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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
To make progress we need to overcome the “Dragons of Inaction” – our distressing tendency to believe what our senses tell us, instead of listening to the warnings of climate scientists.
How your brain stops you from taking climate change seriously
Science Jan 4, 2019 7:13 PM EST — Updated on Jan 4, 2019 9:16 PM EST
By — Nsikan AkpanInaction on climate change has been stymied by politics, lobbying by energy companies and the natural pace of scientific research — but one of the most significant barriers is our own minds.
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Finally, there are what Gifford calls “dragons of inaction” — the specific cognitive barriers that dominate someone’s view of climate change.
“The perception of not having control over the situation is certainly one of the biggest” barriers, Gifford said.
Whenever the NewsHour covers climate change, the most common responses we get from those who don’t believe that humans influence climate change point to the ice ages. They cite how the Earth has experienced natural cycles, between extreme cold and heat, for millennia.
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For instance, even if many people know that the average American emits about 17 tons of carbon every year, they don’t realize half of those emissions could be eliminated with simple fixes.
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Washing clothes in cold water can save up to 15 pounds of carbon emissions per load, depending on your washing machine and your energy supplier.
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Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-your-brain-stops-you-from-taking-climate-change-seriously
My Dragon of tedium almost defeated my struggle to read to the end of Nsikan Akpan’s rather long climate monologue. But what stood out more than anything is the sheer inanity of Akpan’s proposed solutions. Buying more electric cars. Washing clothes in cold water. Turning down home heating.
Instead of glorifying the utterly inconsequential 15 lb of CO2 you save by not heating the water you use to wash your clothes, instead of struggling to win people’s belief, lets sidestep the issue of whether people believe climate change is a problem, by converting the economy to zero carbon nuclear power, the way France did in the 1970s.
By embracing zero carbon nuclear power, greens would get their bipartisan support for a policy to reduce CO2 emissions, without upsetting people with ridiculous belief building exercises, and earnest campaigns to make us all feel virtuous about wearing smelly, badly washed clothes.
And having to utilize Weak Transient power supplies
The only way you get clothes clean in cold water requires surfactants and sometimes bleach, which these chemophobes despise.
My “Dragons of Inaction”, i.e., my Critical Thinking Skills, overcome any Precautionary Principals and engage my Null Hypothesis.
This is nothing but pathetic “actionable” information for the same silly Patagonia-clad twits who think they’re (gasp!) saving The Planet ™ by eschewing plastic straws. They try to out-virtue-signal each other (unintentionally hilariously) on a local blog in my town. “I’m GREEEEEENER than you are, I recycle PEEEEEEEE!!!” ad absurdum. But PBS and Guardian types eat that up. Playing to their base.
ok ALL detergents for laundry contain surfectants anyway so that points a dud
unless you grate bar soap and make your own?
in which case youd be adding washing soda if you want it to work better and maybe a tad of borax for extra stain removal?
most Aussies wash in cold water and have done for decades, i can get greasy engine oil soaked denims clean in cold washing by using either a few drops eucalyptus oil if I have it-or a cheap pump pack stain remover.
it means the household doesnt pay heaps for during the day water reheating and have sufficient for showers etc if on off peak.
and ps you only use bleach on whites, yes they make coloursaf bleaches too but they do fade clothes if used every wash, needless expense and the fear of germs that seems to have got a hold of the gullible.!
if youve not been working in the sewers or in an abbatoir then the need for antibacterial everythings made you a classic advertisers bunny
We use ammonia and soap. Manual dasher in a 5 gallon bucket for laundry. Living on a boat, we bathe in the ocean, wash and shower in tank water. Reverse osmosis watermaker with solar power. We make 35 gallons on a good solar day. About one gallon per load. Life in paradise off the grid.
We don’t begrudge anyone’s normal or even peculiar wash rituals. The energy consumed from our point of view is merely availability and a money issue. If you have access to cheap, plentiful water and affordable heat then your path is different.
I certainly don’t want somebody making decisions for us.
Mark
Sadly, we live in a regular household, although far from extravagant, with one male (me) and four females (including our dog, who almost doesn’t count except for her weekly bed wash).
Daily clothes washing is a ritual my wife and I endure with a fixed smile. Young women of 20 and 24 don’t really get the domestic thing, yet.
Our clothes are invariably washed at 40C, and there starts the problems.
Scum, bacteria and smells.
Whilst I recall my dear departed mother washing everything at near boiling point (good quality cotton in those days) pipes, tubes and washing machine internals were scoured and virtually boiled daily. Not now.
