Rebellin

In an effort to do what I can to help stop/slow global warming, I contacted my senator, Harry Reid. I got a canned response from him, but I was glad to hear some of the things he had to say, such as the fact that he hopes “that this issue will rise above partisanship and that all parties will realize our moral obligation to address this issue so that future generations can enjoy a safe and habitable world”. That is exactly what I have been saying here.

However, I think politicians get stuck on viewing global warming as simply a vehicle emissions problem. It’s not. What about the emissions caused by providing energy, and why isn’t the government doing more to encourage green energy? And to our President, George, I think there are other threats to our country besides terrorism. Perhaps we should pay attention!

Dear Mrs. Bellin:

Thank you for contacting me about halting global warming. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

I believe that global warming constitutes one of the greatest challenges of our time and that the Federal government must take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions. On June 22, 2005, the United States Senate took an unprecedented step by approving a resolution that recognized the need for the federal government to “slow, stop, and reverse” global warming emissions.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has refused to act on this issue, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming has very serious consequences for our planet. To commemorate the one year anniversary of the passage of the Senate resolution and to revive this issue in Congress and put pressure on the Bush Administration, I was proud to sign a letter from a bipartisan group of Senators sent to President Bush. Our letter asked him to finally provide leadership on this critical issue and to take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions.

I believe the President must build international and domestic support for global greenhouse gas reductions and work with Congress to increase U.S. efforts to do the same. Over time, I hope that this issue will rise above partisanship and that all parties will realize our moral obligation to address this issue so that future generations can enjoy a safe and habitable world.

Fossil fuel use, which emits greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, must be curtailed or be made zero-emitting in order to halt climate change. That is one of the reasons why I have been working to reduce America’s dependence on oil. I recently joined twenty-four of my colleagues to introduce the Clean Energy Development for a Growing Economy Act (Clean EDGE, S. 2829). Clean EDGE is an Apollo Project-like initiative that has an aggressive goal: to reduce America’s consumption of foreign oil by forty percent by the year 2020. Among other things, this bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code to extend tax credits for investment in solar energy technology and fuel cells; mandate that fifty percent of new vehicles sold in the United States be capable of using alternative fuels by 2020; as well as set a national goal for installing alternative fuels at America’s gas stations.

During my time in the Senate, I have pursued policies that would strengthen corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards and increase fuel conservation. I recognize that upgrading fuel economy standards is an essential component to achieving energy independence, as well as saving money for consumers and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I am also working to provide consumers with more fuel efficient vehicle choices, more accurate fuel economy information, and streamlined fuel specifications that maintain state clean air protections. Additionally, I will continue to support the development of hydrogen energy and improved infrastructure and electricity options for hybrids.

The nation’s current energy policy has made America more dependent on oil. I was disappointed that on May 2, 2006, an amendment offered by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to add $3 billion for a wide range of energy efficiency, security, and research development programs to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill was prevented from being considered by the full Senate. The successful implementation of Senator Menendez’ amendment would have been a significant step towards reducing our dependency on oil. As the 109th Congress moves forward, I will continue to use my position in the Senate leadership and my senior position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to help achieve that goal and promote development of alternative and renewable energy sources.

Together, America can do better and achieve energy independence by 2020. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

My best wishes to you.

Sincerely,

HARRY REID

United States Senator

Hats off to Stacy, who actually took action to help reduce global warming by planting a tree and changing her air filters. Anyone else inspired?!

To address some of the other comments:

Karl, yes, it is bad to stomp on the gas just to see the smoke come out of your diesel truck.

Amber, how much money would you like to pay for my Trans Am?!

So I’m getting all kinds of flack about my postings regarding global warming. Both of my brothers want me to GIVE them my Trans Am, and if I do, they promise to drive their gas guzzlers less.

Well, that’s not gonna happen.

But still, I recommend that everyone stop putting their energy and effort into denying global warming and trying to poke holes in the theories, and just start concentrating on what you can do to reduce your personal carbon emissions.

