the CO2 generated by the obtaining of an efficient car. I know I sound like I am knocking the American way, but think about it, and you will agree. I recently saw a new feature we all gotta have on our next refridgerator: an LED powered HDTV built into the door!
Deliberately generated wasteful consumerism is definitely a major player on the unGreen team.
Next topic is Thinking Outside the Box Robert, you are getting too wierd; Return to the Beginning