Why the US government doesn’t act on climate change

If you want to know why the US doesn’t take any significant action on climate change, look no further than the House of Representatives subcommittee on Climate Change.  Its new chair is Rep Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah who does not believe in man-made climate change.  This is also a guy who thinks the EPA should be eliminated because it ‘thwarts energy development.’  Yeah, just ask China how that’s going.  I for one believe that sacrificing long term growth and prosperity in favor of short term profits is NOT pro-business, and am disgusted at the Republican party as a whole for taking that stance while at the same time pretending to be pro-business.  This short-term perspective is nothing more than personal greed.

When virtually all climate scientists believe in man-made climate change…to have the chair of this subcommittee oppose that view is an outright rejection of science and logic.  No wonder Congress can’t get anything done.

(via Salon)

The cost of climate change

People are so incredibly focused on what fighting climate change would cost then, now, that they tend to overlook the cost of inaction.  Sure, most of this cost will be borne by future generations, but what gives us the right to burden them with this?  They deserve the same, or better, quality of life as us.  So, what is the cost of climate impacts due to human-caused CO2 pollution?  A recent study (link) finds the worst case cost, which is based on our current course of action, at about $1240 trillion, a number so large that I have a hard time comprehending it (the timeframe of this is a bit unclear, but they do say the annual impact is about $1.5 trillion so this cost looks like a long-term one, not to downplay its significance any!).  What’s more important is that they also estimate that, if we can stabilize CO2 levels at 450ppm, the impact is only about $110 trillion, a substantial savings.  Given the obvious cost savings here, and our current inaction, I fear our generation will do nothing more than teach future generations to not be so greedy.  Which is not all bad, assuming future generations can manage to still have a cohesive, productive society in the changing ecosystem we’re creating for them.  Read more here.

Jumping now to this infographic, obtained from grist.  It lays out the expected impact of climate change, taking into account different CO2 emission scenarios (we’re on track for the worst case scenario as laid out here…scary).  Click the thumbnail below for the full image.

IiB CO2 graphic v3

Where is Peak Oil?

The idea of Peak Oil, where demand exceeds supply, threatened us for a long time yet continual advances in oil extraction techniques keeps pushing that date farther and farther out, as explained in a recent article over at FastCompany (worth reading if you’re into this stuff!).  Instead, we’re facing a new dilemma…we’ve gotten so good at extracting fossil fuels from the ground, that we now face the grim reality of the environmental impact of consuming the known and accessible fossil fuel reserves.  If we want to stay below the internationally-agreed upon 2°C of global warming, we can dump about 565 gigatons more CO2 into the atmosphere.  The problem is that current fossil fuel reserves, ignoring any future discoveries, contain about 2,795 gigatons of CO2 (source).  Yeah.  Not good.  Either fossil fuels need to get so expensive that people stop using them, or we’re going to really mess up this planet.

Can the Internet of Things help reduce global warming?

The Internet of Things is best thought of as abundant networked, communicating smart devices all around you.  Sensors, mostly, that are all communicating and making available unprecedented amounts of information about objects and the environment.  Houses that know what rooms people are in, what rooms they are likely to be in next, and adjust HVAC systems accordingly to reduce energy consumption, for example.  I’ve loved the idea of this from a technology geek perspective, but I hadn’t considered the environmental aspect until coming across this article talking about how it could offset billions of tons of CO2 through increased efficiency.  Interesting idea…and it makes a lot of sense.  We’d have to also consider the CO2 impact of actually producing so many sensors and networked objects, though.

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