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Opinion
Jun. 12, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: The green blues
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A lot of things people do in an attempt to "think green" and "leave a smaller carbon footprint" end up backfiring.

As complex ecosystems which man has never been able even to accurately predict are simplified to the level of Miss Nancy of Romper Room advising the children to wash their hands and "Do Be a Do-Bee," should we be surprised?

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    • Take the story out of Agence France Press over the weekend which reported that two environmental engineers at the University of California at Davis have calculated that it can actually be more "eco-friendly" to drive into town in your SUV than to take the train, depending on seat occupancy rates on the train, as well as the (previously uncounted) carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in the process of building and maintaining the train and its tracks.

    Meantime, a funny thing happened to that whopping $5 billion in economic stimulus "weatherization" funds as they worked their way through Congress last year.

    "If you were doing it on a national basis, you'd do the most cost-effective jobs first, which would mean doing a lot in places like the Dakotas and Minnesota," explains Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit group that favors weatherization.

    But that plan didn't do a good job of attracting the votes of Southern congressmen. So instead, where in the past only 16 percent of such federal funds were spent insulating homes south of the Mason-Dixon line to save on air conditioning costs -- a process which nets much smaller overall energy savings -- the "Southern" portion has now grown to 31 percent.

    This has raised repeated questions about the effectiveness of weatherization in hot-climate states, The New York Times reported last week. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which evaluates the program for the Energy Department, released a study last year questioning the program's results in Texas, which will get $327 million in weatherization money from the stimulus law. The laboratory found that insulating homes did not save a significant amount of money on cooling, a finding it consistent with previous studies.

    But J. Bennett Johnston, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana who pushed for the new "31 percent" formula, said more people were dying from extreme heat than extreme cold. "This was not so much an energy saving proposal; it was more of an equity proposal ... " Mr. Johnston said.

    So cost-benefit analysis went out the window, because, "We're from the government, we're here to help, every congressman had to get his share, and after all ... it's only tax money."

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    tweedledee wrote on June 12, 2009 10:52 PM: Trees and plants take co2 and turn it into the oxygen we breathe along with making carbohydrates. Look up photosynthesis if you don't believe it. This simple fact has been lost in the climate change argument. The wacks in their propaganda try to make us believe that all the co2 from man and other sources is still in the air or trapped in the plants waiting to be returned to the atmosphere. We keep hearing how the "lungs of the earth", the Amazon, is getting burned off, which is true, and we are all going to die from it. Not true. Studies have shown that there are more trees in this country now than ever before but the wacks turn blue in the face trying to call it a lie. Las Vegas is a perfect and hardly the only example. In the old days there were hardly any trees here and now they are are all over the place. Same with grass and other plants. I'll bet other countries have more trees and plants than in the past. Instead of cap and trade maybe we should plant a couple of trees for every car made or power plant built. The wacks treat carbon as the scourge that will kill the planet but forget that humans and many other lifeforms are carbon based. Humans exhale co2 so if the the wacks really and truely believe the Earth is in dire straits, maybe they should do their part and quit breathing. Being the superior beings they think they are, they would rather we stop breathing as we are expendable and they aren't.


    Alan wrote on June 12, 2009 06:32 PM: Brian is al gores left nut, or licks his left nut?


    climate wrote on June 12, 2009 04:38 PM:


    Vegas Vic wrote on June 12, 2009 03:33 PM: Brian,
    Check out the percentage of CO² in our atmosphere. It composes only 0.037%. That's practically NOTHING in relationship to the OTHER green house gases. Water vapor holds more heat than the miniscule amount of CO² there. So your argument is the southern output of a north-facing bull.


    jeff wrote on June 12, 2009 02:59 PM: We can't tax people's sunlight usage, so we need to find another cause.


    HELEN WEILS wrote on June 12, 2009 12:08 PM: TO ALL OF THE LIBERAL GORE SHEEPLE WHO BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING.
    IT WAS REPORTED LAST WEEK THAT THE SUN IS THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING.
    ONE VOLCANO WILL SPEW MORE DEBRIS INTO THE ATMOSPHERE THAN ALL THE CARS, FACTORIES, ETC. PUT TOGETHER.

    THAT'S WHAT HAS CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE PAST.
    THE HOPIS SAY: THE EARTH ALWAYS CHANGES.
    AND SO DO WE.


    perkins has the better answer..............................real id act cards fix everything... wrote on June 12, 2009 10:41 AM: ..



    perkins knows if everyone has to use the perkins real id act cards from the perkins rfid card company.

    all the money going into perkins pockets, will make them green and all problems go away for tax payers.










    $


    woodbury toll roads would solve all our headaches with higher co$ts wrote on June 12, 2009 10:39 AM:
    woodbury once the head guy of the water authority district.

    has the answer.

    put money in woodbury pockets. and this solves everything.




















    $


    SamT wrote on June 12, 2009 09:49 AM: Congressman Ron Paul said it best, just last week: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul537.html


    SpongeBob wrote on June 12, 2009 09:15 AM: Of course global warming is real. So is global cooling. That's why they rebranded it as 'climate change'.

    Climate change is real. The climate has always changed and will always change. Heck, the climate is supposed to change.

    This isn't about helping the environment. It's about empowering the state under the guise of 'saving the planet'.


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