This thread is about what's going right with the recession.
One day it will become common knowledge that Global Warming was stopped by Peak Oil. As for now please stand in awe at my willingness to be so contrary as to post endless news articles about emissions targets being met by and only by economic collapse and sudden drops in the average temperature of the Earth that correspond to economic-induced reductions of greenhouse gases.
Feel free to post about how this is all wrong while it unfolds further and further into being. Your words do not have an effect on the truth and the truth is becoming more and more evident.
Just because a concept like unstoppable global warming is embraced by a large number of people does not cause it to change from a falsehood to a reality. Remember when the world was largely thought to be flat it wasn't flat. Now I don't say that global warming is untrue, just that it's misunderstood to be unstoppable and that the evidence is leaking in that cutting back on the greenhouse gases due to an economic crash caused by Peak Oil will bring back cooler, wetter conditions exactly the opposite of all the efforts put forth by environmentalists when they campaigned for the Earth but didn't make a dent in the issues they assailed.
Recession Helping Produce Less Landfill Waste<< Tom Henkenius
Channel 2 News
March 23, 2009
On trash day, most of us have two choices: trash or recycle.
Waste Management reports a 35% decrease in the amount of trash they're taking in at the Lockwood landfill. They say, since we're not buying as much, we're not throwing as much away.
If the trend continues, they say the lifespan of the dump will increase. And considering few of us would want a dump near our homes, that's certainly a good thing.
Beyond throwing out less, there is another way to lengthen the life of the dump - recycling. It's a trend spokesman Justin Caporusso says is growing. "I think the economy and the way people are changing their purchasing habits it's actually going to help recycling because they're going to be making more conscious decisions when it comes to what they're throwing away and what they're purchasing."
And because of the reduction in the amount of trash, Waste Management's reducing the operating hours at the Lockwood dump. Beginning on Saturday, April 4th, they'll only be open on Saturdays from 7am-noon. Weekday hours won't change. >>
Russian coal production plummets 21% in February - Rosstat<< Interfax quoted the Federal State Statistics Service said Russian coal production plummeted 20.8% to 22.1 million tonnes in February 2009 compared to February 2008.
Bituminous coal production fell 17.4% to 16.1 million tonnes in February, with open cast mines producing 8.9 million tonnes of this, down 19.7%, and deep mines producing 7.2 million tonnes, down 14.5%. Lignite coal production fell 28.6% to 6 million tonnes. Coking coal production fell 29.9% to 3.8 million tonnes.
Coal production also fell compared to the previous month - by 6.5% with open cast mines reducing output by 1% and deep mines by 7.6%.
Lignite coal production fell 12.5% in February compared to January, while coking coal output declined 15.9%.
Coal production fell 19.3% over the first two months of the year compared to the same period of 2008. Bituminous coal production fell 16.6% with open mine output declining 20.5% and deep mine production falling 11.4%. Lignite coal production fell 5.6% in the two months and coking coal output plunged 37.8%.
(Sourced from Interfax) >>
EU aims to release 2008 emissions data on April 1<< Carbon market analysts expect 2008 emissions to have dropped to around 2.10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, down from 2.17 billion in 2007. >>
Economy vs. Environment<< by David Owen for The New Yorker Mar 25 2009
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So far, the most effective way for a Kyoto signatory to cut its carbon output has been to suffer a well-timed industrial implosion, as Russia did after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. The Kyoto benchmark year is 1990, when the smokestacks of the Soviet military-industrial complex were still blackening the skies, so when Vladimir Putin ratified the protocol, in 2004, Russia was already certain to meet its goal for 2012. The countries with the best emissions-reduction records—Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic—were all parts of the Soviet empire and therefore look good for the same reason.
The United States didn’t ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but Canada did, and its experience is suggestive because its economy and per-capita oil consumption are similar to ours. Its Kyoto target is a six-per-cent reduction from 1990 levels. By 2006, however, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars on climate initiatives, its greenhouse-gas output had increased to a hundred and twenty-two per cent of the goal, and the environment minister described the Kyoto target as “impossible.”
The explanation for Canada’s difficulties isn’t complicated: the world’s principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity. The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don’t spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even af-fluent people buy less throwaway junk. Gasoline consumption in the United States fell almost six per cent in 2008. That was the result not of a sudden greening of the American consciousness but of the rapid rise in the price of oil during the first half of the year, followed by the full efflorescence of the current economic mess.
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One beneficial consequence of the ongoing global economic crisis is that it has put a little time back on the carbon clock. Because the climate damage done by greenhouse gases is cumulative, the emissions decrease attributable to the recession has given the world a bit more room to devise a plan that might actually work.
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Don't use factory closings to reach target: watchdog<< In a special report released yesterday, Gord Miller pointed out that Ontario's Climate Change Action Plan doesn't take into account that the economic downturn, if it continues, could enable the province to meet its emission-reduction targets without implementing any environmental strategies at all. >>
2008 temperature: Coolest since 2000, but still 9th-warmest on record<<
NASA scientists reported today that the global average surface temperature in 2008 was the coldest since 2000, but was still well above the long-term average, coming in at ninth-warmest since measurements began in 1880. This followed another report from the
National Climatic Data Center that said 2008 was the eighth-warmest year on record. The two organizations analyze data sets slightly differently, which explains the disparity. >>
So are NASA and NOAA the ones who speak the truth when they talk about unstoppable global warming while at the same time they are liars when admit the world is getting cooler instead?
Do rising greenhouse gases make the world warmer but falling greenhouse gases fail to make the world cooler?
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