Global warming has been a top-down political issue in the past, but with incontrovertible evidence now being reported, perhaps we should be looking to our local and state politicians to take a stand.
In Senate District 47, Minnesota House Representative Melissa Hortman (D) takes environmental issues seriously. In her current term, she co-authored legislation to reduce mercury emissions from the largest coal-fired plants in the state of Minnesota by 90%. In a press release dated April 28, 2006, Hortman said, "Mercury reduction is crucial to improving the quality of our air and water, as well as the overall health and economic growth of our state…It's very gratifying to be part of the bipartisan effort that brought forward this good bill." Further legislation authored by Melissa Hortman encourages increased recycling of fluorescent light bulbs. Her legislation requires utilities, lighting manufacturers and retailers to inform consumers that fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury. By recycling fluorescent light bulbs, consumers can take 100 pounds of mercury out of Minnesota's environment every year.
She also welcomed a House bonding bill that secured federal funding for the NorthStar Corridor Commuter Rail Project. Improving public transportation is a key component in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and we must keep this and other environmental issues at the forefront of this election cycle. Melissa Hortman welcomes the questions and concerns of her constituents and you can meet her tonight, Thursday, June 22, 2006 at the Coon Rapids Dam where she is hosting an event at Pavilion 3 at 7:00 p.m.. You can bring food, eat food, and dance (or just listen!) to the live music of The Rockin' Hollywoods.
Mike Hatch (D – Governor) says "Lax environmental enforcement and funding at the federal level only intensifies the need for strong leadership and initiative at the state level….the Bush and Pawlenty administrations have abominable environmental records [and] we can do better." He details Governor Pawlenty's lack of concern for the environment in a position paper posted on his website where he also addresses the importance of good environmental stewardship and charting a new course.
Regarding issues that affect global warming, Becky Lourey (D - Governor) writes "Under my leadership we will not only expedite improvements to transportation infrastructure, but we will prioritize projects that reduce and prevent pollution, including the development of biofuels grown from Minnesota's corn; [and] we will prioritize development in Minnesota's clean energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels, jumpstarting our economy and creating jobs, as well as eliminating the pollution that compromises our air and water and makes us sick. Minnesota can and must become an international leader in clean, renewable energy."
Amy Klobuchar (D - U.S. Senate) states on her website that the priorities in Washington need to change and she will fight for federal policies that help to conserve our air, water and land for future generations. She will fight for a national strategy to address global warming and reduce greenhouse gases by developing renewable sources of fuel and by setting energy efficiency and emission standards that protect our environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Further, she will fight for land use policies that preserve our open spaces, farmlands and hunting lands and that protect our wetlands so we can maintain important wildlife habitats and reduce flooding dangers.
Clean air and water, land use, transportation and economic issues impact the problem of global warming both individually and cumulatively. According to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman at the Hamline University Colloquium on Global Warming June 20, 2006, global warming is and must be a campaign issue.
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Comments: 52
Improving Public Transportation and reducing Global Warming aren't really the same thin. Close? No, not really. Reduction in the overall CO2 small, almost insignificant for a State like Minnesota in the overall.
Environmental Issues that should be done and with merit both but nothing to do with Global Warming.
Complaining about not getting enough money to deal with the Environmental issues is just an escape clause. And a cop-out for those that are impotent or incompetent.
Switching to Bio-fuel will impact the problems with Global Warming less than cow farts, as cow farts are more on the methane or CO3 side which is about 100 times more important in Global Warming than CO2.
However, Wind, Solar power, Geothermal (in Minnesota?) and even Hydrogen power would be a benefit.
The Global Warming issue as I see it is real. However there are some things that folks need to know.
First the Sun heats and cools in cycles which are well known, and currently we all are in the heating up side of this.
Second, all the populations on Earth are contributing in their industrial societies at increasing the CO2 levels on Earth. This is also known and can be measured.
However Methane (CO3) will increase the chances of Global Warming 100 fold over the CO2. This is also well known. Also well known that under the permafrost is so much rot (methane) that when released there can be no stopping Global Warming. But on the good side, all that Methane well deplete itself in about a hundred years or so.
Also of note in or about the year 2031 the Maunder Minimum is scheduled to show up. This Maunder Minimum Sun cycle is a cooling cycle and shows up every 400 or so years, and the last time it showed up was a period that was called the 'Little Ice Age.'
