…stay away from your blog. At least that’s what I’m trying to do after this news.
There is an upside to this: I’m already thinking about who I want to support for King County Exec in ’09, since Ron is pretty much making it clear that he isn’t running again. One of my only rules is that the candidate has to have a consistent position on light rail. They can’t be for it…
…and then against it.
Will, you just don’t get it. Sims’ coming out against this bloated, expensive, deceptive bond package doesn’t mean he’s “against light rail.” It means he’s against bloated, expensive, deceptive transportation propositions because WE CAN DO BETTER.
The proposition on this fall’s ballot is the height of folly. It starts 520 bridge replacement without providing enough funds to finish it — and opts for an absurdly expensive, gold-plated 520 replacement option.
It buys the support of parochial-minded politicians like Doug Sutherland by making taxpayers pay for things like the environmentally unsound Cross-Base highway, instead of concentrating scarce resources on the region’s fundamental needs.
Further, I would argue it’s premature to raise taxes for the purpose of extending Sound Transit’s light rail lines, when the first ST light rail trains aren’t even running yet. Shouldn’t we get Phase I up and running, and see what the ridership is, and iron out the system’s bugs, before committing to spend billions more to expand the system?
Your damn-the-cost attitude toward this gold-plated, jewel-encrusted tax package, is I submit, inconsiderate of the families for whom these taxes will be a genuine hardship. We are talking about roughly $90,000 per household in new taxes, Will. I submit that Ron Never-Met-A-Tax-He-Didn’t-Like-(Until-Now) Sims has his feet on firmer ground than you do, and that’s not flattering.
@1..RR…
Here, here…about half the time…
The Piper
Defeating this turkey doesn’t mean critical road projects and more light rail won’t be built. It means transportation planners will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a more realistic plan and price tag. This ballot proposition is merely the transportation dreamers’ first offer. A “no” vote will force them to negotiate with taxpayers. No rational person can possibly believe this region can afford to throw $90,000 per household at transportation, on top of existing taxes, and with large tax bills yet to come due for saving Puget Sound and replacing Seattle’s 100-year-old water and sewer infrastructure.
You mean if the Prop 1 folks sell us Eastsider’s a bunch of roses and we say ya great – then we find out there’s no money to finish 520 and two lanes on I-90 will be eliminated for exclusive light rail use, it’ll take 20 years to finish and 50 years to pay off – oh, and it’ll create the largest tax hike in the states history. Hmmm… you can call me a flip flopper too if you want but when facts come out like they have, people can and should make a reasoned decision to change their position. I’m with Ron on this one.
I still don’t understand how the people who dreamed up this $18.5 billion tax increase managed to spend $4 billion on a concrete pontoon bridge only 7,600 feet long when Tacoma’s shiny new suspension bridge cost only $843 million. My response to that will be to vote “no” and then tell them to pick up a phone book and look for some cheaper concrete.
Now I wonder if the green-xstreamists in the 700 Club still think we will see a ST 2 only plan next year??? Or as early as February 08?? Right.
The biggest champion of light rail in the region just announced he thinks our region should just get by with his smelly, slow, stuck in traffic buses. He has said the future of this region isn’t in trains and rail it is in deisel powered buses and concrete.
Make no mistake, Ron Sims is against light rail for the Puget Sound region. His position announced yesterday is driven by his disdain for the light rail extentions not because of the road projects in this plan. He isn’t against the road projects, just thinks we should pay for them with a toll and not MVET (you decide which is more regressive???).
As a longtime Ron Sims fan, I am profoundly disappointed not just in his position, but in how he carried it out.
He spent close to two years at the table at Sound Transit taking vote after vote to move this plan forward. He never said a thing.
Joni Balter and Dori Monson may consider that leadership. I don’t.
Ron Sims thinks we should raise the sales tax to pay for sports arenas for millionaires, but not to build a 50 mile light rail system for our region.
He claims the Roads and Transit plan will make global warming worse, after he just cut the ribbon on a 800 stall county parking garage.
