WolfeNotes.com

Is there a point to your photo essay?
What’s being shown in the first picture, steam? You do realize greenhouse gases are invisible.
You must have missed the news back in June. China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions and by 2030 China’s emissions will more than double. The U.S. accounts for 25 percent of global economic output, China, 5 percent. U.S. carbon emissions fell 1.3% in 2006 while the economy grew by 3.3 percent.

ThomaReid –
With respect to the first picture – Consult your physics textbook – look up how many calories in takes to make “steam”. Then go visit this paper plant in Camden and ask them how they generate those calories.
The US consumes the most energy and creates the most emissions (per capita) by far than any other country in the world.
Us consumption of energy, raw materials, and finished products by far exceeds US global economic output as a percentage of world production. The US is the largest consumer of everything, we take far more than we produce. That’s why the US trade deficit is so huge and growing. We have gone from the world’s’ largest producer to its largest consumer.
Green house gases have a residence time in the atmosphere. By far the largest contribution of current global CO2 concentrations were emitted by the US.
So, US profligacy has equity dimensions too.
China holds how much US debt and how much of a trade surplus with the US?
And your point is?

ThomasReid:
A photo is art, not science. It requires imagination and individual interpretation (not to imply that science doesn’t also require same). But let me suggest an approach:
Open your eyes and look – what do you see?
How does it make you feel?
What could that barbed wire in the foreground mean? What about the tattered edges of the flag?
Could it be an echo of the fortress America that builds Berlin like walls along the Mexican border and bunker “hardened” imperial US embassies throughout the world, while restraining US citizens in “protest zones” here at home?
Could the tattered edges suggest an erosion of US principles?
What could that empty bench along the river mean?
Could that relate to Bush policies that have isolated the US from the rest of the world – you know, things like a unilateral foreign policy, militarism, disdain for the UN, and rejection of the Kyoto treaty?
Could it imply US alienation from nature? That nature will survive human folly? That global warming will cause more floods?
Are we fighting wars to maintain our high consumption high energy intensity standard of living?
Do you think there is no relationship between these kinds of US attitudes and policies and global warming?
Many feel sick to see the US flag representing these kinds of attitudes and policies.

New York Times:
China to Pass U.S. in 2009 in Emissions
LONDON, Nov. 6 — China will surpass the United States in 2009, nearly a decade ahead of previous predictions, as the biggest emitter of the main gas linked to global warming, the International Energy Agency has concluded in a report to be released Tuesday.
link to full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/business/worldbusiness/07pollute.html

China Watch
http://www.worldwatch.org/taxonomy/term/53

My point is that it takes energy to create output and to achieve a high standard of living. The U.S. has the world’s largest gross domestic product and U.S. manufacturing output reached an all-time high in 2006. So we’re producing more stuff than ever before, even while we move to a knowledge-based economy. Impressive.
Remember that exports are costs and imports are benefits. We drive a hard bargain. But what’s your point? The U.S. should reduce its economic output to reduce energy consumption? Lower our standard of living to reduce energy consumption? What, what are you suggesting?
As far as greenhouse gas emissions go, your data is old. From NPR, “China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest producer of carbon dioxide.” I know you distrust American media, so check out the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency which noted that “China’s 2006 CO2 emissions surpassed those of the USA by 8%. Or this June 2007 article, “China overtakes US as world’s biggest CO2 emitter”, from the UK’s left-wing Guardian.
I don’t know what powers the paper plant in Camden, but I do know that nuclear power is the largest source of energy in New Jersey, accounting for 50 percent of power production in the state. And as you should know, nuclear power doesn’t emit those nasty greenhouse gases. What do you want to do, close down the paper plant?
The purpose of the Berlin wall was to keep people in. The wall I hope we complete on our southern border is to maintain an orderly and legal flow of people trying to come in. I should think the wall would make you happy – fewer people in the U.S. consuming energy.
As far as the other photos go, I notice you have since added comments to them all. In the third picture, I see a house with an American flag taken some time during the fall. Was it taken on Veterans Day? I can’t see through walls to speculate about insulation, but I notice the windows are small. I also can’t tell what source of fuel its residents use to heat their home. You suggest that it’s wood. What should they use nothing?
In the third picture, I notice a man with a glove on his hand winding up some rope. That’s rope, as you’d be able to see if you enlarged the photo. There’s a car in the garage, not a truck and I don’t see any power tools. It was taken some time in fall. I see a pumpkin and an American flag, so again I wonder if the picture was taken around Veterans Day.
The fourth, I see a pickup truck in the driveway and no SUV. Why the truck is there I can only speculate. Perhaps the vehicle’s owner is doing a job at the house where the nice American flag is displayed. It was taken during the fall. Another Veterans Day photo?
In the fifth, I see tombstones very close to a building of some sort and a small American flag planted next to a headstone. It looks like an old cemetery and I can’t tell what time of the year the photo was taken, but given the context of your “essay”, probably around Veterans Day and probably at the grave of a veteran. Your caption is false and beyond cynical.
The sixth is a picture of an ugly gray day, brightened only with the colors of an American flag – a symbol of our country representing hope in an otherwise dreary world, timeless as the river of time keeps rollin’ along.
I asked you once before and you didn’t answer, so I’ll ask again. What’s the optimum temperature for the earth? Would it be warmer or cooler than today? In any event, man adapts. It will be great when we figure out how to derive all our energy needs from the sun and good old H2O. Until then, it’s nuclear energy and fossil fuels.
“Sir David King, who stepped down last month after seven years as the government’s [UK] chief scientific adviser, says any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change – including nuclear power – is one of “utter hopelessness”.
He says: “There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves ‘green’ are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century.”
He characterises their argument as “let’s get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century”.
“People say ‘well, we’ll just use less energy.’ Come on,” he says. “And then there’s the real world, where everyone is aspiring to the sort of standard of living that we have, which is based on a large energy consumption.””

Robert Morris is a hero of mine.
So is Amory Lovins (Small is Beautiful), Murray Boochin, and a host of other technology and society thinkers.
We better get cracking on small scale decentralized low energy intensive technologies, before the rising costs of peak oil force change upon us.
If we don’t we sirely will b heading back towrds pre-indsutriltimes.
Time to choose which path – adapt of die.