But over-all as I see this thing, nothing that we do will stop the events that are occurring with the melt of the permafrost (The big Problem).
And if this does occur the seas will indeed rise 90 to 120 feet due to all the ice in Greenland and the South Poll. Oh, yeah! The fight for land use will also increase.
Isn't most of today's "heavy or dirty" industries in China, India, and SE Asia? They are also are excempt from most of the Kyoto standards. Why? Why aren't we holding them more responsible? They are growing rapidly, much fast than than the USA or Europe. China is consuming at a pace never seen before, but we don't seem to care. If the earth is so fragile, then why aren't we very concerned about the tons of stuff spewing out of factory stacks in China? Or, is this just a way to impose omre socialism and social engineering on the United States and make it less competitive and bring it down to the level of Europe?
I agree the earth in warming, probably both from man made causes and solar cycles, but this urgency to push more socialism in the name of saving the earth I don't buy.
Thank you.
Have a look at some facts at http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/016.htm#co2 or google the term "radiative forcing" if you want to know more.
The only people seeking a handout or a quasi-"socialist" redistribution of income here are the folks pushing unlimited consumption of fossil fuels while weaseling out of the true costs and trying to profit at the expense of those future generations.
There is far more evidence that global warming is real (and will have devastating effects) than there is that anyone is going to be economically harmed by trying to reduce it. In fact, a lot of people are going to profit as we invent whole new technologies and industries (and capitalist investment opportunities!).
You're right to be worried about China. Kyoto isn't a perfect treaty. But it's a start. And China is no excuse for America to shirk its own responsibilities here or to stupidly pass up a chance to take the lead in inventing an entirely new sector of the economy. Hydrogen cars are coming, and the only real question is whether they will be made in the U.S. or imported from Denmark and Japan.
We need people like you to realize this -- FAST -- and stop holding the rest of us back.
I totally believe America can rise to this challenge, and I wish you would join me in believing it too.
>>
I'm well aware of that, but when the permafrost melts then the methane will show up fast, and won't be able to be stopped. However, the permafrost melt will be accelerated by the additional co2 in the air.
Some info on contrails.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/contrail.html
more info on dimming.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/dimming.html
"We are all seeing rather less of the Sun. Scientists looking at five decades of sunlight measurements have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling. Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml
http://dels.nas.edu/basc/
Regarding the influence of the sun (& other factors) on the climate: Fluctuations in the output of the sun and volcanic activity do a good job of explaining climate changes up until the industrial revolution. Since that time, the observed changes in climate cannot be explained unless one includes the rising CO2 levels in the equations. One need only overlay the graphs of CO2 levels and global mean temperatures to see this: temperatures certainly show cyclical ups & downs, but they dance around the CO2 levels.
The next Maunder Minimum in the Sun's output will be occuring when CO2 levels are twice what they were the last time it occured. As mentioned, CH4 (methane) levels will be much higher as well, and water vapor as well (H2O is the dominant greenhouse gas, and as the atmosphere warms, more water vapor will enter the air). In the recent past, CO2 provided about an 8-9C boost in Earth's temperatures. With a doubling of CO2, this could be an additional 1.5 to 2C, plus no doubt a substantial amount of forcing from the CH4 and H2O. During the Maunder Minimum, global average temperatures seemed to have been about 0.3 to 0.4C lower. (NB: European temperatures were reduced further--about 1-1.5C--mostly due to variations in ocean currents in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans).
So fat chance that the Maunder Minimum will reverse global warming trends to any substantial degree: at best, it will only slow the trend for a few centuries
NASA has a nice summary of the Maunder Minimum & it's effects at:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011207iceage.html
(The other numbers about CO2 greenhouse contributions are from a textbook, "Principles of Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry", by Richard Goody)
As of now, we've increased CO2 from pre-industrial levels by about 87 parts-per-million, while methane has increased by about 1. That doesn't sound like much, but in terms of trapped heat, the CO2 is trapping an extra 1.46 watts/meter-squared, while the methane is trapping an extra 0.48 w/m2 (NB: the top 5 halogenated-hydrocarbons trap about 0.31 w/m2, and the nitrous oxides--a major air pollutant--traps about 0.14 w/m2).
