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Judy's comments:

on A Conversation with Bill McKibben

Do you agree that burning wood and biofuel is not really a renewable source of energy?  If our society burned wood instead of oil, would it still overload the biosphere with CO2?  I suggest if every house was warmed by wood, we would burn the forest faster than it could grow (even without the New York Times being printed on wood based paper). 

I have decided to keep my thermostat down to 60 degrees this winter.  Humans lived for thousands of years with winter and felt warm in caves that kept a constant temperature of 52 degrees.  During the winter when we have a warm day of 52 degrees, many people go out without their coats.  Humans are delightfully adaptable.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on A Conversation with Bill McKibben

In James Lovelock's latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, he states on page 11 that the threat of dealing with the waste from nuclear energy is "insignificant compared with the real threat of intolerable and lethal heatwaves and sea levels rising to threaten every coastal city of the world" by 2046.

He does not see nuclear energy as a cure, but a way to buy time to make a global switch away from oil and coal.  He implys that science needs electricity to solve problems, even if it comes from nuclear energy.  He states that wind turbines will be useless when the wind currents change.  The most reliable source of alternative power will come from geothermal and wave energy but that still needs extensive time to develop.  I am willing to resort to nuclear energy, would you?

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on A Conversation with Bill McKibben

NASA and NOAA have a "global database of surface seawater Dimethylsulfide (DMS) concentrations."  Have you heard of the CLAW hypothesis (1987) presented in June 2009 by Benjamin Hillman of the University of Washington? [CLAW stands for C = Charlson, L = Lovelock, A = Andreae and W = Warren]   

Can humans contribute to the sulfur cycle by enriching the phytoplankton with nutrient concentration of iron?  Are there other ways to increase cloud cover to create a cooling effect? 

It is obvious the science footnotes stop in 1999.  Thankfully the DMS database has continued to gather data from "Ships of opportunity" even with the political silencing of climate data.  

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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on A Conversation with Bill McKibben

My participation on October 24 is to wear White all day as a demonstration of grief for the melting Arctic ice.  I have a white car and if I had a house I would paint it white and put a white roof on it.  If 6 billion people all wore white and had white houses and if all the roads were white instead of black, would heat be reflected back like the arctic white cap?  Even if not, it would be a visual act of solidarity to identify people who care.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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