Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels gets a glowing profile in the new issue of Rolling Stone. The article is titled, "Warriors and Heroes: 25 Leaders Who Are Fighting to Stave Off The Planet-wide Catastrophe." My fellow West Seattle-ite Nickels is in heady company, including Al Gore, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Blair. Here's the Nickels profile, titled, "The Pied Piper." It focuses on Nickels' activism in support of the Koyoto Protocol on global warming. Below the fold here are some excerpts, some additional perspective, and a rather specific set of comment guidelines.
(Mac Safari users, please click on time stamp to continue).
Earlier this year, as the rest of the industrialized world prepared to implement the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming, Greg Nickels was frustrated to see the United States sitting on the sidelines. So the Seattle mayor decided that if "the White House isn't going to make it happen from the top down, America's cities can and will make it happen from the ground up."In February, Nickels introduced the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, calling on municipalities to meet Kyoto's targets -- reducing greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels. So far, 187 mayors from major cities in thirty-eight states have signed the agreement, and Nickels hopes to double the number next year. "He's making global warming the focus of the next great grass-roots revolution," says New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. "Let's face it -- if we wait around for the feds to act on global warming, nothing is going to happen."
Nickels, 50, got involved in politics when he dropped out of the University of Washington to volunteer for the Young Democrats. Under his initiative, cities from Miami and Atlanta to Denver and Los Angeles are implementing a host of climate-control strategies: adding bike paths and bus routes, planting trees to absorb CO2, buying hybrid cruisers for police, pushing local utilities to use more renewable energy, and using energy-efficient light bulbs in street lamps and stoplights.....
When it comes to global warming, cities are both the problem and the solution. They account for seventy-eight percent of all climate-warming emissions -- but they may possess enough purchasing power to actually alter the weather. "We buy car fleets, buses, construction equipment, computer systems, light bulbs," says Nickels, whose city's economy is larger than Ireland's. "If we invest in efficient technologies, that can have huge implications for climate change."
Climate change is one rare global issue that I believe it is NOT inappropriate for the City of Seattle to address. The question is how. Let's assume, just for the sake of discussion perhaps, that the global warming threat is not just an Al Franken-Michael Moore-Robert Kennedy Jr. talking point, OK? (Breathe deeply, exhale through nose, repeat). Even so, Nickels' approach has real limits and by celebrating it, Rolling Stone indulges symbolism at the expense of context and understanding. As NASA points out here, achieving greater fuel efficiency is just one approach; and while carbon sequestration is a viable strategy, it will occur most optimally not as a result of planting more trees in cities, but instead by utilizing established forests and croplands - plus natural underground reservoirs of oil and gas, and deep deposits of coal or salt.
Finally, writing in Forbes, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo - who believes global warming is real and serious - says that nonetheless, Kyoto is not the answer, or even a very good start. Zedillo, now director of Yale University's Center For The Study of Globalization, makes several related points. He observes that the treaty sets only short-term goals to deal with a long-term problem; that there are no signs many Kyoto signatories are on track to meet the emissions-reduction goals; that a number of developing nations ramping up their consumption of fossil fuels are not Kyoto signatories; and that the U.S. government must be better convinced of the need to address climate change, through better scientific research. Zedillo also points out that market forces can and do help drive use of alternatives to fossil fuels.
The Rolling Stone snippet on Seattle's mayor and global warming clearly hints at the predominant strands of mainstream media coverage on climate change. The United States, and evil fossil fuel consumers (read - people who drive cars to work) are always the bad guys. Adherence to and unflinching endorsement of Kyoto is an undisputable litmus test of environmental and ethical virtue. There's always some new study that proves beyond a doubt anyone who doesn't take global warming seriously is a malicious dunderhead. Solar and wind power are always good alternatives, but nuclear power is scary and best left untouched.
Myself, I'd sure like to hear more about carbon sequestration, the nuclear power alternative, and the points cited above from Zedillo's Forbes essay. The MSM needs to broaden the discussion, along these lines. As does Mayor Nickels, as long as he brought up global warming. Or perhaps this was mostly an image-building attempt to shore up his lagging popularity with Seattle progressives, whose concern with the issue is limited to politically plangent, anti-Bush talking points.