So methane is indeed a problem and will become a larger problem, but not 100's of times as severe as CO2. ( Wikipedia has a decent discussion at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas )
Hurricane Katrinia made the point that capitalism can make the same mistakes. Much of our oil & gas production & refineries are clustered around the gulf coast for various good economic reasons. When Katrina came through, the US lost about 1million barells of daily oil production--about all of our excess capacity. (Fortunately, that was all we lost, and fuel prices went up substantially, but without too much economic impact)
A strength of capitalism is that millions of minds focus on solving problems to optimal short term distribution of resources. They do so, because they can make a buck by doing something faster, cheaper, or better. The problem is that individuals have short planning horizons: if you don't make something faster, cheaper or better now, it doesn't matter if your idea will be better, cheaper or faster in 20 years when market conditions change.
Magical thinking about capitalism is very popular: somehow, if we all are greeding and pursue our short term interests, the "invisible hand of the market" will guarentee that everything will turn out best. (Usually the "we" in this concept is the people with money to invest and will make money from the investments)
On the other hand is Mathematical thinking about Capitalism. It is the stuff of Nobel Prizes, the discoveries and mathematical proof that the invisible hand requires 3 conditions to operate efficiently: (1) Buyers & sellers must enter into transactions with free choice (be it goods & services, or labor). Each must have the freedom to negotiate their terms and with others. (2) Buyers & sellers must have "symmetrical information"--i.e., they must both know the same about what they are transacting. (3) All costs must be internalized, i.e., no artificial subsidies, no 3rd parties paying part of the cost. A prime example is air pollution: a utility could burn coal without pollution controls to sell the electricity for the cheapest price, while causing skyrocketing medical bills, suffering & death in the surrounding community--who get no benefit. All of these play into the global warming debate, especially the last: the costs of our CO2 pollution will be in the trillions of $ (and in millions of lives, and in the suffering of billions). On the other hand, the investment of a 1-2 percent of gross economic product will greatly reduce future property damage, improve the health of many, and provide more reliable energy sources.
Case in point: some of use who remember the economic boom of the 90's might remember the economic reports of unexpected economic growth due to an unexplained growth in productivity. When economists went back to the numbers, they found much of that growth could be traced back to improvements in human health due to better health care, and better pollution control. The Clean Air Act has been estimated to save the US about $100 billion per year alone: do the math--that's above 1% of GDP, which was growing at 2-4% per year.
We can't wait for the government to make policy changes. DO IT YOURSELF!
Example - slavery. The group of people that had slaves didn't want to lose them. The States had the political power to keep them for awhile, then there was a war with the other states that thought different and after that war in one fell swoop the states or all the states lost their governing power in most areas regarding commerce and voting privileges, as the states showed that they couldn't be trusted independently.
Now then if this can happen at the state level what makes one think that it can't happen at the country level?
No political interest in the environment at the country level?
Ya gotta be kidding.
However, in the long run all the people that are competent should but usually don't think about the impact that they are making in this little world of ours. There are many factors for this, lack of education and greed are just a couple that are in there.
But I have to wonder how the farmers will react when they realize that CO2 pollution boosts the growth of weeds about 6 times as much as crops, and their animals will take longer to mature with the lower protein fodder that high CO2 levels encourages. Not to mention it's hard to miss the drier summers, warmer winters, etc.
Is global warming the politcal left's last card in the hand?
It's a common mistake to confuse correlation with causation. Sales of thongs correlate very well with sales of iPods, but I dont think one causes the other.
The fact is that a thousand years ago it was hotter than it is now. Perhaps in some unknown part of the world we will uncover SUVs from the middle ages. It is also true that many thousands of years ago, MN was under a mile of ice, perhaps caused by prehistoric SUVs running in reverse.
I dont know the answer but I do know this: only an incompetent or dishonest scientist would dare to claim that our theories about global warming are anything more than interesting early theories. Only fools like Al Gore (noted climatologist) are stupid enough to parrot these ideas around as facts.
Nonetheless, idiots like Chris Coleman think the issue will put liberals in power. I doubt it. The nice people with Wellstone stickers are not the ones who will determine elections.
So!
You're only a card counter.
Is that all you're good at?
I remember the phrase 'I don't belong to any organized political party, I'm a Democrat.'
