Seattle Times: "The truth about global warming"

All this change for the better sounds like a lot of work, if I vote Democrat will ron j do this work for me?

I don't know - I hear that his Jarvis Jelly contributes more CO2 to the atmosphere than all the volcanoes and the varous power plants in the PNW combined (I'll post several links to scientific studies to this effect later).<br><br>Most of this is not really that tough - just informing some choices you are likely already making in your life versus having to add a ton of new steps to your busy life (and the UCS link Greg provides gives a lightweight half-page list of info that would be plenty to help turn the tide if enough Americans followed the advice). And the good news is that most of these steps will save you money in the long run (one of the ironies of environmentally friendly consumption).

Those of us who have the latest Backcountry Magazine received the DVD "Sanctified." Aside from skiing and lots of really cool dudes in yurts, Sanctified refers to environmental issues. I liked some of the ski footage in Sanctified, but it is lame in some ways. I enjoyed reading Lou Dawson's comments this AM on his website. With his permission, I am posting some of his comments:<br><br><br><br>Lou Dawson's Backcountry Skiing Weblog<br>November 8 - 2005<br><br>... Sanctification via DVD<br><br><br>...it implies that backcountry skiing will make some kind of significant reduction in green house gasses. Or weirder, it seems to infer we can somehow live in a yurt in the mountains 365 days a year, not burn firewood, not use a pickup truck to maintain the yurt, and thus gloat about our no-impact lifestyle.<br><br><br>...To compensate for that and be truly "sanctified" you owe it to the rest of us to be even more frugal in your energy consumption habits. Indeed, choosing muscle powered snowsports over snowmobiling is nice, but please, don't use ski lifts or helicopters, don't travel, and ride your bicycle to the trailhead. <br><br>(end of quote)<br><br>I recommend reading the full article at Wildsnow.com<br>

Bump! Another great discussion, and it is nice to see that, as usual for this forum, there can be disagreement without the loss of respectfulness, unfortunately so common elsewhere on the internet.<br><br>The last few posts prompted me to again try to track down some figures which I have not been able to find in the past, and at last I think I have found what I've been looking for. These figures relate to energy consumption on the individual level, which seems to me to be what is needed in order to make good choices about our energy-consuming activities, which are largely related to our individual contributions to global warming.<br><br>gregL provided a link to a page titled "What You Can Do about Global Warming " on the UCS site. The first section is titled "Take Personal Action", and the first entry in this section states, "The next time you buy a car, choose one that is highly fuel efficient. Your choice of vehicle is probably your single most important environmental decision..."<br><br>I don't necessarily disagree with this statement in general. For citizens of the US as a whole a lot of our energy consumption is due to the use of fossil fuels to power automobiles, and if, as a whole, we were to double the fuel efficiency of the autos we drive there would be multiple large positive effects.<br><br>What I have been interested in, however, is our individual choices and how those might affect our personal energy consumption which contributes to global warming, specifically the consumption of fossil fuels. How significant an impact on our personal consumption of fossil fuels would various choices have: ride a bike to work instead of driving, change from oil or natural gas heat to a "green" source, live in a wood-heated yurt, stop going to ski areas or stop doing any kind of skiing?<br><br>The data I found come from the US Dept. of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). This is the main index page for these stats . This Table 4-20: Energy Intensity of Passenger Modes is where I found the stats I use here. This table reports on the "Btu per passenger-mile" for various forms of transportation choices, and for the most part comes down to the consumption of fossil fuels.<br><br>The latest data in Table 4-20 is from 2003, and that is the data that I use here. The question I have wanted to answer is this: how does our personal consumption of fossil fuel energy by driving compare to the same by flying?<br><br>This is what I have concluded from examining the data, subject of course to alternative interpretations and debate. The energy intensity (Btu per passenger-mile) of both air travel and passenger car travel have been improving over the past 45 years, with air showing a greater improvement (increase in efficiency of energy use). To simplify things, I think it would be pretty accurate to say that by 2003 the energy intensity of air and car travel were about equal (3476 and 3894 for air categories, 3553 and 4068 for relevant car categories).<br><br>Going ahead from this simplification, this says that the same amount of fossil fuel energy is used to transport a person one mile by car and by air. The issue that I see, then, is that it is much easier to travel long distances by air than by car, and so if an individual is not careful with their use of air travel, any decrease in fossil fuel energy consumption they might realize from going to a more efficient car could easily be negated by a single airline trip.<br><br>Here's one more stat, which comes from Table 4-11 for the year 2003: in the US the average miles/vehicle/year is 12,200. To simplify, I will assume that a single individual is responsible for these miles (possibly pretty accurate given the number of single-occupant vehicles on the roads).<br><br>So here's how I now look at this issue from a personal point of view. I am an average citizen of the US and I drive 12,000 miles a year. I'm thinking about taking a trip to the east coast by air, a round trip of 6,000 miles. Because the energy intensity of air and car travel is the same, to offset my additional consumption of fossil fuel energy from this air travel trip, I could:<br>(1) Cut my yearly driving mileage by half (12,000 to 6,000 miles), or<br>(2) Trade in my car which gets average fuel efficiency for a car which gets 100% better fuel efficiency (that is, 2x), but still drive my 12,000 miles/year.<br><br>If I am already a heavy user of air travel (perhaps as indicated by my frequent flyer mileage), does it really make much difference if I trade in my already relatively efficient car for a gas-electric hybrid? By cutting back on my air travel might I be able to make a much larger cut in my personal consumption of fossil fuel energy (and contribution to global warming) than I could ever achieve by buying that Prius?<br><br>Disclaimer: the above is kind of like a trial balloon for my thinking on this issue. I could have made a mistake in the logic somewhere. If so, please let me know but keep in mind that I'm just trying to sort this all out in my mind, not single out anyone for criticism (after all, I do travel by air).<br><br><br>

Records fall as cold grips Europe<br><br> www.cnn.com/2006/WEATHER/01/24/europe.cold.ap/index.html

Lately I have been wondering about our PNW temperatures during the past few months. Are our recent temperatures normal, above, or below?

There is a decent snowpack out there now. It would no big deal during periods of normal snow years, but it is certainly nice considering the snowpack last season!

I would bet they are definitely above normal. I doubt we've had a below normal temp winter for quite a few years now. When was the last time we've had a record low temp? There've been a lot of record high temps the last several years. I've noticed a lot of creeks with a hell of a lot of snow piled up around them, but not filling in the way they should. I think that's a sign that it hasn't been getting as cold as it should. Maybe it's still early.