He says light rail to Bellevue and Tacoma is the wrong technology choice, after saying a few short years ago, “we are going to dig and keep digging until we get to Bellevue and Tacoma and Everet.”
Leadership? No.
I hope the Sierra Club can pause for one moment to come to terms with the extreme coalition they find themselves a part of and realize that neither Kemper Freeman, nor Ron Sims, nor Mark Baerwaldt, nor Jim MacIsaac, nor Dori Monson will be anywhere near their transit only fantasy plan in 2008 should Roads and Transit fail.
Also, keep in mind this proposal asks senior citizens to choose between food and medicine, or bridge they won’t drive on and light rail they won’t ride.
Ron Sims was on Dori Monson today. It was a love fest. Ron Sims cozies up to the guy who has built his entire radio career on attacking Sound Transit and trying to kill light rail in this region. That is like buying dinner for your sister’s ex boyfriend who spent 6 years abusing her.
@7
I had forgotten that Ron was the leading proponent in Olympia for the Sonics’ arena.
Ron how long would those sports stadium taxes have go on?
Taxes for millionaires but not public transportation?
I’m down with the rabbit! Welcome back RR!
Simms hasn’t changed his position on light rail one lick, what he’s said is: “While containing some good projects, this plan doesn’t solve traffic congestion in the short term, nor does it provide enough long-term relief to justify the financial and environmental costs.”
That’s not being against light-rail, that’s being against a package that is slow, expensive and inefficient in its use of tax dollars. For example, the best bang for your buck on light rail in Tacoma is extending Link into the Stadium District so that more people can get down town too use the existing express buses and heavy rail to Seattle and Portland, not running a line from downtown (and how are all those people going to get down town?) up Hwy 99.
@6 While I do not necessarily fault your analysis of Sim’s leadership, the relevant problem is not what Sims thinks but how do we deal with our region’s transportation needs within an affordable budget? It’s a tough challenge, but that’s what we pay bright people the big bucks for.
Here is something that is too often overlooked and not discussed when people talk about spending more on public transportation: People have to own cars anyway.
Consequently, when you tax households to expand public transportation, you force them to pay for parallel transportation systems that duplicate each other to a substantial extent.
Public transportation costing a household $5,000 a year would be a good deal if it eliminated a vehicle costing the household $7,500 a year. Trouble is, it doesn’t. If the household uses the public system, it might save $500 a year in gas, but gas is only a small part of the cost of owning a vehicle, and the household still has all the other costs. The reason it is so hard for public transportation to get traction with voters is that the taxes need to support it are an ADDED expense on top of their existing transportation expenses. That makes public transportation a tough sell.
For most households, public transportation will never eliminate the need for owning one or more vehicles. For many people, public transportation is something they hope other people will use so they can drive their vehicles in less congested traffic. For some people, public transportation simply isn’t an option, such as a plumber who has to go from job site to job site with his tools and materials. These taxpayers don’t see tax increases for expanding public transportation as a necessity; to them, it’s just another onerous financial demand by governments whose appetite for taxes seems limitless and never-ending.
That is why it will always be difficult to get tax-based funding for public transportation; and, for this reason, proponents of tax-supported public transportation should be judicious both in how much they demand and how they go about persuading their fellow citizens to support it.
Btw, if you look at the Big Road Building Leadership (BRBL) in public office and in the Olympia bureaucracy one of the commonalities you’ll find is that most are aging baby boomers.
RTID represents the last gasp of the BRBL.
@6
“The biggest champion of light rail in the region just announced he thinks our region should just get by with his smelly, slow, stuck in traffic buses. He has said the future of this region isn’t in trains and rail it is in deisel powered buses and concrete.”
Sorry, wake the fuck up. He’s not saying that at all.
@11
Perfect!
Living close to work is the best solution, but we’re still building this:
Home————->Work
When we should be building this:
Home–> Work
There goes Michael the 700 Club elitist green-xstremist again.
All those folks who live in Kent should just be able to afford the $500,000 median Seattle house.
Michael, oh really? Ron isn’t against light rail?