Now it time for folks that don't even know what a republican is to hold their breath. For here come the Democrats, Here come the Democrats.
Me!
I'm a republican, a pissed off republican, a republican that knows a brainwashed republican when I see one.
At preindustrial levels of 275 ppm, CO2 absorbs about 60% of the Earth heat emissions in the 18-21.75 GHz spectrum and it's a textbook calculus exercise to peg Earth's heat gain from at about +7.3C. Take it to current level of 345 ppm, you get an additional 1.2C boost. Double it (the minimum prediction), you get about 84% absorption, for another 1.7C, and tripling it yields a about a 2.8C increase of current heat absorption.
One fundamental flaw of the right-wing position of "no causation, only correlation" is where does the heat go? One has to posit miracles & unknown mechanisms to avoid heat gain due to increases in greenhouse gases.
The 2nd fundamental flaw is finding climate cycles that can explain the current rise in average temperatures. In decades of research, they just haven't shown up.
1. The scientific community agrees that CO2 is a factor, but does it account for 1% of the temp rise, or 90%? There is no agreement.
2. Assume Al Gore (C student is college, no science background, internet inventor) is correct and it's 90%. We are headed for 500 ppm of CO2. There is no plan- none- that will take the levels back down below 300 ppm. Kyoto is a joke. Putting up windmills is like tilting at them. They will reduce CO2 by AT MOST 4%. Meanwhile our electrical needs will increase by 40% in the next couple of decades! In other words, all the noise the politicians are making about recycling light bulbs and adding another light rail line will have virtually no effect on the 1.7C increase.
3. The computer models are straight line predictions. They dont take into account feedback mechanisms that always exist in closed systems. For example increased ocean plants and crops growing in Greenland. The models are all worst case scenarios because thats how the acedemics keep their funding coming in.
4. A hotter earth is not necessarily bad. Some ecomists have predicted huge benefits from a warmer earth.
5. By far the weakest claims about warming have to do with increased storms. There simply is no data to support it. It's pure politics.
Waht can we do?
1. Get back to nuclear power.
2. Support bio fuel research.
3. Research man-made cooling mechanisms: ocean plants, ice crystal seeding, etc.
4. Research hydrogen fuel.
5. Prepare for a warmer climate.
6. Prepare for an energy war with China in twenty years.
Does not casting environmental issues into the Red/Blue divide weaken the cause? Drive past any union hall and observe the Silverados, Durangos and Suburbans lined up outside.
Ultimately, energy consumption will be curbed more by price than by moralizing.
You OWN this discussion.
Bravo
I am still waiting for my kids to die (like the orchards did financially) from all the Alar on the apples and in the juice they ate....remember Alar, remember the leftist celebrities scaring the crap out of us in the 1980's telling us that Alar was killing our kids. They were sure it was the end, now they are sure this is the end.
It was political then and it is political now.
Yes the Dems need a platform and this seems to be their chosen one.
I stood and watched in Cannes as Al Gore and his many handlers drove giant SUVs 300 yards to unload onto the red carpet.
He sure talks the talk but he has never walked the walk.
Ask his Daddy about growing deadly Tobacco with our tax money...the basis for his wealth!
Talk about greed, no better than a street corner pusher being subsidized with out tax dollars.
OK...I think that is far enough of topic for now.
Peace
"I am serial about this".
:)
I've been following climate change in the scientific journals, not the popular media because the media muddles the message so much (as you kindly illustrate).
(1) there is universal scientific agreement that the CO2 contribution to the documented global warming is no where near 1%, nor anywhere near 90%. A few years ago they estimated somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of the the climate variability was due to CO2. The estimated CO2 forcing is somewhat higher by now because while temperatures and CO2 have kept climbing, the solar influx has not kept pace.
(2) The issue is preventing an +2.8C change, not preventing a +1.7C change. CO2 levels will triple if we keep on with business as usual. It is likely that we can adapt to the climate changes that are expected go along with a doubling (although nature always has surprises); all bets are off when we push the system too far: there are too many ways it can turn out really bad, and too few ways that it can turn out mildly bad.
By the way, Al Gore did have a key role in the legistlation that took Arpanet out of the lab and into our laps. He was right to say that he was "proud of his role in creating the internet", because he did have a role, and a significant one at that. But he never claimed to have invented it.
