“Care to address my assertions?”

Not really, though you have correctly identified that decarbonization of the global economy is a big part of my current research, so please expect to hear more about that here.

If you want to comment here using a fake name that is fine, but please don’t use the name of a real person, otherwise I’ll delete them.

And I really don’t get pointing out the errors in the small details of the agenda pushers, while still accepting the agenda.

Even if we got off of oil and coal, ethanol and other renewables are still carbon based and windmills won’t spin long without petroleum based lubricants and their many polymer based parts. As long as we make everything out of plastic we haven’t decarbonized ANYTHING. Electric trains and cars will still carry a carbon footprint and always will, and we will still pump, refine and produce petroleum products and byproducts. Furthermore, recent study shows that computer and internet use creates a MASSIVE carbon footprint and their disposal is an environmental nightmare, so automation efficiency offers little net gain environmentally.

There exists right now, by current means, NO CARBON FREE FUTURE OR PLAN FOR ONE. FACT.

Roger, you include the word “decarbonization” in everything you write lately. Care to address my assertions?

It would be interesting to try to come up with a model that mimics per-capita energy use and per-capita CO2 emissions from country to country, and within countries (e.g. between states, and even within states in the U.S.).

For example, here’s a very cool (no climate pun intended) map of U.S. per-capita CO2 emissions:

http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/16/newvulcan.jpg

Notice that southern Texas has some high areas. Also notice that areas of Colorado, and the San Joaquin valley in California have high emissions. The emissions for all these three places seems to correlate with oil and gas field locations:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/rpd/topfields.pdf

But also notice that Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan have high emissions. That may be due to cold weather (heating requirements).

Finally, notice that Florida has some high emission areas; those are probably due to air conditioning requirements.

It would be interesting to construct a model for the U.S. based on these data, then see how well the model predicted for other countries. For example, the model would presumably predict very high per-capita emissions for oil-producing countries in the Middle East. Likewise, it would presumably predict high per-capita emissions for northern countries (e.g. Canada)…but maybe only if those northern countries were sparsely populated. For example, Maine and the Upper Peninsula have high emissions per capita, but not so for Chicago, New York City, Detroit, and other large northern cities.

Likewise, the prediction for southern countries would be high, but apparently only if those countries are pretty humid…e.g., Arizona doesn’t seem to be high-emitting.

Cross country comparisons are indeed likely to deceive. Using the NYT methodology the world’s three most “efficient” countries are Chad, Cambodia and the Congo.

Maurmike-

I did send in a letter, and its text is different than this blog posting, since they disallow prior published material. If it is not accepted within a week, I’ll post it up for posterity sake.

Goks-

Agreed, but since Japan and Germany are both 50% less carbon intensive than the US, there remain important lessons to be learned, even if not all the lessons can be transferred. More on this soon.

Mike McHenry

What I find most interesting about discussion with people about CO2, few know what photosynthesis is, and even less understand cellular respiration. Photosynthesis, isn’t that something you do with Photoshop? Cellular what? I know what texting is but … Carbon lifeforms could use a little education to go with that Blackberry.