If you do a lot of little things, it can add up to make a huge difference. Recycle. Plant a tree. Use energy efficient light bulbs and appliances. Replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner. Check the air pressure on your tires. Those are just a list of the completely do-able things we each can do.

Here are the suggestions from ClimateCrisis.net.

Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl)
CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. If every family in the U.S. made the switch, we’d reduce carbon dioxide by more than 90 billion pounds! You can purchase CFLs online from the Energy Federation.

Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer
Almost half of the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has more tips for saving energy on heating and cooling.

Clean or replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner
Cleaning a dirty air filter can save 350 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Install a programmable thermostat
Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.

Choose energy efficient appliances when making new purchases
Look for the Energy Star label on new appliances to choose the most efficient models. If each household in the U.S. replaced its existing appliances with the most efficient models available, we’d eliminate 175 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year!

Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket
You’ll save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple action. You can save another 550 pounds per year by setting the thermostat no higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Use less hot water
It takes a lot of energy to heat water. You can use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of carbon dioxide saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year) instead of hot.

Use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible
You can save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide when you air dry your clothes for 6 months out of the year.

Turn off electronic devices you’re not using
Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Unplug electronics from the wall when you’re not using them
Even when turned off, things like hairdryers, cell phone chargers and televisions use energy. In fact, the energy used to keep display clocks lit and memory chips working accounts for 5 percent of total domestic energy consumption and spews 18 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year!

Install a programmable thermostat
Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.

Choose energy efficient appliances when making new purchases
Look for the Energy Star label on new appliances to choose the most efficient models. If each household in the U.S. replaced its existing appliances with the most efficient models available, we’d eliminate 175 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year!

Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket
You’ll save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple action. You can save another 550 pounds per year by setting the thermostat no higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Almost one third of the carbon dioxide produced in the United States comes from our cars, trucks and airplanes. Here are some simple, practical things you can do to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide you produce while on the move.

Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible
Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year! Click here to find transit options in your area.

Start a carpool with your coworkers or classmates
Sharing a ride with someone just 2 days a week will reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by 1,590 pounds a year. eRideShare.com runs a free national service connecting commuters and travelers.

Keep your car tuned up
Regular maintenance helps improve fuel efficiency and reduces emissions. When just 1% of car owners properly maintain their cars, nearly a billion pounds of carbon dioxide are kept out of the atmosphere.

Check your tires weekly to make sure they’re properly inflated
Proper inflation can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Since every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, every increase in fuel efficiency makes a difference!

When it is time for a new car, choose a more fuel efficient vehicle
You can save 3,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year if your new car gets only 3 miles per gallon more than your current one. You can get up to 60 miles per gallon with a hybrid! You can find information on fuel efficiency here and here.

Try car sharing
Need a car but don’t want to buy one? Community car sharing organizations provide access to a car and your membership fee covers gas, maintenance and insurance. Many companies – such as Flexcar — offer low emission or hybrid cars too!

Try telecommuting from home
Telecommuting can help you drastically reduce the number of miles you drive every week. For more information, check out the Telework Coalition.

Fly less
Air travel produces large amounts of emissions so reducing how much you fly by even one or two trips a year can reduce your emissions significantly. You can also offset your air travel by investing in renewable energy projects.

Study suggests hair dye, cancer connection.

A new European study says that people who color their hair face a 19 percent increased risk of lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. For those who color at least 12 times a year, it says that heightened risk jumps to 26 percent. And, for those who started coloring before 1980, 37 percent.

Ugha, that is really not good news for me. Wasn’t it bad enough that I started going gray at 17?! Now it puts me at increased risk for cancer?!

Did anyone see the story on the news last night that linked global warming to forest fires? Here is an exerpt:

The Earth’s warming climate is making wildfire seasons longer, more intense and more dramatic across the West and especially in the northern Rocky Mountains, according to a study released Thursday.

The study, to be published in the journal Science, is the first of its kind examining the link between climate and increasing fire activity in recent decades.

It’s one of the starkest examples of how global warming is affecting the continental United States, said one of its authors.

