Yet another empty gesture

Australia announced plans to ban incandescent bulbs.

A story "According to the Government, phasing out incandescent globes over the next three years could save about 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year by 2012 and as much as 4 million tonnes in 2015."

But goes on to say...

"At best, that would be far less than a 1 per cent cut in Australia's greenhouse emissions, which were 564.7 million tonnes at last count in 2004 and are forecast to keep growing rapidly."

The "far less than a 1 percent cut in Australia's greenhouse emissions" agrees with my own analysis which I posted to another thread recently.

IMO it would make far more sense to c "The IPCC report doesn't call for particular reduction figures. It does, however, make clear that reduction in emissions must be quick and deep. There is no more optimistic alternative. Even if we do everything right, we're still going to see serious increases in temperature, and all of the physical changes (to one extent or another) predicted in the report. However, there's reason to hope that if the US acts extremely aggressively and quickly we might be able to avoid an increase of two degrees Celsius, the rough threshold at which runaway polar melting might be stopped. This means that any useful legislation will have to feature both a very rapid start to reductions and a long and uncompromising mandate to continue them."

An advance copy of McKibben's article is at...

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Reply to
Dave Houston
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ROTFL. "Analysis" ?! Some folks are as clueless about what is needed to actually cause folks to change entrenched behaviour (as even the most casual acquaintance with the realities of the field of Environmental Education would provide) as they are about real-world economics.

Self-described curmudgeon to grandson: "There's no point in your starting a piggy bank because what you'll need for a nursing home will never fit inside."

I included questions on Gore's _Earth in Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit_ in the pre-test to the Environmental Geology courses I taught beginning in 1993. OP woulda flunked the course as badly as he has his own real-life economic exam.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

Greetings,

Don't laugh, but the California Legislature in their infinite wisdom is going to try to do the same thing. Sorry that I don't have a reference, I heard it on the radio.

Larry Hazel

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Reply to
Homer L. Hazel

At least California has done many other things which actually do save significant amounts of energy and make significant reductions in greenhouse emissions. California figures are about 30% better than the US average and would be better yet if the current federal administration hadn't blocked some of their efforts regarding automobile efficiency standards.

Cuba and Venezuela have also mandated CFLs.

While the CFIs push CFLs the US electric power industry is planning to build

150 coal-fired generating plants which will only make the greenhouse effect worse...

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BTW, most of Australia's electric power comes from dirty coal-fired generators.

"Homer L. Hazel" wrote:

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Reply to
Dave Houston

It may be of interest to the Johnny-come-lately's who do nothing but criticize and are just now awakening to the issues that California and US's minor progress has come, and will continue to come, incrementally -- any one part of which can be dismissed as insufficient as the OP has CFLs.

For example, part of the reduction cited by the OP has come about through provisions concerning lighting in the comprehensive energy legislation passed by the U. S. Congress in 1992 (The Energy Policy Act aka EPACT) that included requirements that eliminated some wasteful incandescent and fluorescent lamps meet minimum efficacy standards. Many of the standards took effect in 1994-5.

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The 2005 EPACT bill has a similar incremental effect.

Folks that are jist now waking up to energy issues including climate change might consider changing their own obstinate and wasteful ways. The OP has stated that he gets five years life out of a regular incandescent lamp because he dims them. This is extraordinarily wasteful of energy because in order to 'save' a few pennies on the lamp, he wastes many dollars through reduced efficacy (lumens/watt) when lamps are dimmed using reduced voltages.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

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