The ritual is , every so often, the machine must be pulled apart, nooks and crannies cleaned of scum by various means including copious amounts of hot water and chemicals, then the machine run, EMPTY, for a couple of boil washes. The manufacturers state only one, which is probably fine for the machine (no it’s not!) but not for the outlet pipes.
God forbid one leaves clothes in a machine for more than a few hours following a wash cycle completion because they come out stinking. Rinse and repeat.
I’m not even going to start on the wonders of the low volume toilet cisterns other than to say we had a Victorian style cistern until 5 years ago. One flush and everything was gone. At least two, usually three, and frequently four flushes now to rid the pan of it’s debris.
How on earth is all this progress?
Retirement looms. A boat is looking a fine option, just have to persuade the wife! 🙂
” At least two, usually three, and frequently four flushes now to rid the pan of it’s debris.”
As we used to say back in the late 60’s …. that’s some heavy shit, man.
Dave Barry once had an excellent article about smuggling a Canadian Hi-Flo toilet into the states because of government regulations making it impossible to get one here.
No idea if you can still get them there. Might have to go further afield these days.
~¿~
Going to nuclear is simply a good idea, to preserve our coal supplies for plastics and pharmaceuticals. We will always need gasoline and diesel for transportation as EV cars simply do not have the power density except in intercity taxi fleets which would have many interchangeable cars to work with.
However, going nuclear and allowing the alarmists to think if is good, as it serves the goal of decreasing emissions, means that we will never be able to kill the junk science that they are trying to scam the world with.
We need cheap, reliable energy, so nuclear is the best. But, we also need to kill the global warming scam and Agenda 21, the main monster, as well as dismantle the UN, which created this entire mess.
I’m surprised we don’t see activists milling around with “SAVE THE CARBON” signs.
For what use are we saving the Carbon?
What will we do with all the piles of carbon that will be accumulating?
/sarc
We should be returning it back into nature’s cycles where it can be better used.
Why in natatories usualy you can swim in warm water ?
If you swim in cold one, you get a cold, stay at home with fever and don’t walk around producing lots of CO2.
So let’s change that unnecessary heating of water.
At any point in time, the total sun’s energy that is directly intercepted by the Earth is distributed over half of the Earth’s surface area. This is considered the day side of the Earth. This is a fundamental truth and is not contested is it (other than perhaps during an eclipse)?
But the recent explanation here as to how the Stephen-Boltzmann law is applied to Earth in order to arrive at an expected temperature does not conform to that simple truth.
Consider a planar cross-section of Earth’s shadow. We can determine how much of the sun’s energy is blocked by the Earth to form this shadow by calculating the area of that circular shadow in the planar cross-section and multiplying it by a known rate of sun’s energy for Earth’s distance from the sun. Now we have the total amount of the sun’s energy that is blocked by the Earth to form the circular, planar shadow. The area of that circular planar shadow is 1/4 of the surface area of the Earth by definition of a sphere.
This is all fine so far. Next, we’d like to ‘average’ the received sun’s energy over all of Earth’s surface area.
The first step described in applying the Stephen-Boltzmann law is to divide that amount of the sun’s energy by 4 to arrive at this average since the Earth has four times more surface area than the circular planar shadow.
However, that same amount of the sun’s energy that is blocked by the Earth to form that circular planar shadow, is always illuminating half of the Earth (definition of a sphere). This is a fundamental truth, half of the Earth is receiving all of the sun’s energy that forms that shadow. Therefore, to average the amount of the sun’s energy hitting the Earth over the entire surface area we would divide it by two, not four.
A difference of a mere factor of two in the first step, dividing the sun’s energy by four rather than by two. Does that skew the result?
We still need to examine subsequent steps in the Stephen-Boltzmann law application for accuracy, but first what temperature is derived from the Stephen-Boltzmann law if we were to only modify the first step to remain in compliance with reality?
Wrong. You must account for the higher angles of incidence for surface locations at non-zero radii from dead center. When the sun is not directly overhead, any given solid angle of solar energy is dispersed over a larger surface area. Hence the factor of 4.
Another way to look at it is that all solar energy blocked by the earth, producing the shadow, must be eventually distributed over the entire surface, not just one hemisphere.
Floyd Doughty – Thanks for your response.
“Wrong”
Are you saying that half the Earth, the day side, does not receive all the energy from the sun?
” You must account for the higher angles of incidence for surface locations at non-zero radii from dead center. ”
Why? That’s considered in a subsequent step of the Stephen-Boltzmann law application where the amount of the sun’s energy is discounted by the Albedo at the contrived rate of 70%. We’ll examine that issue later.
