It's getting hot in here....so lets...read this article?Follow

Yeah, lots are efficiency based. Greater efficiency usually relates to less overhead.

Many green initiatives can improve public health as well - so presumably there'd be some indirect cost savings in the form of reduced reactive health care.

The planet'll be fine. It's a self-correcting system. We might not be around to see it, though.

Yeah, I should have been more specific. Systems have changed - first the chemistry, next the ecosystems.

Old mother earth could probably care less if our coastal cities can't seem to keep their heads above water, or if the wood boring bark beetle population explodes. It's just a little hot flash - it'll pass.

Admit it you're just sick of all the ice, and tired of riding out the winter in Arizona. The northern polar region is warming faster than anywhere in the world and all you see is dollar signs. Who cares about the polar bears? They're nothing but pests anyway.

For shame.

Racist

Even if you don't believe that God will condemn you to an eternity of torment and hellfire, why take the chance by not going to church once a week?

The problem is, I suspect, how one looks at "green initiatives". Assuming we're talking about the set of things which our government has to get involved in to force people to adopt, the idea that there's a positive ROI on them is pretty much absurd. If you could save money doing X, Y, or Z, and you are in a business which desires to make money, then you will do X, Y, and Z whether the government tells you to or not.

It's pretty absurd to point to those things and use them as a justification for all the stuff the government *is* having to force people/businesses to do. Because those things are almost certainly *not* going to be better ROI than what they're doing now. It's nearly axiomatic to the issue itself that this is the case.

Sure. But then it doesn't take more than a nudge or a bit of information to get people to adopt those kinds of changes. And those aren't usually the sorts of things that anyone fights over politically either. It's the subsidies for a new type of light bulbs (which only coincidentally give a virtual monopoly to a big donor of the current administration), or regulation designed purely to increase the cost and decrease the availability of one form of energy in order to make an alternative look more attractive, or a whole list of other things which people actually oppose.

I don't know anyone opposing the installation of improved heat exchangers in office or hotel buildings though, so I think pointing out the ROI of such things when speaking broadly of "green initiatives" is misleading at best.

You're wrong, but then I would never expect you to be able to discern the difference between fact and fiction.



That you expect anyone here (or anywhere else, for that matter) to believe your baseless opinion on the matter over a worldwide body of volunteer scientists pouring over thousands of data points and all arriving at similar conclusions is typical, however hilarious and unlikely.

Edited, Sep 25th 2012 2:06am by BrownDuck

Except when the cost is individual and the outcome is shared.

Speaking of 30% I thought I just read somewhere that 5%-30% of the arctic warming was due to natural cycles.

I wish it wasn't so hard to get the actual science links on these things...

Thanks.

I was getting a message that the file had already been download or viewed from my IP address, and it sent me to the "terms and conditions" page.



Which I think is a very good point. It's not that these other things (solar cycles, leaving an ice age, ect) have an effect, it's just that with modern scientific instruments we have the ability to tease out that effect.


Edited, Sep 25th 2012 8:48am by someproteinguy

This will kill us before Global Warming.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/decline-of-honey-bees-now-a-global-phenomenon-says-united-nations-2237541.html

Where are the billion dollar solutions for an issue we are actually experiencing. That actually has drastic ramifications in the immediate future, the world over.