There is no single technology that will solve climate change problems, and no reasonable person is claiming such. There are also a lot of other energy problems that we are facing which we must solve. We can save a lot of money & trouble if we solve the problems together. For an example of some of the best & brightest, I recommend the Rocky Mountain Institute for creative & out of the box thinking:
www.rmi.org
(3) Dead wrong. A lie from the pits of hell. I can only testify about what I have seen with my own eyes in the published research, and about my own experiences using mathematical & statistical models. I can only guess where you get your information from, but it sounds misinformation amplified by rumor.
Climate change models are big and complex because they have to deal with so many feedback & feed forward mechanisms. Because of the complexity, we break the models down into components: so if you're studying the effects of solar changes on ocean circulation, you would not pay much attention to vegetation changes in Greenland. On the other hand, researchers studying the effects of vegetation changes leave out many of the details regarding ocean circulation. After each group has reached some conclusions about how the variables affect each other, the main model can be updated and the process can start over again.
(4) Correction. A warmer earth is not necessarily bad, since one can extrapolate some benefits based on current conditions. A much hotter earth is unequivocally bad, because we know that there will be have to be major disruptions in the ecosystems with a large enough magnitude changes.
You can find an economist to support just about any position. It's pretty much a matter of them picking assumptions that support their outcome. Good science is more about examining all of the assumptions: if the assumptions are out of line with reality, the outcome must be questioned (NB: often multiple assumptions lead to the same outcomes).
You may have heard of a particularly wacky example of this a few years ago. Some group circulated an article carefully formated to look like one from the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, along with a petition asking for people with science backgrounds to sign on. The article extoled the benefits of high CO2 levels and questioned current climate change research. (They got about 17,000 suckers to sign)
One of the claims I remember the best is that "10's of 1000's of experiements have shown that plants grow faster & bigger under enriched CO2". (Are their any farmers reading this? You'll start to see the humor when you think about how much effort you spend making things grow versus how much effort you spend keeping things from growing). DUH!!! of course plants grow more with more CO2 & each experiment represented a small handfull of species under labrotory conditions. 10's of 1000's of experiements, all of them the WRONG experiement for the question at hand. On the other hand was a small (but growing) number of experiments growing plants under realistic conditions that showed that the plants were less nutritious, often more vulnerable to pests, pollen production when way up, etc, etc. The latest I've read on the subject was that poison ivy (and other vines) show about 6 times the growth increase as other plants in response to high CO2, and it produces a higher proportion of the more toxic variety of the itchy oil (whose name I cannot spell).
So yeah, if an economist just does a straight line model of the fact that, say, orange trees produce 50% more oranges under doubled CO2, of course the predicted result will be beneficial. The picture becomes more complex when one considers the interaction between a +20% corn growth, a +100% weed growth, the aphids who thrive on the additional corn growth, the other insects who start on the new growth, the cows & pigs which take longer to grow to market size on the corn with lower protein content, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention the drier soil resulting from warmer temperatures, the occassional wetter soil when the atmosphere dumps the excess moisture, the resulting mold & erosion, the insects pests who are no longer killed off by cold winters, etc, etc.
As one can see, a lot of things have to go right for climate change to be beneficial, and a lot of things can go wrong for climate change to be detrimental. From what I've seen, the pro-climate change models tend to be too simple and naive to be worth trusting.
(5) Increased storms is indeed a trickly claim to make, and scientists are always very tentative in making it. Iit is really more a matter of common sense, than definitive statistical proof. Especialy major storms like hurricanes, which are episodic and highly variable. For instance, Katrina lost energy when it went over Florida and could well have died out like 1000's of storms before. But for the last 30 years, the water in the Gulf of Mexico has been warming exactly as predicted by climate change models, and it is basic science that hurricanes are powered by the heat of the oceans. Katrina promptly picked up energy & the rest is history. So, there's a pretty solid link there between global warming and the renewed energy of Katrina, but it's not a 100% certain link. Sooner or later a bad storm was going to hit New Orleans anyway, with or without climate change.
The current research on multiple storm basins shows an increase in the severity of storms (as would be expected from warmer surface sea temperatures), and in all storm basins (as one would be expect from global changes, but not from fluctuations in ocean circulation), but not a significant change in the numbers of stroms (storm formation depends on too many other factors to predict which way climate change would affect storm frequency).
