No House for You

If people were to use some common sense in building their CA homes, like putting solar panels on their roofs to power their A/C units and business put solar units on their roofs to generate power to cool the business they work in, maybe CA would not have the air pollution problems it now has, which includes the pollution coming out of SUVs that are too large to be reasonable choices to drive to work.  It is time for people to start driving plug in hybrids to work and use solar panels to charge their cars while at work, or be forced to move close to work and to take a bus. 

Food should not be used to make fuel when many people making $6.25 a hour cannot afford a roof over their heads and have to live out of their cars.  Yes some people are now living in their cars and the State of CA is providing parking lots for these people to park their cars on at night.

What worries me is the dropping oxygen in the air because of all the oil and coal humans are burning to live above long term sustainable life style.  The next generation is in for a shock when many more of them are forced to live in cars because they cannot afford an apartment, food, kids, clothing, a car, medical care, and the cost of non-renewable energy.   

Green has been defined for us by Jerry Brown and Mr. Gore in both very passionate and broad perspectives.

With Al, well New York and coastal cities will be underwater in a hundred years and the Polar Bears need more habitat.

For grins, lets look at this from a different perspective. Anyone notice that gas is hovering around $4.00/gallon? BTW that will go down between now November (obviously both parties will want to claim credit for walking on oil - borrowed metaphor). We've done nothing to advance tax advantages for renewable energy (same reason gas prices will levitate for a few months).

Do you know that in Europe $7-9.00/gal for petrol as been common since the early 90s?

Guess what we'll be paying in about 18-24 months!?

We SHOULD have heeded guys like Jerry in the 70s when OPEC first flexed their muscles.

Instead of curbing our appetitie for energy, we used our superpower status to lean on the Sauds et.al. to boost production and keep our prices artificially low. (Query: Since we are a "superpower", do all elected officials then consider themselves to be superheroes? If so are all of our problems traceable to a perpetuated political mass delusion?)

Green and conservation ARE conservative. Let's move away from automobile anxiety for a moment.

In 2004 the U.S. spent roughly $237B on electricity - approximately 50-50% split between residential and commercial/industrial. EASILY half of both sides of the equation were pure waste (as is roughly 37% of the gas we burn in our cars).

Green is about MONEY as well as our (individual and) collective survivability as a sovereign nation, and a world. We wasted over $80-108 B(ILLION DOLLARS) in our homes and businesses.

Years ago there was a cartoon "POGO". One particular cartoon ad the lead lizard walking around a tree with his GI helmet on. His caption: "I have seen the enemy and he is us."

We in te U.S. are energy pigs.

In 20 years if we are not 60-80% sustainable in our buildings and renewable energy resources; Russia and Iran will dictate our foreign policy (not that they aren't quite the influence now). See U.S. EIA Report 2007. Study the science and graphs, ignore the propaganda.

BTW if you're wondering about my politics, I'm just to the right of Reagan with a Ron Paul flavor.

I think it's interesting that we dog our president (who really has done a pretty fair job) at a 30% approval rating and fail to mention the 9% approval rating of congress. Our government needs a laxative.

Speaking of laxatives, with all due respect while the President's position on drilling for oil is commendable, we will need it for other purposes than fueling vehicles. However one must bear in mind that "deep oil" is retrieved at a depth comparable to the height of Mt. Everest. Definitely not your $4.00/gal gas.

Our future is Solar, Wind, and Hydrogen.

The thing that eats my lunch is much of what we need, especially for sustainable buildings, is already shelf technology.

Today (as in honest to God -no offense to the overly religious intended - today), we can affordably reduce building external heat loads by 96% in sunbelt houses. That will decrease the electric bill by 50-70%, increase the equity value of the home (with appropriate affordable alternative energy solutions, the bill can be "zero"), and ... ta da the U S GOVERNMENT will provide a significant grant to offset the cost.

Utility bills are magically back to 70's levels, and simple paybacks drop to 2-3 years. (AND if you apply just a portion of your savings to your mortgage...ala kazaam the mortgage company loses 4-7 years' control of your pocketbook.)

Are extreme measures to go green really the way to get there? Hello!!

YES!

In WWII we went from making Maytags and Model A cars to making bombs, planes, boats, ammunition, etc. and outfitted the largest multi-front expeditionary force in the world. Energy transformation sould be a national emergency.

Who will make this "energy crisis" go away? (Please repeat after me "I know that this is my partly my fault, goshdarn I'm sorry. I will OPEN my mind and change my ways". You'll feel better now.)

I watch the political ballet and remember the words of revered British poet, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

Oh! The Constitution of the United States of America...as I recall there are three important words at the beginning of this document "We the People..." not "them the politicians" are responsible. Energy: how we consume it, generate it and transport it are front burner issues (lovely place for a pun).

