Bob Morris @ Nov 16th 2007 17:23 - Category: Unfiled ;
$3.23 a gallon. Last year it was $1.95. It’s about 130 gallons to fill it up. So that’s $160 more (for about 6 weeks of heating.)
We can afford it. Lots of people in New England won’t be able to. So they’ll turn the thermostat way down, skip meals or medical care, that kind of thing. This winter is supposed to be mild, imagine what would happen if it was a cold one.
Bob Morris @ Nov 16th 2007 07:19 - Category: Unfiled ;
From a post on the LBO-Talk listserv
Then there’s this classic tale, from a U2 concert in Ireland. In a break
between songs, Bono starts clapping, slowly, and as he’s clapping he says, “every time I clap a child in Africa dies.”Loud and clear comes from someone in the audience, “Then stop fooking doing it then!”
Bob Morris @ Nov 16th 2007 00:19 - Category: Climate change ;
And the enviro-left blows a gasket. It seems to me that if environmentalists actually care about the planet, they should be engaging in dialogue with those who want to do the same thing, even if they differ on policy. Here you have an impeccably credentialed conservative puling the GOP to a more eco-friendly position. And they can’t hurl enough vitriol in his direction.
Global warming and peak oil are immense problems that will require planetary-wide solutions. These aren’t political issues (although they will of course have political aspects) and will require working together, not temper tantrum articles like the Grist piece Sullivan links to.
Interestingly, much of the vitriol is aimed at Gingrich for saying technological solutions are needed. For whatever reason, this proposal can meet with snarling rage from enviros who apparently don’t want technology to solve anything. Better we go back to living in caves with heat from campfires as penance for our sins, apparently. The BreakThrough Institute has proposed a 10 year program of federal funding of $30 billion a year to find clean and better sources of energy and has met with much the same hostility from enviros (and no one else.)
Sure, we need to cut back on energy use as much as possible. Do an energy audit and cut your household emissions. Ditto for businesses. But that doesn’t preclude funding technological research to find better ways of creating and using energy. The fuel cell train is a perfect example of this. It can run on waste hydrogen and has no carbon emissions. Imagine the energy savings if trains were to run on fuel cells. So, technology has much to offer here too.
And so can people from all over the political spectrum. Has Gingrich done noxious things in the past? Sure. But the simple fact that he’s written a book about finding solutions for global warming indicates a sea change on the issue coming from the Right. That means they’re discussing the issue, and thus we should discuss it with them.
Stopping global warming will require enormous resources, huge amounts of money, and millions (billions?) of people working together. It won’t be magically solved by a bunch of greenies living in yurts and scrupulously recycling. If we don’t like the pro-business, anti-government regulation solutions proposed by Gingrich (and many others) then we need to be engaged in the discussion and solutions, not banging a rattle on the high chair because someone moved into turf enviros thought their own.
Bob Morris @ Nov 16th 2007 00:11 - Category: Unfiled ;
Scientists a step closer to steering hurricanes
Assuming this could actually be done, imagine the liability if say, New Orleans steered a hurricane away from them and it hit Houston instead. Or maybe Houston would see the steered storm coming, and steer it back. Might make a good reality show, though., “Extreme Hurricane Steering.”
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