“Another way to look at it is that all solar energy blocked by the earth, producing the shadow, must be eventually distributed over the entire surface, not just one hemisphere.”
All the energy blocked by the earth is already spread out over one hemisphere. There are two hemispheres, to get the average over the entire Earth, divide by the number of hemispheres (2).
To conflate the area of the cross-section of Earth’s shadow being 1/4 of the whole Earth is wrong. That is saying that only a quarter of the Earth is receiving the sun’s energy at any given time.
It’s really quite simple, half the Earth receives all the energy from the sun. To get an average, divide by two. Areas of the Earth receive the sun’s energy in a gradient over the half representing the day side. But that half is receiving all of the sun’s energy. Half.
Wrong again. Albedo has nothing to do with this simple concept. It’s all about basic geometry.
I’ll try once more, and then give up:
The total solar radiation illuminating the day side hemisphere is exactly equal to the total solar radiation that would illuminate a disk, perpendicular to the direction of flux, of radius R, where R is the radius of the Earth. The area of that disk is equal to (PI*R^2). The solar energy incident upon that disk then must be distributed over the entire surface area of the sphere, which is (4*PI*R^2). Notice the difference is a factor of 4?
If you are unable to understand this concept after I’ve explained it three (actually, two) different ways, then I can’t help you. Good luck. I have a feeling you’ll need it.
Floyd – I think you need luck in sorting out your human interaction. You have quite a bit to learn.
Floyd Doughty “The total solar radiation illuminating day side hemisphere”, averaged with the total solar radiation on the night side is … ”
(Total solar radiation illuminating day side) / 2
Thanks for clarifying.
“When the sun is not directly overhead, any given solid angle of solar energy is dispersed over a larger surface area.”
Before the sun’s energy is distributed over larger area it first has to penetrate further through the atmosphere. By the time it reaches the surface it has already been weakened in some cases to be insufficient to have a noticeable warming affect. If there are two walls of bricks: One at the equator one lying flat on the ground, the other at one of the poles arranged upright, so that the sun strikes both at the same perpendicular angle, they will not heat equally and at the same rate. We all know that the wall at the equator will become too hot to touch, while the one at a pole is likely to remain cold. Therefore the area rule can only be applied after the sun has traveled through the atmosphere, which is a short distance at the equator and bigger and bigger distance towards the poles.
Surely?
Nope. This discussion has nothing to do with temperatures, warming, or atmosphere. It’s strictly high school geometry. Radiant energy with an angle of incidence greater than 0 degrees is distributed over a larger area than radiant energy with a direction of travel that is normal to the surface. This is the case at every point on a sphere, except the point at which the normal is parallel to the direction of flux.
How much total radiant energy actually illuminates a sphere? The same amount that would illuminate a disk with the same radius as the sphere, which is perpendicular to the flux.
Floyd Doughty – “It’s strictly high school geometry.”
Exactly! But you don’t seem to see it. If I drive 40 miles in a hour and then stop and have lunch for an hour. I was driving for half the time and stopped for half the time, the average speed over the whole two hours is 40/2 = 20 mph. It doesn’t matter how much time I spent driving 60 mph in that first hour.
We derived how much energy from the sun is received by half the Earth (day side). To average that over the entire earth, we simply divide by two. It doesn’t matter how that energy is distributed over the day side.
Thomas Homer
That “flat earth” approximation myth is only valid “on average” across a mythical disk in space – at 40 degrees latitude on the globe – and is correct even at 40 latitude for only those two periods of the year when daily sunshine at top of atmosphere approximates the yearly average of 1362 watts/m^2. (Most users prefer Trenberth’s 1/4 diskworld though. )
OK, I’ll try just ONE MORE TIME. If the following explanation doesn’t work for you, nothing will, and I promise to stop trying, because this entire subject is really off topic for this thread. I’m posting in response to your initial post, since the column width is becoming rather narrow.
Your argument for dividing by 2 is correct if we were considering TOTAL energy in watts (or average flux in watts per square meter) over the entire day side hemisphere. But we’re not. We’re talking about actual flux experienced by each surface point of the day side hemisphere, which is NOT constant. You’re confusing total, or average energy with flux, or energy distribution.