Ron Sims
Seattle Times
Even if on schedule, 60 percent of new light rail won’t open until 2027. Light rail across Lake Washington is at least 14 years away. The Northgate extension is 11 years away.
Projected light-rail ridership to Bellevue and Overlake is lackluster because of indirect routing. Traveling from Capitol Hill to the Microsoft campus via downtown Seattle and Mercer Island is slow and cumbersome. The retrofit of Interstate 90 for light rail will slow express-bus service and increase commute times to Issaquah, Sammamish and North Bend.
To the south, we have different inefficiencies. Light rail would connect Seattle to Tacoma (already served by faster Sounder Trains) and run along Highway 99 (where last year’s King County Metro “Transit Now” tax increase is ramping up bus-rapid-transit service).
@15
No, rather than subsidize roads and have people commute we could subsidize housing and have them walk to work.
Or, we could give people that live near where they work a break on their taxes or home loan.
Some of what you are doing when you drive till you can afford the mortgage payment is replacing mortgage cost with transportation costs. Getting rid of a car allows you to afford a more expensive mortgage, but many banks don’t take that into account when giving out home loans.
Look at our state budget, the most expensive thing is transportation. Reducing the need for transportation reduces our tax bill.
People need to think outside the box a little better and look for solutions that don’t take a decade to put in place.
@16
Hell, I’m against light-rail that will take decades to put in place. I’m all for extending Tacoma’s Link, which if Tacoma had the funding, they could start work on on Monday.
@15
I’m a well known Seattle hater, btw.
@15
And I’ll never, ever live in a condo.
In Europe, most people don’t own cars, and you can get almost anywhere on public transit. Their cities are more picturesque, they have universal (and better) health care, and their currency is worth more than ours. And they don’t have a problem with other people speaking a different language. Furthermore, they have no Republicans.
@22
Americans vacation in Europe and talk about how wonderful it is. So… Why not build out America on a little more European model.
How many of you folks who “rail” against buses actually take them?
Lite rail ain’t that different than buses and the buses are a lot more flexible and much cheaper.
Give me my bus lanes!
And a bit of info for Will, Ron is counting on an appointment by a Democratic president to a federal post. Otherwise, he is running again.
Just what I’m hearing.
Liberals suck. Seattle’s gay!
George Bush #1
Michael you and Ron Sims should put a subsidize housing plan on the ballot in the three counties raising sales tax for everyone to build flats in Seattle and Bellevue.
Good luck. I think congestion pricing would poll better than that.
@27
You might be right, but we’ll never know until we try. I’m just throwing out a few ideas.
I’m betting people would look at living closer to work if it would cut a few points off their mortgage.
I am confused did Ron’s wife or Kemper Freeman help Ron write this op ed?
“The retrofit of Interstate 90 for light rail will slow express-bus service and increase commute times to Issaquah, Sammamish and North Bend.” Ron Sims
And Michael, it looks like Ron Sims doesn’t share your goals for living close to where you work.
He is worried about people driving SUV’s from Sammamish having a slower commute on I-90 once light rail is built.
Interesting. According to Ron Sims, we shouldn’t build light rail because it will take longer for someone to drive from North Bend to Seattle.
This man has lost it.
Quick Kevin Fullerton or another green-xtremist, help Ron make sense out of that one. Maybe his wife wrote that paragraph. Wait a second, where does Wil Knedlik live again? hmmm
so according to Michael the free market is dead. People in the suburbs are out making irrational financial decisions because, um, well because they feel like it. They can’t add two and two and are unaware that they could actually afford a $500,000 loft in South Lake Union if only they didn’t drive those 30 miles round trip everyday between Kent and Seattle.
You moron. Living in Seattle saves you $2.50 a day on a gallon of gas, not $250,000 on a mortgage.
But Michael and Ron’s tax plan is going to bridge that gap so we can all afford $500,000 lofts in downtown Seattle.
@29
Simms is saying he’s against this plan, not rail in general.
If Simms is against people living close to work I’ll fight that battle when we get there.