NOTE TO COMMENTERS: Take whatever position you have on global warming and the proper response, if any, by the City of Seattle. Feel free to include especially useful links to back up your views. It's fine if you disagree with the Mayor, or me, or anyone, just do it without name-calling. I'd like to to see a high signal-to-noise ratio in this string.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 03, 2005 11:01 PM | Email ThisWhat I find very hard to swallow is that somehow we are responsible for this latest round. Think about how beneficial it would be if we could control the Weather, even locally, to cause rain in deserts, or to prevent hurricanes. We have no where near that power to manipulate nature, and yet the left wing loons would have us believe that somehow we have managed to raise the temperature on a global scale.
Read this and let's see what your first thought is:
"And for three summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress."
Sounds like the left wing loons maybe be on to something, right?
Wrong!
That was an edited sentence that in it's original form reads:
"And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress."
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.html
So if climate change is occuring on Mars as well, who's fault is that? Ours? Are the Mar's rovers really heating things up there that much? Of course not. It's part of a natural cycle of heating and cooling, just as we experience here on Earth.
For a long time geologists have known that the Earth went through cyclical heating an cooling, but didn't really know why. Given the new data from Mars, they now theorize that increased solar energy may be a factor. Basically the Sun gets hotter and cooler in cycles over many thousands of years, and as a result, so do all of the planets, including ours, and without an help or intervention from us.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
The very notion that we could be causing this is just pure arrogance and self centered agrandizment. Even when the left is faced with the facts, they still brush it off as only a contributing factor, rather than the main cause, as is seen in this AP article:
http://www.abe.msstate.edu/classes/abe4312/sustain/sci-sun.html
The total amount of energy released by human action, through burning fossil fuels, setting off atomic bombs, and anything else you can think of, over the entire course of human history doesn't even come close to the amount of energy released by the Sun in a single minute! And yet the left wing loons would have us believe that it's just a contributing factor to global warming, that clearly we must be at fault. These people are completely incapable of seeing the bigger picture, which is why they also often perform so horribly in public office.
But, I think a more dangerous chemical reaction occurs when we mix science and law too quickly. Kyoto clearly favors developing nations, giving them much more time to come into compliance (I think South Korea has until 2013 to comply). These nations signed-on, in part, in the hopes that it might give their home-grown corporations a competitive advantage (if U.S. companies were forced to spend more money to come into compliance, while their home-grown companies did not).
At the local level, is the Mayor's plan comprehensive? Will it potentially drive away certain companies that don't want to comply? Or is he only implementing the aspects of Kyoto in a way that don't drive away business?
Posted by: YourGovernorCostsMillion$ on November 4, 2005 12:53 AMThe reason you don't hear about ozone depletion anymore is because the problem has basically been solved. Global restrictions on CFC production have halted the damage to the ozone layer, and within our lifetime we should see a natural repair as ozone is slowly replaced. Chalk this one up as a success for smart environmental policy.
The reason ozone was depleted at the poles is because that is where the sun's radiation bombardment of our planet is the greatest. Radiation hits the planet's magnetic field and is drawn to the poles, creating the Northern (and Southern) Lights. That same radiation combines ozone and CFCs into chlorine and other chemicals, and the ozone is naturally replaced at an extremely slow rate.
Sorry for the science lecture, it just felt good to actually know the answer! I had a real good class on Climate Change at WSU-Vancouver, which was very helpful.
And finally, I would remind folks that conservation really is conservative. Check out the Republicans for Environmental Protection at www.repamerica.org and see what we're all about!
I would love to see more nuclear plants. I was a nuclear engineer in the Navy and it is my opinion that properly run nuclear plants are the answer to many of the questions being asked. Cheaper electricity, less coal and oil burning, reduction in the cost of virtually everything. Yeah! I'd like to see Mayor Nichols campaign for a couple small nuke plants somewhere on the coast near Seattle to eliminate our dependence on oil. Vancouver, BC has electric buses that run all over the city. Put those into Seattle, people will be buying electric vehicle left and right, good to go.