Please follow this simple explanation: Let’s have a weak sun illuminating a sphere of radius R meters. Let’s also say that a surface at a right angle to the direction of the flux would experience 100 watts per square meter. First replace the sphere with a disk of radius R meters. To state the obvious, that disk intercepts EXACTLY the same amount of energy as the original day side hemisphere oriented towards the sun. Each point on the disk experiences precisely 100 watts per square meter because the surface of the disk at each point is perpendicular to the radiant energy. The TOTAL energy illuminating the disk is (100*PI*R^2) watts. Now make that disk into a stretchable membrane, and stretch it into a hemisphere with the convex side towards the sun. The edges of the hemisphere and original disk are coincident. The new membrane hemisphere also experiences a total of (100*PI*R^2) watts because the cross sectional area is the same as the disk. Isn’t that obvious? Now the total (100*PI*R^2) watts illuminating the day side hemisphere must be distributed over the entire sphere. So divide the total (100*PI*R^2) watts by the area of the sphere, which is (4*PI*R^2), to obtain the average flux over the entire sphere, which is 25 watts per square meter. Hence the factor of 4.
Look at it another way. The membrane hemisphere experiences the same total energy as the disk, namely (100*PI*R^2) watts. But the area of the hemisphere is twice that of the disk. So the AVERAGE flux per square meter of hemisphere surface must be half that of the disk, or 50 watts per square meter. So now you can do your divide by 2 thingy to get the average flux over the entire sphere, because the flux we just calculated for the day side hemisphere is already an average.
What’s twisting you off is that you assume the radiant energy received by every square meter of the hemisphere is the same, and equal to (in the example above) 100 watts per square meter. It isn’t. If it were, then a hemisphere would receive a total of (100*2*PI*R^2) watts, but a disk with the same cross sectional area would only receive (100*PI*R^2) watts. That would mean that a cylinder of parallel (nearly) rays from the sun with radius R and a specific flux density would impart twice as much total energy to a hemisphere than it would to a disk with the same area as the cylinder of rays. That’s insane, and reminds me of the kind of nutty arguments made by alarmists.
The only point on the hemisphere that receives the same flux as every point on the disk (100 watts per square meter), is the center point, where the surface is perpendicular to the direction of flux. Every other point on the hemisphere receives less, because of the curvature of the hemisphere. The amount of flux any point on the hemisphere receives is equal to (100*Cosine(theta)) watts per square meter, where theta is the incident angle of the radiation at that point on the surface. This is explained in more detail below, even though this concept should be obvious. At larger distances from the center, like near the edges, a square meter of flux grazes the surface, and so is spread over an area of (1/Cosine(theta))
square meters, where theta is the angle between the normal to the surface at that point and the incident ray. If you were to compute the integral of the energy illuminating the entire hemisphere, it would equal (100*PI*R^2) watts (the same as the disk would receive), but the actual flux at each point on the hemisphere would vary between 100 watts per square meter (at the center) and zero (at the edge).
There is only one case in which your calculation could possibly be correct. If each point of the hemisphere is irradiated with a flux that was parallel to the normal to the hemisphere at that point, your calculation works. That might be possible if the sun were replaced with a continuous hemisphere of an infinite number of “laser suns”. Each laser sun would emit an infinitely narrow beam of energy that intersected the day side hemisphere at an infinitesimal point where the normal at that point was parallel to the direction of flux. But that doesn’t happen in the real world.
Why doesn’t every point on the hemisphere experience the same radiant energy as every point on the disk (100 watts per square meter)? Maybe the following experiment will help you understand:
Take a sheet of paper. Draw 5 horizontal, equidistant, parallel lines all of the same length. Imagine a radiant source very far off to the right of the page – so far off that rays of radiation from this source are essentially parallel, at least over a delta distance of R, the radius of our sphere. Let’s say the parallel lines you drew are rays of flux. The lines are spaced 1 meter apart, and each line represents 100 watts. Also imagine the lines (hereafter, “rays”) replicate into the plane of the page, so the drawn rays actually represent 5*5=25 rays in a square cluster on a one meter grid. So this is a representation of a flux of 100 watts per square meter propagating to the left. Imagine that this is a representation of only a small portion of the total flux, and the rays actually replicate along both axes that are perpendicular to the rays, far beyond your page. Now draw a line intersecting and perpendicular to the rays. This represents a plane with a normal that is parallel to the direction of propagation. Each point on this plane experiences radiant energy with a flux of 100 watts per square meter. Now draw a line intersecting the rays, at a different angle to the rays. 45 degrees would do nicely. This is a plane at an angle to the illuminating energy. At the point where the new plane intersects the lowermost ray, draw a short line perpendicular to the new plane. This is called a “normal” of the plane. The angle between this new line and the rays is called the angle of incidence, theta. Now draw another line from this same point where the new plane intersects the lowest ray, perpendicular to the rays, and intersecting all rays. Notice that the length of this line between the top ray and bottom ray is shorter than the length of the angled line between the two rays. Using really simple geometry, the ratio of the lengths can be shown to be the Cosine of theta. Now considering each of the lines, which are actually planes intersecting the rays, the same amount of radiant energy must be distributed over a larger area on the slanted plane, relative to the perpendicular plane. Therefore, the flux (watts per square meter) illuminating the angled plane is less than that illuminating the perpendicular plane by a factor of Cosine theta. Now draw the projection of a section of hemisphere across the rays on your paper, convex to the right. Finally, you should realize that radiant energy intersects a hemisphere at varying incident angles, so not all points on the hemisphere experience the same value of flux.