I live 2.5 miles from work, 2 from shopping coffee shops and bars; I’m practicing what I preach.
#30
Well if you get rid of a car, you get rid of a car payment. Mines $250 a month. You get rid of insurance, that’s another $80 a month more me. And you get rid of gas and that’s another $25 a month for me. Grand total of $335 dollars a month not including oil changes, tires and so on. A bit more than Bob’s $75 a month, me thinks.
And your comment, Bob, is about as far wide of the mark as you can go. I’m not saying any of those things.
Uh, Michael, are you and I reading the same newspaper.
“The retrofit of Interstate 90 for light rail will slow express-bus service and increase commute times to Issaquah, Sammamish and North Bend.” Ron Sims
Oh and by the way, Ron Sims signed the agreement to retrofit I-90 for light rail. It was called R8A and he was a huge champion of it. Was…a huge champion of it. Before he converted to a Kemper deciple.
#33
Yep, I am reading the same thing you’re reading. And I’m perfectly OK with the two of us getting different things out of it.
michael says:
@11
Perfect!
Living close to work is the best solution, but we’re still building this:
Home————->Work
When we should be building this:
Home–> Work
Umm, Michael, it is already built that way. People live in Kent whether you like it our not. Our region got a late start building transit and developed by way of the road. The question is not whether we are going to bulldoze Kent and replace it in downtown Seattle with condos, it is how are we going to move the people that live in Kent and the 1 million more people that are coming here to work and back. In their cars or on a train? Or on one of Ron Sims stuck in traffic unreliable buses?
just get rid of the car?
Seattle residents have the highest per capita car ownership in the world.
just live in Seattle and get rid of your car. right
Sims just has one “m”
If you claim to know what he is saying and thinking, you ought to at least know how to spell his name.
And if you read his anti rail op ed you would also know how to spell his name.
@35
We’re really talking about two vastly different things, not one thing in two different ways. And you can’t really fix that on a comment thread on HA. So I’m going to throw in the towel and go to bed.
Michael, you said you live 2.5 miles from work, by golly why do you still own a car?
You are telling me I live close to work and then I don’t have to own me now car. I free up all that money to by me my fancy loft.
Something isn’t computing here
@39
You’re just being a dick.
@35
The higher the density the housing the better trains work.
And now I’m off to bed.
Couldn’t sleep so one more comment it is. And yeah, I know you all want me to shut up and go away. You’ll get your wish soon enough.
@35
I never said we should bulldoze Kent or anywhere else. Or that we should put all the housing growth in down town Seattle. In fact I pointed out that I never live in a condo and I that I don’t like Seattle.
People work all over the region and all over the region there are people that would like to live closer to work. Why not work with them? Some times that means bringing housing closer to jobs. Where I live is somewhat suburban, and it’s more a matter of bringing in more jobs while keeping sprawl in check.
As for the diagram:
Home————->Work
Home–> Work
RTID does does this. It just doesn’t do it nearly well as we can or should.
Sooner or later, if we’re really serious about doing something to stop befouling our planet, we’re going to need to start doing stuff that’ll make the measures being discussed now look like a walk in the park. I’m talking about highly punitive horsepower taxes, prohibiting the ownership of a truck rated more than a quarter-ton without proof of a true business need (and continuing documentation of business use by the mile), really high parking fees not only in downtown Seattle but in all business areas (shopping centers included) and perhaps some fat tax incentives for employers to provide housing near workplaces and employees to live there or telecommute.
Sims seems to have had an epiphany of sorts, and realizing that this package has morphed into a lot of very expensive fiddling while the planet burns. He’s done something highly unusual for a politician, and that’s admit he made a mistake. Sure wish more would do the same.
@11…RR…
Some excellent points coupled with possibly the most realistic and honest understanding that not everyone lives, or wants to live, a cave-dwelling, hyper-dense, uber-urban, technology/white collar-oriented, life-style.
