Killing Global Warming and Terrorism With A Single Stone

The Faithful Few Weblog ^ | 02-15-2005 | Alen

[TheConservativeCitizen]

ABSTRACT

The Kyoto Protocol offers us a wonderful opportunity to deeply examine two seemingly unrelated areas that our colleagues, the paid media, demonstrate particular ineptitude at coupling: global warming and terrorism. From the standpoints of both security and stewardship, America has a mandate to massively develop alternative energy. (Stop here to be spared the rhetoric.)

DISCUSSION

Obviously "fossil fuels" generally means oil, and oil is big business. Simple-minded conservatives erroneously equate economic prosperity with conservatism, rendering the most powerful businesses champions of their cause. Such "economic conservatism" ignores social concerns and denies the economic realities of captive markets (monopolies) and favor-based political contributions. Conservatism that focuses only on building wealth and fostering economic activity misses the heart of Real Conservatism as I see it--accountability. So let us agree that the oil business is not some conservative ideal, but merely a club of merchants who have something that almost all of us need. That the Bush family fortune is based on oil is an unfortunate circumstance. It has created doubt about dynastic motives on the part of the family estate. Nonetheless, it's important to understand that an oil fortune neither mandates nor precludes the Bushes from occupying that hallowed ground of Real Conservatism.

Oil has been called "black gold," and the world's appetite--particularly our appetite--is voracious. What may not be particularly obvious is just how "black" that money may become. The lion's share of global oil revenues end up flowing into the coffers of the eleven OPEC nations: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Without exception, these nations represent various problems for those who embrace freedom and democracy. In the interest of brevity, the demonstration of this fact is left to the reader as an exercise, (though I would be very interested to learn of exceptions.)

The stated aim of OPEC is to bring stability and harmony to the oil market by adjusting oil output to help ensure a balance between supply and demand. However, the activities of OPEC amount to aggressively leveraged price-fixing in a thinly veiled attempt to steer global economies and manipulate geopolitics. It is no exaggeration to call OPEC a cartel (roughly the equivalent of monopolies or trusts in business.) That OPEC has among its member states long-standing sponsors of terror is also well established.

Let us put to rest any contention that OPEC is an entirely hostile cartel--for we need only agree that at least some OPEC revenues flow into treasuries that finance world terrorism--that is enough. It means that we needn't buy drugs or guns in order to support terrorism--just gasoline, heating oil and jet fuel. In the proportion to the degree that we do not meet our own demand for energy, we financially enable our most insidious enemies!

Next we come to the (once controversial) well established circumstance of atmospheric contamination with carbon-based gases that absorb and emit infrared light more readily than do oxygen, nitrogen and ozone and the effect of these molecules on the planetary climate. There are no scientists today publishing anything credible to discredit the ideas that the fractions of carbon in our atmosphere is increasing, or that our planet is both measurably warmer and demonstrably exhibiting indications of climatological shift. The unequivocal establishment of these facts has only concluded in the past 10 years. Of the many hundreds of formerly undecided or non-believing climatologists, no more than a few dozen remain--and these are persuaded more by faith and/or intellectual momentum than by a careful analysis of the data.

The immediate extent of current warming, and the projected timeline of future changes remain controversial, but it is almost universally accepted among the relevant scientific communities that we are causing some warming. Furthermore, both the warming and the gas fractions are unprecedented and inconsistent with any previous contamination or thermal dynamics in our atmosphere. These things have been assessed from geological and glacial gas samples, visible records of plant growth (such as tree rings) and measurements of aqueous carbonation at subterranean sites isolated from the current atmosphere. The evidence for global warming is compelling. From the standpoint of (Biblical) stewardship, our mandate is clear: it is we who must reverse this trend.

While we could quickly reduce and eventually even eliminate our funding of state sponsors of terror by drilling up the reserves in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, this does not address the issue of planetary stewardship. Only viable alternative energy can do this. "Viable" alternatives must balance practicality and environmental impact. Hydrogen is very environmentally friendly. The only by-products are a small amount of heat and a significant amount of water. However, it is incredibly impractical in terms of energy-density and distribution. Nuclear energy, while 99.99% safe, includes such severe environmental risks that the one-in-ten-thousand accident rate must be assessed as unacceptable to meet the broadest energy needs. Also, the likely weaponization of radiological components of nuclear energy greatly increases this risk assessment. As we examine each alternative energy source we see that some are more practical than others, and that some fit certain tasks better than others.

Our energy needs include transportation, manufacturing, buildings (heating, cooling, lighting, appliances,) commercial and civil support. Anything that remains in one place may be served by a wide variety of alternative energy options, particularly those producing electricity or directly harvesting heat. Thus, we could and must immediately move to generate solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and other statically situated alternatives to meet as many of these needs as possible and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Furthermore, innovations in building construction, much more aggressive insulation, and a better application of materials science (particularly luminescent and phase-change materials) could substantially reduce our overall needs. The key is to stop burning things unless absolutely necessary.

This leads us to things that move. How can we keep things moving practically without burning something? The answer comes in parts and is at best an imperfect one. First we can build hybrid vehicles that can either use inductive energy supplied by coils below roadways and/or that can be loaded on and off electrical rail systems for long-haul transit. These options make statically generated power available to dynamic systems. Next we can outfit these vehicles with cutting-edge batteries, solar cells and flywheels that would allow them to run for extended periods in emission-free modes. The addition of regenerative braking would greatly enhance these vehicles efficiency in for city-type stop-and-go driving. But obviously there will be times and places where the construction of large-scale power distribution or generation would be impractical and the various options for vehicle-based power restoration would be unavailable. Therefore, as a last resort, such vehicles must, for the foreseeable future, possess at least some capacity to chemically generate energy in order to restore their batteries, power their drive systems or both. America has the capacity to produce enough alcohol, hydrogen, liquefied hydrocarbon gases and heavier petroleum fuels to meet this miniscule demand right now. Furthermore, it would be inherently sensible to continue researching high-density alternative energy so that we might eventually be able to eliminate this need altogether; however, there exists, as yet, no alternative that is both available and dense enough to completely eliminate some reliance on hydrocarbons.

So, how can America make this happen? First it would take not silencing the naysayer economic conservatives, but drowning them out. This is particularly true of those lobbyists with substantial investments in the energy status quo such as automobile manufacturers and the fossil fuel industry. These interests willingly jeopardize the rest of us, endanger the planet and encourage terrorism (thus placing themselves at risk) to obtain short-sighted gains! Thus, the political force of will to adopt alternative energy must begin at the grass roots.

Financial incentives must exist making alternatives an economically attractive (and even possible) option. These can take both negative and positive forms such as tax breaks or low-interest loans for adopters, “guzzler” penalties for egregious non-compliance and direct assistance for those without the means to otherwise transition. This would most-likely include massive federal underwriting of not only research and development, but of early-phase manufacturing as well. This national endeavor would be no less ambitious than that undertaken by NASA in the 1960s. If America can establish itself on the vanguard of alternative energy, we may ultimately retake a significant fraction of the manufacturing jobs we have lost in so many other sectors. Finally, we must overcompensate businesses for adopting changes in their energy management practices which reduce their dependence on centrally distributed resources. We can make it happen. If we succeed it will stand as a testament to effectiveness of our republic. Failure, will only evidence that big economic interests truly govern America today.

[MHalblaub]

If you want some reality:


Global Warming Threatens Alps Resorts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1345881/posts