OK, I am TRULY done with this topic now. If you can’t understand what’s going on by now, I’m not going to waste any more of my time.
” “The perception of not having control over the situation is certainly one of the biggest” barriers, Gifford said.” Right. Go watch a thunderstorm, and see how much control you can assert. Weather operates at such high localized power
fluxesas to completely overwhelm the influence of carbon dioxide and other minor greenhouse gases. A sensible observer quickly gives up the delusion that man has control over what the atmosphere does with heat.sorry – please delete “fluxes” for this to read sensibly. Bad engineer. No cookie.
100% agreed. Go nuclear, end of CO2 issues! The fact that the Green Blob won’t even consider this tells you all you need to know about their motives- which are NOT anything to do with CO2, despite having brainwashed legions of followers into thinking this is the case.
Why we are still paying for PBS/NPR is way beyond me. Not only do they push this nonsense, but we are forced to pay for it.
Proof of the existence of the “Uniparty”. “Budget Hawk” Ryan in charge. PBS still funded with big budget increases.
“Whenever the NewsHour covers climate change, the most common responses we get from those who don’t believe that humans influence climate change point to the ice ages. They cite how the Earth has experienced natural cycles, between extreme cold and heat, for millennia.”
Talk about the Dragons of Inaction. The ice age and other natural cycles were mentioned in the above article but the point was never disputed. Climate freaks never will talk about the ice age and natural cycles, ever. This article is no different.
Those dragons are haunting me – I feel sure that I will feel much relieved by fighting some decent windmills.
I wouldn’t wear cold washed clothes, it’s warm water dissolving fat.
Nsikan Akpan may wear uncleaned clothes, his problem 😀
Washing in cold water is sometimes best. link The clothing label will give you washing instructions. Insisting on hot water washing will harm some of your clothes and make you less comfortable.
Following one simple rule makes your life simpler. Sometimes it makes you worse off. On the other hand, trying to always get everything right is also guaranteed to make you worse off. Ya can’t win. 🙂
But has trouble killing Germs.
But has trouble killing Germs & Bacteria.
if plain simple soap and washing hands well removes the majority of bacteria…
then why the hell do you fear natural bacteria on clothes?
and if you SUNdry clothes than more get wiped out IF there was anything much there anyway
Modern again 😀
All well known, but as our water has less than 30°C, it has always to be warmed for washing.
stick woolens in a hot wash, even a warm one
and than go buy all new clothes
Woolens aren’t my favorite clothes 😀
Dry clothes in sun sounds nice, but I just look out of my window and search the sun and a certain warmth, unfortunately I don’t find , but it rains and will change in snow uring afternoon.
Haven’t you some better ideas, elect greens f. e. ??
😀
Is that your choice for futur and climate saving ?
Greenies wishfull thinking – back to the middle ages, back to the “darkbrown” roots, isn’t it ?
😀
Quite right. Speaking as a mere female who has done the washing all my adult life some of the ideas of washing fabrics by males on this thread is madness. Boiling clothes!Most new fabrics need cold water. Wool needs to be washed by hand in lukewarm water. Read the labels inside the clothes before purchasing is my humble advice to those who do not leave everything to their females
…so will peeing in the yard
about the same….nil
Why is this garbage always directed at 1st world countries?…when it’s 3rd world that’s increasing emissions
Why not do away with the washing machine altogether and tell your wives that they should waste their time using the washboard again? Washing by hand will make a glorious comeback. Such a low carbon approach surely is a great leap forward.
modern again
And the rivers water and fishes enjoy 😀
How many gigatons of co2 do wives emit whilst bashing clothes on rocks and washboards?