Given that, do I think that we are causing global warming? Not particularly. The enviro-wackos are constantly claiming that we are causing something or other, but when it turns out down the road not to be true do you ever hear them come out and admit their mistakes? Nope. By then they are busily claiming that we are causing something else bad to happen. Example? Schools built under power lines are causing kids to get cancer. Comletely debunked. DDT is destroying the environment. Completely debunked and now millions of people are dying of malaria and we are spending billions to stop it. Never mind that we have a perfectly good prevention in DDT. There are more examples too numerous to list. They cover virtually everything these groups have ever talked about. Yet you don't hear about any of them.
Have they done good work? Sure. I'm in favor of saving the whales, I'm in favor of more trees on the planet, problem is most of their solutions involve my giving up my lifestyle to live in a yurt and grow my own granola. No thanks.
Posted by: Calvin A on November 4, 2005 05:56 AM"When it comes to global warming, cities are both the problem and the solution. They account for seventy-eight percent of all climate-warming emissions"
Just where did they come up with that line of crap?
Remember that last little St. Helens burp, that made St. Helens the biggest polluter in the state.
The new "Green" City Hall uses more energy than the old one.
The bottom line, climate has multiple cycles on varying time scales. When several peak at the same time global temperature goes up.
Human contributions to the climate are at best round off error.
Posted by: JCM on November 4, 2005 07:52 AMLiberal Loser Loonies!!!!!
Posted by: Norm on November 4, 2005 08:13 AMThe defining work in this area is called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg. The book is probably the most painstakingly researched book you will ever read. And it goes into minute detail to debunk almost every environmental myth. This is the book that environmentalists tried to discredit, and don't want you to read.
Go get it and read it so you'll have lots of ammunition to counter the evironmental wackos, like Mayor Nickels. All of the environmental "issues" can be unmasked to show what they are at heart. And that is just more schmemes to redistribute wealth.
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 4, 2005 08:17 AMExcellent.
Seriously, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is required reading for all Sound Politics readers.
Of course it's worthless to counter "Don't you care about the truth?" Because we know that those who are truly dedicated to the politics of the left wing enviros don't care about the truth, just thier agendas.
KCTS 9 had a show on global warming on a couple nights ago, I thought I was watching the discovery channel at first and I was outraged at the rhetoric that the host, some B list actress, was spewing, then I saw it was PBS and realized it was just more of my tax dollars at work.
Posted by: Dan on November 4, 2005 08:46 AMwww.junkscience.com
Posted by: NewtotheSound on November 4, 2005 08:50 AMAll of them, at one time or another, predicted doom and gloom for the environment, with photos of the treehuggers in all their glory claiming we'd run out of clean air and clean water by the year 2000.
I kept these old editions, and I bring them out every time and show them to my liberal buddies every time they start talking up the end of the world. And then I ask - 'You guys were wrong 30 yeasr ago, the planet is still green and blue and beautiful. Why should we believe you THIS time?'
Posted by: Larry on November 4, 2005 08:57 AMBetter yet, what caused the ice age? Most dinosaurs are reptiles and require warmer temperatures to survive.
Man may be a contributor, but I think we may be a bit conceited to believe that we are the primary cause of global warming.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on November 4, 2005 09:01 AMDaily rotation, day to night.
Earth annual orbit, seasons.
I don't think these two need a link.
The following cycles that effect climate are extra-terrestial influences, the sun and orbital effects.
Milankovitch 21,000 year cycle
I am sure somehow Bush is responsible for solar and orbital cycles.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation
In other words there are dozens if not hundreds of known climate oscillations on time scales of hours, day to night, to 10's of millennia. How many oscillations have we not discovered because we only have direct recorded scientific weather data of less than 300 years. We have the geological record, but how many variables are not geologically apparent.
What happens when many of the peaks of these cycles occur at the same time.
Global Warming
None of the cycles are attributable or affect by humans.
We are coming out of a period of "mild" weather, or not many of the cycles peaks or valleys coincided. The Puget Sound area has been both glaciated and tropical at various times in geological history.