A little humor for you (environmentalists - we're on the same side, but save the humans, and save America are up there for me and y'all did create the treehugger image). Perhaps we could breed smaller polar bears until the ice caps come back. Hang signs around windmills for migratory birds that say "BIRDS TURN LEFT" (you have to specify left as it is rumored most will go right by nature). AND we can place all major coastal cities (including the Statue of Liberty on barges and pontoons.

I will not debate the science of global warming. Flip a coin and we are responsible to some degree. Let's move this conversation to short-term, mid-range, and long-term socio-economic real-time solutions.

Wake up! Three crises loom ahead this century: RIGHT NOW -1. affordable, inexpensive energy; witin 40 years - 2. sufficient potable water for everyone in the world, and now - 3. enough food for everyone.

EXTREME GREEN for the right reasons.

Green is conservative. It's right. It's necessary IN THE EXTREME now.

GUYONTHEWALL

From Melanie's link which she supplied above, Sir Christopher Monckton ( http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerr... ):

Gore says the Arctic has been warming faster than the rest of the
planet. It is not. While it is in general true that during periods of
warming (whether natural or anthropogenic) the Arctic will warm faster
than other regions, Gore does not mention that the Arctic has been
cooling over the past 60 years, and is now one degree Celsius cooler
than it was in the 1940s. There was a record amount of snow cover in
the Northern Hemisphere in 2001. Several vessels were icebound in the
Arctic in the spring of 2007, but few newspapers reported this. The
newspapers reported that the North-West Passage was free of ice in
2007, and said that this was for the first time since records began:
but the records, taken by satellites, had only begun 29 years
previously. The North-West Passage had also been open for shipping in
1945, and, in 1903, the great Norwegian explorer Amundsen had passed
through it in a sailing ship.

More from my friend Mick ( http://www.uncorrelated.com/2008/06/ice_free_north... ):

The reality is that there is no significant warming going in the
arctic, and that the warmest period was in the 1940s, not more
recently. Antarctica is actually cooling.

What really interesting about polar ice and temperature studies is
that you can actually get localized warming, which is the case in the
antarctic where 2% of the region is in fact showing a warming trend,
while the remaining 98% is cooling. If you pick the right areas, you
can support a chicken-little-narrative for global warming, which brings
us to an interesting feature of polar ice studies--the Gore Box.

What is a Gore Box ( http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/01/98012... )?
Well, during the cold war, various scientific data collected by
submarines was considered classified data. In 1998, then Vice-President
Albert Gore declassified the Navy's sea ice data for a specific
geographic area of the arctic known as the "Gore box".

No one seems to know how the borders of the Gore box were
determined, but boxing the arctic provides a wonderful opportunity to
skew "global" warming data, doesn't it?

Global Warming Myths and Facts ( http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1011 )

MYTH: Global warming is just part of a natural cycle. The Arctic has warmed up in the past.

FACT: The global warming we are experiencing is not natural. People are causing it.

As for previous Arctic warming, it is true that there were stretches
of warm periods over the Arctic earlier in the 20th century. The
limited records available for that time period indicate that the warmth
did not affect as many areas or persist from year to year as much as
the current warmth. But that episode, however warm it was, is not
relevant to the issue at hand. Why? For one, a brief regional trend
does not discount a longer global phenomenon.

We know that the planet has been warming over the past several
decades and Arctic ice has been melting persistently. And unlike the
earlier periods of Arctic warmth, there is no expectation that the
current upward trend in Arctic temperatures will reverse; the rising
concentrations of greenhouse gases will prevent that from happening.

But hey, let's see if we can find conservatives who thing that conservation is a good idea since we're keen on presenting the idea that global warming is a liberal fallacy...

From ConssevAmerica ( http://www.conservamerica.org/mission.html ), a Green Republican Organization:

Too often, however, conservation and
environmental protection suffer from partisan bickering. Misguided
"conservatives" dismiss them as "liberal" causes. "Liberals" claim them
as their exclusive political territory. But there is nothing
partisan—and certainly nothing liberal—about practicing good
stewardship of America's air, water, energy and other natural resources.

 The Green Old Party ( http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200407/green.asp )

Conservation is fundamentally conservative. Republican Party values of
fiscal prudence, reducing waste, love of country, and responsibility to
future generations
mesh neatly with environmental goals

Nerd's Eye View ( http://www.nerdseyeview.com )

From my co-blogger Mick, an engineer, with a look at what's really going on at the North Pole ( http://www.uncorrelated.com/2008/06/ice_free_north... ).

Sorry not to respond earlier ladies, I had some appointments today.

Melanie, great to hear from you, and thanks for the added substantive information.

Mom101, great to hear from you too.