I have yet to get a straight answer from any ST fan as to how you schlep six sheets of 4X8 wallboard, a bucket of mud, sheet rock screws, and tape on a ST train? Or how you swing by the cleaners, the vet, Mom’s nursing home, the kids’ school, soccer practice, or any of the other kajillion errands many, if not most, people do either to or from their daily exercise as a wage slave for the man?
That so many consider light rail, which strikes me as 19th-Century technology, as some sort of shining light upon the hill boggles the mind.
We’re going to spend how much to get how much??? 50 measly miles? And the first engine of the first light rail train hasn’t even hit the track yet? Simply nuts to me.
You think you got Tim Eyman phobias now…just wait and see what will happen within two years if turd-in-the-punchbowl Prop. 1 passes.
I-912 gets defeated, other tax measures pass, we’re always hearing that THIS is the proposal to end all proposals that will solve our transportation problems until the Second Coming…Until, that is, the next bag of hot gas comes down the pike.
Which shell hides the pea?
And the motivations so many – for Prop 1 or against it, makes no never mind – have who flog light rail as divinely inspired…Unreal! Transportation policy should be about maximizing the effective and efficient movement of the greatest number of people in the most cost-effective manner. Freedom and liberty to move how they wish, where they wish (including wherever they wish to live), when they wish, in whatever manner they wish…People first.
Now, I’m also one who says if you want to use it, pay for it; like lunch, there is no such thing as a free ride, a concept that should apply both to road warriors and train trekkers. Tolls on 520 don’t bother me; I might even be willing to consider congestion pricing, but not for any environmental reason. Like cheaper tickets for a matinee or off-season resort holidays, shaving a few pennies off the toll when you cross the bridge at 4:00 a.m. might make sense.
Prop 1 looks like an animal designed by committee…They can exist, but they usually end up sterile.
The Piper
@26 #1 what?
#1 Failure?
#1 Liar?
#1 Incompetent?
#1 Idiot?
#1 Illiterate?
All of the above.
@43 “I might even be willing to consider congestion pricing, but not for any environmental reason”
Why not for environmental reasons? Do you think the health of the environment that sustains us is irrelevant to our survival, let alone our prosperity?
@45…RR…
Because I remain unconvinced that the environmental reasons touted in favor of ST are all they’re cracked up to be.
Reminds me too much of Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb…which was a bomb itself in predicting dire catastrope. All the experts and political pundits told us that the population sky was falling, and we’d be starving due to too many people and not enough food by the…1980’s.
Now…I’m all for clean air, water, land, and food (though I don’t consider Chef Boy-R-Dee or Franco-American anything to be “food”), but my personal opinion is that cramming people into trains for other than efficient movement of people reasons is not only poor policy, but essentially denies people the right of choice.
Spending billions on transportation not because it’s good TRANSPORTATION policy, but because you think my car is dirty simply rubs me the wrong way.
People first…
The Piper
@46
What it takes to move 15,000 people per hour using different modes of transport.
http://frumin.net/ation//2006/.....anspo.html
Rail makes sense for most (note the word most, Costco and Home Depot don’t work so hot by rail) commuting and that doesn’t take away your, “choice.” Roads will still exist, you can still choose to use your car.
@46 Your car IS dirty, but not to worry, at the rate you humans are guzzling gas all the world’s known oil reserves will be gone in less than 30 years.
43 – What moronic nonsense! ST is about transportation options and more choices not a one size fits all solution.
ST NEVER purports to be a contractor’s solution.
The answer is with a f’ing pickup!!
@49…YLB…
A contractor doesn’t schlep six sheets of wall board at a time, but a Joe or Jane Doakes who’s doing an after-work remodel job at the house who stops by McLendon’s on the way home does. And she has a ton of other errands to run on the way to, during the lunch break from, and on the way home from the mill, facotry, office, or espresso stand where she works.
Choices? What choices?
Will a ST train accomodate this commuter? You said it yourself, albeit in a potty-mouthed sort of way, that it doesn’t. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, “It Takes a Truck!”
There you have it! You’ve just advocated abandoning ST in favor of an F-150!
Hell bent for leather to throw billions at 50 little, itty-bitty, short miles when no one has any real knowledge of whether commuters will embrace light rail since not a single solitary passenger has ridden it yet!
