According to Jack Fellows, cities have more than one incentive to plan ahead for global warming.
Jack Fellows: They’re going to gain knowledge on how to deal with climate change. And that knowledge is going to be exportable to other areas and to other countries.
Fellows, who spoke with EarthSky at a science meeting, is a leading expert on climate change and public policy. He works with The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Jack Fellows: It’s critically important for communities not to plan for current climate, but for a climate that might be two to four degrees warmer than it is today.
Fellows suggested that cities around the world will have to cope with sea level rise, droughts, and floods. He thinks that if cities plan ahead, they might be able to sell their adaptive knowledge and technologies – technologies affecting things like water infrastructure, bridges, wind farms, and solar farms.
Jack Fellows: You know, where are you going to put those? How are you going to build them? I don’t think we even really know all the opportunities that are going to exist. But just right now, there’s a pretty good sense that it’s going to be substantial, billions of dollars.
Join EarthSky in celebrating The International Year of Planet Earth. Thanks to the National Science Foundation and US Geological Survey.
Our thanks to:
Jack Fellows
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado
Individuals CAN prevent Global Warming
I am not completely convinced CO2 has anything to do with Global Warming. That notwithstanding, I am certain that reducing our reliance on fossil fuels is both a good idea and necessary, for a large number of obvious reasons.
The good news is that we can all make a difference. It goes way beyond buying a few (polluting) low energy light bulbs, and will have a real impact if even half of those concerned about Global Warming follow the proposals. The beauty is that even if only half do this, it makes no difference what the rest do! Renewable energy will become cheaper than fossil fuels with enough investment in the technology, and everyone will move over naturally!
Firstly, buy renewable energy.
As far as I am aware, you have the choice to buy renewable electricity in all developed countries. If you cannot now, you should campaign for that inalienable right immediately. Currently our own household buys 25% of our electricity as renewable, costing us about US$33 extra per year. 100% would cost US$183)*.
Some argue that if millions of householders (and industries, I would hope) buy renewable energy, there will not be enough. If you do not buy it, there will NEVER be enough. If you do, the money will be used to INVEST in infrastructure for future renewable energy, so making the expense just as effective.
Merely by choosing to buy this, you are immediately and directly investing in the renewable energy industry, and sending a powerful and undeniable message to those who matter, the people who actually generate electricity, not environmentalists or politicians who may have different agenda.
Secondly, stop investing in ‘Big Oil’ and ‘Big Coal’.
It comes as a shock to many ordinary citizens to be told that the huge greedy corporations actually make money for THEM, not for some faceless consortium. Sure, corporate flunkies may make millions of dollars, but WE, as investors, make billions, and even trillions. Their huge payouts and massive junkets are insignificant compared to the profits the companies make for their investors.
You may well think that you do not invest in these companies, but if you have a pension or investment fund, you almost certainly do. These funds will, quite obviously, be invested in the very companies that make the most profits and returns for their investors. All these corporations are doing is actually acting effectively YOUR instruction, ie to get the best possible return. If WE stop investing in them, they fail, and will be forced to change their practices to survive in a capitalist environment.
The answer is to choose ethical investments (there may be different names). Talk to your financial adviser and make the switch now. ONLY YOU control your investments. Make the choice and stop letting others do it for you.
The message is that YOU control the future of energy production with your wallets. The bad news is that it will cost, but nothing the environmentalists or governments will ever do about this issue will cost you less than this, and most of what they want to do will take control away from you and waste most of your expenditure in bureaucratic bungling and misguided foolishness, in my opinion. This simple two-step approach has all the potential to work and with no complex side effects that I can see immediately. It has a direct and immediate effect.
It is so rare that we are able to do something so straightforward in this complex world. If Global Warming concerns you, I urge you to put your money where your mouth is, and make an immediate difference TODAY, before the power is taken away from you.
* Based on a usage of 5,000 kWh of electricity.