As the global climate has warmed, snowpack in the West has melted earlier in the year, drying out landscapes and creating ripe conditions for fire. Since 1986, longer, hotter summers have led to a fourfold increase in large wildfires compared to the 1970s and early 1980s, the study found. The greatest increases were in places like Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, where mid-elevation forests seemed especially susceptible to rising temperatures.

The average wildfire season in the West is 78 days longer and the average large fire burns longer, jumping from 7.5 days to 37.1, the study said.

The changes corresponded with a 1.5 degree Fahrenheit increase in the region.

“Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away,” co-author Thomas Swetnam, of the University of Arizona, said in a statement. “But it’s not 50 to 100 years away — it’s happening now in forest ecosystems through fire.”

And for my brother that offered to take my Trans Am and ride his bike to work more (and also give a bike to Al Gore), you are welcome to my Trans Am… For the right price!

The main rebuttal to global warming is “how do we know humans are causing global warming”? Couldn’t this just be another cyclical climate change?

That seems to be the main denial that most people are living in. Carbon dioxide levels can be measured by taking ice cores in the polar ice caps. Bubbles of air get trapped in these ice cores, enabling scientists to measure CO2 levels back as far as 650,000 years. Seriously.

If you chart out increased CO2 levels against the global average temperature, you’ll find that the two mirror each other — the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the hotter the earth is. It also seems to be an up and down line on the graph.

Yes, there are periods of warming and cooling historically, dating back 600,000 years. But CO2 levels are higher now then they have EVER been, and hence temperatures are rising. The projections are for the CO2 levels to go off the charts if we continue as we have been.

The high levels of CO2 in our atmosphere right now are due to buring of fossil fuels. Period. That is human caused. And I wish I could say all of this as eloquently as Al Gore, but my point is this: stop trying to debunk global warming and just see this movie. It really made a believer out of me.

One of the things I’m struggling with right now is my vehicles, which are definitely contributing to this problem. Oh, how I love my Trans Am, but it is admittedly bad for the environment. I’m not sure how I want to deal with this, considering even if I sell my two vehicles to buy a hybrid, SOMEONE would still be driving them. But still, there are other things we can all do. We have the responsibility to do these things. If you care what this planet will be like for our children, you must care. As it is, global warming is disrupting ecological balances, resulting in the spread of pests (like the pine beetle, who eats forrests and leaves them vulnerable to fires), increases in the ranges of disease vectors (including mosquitos, ticks and fleas), and the extinction of a growing number of species.

Add to this the fact that the population is growing exponentially, and as the polar ice caps melt, available land mass will shrink. Plus, the polar ice caps now reflect the sun’s rays, helping to keep the planet cool. Once they are gone, the sun’s rays will be absorbed by the oceans, warming them even more, causing more catostrophic storms.

Don’t sit there and deny that this is already starting. It is. Hurricaine Katrina. The most Hurricaines in a YEAR last year — they ran out of names for them! The Bird Flu. West Nile virus. This is the legacy we’re leaving for our children. The least we can do is work to diminish our individual effects on the planet.

More on that later.

Here are a few exerpts from the website for An Inconventient Truth.

“Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are rising.

The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it’s already happening and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence. The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable.

We’re already seeing changes. Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing.

• The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
• Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.
• The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.
• At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.

If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.

• Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years — to 300,000 people a year.
• Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
• Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
• Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
• The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
• More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.”

We are seeing so much evidence of how bad this can get. More intense storms (Hello, Katrina), the spread of diseases (thank you, Avian Flu), rising ocean levels, forrest fires, droughts, and the fact that our polar ice caps may be GONE by 2050. GONE. My next post will focus on what we can do. What we must do. Oh my gosh, you need to see this movie.

This past weekend, JB and I saw An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s movie about global warming. I don’t care if you don’t like Al Gore. I don’t care if you think the movie is for tree huggers only. GO SEE IT. This movie has been haunting me ever since I saw it, and the scary thing is — it isn’t fiction. Expect to hear a lot more about this movie on my site in the next few days, but for now, just take my word for it — it is a MUST SEE, out of responsibility to future generations!