But we're not slowly destroying the planet. There is no credible evidence that humans are causing a build-up of greenhouse gases--nor any other agent for that matter, including mother nature. Note one of my links, from a former global warming believer who has said the evidence is not there--there should be hotspots in the atmospher, and they are not there ( http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html ). Also, the oceans are not warming ( http://backyardconservative.blogspot.com/2008/03/r... ).

But for the sake of argument, let's concede there is global warming.  

Advanced capitalist democracies such as ours are the cleanest and the
most likely to come up with technology to keep pace with any
environmental worries we might encounter--Jerry Brown's and Al Gore's draconian solutions would wreck our economy so that we couldn't afford or have the knowhow to develop what we need. Look at how much drilling has advanced--very safe, very little imprint ( http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/republicans... ).

And the biggest polluters are the communist command economies which Brown and Gore want to emulate--China ( http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi...,0,2995452.story ) and Russia.

When politicians are over the top, I am of course going to mock them.

Especially when they threaten my civil liberties with their big brother ideas. Gotta exercise a little extra free speech while I can:) 

Maybe we don't like his proposals. Maybe we don't want to turn over our "rights" that we feel will compromise our quality of life. I know I don't much care for people telling me what to do or giving up things that I love.

But still...he's right.  Our lifestyle is slowly destroying the planet.

I don't know what's to be done about it; maybe nothing. But I don't think that mocking him for speaking the truth is the right answer either. 

Mom-101 ( http://mom-101.blogspot.com )
( http://coolmompicks.com )

Cool Mom Picks.com ( http://coolmompicks.com )

Meridian Magazine, All In A Good Cause: http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/070313goodprint.html

35 Inconvenient Truths: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerr...

Melanie
Blogging Basics 101 ( http://www.bloggingbasics101.com )
Bloggy Giveaways ( http://www.bloggygiveaways.com )
Don't Try This at Home ( http://www.donttryit.com )

Just letting you know there is another conservative out here who appreciates your posting the conservative POV. We all need to do more of this to balance the liberal info that is being posted daily--some it not quite complete.

I agree with you that science will prevail. I'll check the links I have against the ones you've already provided and, if they are different and add to the discussion, I'll post them.

Melanie
Blogging Basics 101 ( http://www.bloggingbasics101.com )
Bloggy Giveaways ( http://www.bloggygiveaways.com )
Don't Try This at Home ( http://www.donttryit.com )

A political scientist is not a real scientist.

Everything is not always a cartoonish eeevil corporate conspiracy.

The real test is whether independent observation confirms the theory.

Perhaps that's why Al refuses to debate ( http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20873 ) those who don't agree with him.

And how about that blogger who found an error in NASA's key temperature numbers ( http://backyardconservative.blogspot.com/2007/08/c... ), so egregious they were forced to issue a correction (Obviously this news hasn't been welcomed or disseminated by the liberal MSM):

Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data ( http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+... ).

NASA has now silently released corrected figures ( http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt ), and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary ( http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/1998_no_l... ) of the events.

The
effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2%
less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the U.S.
global warming propaganda machine could be huge.

And this ( http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/1998_no_l... ):
Four
of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now
from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10
are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000,
2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.
(World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)
Guess all that man-made economic activity during the Depression was really something.

Interesting source:

Source Watch ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartla... )
Exxon Secrets ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartla... )
Think Progress ( http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/01/heartland-clim... )

Nerd's Eye View ( http://www.nerdseyeview.com )

I ignore the LaRouchies in front of my suburban local post office

Global warming is not settled science, it's just a computer model. And the actual temperature readings don't back it up.

http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/

Nice points, Octamom! 

Remember that horrible August the French disgraced themselves heading
to the beach like lemmings for their annual vacance, only to come home
to their dead grannies? There was no air conditioning in the socialist
paradise. But the French didn't know any better. We do.

Potshots at the French? Really? Am I supposed to take you seriously? I would  like to engage in a meaningful exchange of ideas around conservative issues, but I feel very much alone in that desire when I read this post. 

I was walking around my densely populated urban neighborhood where I lived in my modern day cave dwelling and there was a LaRouche campaigner on the corner.  This poor misguideded soul was engaging passersby with the line "Global warming! It's not our fault!" One guy turned and said this: "Are you out of your mind? It's SCIENCE. LOOK IT UP." 

I suggest you do the same. Here are some staring points:

Censorship on Global Warming ( http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/opinion/20FRI1.h... )

EPA on Global Warming ( http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?dei... )

Global Warming Fast Facts ( http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/12... ) 

Nerd's Eye View ( http://www.nerdseyeview.com )

Is he planning on walking all around California if he does make a 2010 run for guv? What about campaign signs made out of paper? What about the fuel voters will use to drive to the polls? What about the Governor's Mansion, should he make it that far? Will he refuse to live there and adopt the policy he's promoting?

It's those lurking Robespierres that scare me.....

Octamom

www.octamom.com ( http://www.octamom.com )

the musings of a mother to a multitude