Did you factor in the increased respiration of the housewives doing the labor and shooting the breeze at the local pond/river/lake? 🙂
And then there will be 2 people washing clothes. Because she will tell you you can wash your own d… clothes.
Ugh.
They missed the most obvious solution of all.
Don’t wash them at all!
Heck, stop bathing as well. (My son would be ok with this, his mom & dad, not so much.)
This would be especially beneficial for hospitals.
Nothing kills the creepies like cold water.
Talk about a race to the bottom.
\sarcasm is now off for those in doubt.
It does sound to me like they are preparing us for an unreliable electrical grid.
I tried the cold water wash thing for a long time. Someone should tell soap manufacturers to sell soap that works in cold water and is fragrance free for sensitive skin. After double washing clothes and getting detergent stains on the clothes where the stuff didn’t wash out, I went to warm water. It works so much better. I’m even evil enough to use all hot water in special cases. Seriously, if changing the temperature of your wash water will save the planet, we’re all going to be fried anyway. It’s too serious to be saved from.
(Disclaimer: I do not believe we’re at that point.)
Next up…cold showers….
Solves the nonexistent population problem
Once upon a time, my dad was the copywriter for the Tide account. He was asked to set up the ad campaign in Germany. Here in the US at the time it was all about fighting the “dingy grey” you’d get doing your whites. The Germans typically did their “hot” loads at around 200°F. There was no such thing as a dingy grey load of whites.
so dissolve the powder in a bit of hot water first…or swap to a liquid detergent that isnt bulked up with fillers to make it look like a bargain
“How your brain stops you from taking climate change seriously”
All it takes is a brain with the capacity to look past the alarmist rhetoric and understand the science.
It’s a simple reflex against brainwashing 😀
Is it better to use hot or cold water to brain wash someone?
Make them warm and comfortable and lazy and they won’t even know they’ve been brain washed.
Check the label.
45 vol %
😀
So we need the yellow vest movement at the laundry now…..while the jet set flys overhead.
I’ll look at the cyclical AMO chart instead.
. . . and from that bastion of knowledge on which America depends comes this week’s lead article in the Harvard Business Report newsletter that even many of its readers couldn’t stomach . . .
The Story of Sustainability in 2018: “We Have About 12 Years Left”
https://hbr.org/2018/12/the-story-of-sustainability-in-2018-we-have-about-12-years-left?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_weekly&utm_campaign=weeklyhotlist_not_activesubs&referral=00202&deliveryName=DM23125
Step lively now. Everyone back to their cold wash. Time is short.
It used to be five years that we had left.
Another attempt to ‘white wash’ AGW/Climate Change…..
I think you can take seriously climate change without freaking out over it. I can accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I have difficulty, regardless of the amount I read about it, accepting that the small increase in a trace gas can have such a drastic effect. Also, I just can’t accept that we really understand enough about the atmosphere to fully accept the theory that such a small change can have such a large effect – AND that we can quantify the change by 2100.
There are lots of other things to pick at, such as climate models, paleo evidence, and the like. But common sense tells me that we should wait before we become panic-stricken.
Notice, once again, the fatal propensity for proposing people do things which will have no effect on global CO2 emissions, which are supposed to be the problem.
Washing clothes in cold water can save up to 15 pounds of carbon emissions per load, depending on your washing machine and your energy supplier.
Probably. And how much would this lower the US 5 billion tons of CO2 emissions if we all did it? Tiny. Unmeasurable. And what effect would this have on the 37 billion the world emits….?
Exact same problem with the Ocasio-Cortez Green New Deal. It too will have negligible effects on global emissions.
So yet again the question: why do these people advocate doing things which have no effect on what they claim to be the problem, while refusing to advocate doing things which are necessary and effective if their account of the problem is correct?
I have a pair of undershorts the label of which advises me to ‘think climate…cold wash’.
I wish I was joking… but it’s true.
Well, if you turned them inside out you would get twice the wearing time so you could still wash in warm water while producing half the “carbon”.
…and then front and back as well!
Are they green shorts?
Don’t know about that, but they could get brown fast.
Yeah, yeah, it’s because of the “failure to communicate” climate properly; that’s why very little gets done. They just need to get the right message out, tailoring it to different groups. This is what they’ve been telling themselves (and whoever will listen) for over ten years now. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Washing clothes in cold water is fine and better for the clothes anyways, however, it does little to prevent the climate from changing.
Why wash them at all or even buy them?
Street living people are apparently showing the way to go on this. Their perfume of cultural enrichment is ahead of the olfactory curve./