Source: http://www.originenergy.com.au/1142/Green-energy-FAQs#extracost
http://www.carbonclimate.info/2009/03/individuals-can-prevent-global-warming.html
We cannot steer a hurricane; we can’t stop one; we can’t dissipate one; we can’t create one. We can’t steer a tornado; we can’t stop snowstorms; we can’t stop ice; we can’t stop or start anything like that, nothing of major catastrophic consequence. It’s absurd.23 years of predicted crisis. We all have the instinct of not soiling our own nest since we are all animals. But to suggest that human monkeys can cause devastating and irreversible climate chaos (read your IPCC) almost 40 years past the smoggy 70’s when a river caught fire in Ohio is embarrassing. Again, like farting in a tornado. I promise, history will laugh at this theory.
Jerome,
My thinking is similar to yours. I am unconvinced that anthropogenic sources do much in the way of altering the big climate picture. But I don’t think there is any question that we need to move to renewable energy as soon as practical because it makes good sense for a number of reasons.
I would add one thing to your comments. As individuals and corporations look at building out renewable energy we need to read the label. The United States has solar, wind, geothermal, and other component manufacturing industry but we’re a small emerging player in the global market. Somewhere around 90% of the components that go into making solar plants and wind turbines in the U.S. come from China. We should all keep in mind that while the stimulus package is purported to create “green†jobs, the jobs being created will be in China unless we buy from American manufacturers or demand that contractors provide American made products in their bids.
Let’s see, as habitual panicers who proclaim world food shortages in the future, let’s “burn” food instead of pulling energy out of the ground and using it wisely, all because a failed 23 year old theory is clinging to the “precaution” aprouch. Now THAT’s science? Just in case precaution is not exact science.
Let’s protect our world, not save it from a myth.
Oil causes war but face the future with optimism and courage, not this yelling fire in the movie theatre cowardly aprouch.
While the climate did indeed warm (by 0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, almost all of that occurred prior to 1940. It cooled between 1940 and 1975, warmed some between 1975 and 1998, and has not gotten warmer since. The average land and sea absolute temperature around the globe has not risen since 1998, and with the significant drop of 0.8 degrees Celsius from January 2007 to May 2008, most if not all of the 20th century warming has been canceled out.
Global Warming/Climate Change (not to be confused with real pollution) is a 23 year old dead doomsday fad that is not a theory anymore and has become a guilt trip used as a political pawn (the new WMD scam), embraced and sold by hysterical corporate media, a money making wet-dream for anyone in a lab coat (paid consultants), an unconscionable and self assuring socialist utopia, a contemporary (temporary) morality, an egotistical intellectualism akin to witch burning and finally hopefully viewed in history as another lesson in preventing further needless mass fear in a so-called civilized society of human monkeys.
Here is how it will all finally play out. Once the cooling trend is longer than the warming trend the former green trend will focus solely on cheaper energy in a global economic downturn. Every environmental concern will be perceived in doubt as being either part of the old climate change fad or truly an energy concern. In other words people will not be as willing to give up anything in the real crisis: economic survival.
“Cities” do not plan. Cities are inanimate contructs. People plan. People would be better served in planning what to do as the economy melts down and tax revenues plunge. People would be well served to worry about food and transportation as government seeks to control every aspect of life.
When urban folk get hungry and cold, they will resort to stealing and violence to get what they want. Soon there could be anarchy.
The climate will do what it will. Right now it is cooling. That will cause food shortages in itself it it continues. The real proble is the destruction of the economy by collecitivists in all governments. If you will notice, the answer for all problems, real and made up, is more taxes and regulation. Taxes will slow the already stumbling economy and regulation will choke off all innovation and inspiration. We will quickly reach where the former Soviet Union was and where Cuba. North Korea and Venezuela are right now. Hungry, cold and dying.
There will be food and power shortages if government is allowed to take over any aspect of these industries. Count on it.
I will repeat: The climate is fine. Our economy and culture are under assault.