Push hard enough for a replacement to oil and things will, indeed, start to happen. Alternatives will begin to appear. New ways to produce fuels will begin to appear. Push hard enough for a replacement to trans fats, as New York City, newly crowned nanny capitol of the US, just did and solutions will also rear their heads for that problem. The solutions may, in fact, be one and the same.
But the consequences of those "solutions" may be devastating.
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – The oil palm must be the most reviled plant on earth, held responsible for everything from rainforest destruction and orangutan annihilation to polluted Asian skies and exploitation of workers.
But lately, high crude oil prices and new health concerns have given the towering palm, grown mostly in Malaysia and Indonesia, a surprising new status as an environmental saviour.
Palm oil production and prices are soaring as it finds favour as a source of eco-friendly biofuel — fuel derived from renewable resources as an alternative to fossil fuels — and as a substitute for the new dietary baddy trans fats, which are commonly used in processed food.
Palm oil used to be shunned because it is a saturated fat, but trans fats are now believed to be much more harmful and last year the US market for Malaysian palm oil grew by 65 percent as consumers began making the switch.
Meanwhile, European nations in particular are fuelling big demand for biofuel, which is derived from natural oils and plants and added to ordinary diesel, and is seen as an important tool for reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
Last year Malaysian exports of palm oil, already the world's largest, grew to a record 31.81 billion ringgit (9.05 billion dollars), five percent up on the last high set in 2004.
Biodiesel production is expected to double this year……
……"We owe no apology to anyone to use our forests for our own use. Just like the Europeans who used up all their forests for their own use," Energy Minister Lim Keng Yaik said last year.
In Indonesia, however, land clearing is rampant and last month Greenpeace warned that European Union demand for bio-fuel could threaten Indonesia's remaining forests as the government approves new palm oil plantations.
Chinese-funded plans for a vast new plantation in Indonesia's Kalimantan which would see the forest stripped from a 1.8 million-hectare (4.5 million-acre) site — half the size of the Netherlands — have raised particular alarm.
Apart from destroying forests where new species are still being discovered at the rate of three a month, burning to clear land for palm oil poses a major hazard because the dense smoke wafts right across the region.
In 1997-98 the haze choked large parts of Southeast Asia, costing an estimated 9.0 billion dollars by disrupting air travel and other business activities, and triggering a health crisis that rears its head annually.
Kind of interesting, isn't it? China is heavily involved in disrupting the environment while demanding the West change its ways. Do you get the feeling the true believers in man-induced global warming are being played?
I do.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
But as my grandpappy used to say, “For every contrary there is a double. Which means son if it ain’t working the first time then twice as often only doubles the cost.”
Gaius, don’t you think China will buy the solution from us if we invent it?
One reason the global-warming problem seems so daunting is that the success of previous antipollution efforts remains something of a secret.
Polls show that Americans think the air is getting dirtier, not cleaner, perhaps because media coverage of the environment rarely if ever mentions improvements. For instance, did you know that smog and acid rain have continued to diminish throughout George W. Bush’s presidency?
One might expect Democrats to trumpet the decline of air pollution, which stands as one of government’s leading postwar achievements. But just as Republicans have found they can bash Democrats by falsely accusing them of being soft on defense, Democrats have found they can bash Republicans by falsely accusing them of destroying the environment. If that’s your argument, you might skip over the evidence that many environmental trends are positive.
One might also expect Republicans to trumpet the reduction of air pollution, since it signifies responsible behavior by industry. But to acknowledge that air pollution has declined would require Republicans to say the words, “The regulations worked.â€
Does it matter that so many in politics seem so pessimistic about the prospect of addressing global warming? Absolutely. Making the problem appear unsolvable encourages a sort of listless fatalism, blunting the drive to take first steps toward a solution.
Historically, first steps against air pollution have often led to pleasant surprises.
When Congress, in 1970, mandated major reductions in smog caused by automobiles, even many supporters of the rule feared it would be hugely expensive. But the catalytic converter was not practical then; soon it was perfected, and suddenly, major reductions in smog became affordable. Even a small step by the United States against greenhouse gases could lead to a similar breakthrough.
And to those who worry that any greenhouse-gas reductions in the United States will be swamped by new emissions from China and India, here’s a final reason to be optimistic: technology can move across borders with considerable speed.
Today it’s not clear that American inventors or entrepreneurs can make money by reducing greenhouse gases, so relatively few are trying. But suppose the United States regulated greenhouse gases, using its own domestic program, not the cumbersome Kyoto Protocol; then America’s formidable entrepreneurial and engineering communities would fully engage the problem.
Innovations pioneered here could spread throughout the world, and suddenly rapid global warming would not seem inevitable.
You engineers really should accept there is a problem so you can put those thinking caps on. Every working brain needs to be on this.
Should we stop burning oil – yes. For the reasons you think are paramount? Not so much. I have yet to see a good reason why the alarmists on this think this it the optimal – never to be changed – environment for the Earth.
Hint – you can’t – because you have no idea, nor do any of the people you are sending here to try to convince me.
The Earth has been a lot hotter than this in the past – and a hell of a lot colder quite recently. Why are you so certain this right now as it exists world is perfect?
Answer – you don’t. Nor do your alarmist pals, nor do the self-styled experts you are encouraging to come here in hopes of “tipping” me.
You have no clue, only a yearning for stasis.
Ain’t gonna happen.
I am more concerned about coal. Oil will be replaced faster because we don’t have much thats accessible left and we can’t occupy every square inch of the middle east indefinitely without borrowing even more from the Saudis and Chinese.
But even if you don’t understand AGW, surely you do understand the connections between coal and good old fashioned pollution that has a hand in causing brain damage: google the skyrocketing autism rates and mercury from coalmining, to say nothing of skyrocketing asthma rates, nonexistant when I was a kid.
And coal fired electricity produces 40% of the nations electricity to fire up our Ipods.
Hard to believe that we can’t engineer our way out of an 18th century technology (coal fires – boil water – to make steam – that turns turbines: essentially James Watts steam engine) in a the age of nanotech!
I wonder why more engineers are not thinking along these lines?
Certainly theres as much money to be made by all of us in new technology as in digging our energy out of the ground.
“The Earth has been a lot hotter than this in the past – and a hell of a lot colder quite recently. Why are you so certain this right now as it exists world is perfect?”
The question is not which temperature range is perfect, no doubt with a million or two years to adapt some earth creatures of some sort would adapt to a GRADUALLY changing planet average up to as hot as Venus or as cold as Mars…
But as you know: the mass extinctions happen at the boundaries between the ice ages and the warmer ages, ie 250 million years ago, 50 million years ago, the Cretaceous and the Eocene extinctions.
So for us to be “creating” a boundary, like those previous ice age/warm age boundaries,
AND within a mere century or two, not millions of years
- is going to lead to extinctions on a scale that will make it difficult for humans to keep agriculture going.
Not just some butterfly in the Amazon you never heard of but multiple relationships between the pests that affect our crops here that supply our food.