Posted by: JCM on November 4, 2005 09:41 AMPlease appreciate that although we consider them wackos, they should be feared because of the support their idiocy seems to so readily attract from our society. That is really scary. Universities create classes that teach future leaders junk science. Scientist find they are rewarded for creating papers supporting a point of view. Newspapers are ready to spread the word without an ounce of investigation or research. The support adds credibility and in itself, like a snowball rolling downhill, gathers weight and substance without an ounce of truth at the core.
Posted by: snuffy on November 4, 2005 09:52 AMGreen on the outside, red on the inside.
What they couldn't achieve politically, via the socialist and communist agendas is now hidden in the "Green" movement.
It is not about environmental causes, it is about centralized power in the hands of the self chosen elites.
We won the cold war, liberal (in the old fashioned sense) democracies vs. socialist / communist regimes.
Now we have to fight them in the guise of "greens."
Posted by: JCM on November 4, 2005 09:58 AMMusic? Oh yeah, that. RS stopped being about music years ago. The fact that a major story in RS is a crusade for Environmentalism is all you need to no as to why it's not even worth lining your birdcage with Rolling Stone.
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 4, 2005 10:11 AMYears ago, former governor Dixie Lee Ray wrote a fascinating book that covered many of these "Pollution" issues, titled something like "Trashing the Planet." I do not know if it is still available, but it is great reading. I may not be a rocket scientist...but she was (or possibly one better).
Posted by: dl on November 4, 2005 10:22 AMScience backs up global warming.
As a normal part of the climate and environment of earth. Earth gets cold it gets warm.
Occasionally we get whacked by a really big comet or asteriod and that really mucks things up.
Enjoy the ride.
Posted by: JCM on November 4, 2005 10:52 AMIt drives them nuts, it's very entertaining.
Posted by: JCM on November 4, 2005 11:12 AMAnd, speaking of rad fems, they have proven that make believe statistics and psuedo-science can be used to create or manipulate government policy. In fact, they have been successful at doing that to such an extent that we now have legislation that is clearly in violation of our Constitutional rights and nobody seems to care.
The formula: leverage modern America's weakness for hysteria.
The media loves hysteria, because it gets them more viewers and readers. It's really a quite simple formula. The more something can be sensationalized and dramatized, the more the media is able to get viewers and therefore higher prices for their commercials.
Gender issues and the global warming red herring are sensation issues.
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on November 4, 2005 11:20 AMWilma
Katrina.........
While science may back up Globlal warming the last I heard the alarmist view towards it was not supported.(understandably)sorry for mix up JCM.
After reading your post again, it's clear to me that you should read up more on the non threat that is the current topic of Global Warming. Global Warming simply is not an issue. Even if it was a serious issue, our limited collective monies have far greater human issues to address such as disease, immediate threats from natural activities, better education, etc.
If Mayor Nickels wants to spend less energy fueling the Seattle fleat, on stoplights, etc. and consequently save the government expense, that's fine, but it is completely hystrionic to suggest that there is any relation between change in the earth's temperature and the extremely small percentage difference in energy use between an energy efficient and non energy efficient city. Even if every city government on earth took every possible immediate step to become more energy efficient, the percentage change in man made energy consumption and its output effects vs. the total man made consumption and output effect, would still be almost insignificant and definitely insignificant when compared with the effects of the Sun, and other natural energy input and output phenomena. Even if every single human on earth took steps to become more energy efficient, while it would definitely have an economic impact on energy markets, it would still pake in comparison to the energy of the Sun.
Global Warming is quite simply a total myth. It is entirely based on junk science, and as much as we would like to think we could influence the earth on this scale, even the radiation from one day's sunshine that hits the earth makes all of our energy creation and consumption look like mouse nuts.
A mere couple of days without sunlight would have a far, far greater effect on the planet that all of the stored energy that we know of in uranium, petroleum, coal, methane, etc. As if it were even possible for us to somehow instantly tap all of that stored energy simultaneously.
The reality is that what we need to be focusing on is the production of energy, for humans to use, at low cost, and to view and embrace human use of energy as a noble and beneficial activity.
Let's make it completely clear, environmentaists want us to feel evil and shameful with respect to our energy production and use. And politicians like Nickels want us to feel guilty and willing to redistribute our energy use to lesser nations that do not embrace it as we do..