All one can really say scientifically about storms & climate change is that what we observe is consistent with what we expected under climate change. We can be more definitive in 20 years after the current upswing in the North Atlantic hurricane cycle has matured.
But pure politics? Nope. Only to those who see the world purely in political terms.
Your 6 suggestions should be pursued, but will not solve much in themselves either. There are dozens of other things that should be done, and many of them are either safer bets, or proven technology.
Did you REALLY stand in Cannes & watch Gore unload? It has all the marks of yet-another-rumor. See.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/22/drudge-falsely-smears-gore
It should be noted that the toxicity of smoking was not always proven. Gore's family was growing tobacco before then, and stopped after Al's sister died of lung cancer (she was an avid smoker). The climate change debate has paralled the smoking debate remarkably well: currently the climate cynic talk-tanks are in full blown "manufacture uncertainty" mode, just like the tobacco industry was a decade or so ago. The popularity of Michael Chricton (and lack of actual scientists) as a spokesperson for the climate cynics attests to this.
The Alar scare certainly was a media circus, but not much of a scientific one. The scientific opinion on Alar was that it posed a small risk of cancer which was inflated beyond reason in the media (junky journalism, savvy salesmanship). The scientific opinion on Climate Change is that we are changing the climate, that it will be expensive and deadly, and that we can reduce or prevent much of the damage; opinions which are ignored beyond reason in the media (junky journalism, savvy salesmanship).
Anyway, gotta go. I'm beyond my Gather budget for the week & my wife wants me to talk to her instead of y'all.
Whether you agree with him or not Greg could debate you under the table with his brain on half speed.
B.
People instinctively know that ultimately it will be price, not moralism that alters the economies of the world. We all are also aware that environmentalists are motivated far more by religion than science. In short, "Global Warming" is the "Gay Marriage" hot button of the left.
Science does enter into the debate but most often it is the science of psychology, not climate that is the driving force. The current issue of Scientific American explores the phenomena of confirmation bias which is really what is behind this whole debate, see The Political Brain.
The article begins with Francis Bacon's description of confirmation bias in Novum Organum written in 1620.
Confirmation Bias is little more than a mechanical function of the brain that rewards itself for political correctness.
No better example of confirmation bias exists than the descriptions regarding the effects of increased CO2 on farming by Dennis S. One knows before completing each paragraph that the effects will always be bad. Not only do weeds grow quicker, but plants mysteriously begin to lose food quality. We simply know, without having to tax our minds, or read long and apostolic articles, what in the end we are supposed to conclude.
One of the rewards of age is a cynical enjoyment toward such matters. We remember our children enthralled by the "environmental awareness" campaigns of the 1980's and 1990's: the pious school activities, the evangelical Saturday morning "Environmental Ranger" cartoons and so on.
There may have been something scary and something endearing about it all, but there was precious little science, and what science there was served in a sweet Stalinist sort of way to promote a forgone conclusion.
Environmentalism is a rather safe cause, unlike say promoting the legalization of heroin. It is the sort of cause where children can smugly condemn the oldsters and still be loved because the elders recall their own enthrallment with causes with the wistfulness of lost youth.
Even the sad earnest Al Gore and Jimmy Carter illicit a sort of nostalgia for crusading idealism, which we all inevitably reflect upon as being kind of nice as compared to the inevitable realities of $6.00 a gallon gas and 15% unemployment during the transition to other forms of keeping our economy going.
Also, dirty campaigns are more effective than discussing light bulbs by far, and both parties know it!
It stank then and it stinks now. There is NO reason to pollute with factories when the technology exists to manufacture responsibly.
Global warming is real, not a leftist plot. I only hope this is not only a campaign issue, but an issue taken seriously by our next president
It is unfortunate to see so many of us (regardless of political affiliation) going directly to being on the offensive without stopping to consider what is really being said.
Right-wingers: is it SO scarry to actually read and research for yourself and really consider what is being said about global warming? Lefties: How can you expect the rightists to repect your opinion if you are also reduced to name-calling?
Democracy depends on a free and honest discourse in which everyone participates. If we behave like a bunch of brats, calling names and refusing to speak to those who disagree with us, our democracy will suffer... Oh, wait, it already is, so let's all try to be nice!