What a joke!
If you ST affecianados really believe in its efficacy and value, then why don’t you advocate RIPPING up existing highways and REPLACING them with light rail such that you get your environmental benefits, people are shoved like cattle into rail cars then trundled to the drudgery of their work benches, then reverse the process at the end of the day.
Shades of the Japanese “Company Man,” or a scene right out of a Eugene Ionesco play (read his “Rhinoceros” to see the lifestyle you think people should adopt), either way it has all the charm of a nightmare.
All the Chicken Little rhetoric surrounding ST (If Prop 1 doesn’t pass, the sky will turn brown and fall killing us all) is too much. Knute Berger over at Crosscut called much of it “hyperbole,” and he’s right!
Prop 1 is a screw job, and us taxpayers are the screwees.
The Piper
Piper, I’m anti-prop one too, but you really do need to be looking at things in a more, “big picture” frame of mind.
@51…M…
I am very big picture; so big picture that I see beyond the backward looking nature of using 19th-Century technology that will drain the pocketbook of taxpayers without any experiential evidence that the damn thing will produce predicted results!
The Piper
@52
‘Cept you can’t seem to figure out that not everyone needs a truck… Or that what may not work well for you might work grand for others…
Light-rail works great for moving people short distances. I’m no on Prop 1. It’s a bad plan. But, extending Tacoma’s Link line up into the Stadium District, something that Prop 1 doesn’t help pay for, would clean up the air, make getting to work easier for people, save folks money on car ownership and parking and make the existing transit more accessible. Ride a modern light rail car you’ll see that there is nothing 19th-Century about it. Light-Rail works great for short distances in higher density neighborhood, much better than autos.
King County Sims has it right voicing his opposition to the roads and transit propositions package. Looking out in the not too distant future it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. A list of some of these issues — that include steep taxes on the use of fossil fuels, to peak oil, and global warming/climate change. Let the reader decide whether the use of limited tax $s on the roads and transit package is the best way to spend these dollars when being confronted with the following challenges….
Hundreds speak out on Dingell’s carbon-tax idea
September 30, 2007
The reviews are coming in for U.S. Rep. John Dingell’s carbon-tax plan.
The Dearborn Democrat’s request for comments on his Web site had drawn about 700 replies as of Friday evening.
On Thursday, Dingell asked for reaction to his plan to set a $50-per-ton tax on carbon emissions and a 50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax, while eliminating the tax deduction for mortgage interest on homes larger than 4,200 square feet.
The Union of Concerned Scientists said Dingell’s move to discuss carbon taxes “makes sense, but it can’t be an alternative to passing an energy bill.
But Friends of the Earth was more supportive, saying Dingell’s plan “is a serious policy option and will ensure that those paying for global-warming pollution are the polluters themselves.”
Dingle’s policy recommendations include the following:
• Impose a stiff tax on carbon
• Increase the tax on gasoline
• Phase out the mortgage interest deduction on “McMansions”
This would help us cut greenhouse gas emissions 60-80 percent by 2050, the number scientists agree is necessary to reverse the effects of global warming.
To post a comment, go to http://www.house.gov/dingell/c.....mary.shtml.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oil industry ‘sleepwalking into crisis’
Former Shell chairman says that diminishing resources could push price of crude to $150 a barrel
By David Strahan and Andrew Murray-Watson
Published: 17 September 2007
Lord Oxburgh, the former chairman of Shell, has issued a stark warning that the price of oil could hit $150 per barrel, with oil production peaking within the next 20 years.
He accused the industry of having its head “in the sand” about the depletion of supplies, and warned: “We may be sleepwalking into a problem which is actually going to be very serious and it may be too late to do anything about it by the time we are fully aware.”
In an interview with The Independent on Sunday ahead of his address to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in Ireland this week, Lord Oxburgh, one of the most respected names in the energy industry, said a rapid increase in the price of oil was inevitable as demand continued to outstrip supply. He said: “We can probably go on extracting oil from the ground for a very long time, but it is going to get very expensive indeed.