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 4, 2005 12:12 PMAhem...
Well we are big tax spenders, we've got sticky fingers
And we’re loved on KING and KOMO
We talk about warming and we blab about Earth
Ten thousand miles away in Kyoto
We take farm owners land and charge them all kind of bills
And ban cars to save the ozone
But the thrill that'll get you is when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Wanna see my picture on the cover
Rolling Stone
Wanna buy five copies for mother earth
Rolling Stone
Wanna see my grinning mug
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
I've got a freaky old lady name o' Recount Chrissie
Who embroiders all the facts
I've got my HOV carpool lane
To drive my limousine
Now it's all designed to blow your mind
When you’re stuck in this damn traffic flow
But the blow that'll get you is when you see my picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
{Refrain}
We got a lot of little teenage war protesters
Who do anything we say
We got a genuine vote supervisor
Stealing the election away
We got all the pork tax money can buy
So we never have to get a job
And we keep gettin' richer and we just got our picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
The comments made on this thread are the most reassuring that I have read in a long time. They prove that though I daily walk amongst liberal pinheaded idiots and degenerates, there are many sane intelligent people in my midst as well.
Anyone that wants to be informed about the absurdity of leftist Global Warming theory need only read Al Gore's book Earth in the Balance." Gore committed himself to ecological prognostications that have hitherto proven to be nothing more than absurd simple-minded foolishness. P.J O'Rourke observed aptly that liberals will believe anything so long as there are no facts involved. It seems appropriate to observe that a regard for facts amounts to decency and the lack of them is definitive of moral degeneracy.
Quoted in O'Rourke's, “All the Trouble in the World” Legal Scholar Peter W. Huber said that "Getting facts right is a fundamental requirement of morality." O'Rourke goes on to say that “Mankind is accused of numerous and grave environmental crimes. Each of these alleged felonies must be thoroughly investigated and fairly judged. Otherwise we won't know how large a fine to levy upon ourselves, which type of community service we should sentence ourselves to, or what kind of prison we should all lock each other up in.”See All the Trouble in the World, by P.J O'Rourke, the Atlantic Monthly Press, (1994) p.152. Unfortunately all of us in the greater Seattle/King County area are locked up in a prison of administrative/political ignorance with the likes of Nickels, Sims, Gregoire etc.
I highly recommend O'Rourke's book to all you who may not have read it. It is not just substantive, but hilarious as well. That said, it is encouraging to experience the visitation of sane conservatives like those of you who posted comments here.
Thanks.
"Nickels, 50, got involved in politics when he dropped out of the University of Washington to volunteer for the Young Democrats."
Yeah, pretty hard to hand out leaflets in Red Square and do homework at the same time. Too bad--perhaps if he would have stayed in school, he might have learned some real science.
Posted by: Organization Man on November 4, 2005 12:24 PMI challenge these environmentalists that believe humans can actually have any kind of impact on the global environment to a day of sailing on Puget Sound in weather conditions like today! Give them some 30 knot winds, 3 foot waves and mix in a little rain, and they'll quickly find out that when compared to mother nature, a human is as insignificant as a flea on a dog's behind. They're completely opposite of what they claim. They have no respect for the awesome power of mother nature (probably comes from living in the comfort of the city all their lives and never faced with actually trying to survive in the great outdoors).
Posted by: puget sound sailor on November 4, 2005 12:56 PMAs for Nickels, he is just using this topic as a gambit to gain national and international recognition. He has about as much influence over environmental policy as my little toe. Witness all the silly laws and regulations that spend huge resources on deciding whether a tree can be cut down in the suburbs. This in the name of global warming.
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on November 4, 2005 01:11 PMIs Mayor Nickel's meddling in foreign policy and, if so, is that OK?
Posted by: Kira on November 4, 2005 09:28 PMThanks for the compliments, we like you too...
Posted by: Amused by liberals on November 5, 2005 12:13 PM"The reason you don't hear about ozone depletion anymore is because the problem has basically been solved. Bull$hit.
You don't have a clue what you are talking about.
Posted by: Amused by liberal whoppers on November 6, 2005 04:29 PM