Climate Change? Blame Your Stuff

Newhouse News ^ | 8/5/2008 | Scott Learn

[Incorrigible]

 

Stop carbon dioxide production!  Only breath in.  Do not breath out!

 

[Apollo 13]

I am planning to stop eating. Eating is not good. Eating bad. And I am withholding my farts too.

[basil]

This sounds like a perfect formula for bringing the US economy to a screeching halt. That would be helpful/sarc

[Flycatcher]

From the perspective of John Q. Public, who's wondering, 'What can I do to reduce emissions?'

I think the author means John Q Gullible Self-loathing Idiot.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[RC2]

One thing these nuts don’t understand........we don’t need their permission to eat, their permission to buy stuff, their permission to drive, their permission to drill for oil, their permission to travel. That is why we are the United States and the most powerful country in the world. Other countries don’t like our freedom and some in this country don’t like it either. Especially if our neighbor next door has more than the next guy. They prefer total control over everything you do...........it’s called socialism.

[conservativeharleyguy]

"...Every product, from televisions to teapots, takes energy to get to the shopping bag — energy to mine raw materials, make the product and ship it..."

Well... that is true, but solipsistic. They can't just use this model for the things they disagree with. They have to look at the trendy things they love as well.

Things like.... hmm,, let's see.... hybrid cars!! They're loaded with exotic heavy metals, orders of magnitude more copper wire (than a conventional car), much higher percentages of "lightweight" plastic parts (another petroleum product after all), "new" vs. recycled materials, etc. The Chevy H3 is about 30% recycled material (crushed minivans, and soda bottles, how can that be bad?), uses conventional (i.e. proven/reliable/available vs. experimental/unstable/low economy-of-scale) technologies, and it is nowhere near as hazardous as a Prius in the event of a collision, even without considering the additional high-amperage and chemical hazards hybrids present.

And photovoltaic solar panels? Last time I checked, a silicone wafer "Fab" uses several 100,000 gallons of water a day, requires a lot of nasty solvents, and heavy metals as well.

I'm all for alternative energy, but let's be honest about, and factor in the "upstream" source-material impact of everything, not just the things the left loves to hate.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

We live better and healthier than any humans in the world's history. Our lives have never been longer or easier, we have access to an enormous number of utensils and applications which eliminate drudge-work and enhance our lives. No humans before us ever had the mobility we have. Life is great for modern Westerners, and it requires energy consumption. Small wonder the people of China and India are working to join us - and any decent person should wish them every success.

But the environmentalists can't or won't understand this - they look back to some pre-industrial utopia which never existed, full of epizootic biological diseases transmitted by the animals who served as a crude first attempt at relieving manual labor.

[Reeses]

Banning plastic shopping bags is trendy but the reason they are so inexpensive is because they use so little resources in their manufacture and distribution. Price is an excellent indicator of total greenness, a fact the envi-mentalists can’t accept.

[CobraJet]

As someone pointed out.. Life without energy would be brutal - and short.

[Dick Bachert]

AL’S COOL NEW HOUSEBOAT!

[SuziQ]

Some people prefer to live simply. If they like that, that's fine, but they shouldn't kid themselves that they're having any effect on the planet, good OR bad, because they're NOT. Driving an electric car will help the air quality in your particular town, and that can be a good thing, or you can decide to put solar panels on your roof, and solar collectors for hot water, so you can live off the grid, if you prefer, but it won't have any effect on how warm or cold the Earth becomes.

This article is simply another in a long line of those damning Consumerism in general and Capitalism in particular.

[conservativeharleyguy]

The last time I bought new carpet, I picked out a very nice Berber weave that turned out to be made of recycled plastic bags. Greenies never mention stuff like that. They'd have rather forced me to buy carpet made from free-range, organically-fed alpaca wool from some fourth-world, “sustainable”, free-trade millinery (loosely translated from hippy-speak: “high cost, low quality”). Lowe's works just fine for me.

[cheee]

I was visiting my left-leaning son and his flaming-liberal girlfriend recently in Pittsburg (they attend CMU).

Anyway, he and I went to the grocery store and bought, among other things, a couple of portobello mushrooms for his girlfriend. He was going to carry them in his hands for a couple of blocks back to their place rather than get a small plastic bag to carry them. I would have none of it and put them in a bag for him.

The engineer in me wouldn’t let it go.

So, I asked him: “How much oil do you think it takes to make a plastic bag like this?”

His answer: “Some, I guess. I don’t know.”

My response: “Here’s a hint. Consider the weight of this plastic bag. The weight is essentially the same before and after. You can measure the amount of oil needed to produce it in ‘drops of oil’.”

cheee

[Reeses]

Also plastic bags are made of polyethylene which is a pure hydrocarbon, nothing but carbon and hydrogen atoms, so unlike other plastics it is safe to burn or re-use in a fuel. All the energy content of the original petroleum used to make the bag is still there. Possibly the waste heat of a diesel engine, such as a store’s delivery truck, could be used to efficiently turn these bags into diesel fuel. But like you said it would only be a couple drops of oil per bag.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Without a doubt, my stuff is contributing to global warming. I knew I should not have bought that last case of solar flares. Just one would have been fine, but nooooooo, I had to be greedy!

[eyedigress]

This “houseboat” is similar to ManBearPigs.

http://www.billaustinaircraft-yacht.com/2007fantasy/index.shtml

[Dick Bachert]

Have a friend who owns a new 85 footer very similar to this one. Trying to unload it due to lake level here dropping like a stone. He’d have made Algore a hell of a deal.
Probably have even given him something extra off for the radio controlled SEA COCKS.

[eyedigress]

I might have given a discount, but I doubt I would have listed it as that. LOL

[KevinB]

As I’m typing this it’s 57 degrees at my house in Northern Virginia. We slept with the windows open last night. My wife needed a jacket while walking her horse this morning. The forecast high is 77 degrees. Global warming - bring it on!