“And once you see oil prices in excess of $100 or $150 a barrel, the alternatives simply become more attractive on price grounds if on no others.”
http://news.independent.co.uk/.....966842.ece
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
GAO: U.S. needs a peak oil strategy
by U.S. Government Accountability Office
Published on 29 Mar 2007 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 29 Mar 2007.
The following are exact quotes from the GAO Report on Crude Oil (GAO-07-283) that was released March 29, 2007.
Crude Oil: Uncertainty about future oil supply makes it important to develop a strategy for addressing a peak and decline in oil production.
Why GAO Did This Study
The U.S. economy depends heavily on oil, particularly in the transportation sector. World oil production has been running at near capacity to meet demand, pushing prices upward. Concerns about meeting increasing demand with finite resources have renewed interest in an old question: How long can the oil supply expand before reaching a maximum level of production-a peak-from which it can only decline?
GAO
1 examined when oil production could peak,
2 assessed the potential for transportation technologies to mitigate the consequences of a peak in oil production, and
3 examined federal agency efforts that could reduce uncertainty about the timing of a peak or mitigate the consequences. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed studies, convened an expert panel, and consulted agency officials.
What GAO Recommends
To better prepare for a peak in oil production, GAO recommends that the Secretary of Energy work with other agencies to establish a strategy to coordinate and prioritize federal agency efforts to reduce uncertainty about the likely timing of a peak and to advise Congress on how best to mitigate consequences. In commenting on a draft of the report, the Departments of Energy and the Interior generally agreed with the report and recommendations.
http://www.energybulletin.net/27919.html
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
5 Deadliest Effects of Global Warming
Simmons blogs
Sep 11th, 2007
Green house gases stay can stay in the atmosphere for an amount of years ranging from decades to hundreds and thousands of years. No matter what we do, global warming is going to have some effect on Earth. Here are the 5 deadliest effects of global warming:
5. Spread of disease: As northern countries warm, disease carrying insects migrate north, bringing plague and disease with them.
4. Warmer waters and more hurricanes: As the temperature of oceans rises, so will the probability of more frequent and stronger hurricanes. We saw in this in 2004 and 2005.
3. Increased probability and intensity of droughts and heat waves: Although some areas of Earth will become wetter due to global warming, other areas will suffer serious droughts and heat waves. Africa will receive the worst of it, with more severe droughts also expected in Europe. Water is already a dangerously rare commodity in Africa, and according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming will exacerbate the conditions and could lead to conflicts and war.
2. Economic consequences: Most of the effects of anthropogenic global warming won’t be good. And these effects spell one thing for the countries of the world: economic consequences. Hurricanes cause do billions of dollars in damage, diseases cost money to treat and control and conflicts exacerbate all of these.
1. Polar ice caps melting: The ice caps melting is a four-pronged danger —
First, it will raise sea levels. There are 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, if all glaciers melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet. Luckily, that’s not going to happen all in one go! But sea levels will rise.
Second, melting ice caps will throw the global ecosystem out of balance. The ice caps are fresh water, and when they melt they will desalinate the ocean, or in plain English – make it less salty. The desalinization of the gulf current will “screw up” ocean currents, which regulate temperatures. The stream shutdown or irregularity would cool the area around north-east America and Western Europe. Luckily, that will slow some of the other effects of global warming in that area!
Third, temperature rises and changing landscapes in the artic circle will endanger several species of animals. Only the most adaptable will survive.
Fourth, global warming could snowball with the ice caps gone. Ice caps are white, and reflect sunlight, much of which is relected back into space, further cooling Earth. If the ice caps melt, the only reflector is the ocean. Darker colors absorb sunlight, further warming the Earth.
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/?p=276
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And lastly, back in 2006, I gave a power-point presentation at the Veterans for Peace National Convention held here in Seattle. The presentation’s title is, “A World of Hurt or Hope: The National Security Implications of Global Warming/ Abrupt Climate Change
link: http://noboxthinking.com/hurth ope/