Posted on 03/22/2006 5:14:34 AM PST by Born Conservative
Pupils launch bid to save Americans $2.3B in electric costs; seek Oprah's help in plan to dole out lightbulbs
Qiana Marks and 200 other North Babylon students hope to save the Earth - and also save the American public $2.3 billion in electric costs.
It's all part of a campaign begun yesterday in the Robert Moses Middle School to "fight global warming one lightbulb at a time," said Kenny Luna, eighth-grade science teacher.
Luna and his students want to give an energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulb to every school child in America, "all 50 million between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade."
They're asking TV star Oprah Winfrey to help spread the word.
CFL bulbs use an average 75 percent less energy than normal lightbulbs. If every student changed one bulb, the saving at $46 per bulb would add up to $2.3 billion, Luna calculated.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
In 2004, about 21% of US electricity was generated by Gas and Petroleum. http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html
These are fungible goods on the world market. Coal is too, but most of the big power consumers also have large reserves of coal and it is a very dirty source of fuel which will need to eventually be processed into something cleaner.
At present 95% of US imports of gas come from Canada and the US does, as you mention, have plenty of Gas (not a fat joke). http://www.naturalgas.org/business/analysis.asp
Regardless, the largest reserves of gas are outside of the US in countries that are not currently the friendliest of nations. To waste our reserves is still to put ourselves at their mercy at some point in the future.
"But, that humans caused CO2 to rise in a fact."
No it isn't. All human activity combined (including our respiration and the respiration of our farm and recreational animals) only accounts for 4% of total CO2 emmissions every year. The #1 source of CO2 is active volcanos (Mount Kilauea alone is responsible for around 4% of CO2 emmissions), since they're the #1 source of CO2 then they're probably the reason CO2 is rising. Find a way to turn off 1 or 2 volcanoes would reduce CO2 by at least as much as killing every man woman and child on the planet.
then of course you've got the problem that according to the ice core data high levels of CO2 precede ice ages.
Blaming it all on humans just doesn't add up.
Control and affect are two totally different things. Is your mind that illogical that you think this is not a completely absurd question?
Exactly.
I dont have time to look for old posts where you may have based the MSM, but if you know anything about media, consensus is not a story. Only controversy is. Exxon has funded nearly all of the organzations that have come out against global warming. The scientists who are nay-sayers on warming are few and far between and very visible because the media loves conflict, not consensus.
There is something very odd about the President receiving advice on science issues from fiction writers. He can't find many others that agree with him.
Do you think he would consult Dan Brown on doctrines of Christianity?
Are you saying that you think respiration and farming is the cause?
You do of course know it is the burning of fossil fuels right?
Did you go to my link that shows the clear fluctuation in CO2 levels for the last 900,000 years. And that they have never been lower than 180ppm and never higher than 280 ppm during that entire time (volcanoes and all). But now we are at 380ppm and this happened basically in the last 150 years?
Sorry pal, you are way out there.
Actually these threads used to get more intelligent responses, but only those with their head in the sand are arguing that human activity has played no part in the climate change we are clearly experiencing.
How about those pesky sun cycles? Many scientists think that they are the prime reasons for "global warming" and that human contributions in the form of adding CO2 to the atmosphere are minimal to non-existent. GW junk science thinks otherwise. How do these scientists explain the very low temperatures this winter in Europe? Are we entering another ice age? How is that possibility the result of GW? Just asking...
No it is not a fact. It is speculation reported as fact by people with a political agenda who don't give a damn about understanding the earth. In fact, over the last 600 million years, there have been only two periods when CO2 levels have been below 400 ppm!
I hate Junk Science, and man made Global Warming is nothing but Junk Science.
You know of course that overall net affect of climate change is an average warming on the planet as a whole. This will play out differently in different regions and will cause more severe shifts and deviations from the mean.
Thus is January on the East Coast it was 8 degrees warmer. In February it was 7 degrees colder than average. The net affect was 2 degrees warmer, but the reality was vast shifts in temperature and more erratic weather patterns.
Climate Change will probably make Europe colder because of the changing of the Gulf Stream. European weather will be more like Canada with which it shares its latitude.
Your comment is fairly ignorant, but I am sure you are intelligent enough to understand that extreme fluctuations in weather is the overall result, which will mean that it will be colder than normal sometimes and warmer than normal sometimes, and it will be normal a lot less frequently.
600 million years is irrlevant because the continents were in different places. Only the last 2 million years are important since North and South America separated the Atlantic and Pacific.
Open your eyes friend. Did you follow my link and look at page 9?
No. I'm saying that's part of human societies CO2 emmissions and even when you add that all into the mix we still emit very little. Even if (and that's a HUGE if) humans are the cause of a problem (also a HUGE if because we know things have been fine with warmer weather, check Roman history) there are better ways we can tackle the problem.
CO2 levels have fluctuated for a lot longer than the last 900,000 years.
Funny that the guy that throws an insult into almost every post is complaining about the lack of intelligence in the thread. Want it to be more intelligent, start acting that way. There's no need for anyone to respond "intelligently" to an insult, the need to use ad hominems is the ultimate demonstration of stupidity.
That's not been my experience with florescents. Put 4 of them, outside floods operated on a photocell, in the cans 5 years ago and they are still good. Have never had a regular bulb last even one year. Seems like the florescents only cost about 2X the regular floods so in addition to the energy savings their is also savings in the life of the bulb.
I replied to all of your questions in other posts.
Climate Change results in extreme temperature shifts. If you are saying cold weather in Europe contradicts climate change, you never even heard of the Gulf Stream?
You see Europe is on the same latitude as Canada. The Gulf Stream moves warm water from up north.
The melting of the Greenland glacier (at twice the expected rate) may be altering that Warm conveyor belt, thus leading to colder temperatrures in Europe.
In the US, for some reason, the talk is of Global Warming. Although this is the net result, the actual term Climate Change more properly reflects the expected events.
The deviations from the mean are increasing as the mean itself increases. Expect wild weather. You are seeing it all around. The sum total of weather is climate.
Actually, even that won't harm you much. A Mexican queredero (sp??) will routinely give a baby mercury for colic.
Well, that explains a few things.... LoL!
It is a heavy metal,like lead, which the liver has a hard time eliminating. It can build up in brain tissue as well. In the old days, English "Ladies" used to use it to make their skin look translucent, a deadly white color. Doctors woud also use it to treat of all things, liver disease.
Oh well, we live and learn!
This made me smile. It's called a pre-emptive strike. It is fairly common on FR, so I learned to do it as well. In person I am quite diplomatic. Really.
Care to speculate as to the cause of the retreating ice caps on Mars? Seems to me that minor variations in the single most important input variable relating to earth climate, is a far more plausible culprit for the cyclical nature of temperature on earth. Most GW reports I have seen, do not address the Solar Cycles nearly enough. The has been much observation of increased solar activity recently and the next sunspot cycle is expected to deviate from trend significantly.
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