I've become very motivated lately to become a better person. I don't know what started it, but I want to make a more positive impact on my community and the world in which I live. I've been looking at different charities and community outreach programs in which I can become involved through work, we've been switching to more green usage of power at home, I'm more conscious of my effect on the world around me, etc. I don't think this is a shift in who I am as a person so much as just a realization of what impact I have and what impact I can make on the lives of others.
So being in that mindset, I've started talking with people about it. I find that by discussing my desire to help other people in various ways, it motivates those with whom I'm involved in conversation to do the same ... at least at that moment *g*. Today I came across my first real challenge to that.
Really, it started as an innocent comment. I was chatting with someone and mentioned that I was mad at Honda for making the Accord Hybrid $31,000 because I want one. This person, a staunch gay republican told me that I'd get a $5,000 tax credit which would make it only $26,000. Still too expensive for me, I thanked him anyway. Then he said something which caught me off guard. He said "you don't need it anyway; car batteries are far more toxic than CO2 emissions and it would take ten years to make up the extra expense in gas savings. And a single volcano eruption puts out more greenhouse gas emissions than humans can do in 100 years."
Now, I'm no expert on global warming and climate data but most of those words said in that order didn't make sense to me. My first question, obviously, was about the money. Typical me. Unfortunately, the tax credit on the model car I desire is only $1,350. Having that bit of disappointing news, I started to pick apart his statements.
I believe the statement that car batteries are toxic, but I think they can be recycled, so I asked about it. As a matter of fact, most car batteries in the US are recycled so the lead in them is not put back into our environment. Ok, I popped another hole in his statement. What else was there?
Oh yeah, the financial savings of a hybrid. Well, he really had me there. According to a report on Edmunds.com, the average cost of a hybrid vehicle compared to it's non-hybrid counterpart increases by about $4,000. Ok, so estimating my average driving at 10,000 miles a year (factoring out all of these trips to Brownsville) and using my average price per gallon of fuel at a conservative $2.75/gallon and then making the calculations based on a non-hybrid vehicle giving me 20 mpg and a hybrid giving me 28 mpg, I deduce that the hybrid would save me $393 per year in fuel costs. Indeed, it would actually take me a decade to recoup the investment in a hybrid.
But it was his next statement that really got me going. Let me revisit it for a moment: "And a single volcano eruption puts out more greenhouse gas emissions than humans can do in 100 years." That simply makes no sense if you look at the data. Yes, volcanic eruptions spew millions of tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere with each eruption. But, my point to that is that it is a NATURAL part of our ecology. It has been happening for billions of years because it is SUPPOSED to happen that way. What we as a race are adding to the environment is not natural, and obviously harmful.
According to NASA studies (coincidentally funded by bipartisan commissions) the level of CO2 emissions has been on the rise since 1975, and in that time has risen 15%. There has not been a coincidental 15% rise in volcanic activity in that time frame, so that rise can obviously be attributed to US. His rebuttal was that the human population has increased and therefore livestock has increased as well, which contributes to CO2 levels. I thanked him for making my point ... with each additional person we bring on the planet, we are burning more fuels, driving more cars and putting more into our own atmosphere, which accelerates the climate changes we are seeing.
Then he went off the deep end on me. He said he was a "reformed Liberal wacko" and asked what climate change I was talking about. I pointed to the vast sea of scientific data that pointed out what climate change. I then took that cue to discuss an article I'd read about in last week's Science magazine. It's by a group of climate experts from NASA, the Scripps Institute, and institutes in Germany, Australia, and France.
What they've done is straightforward. First, they graph the increase of CO2 concentration, temperature, and sea level, since 1975. Each increases a bit more strongly than a simple linear rise. Maybe they're rising exponentially, maybe not (more on that later).
The changes might not seem extreme. AS I said before, in thirty years, CO2 concentrations are up fifteen percent, Earth's temperature has risen just under a degree Fahrenheit, and sea level has risen three inches.
The authors also display the most important predictions made back in 1990. It turns out that CO2 concentration has risen pretty much exactly as it was predicted. Global temperatures have risen in line witht he worst case predictions. Our sea level is up twenty five percent beyond the worst case predicted. While some other doomsday predictions were far too high, the climate ones were not.
So climatologists in 1990 were not crying wolf. None of them overestimated what was happening. In fact, it'd be easy to look at this and let ourselves become Chicken Little. One could curve-fit an exponential extrapolation to the data. But extrapolation is no more trustworthy than blindly opposing the opinions of someone of a different political party.
As I point out these changes, my conversational counterpart tells me I'm creating a mountain out of a mole hill. Three inches in the vast amount of ocean water we have is nothing. Going back to my article, I give him more indisputable data and fact (the enemy of commentators of the Fox network).
To gain just an inkling of the complexity, I ask him to consider the rising sea levels. The overall rise reflects the ice-cap melting that we're all seeing (although part of the rise comes from thermal expansion of warming oceans). But that net value is an average of larger local sea level variations. The tectonic plates upon which we live rise and fall relative to one another. Since Louisiana and Texas are dropping, we see the sea level rising sharply. But Alaska is rising, so Alaskans see their sea level dropping. New Orleans might go under while Anchorage remains dry. Fill a 2" baking pan with 1/2" of water and then tilt one end to a five degree angle and watch what happens to the water to get my point.
At this point, my antagonist stopped talking. I don't know if my own ocean of facts and figures scared him off or if he became frustrated at the lack of support he had for his argument; my assumption would be a combination of the two.
All of this makes me wonder; why is our environment a political issue? Literally, we are discussing the survival of our race on this planet. Yet it is being used by both sides to get votes more than to raise awareness or enact any real change. Concern about the well-being or survival of future generations shouldn't associate me with any political persuasion. On the other end of the spectrum, why some people use their political affiliation to bury their head in the sand of ignorance when it comes to how we affect our own future is beyond my comprehension.
In any case, we are faced with climate change and it's hard to doubt that we play a significant role in that change. Nor can one reasonably doubt the importance of reducing consumption, waste and emissions, while we look for better information - while we focus, not on the people we like or dislike, but on the data.
