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Sunspots Reach 1000-Year Peak
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:16 PM
from the radio-signals-cringing dept.
from the radio-signals-cringing dept.
rlp writes "Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich are reporting that solar sunspot activity is at a 1000-year peak. Records of sunspots have been kept since 1610. The period between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum) was a period of very few sunspots. Researchers extended the record by measuring isotopes of beryllium (created by cosmic rays) in Greenland ice cores. Based on both observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years."
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What do you know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What do you know (Score:5, Funny)
No need, this is Sun, not Microsoft.
Parent
Re:What do you know (Score:4, Interesting)
I mention them because of all the possible groups out there, they're about the last that would think to jump on the global warming bandwagon. And yet, Reason Magazine [reason.com] (Free Minds and Free Markets!), the definitive Libertarian magazine, has at this point pretty much accepted: global warming exists, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contributes to it, and a variety of things will Need To Be Done about it, one way or another, sooner or later. And I think this sort of thinking, coming from this group, should serve as sort of a bell-weather in politics. And I think that their approach to the topic is one that the Republican Party should strongly consider mimicking: stop squabbling about what is and isn't happening, and why. Worry instead about What Should Be Done.
Now, granted, their ideas of what Should Be Done and the state of things are not very much in line with what the Democratic Party would probably favor. They had a recent article entitled The Convenient Truth [reason.com] on the topic (and they lambast current global-warming politicans for "mistaking panic for virtue").
I would advise any right-leaning free-trade-ish pro-capitalist or Republican types to take a good long look at Reason's articles on the topic of global warming and, with all due consideration, study, and time, try to develop a healthy attitude about the reality of global warming. (As a matter of fact, I would advise any left-leaning types who are actually care about these issues for their own sake, and not merely for some sort of anti-capitalist or anti-Western-decadence agenda, to take a look at them as well, perhaps an even longer one.)Parent
Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
(By the way, I'm a proud Libertarian.)
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem is (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem. Many people act like they are all about science, and are open to questioning, but then when it happens, the reaction is vicious. Sorry, but you don't get to say "Any questioning of our position proves you are an idiot and thus we don't have to respond." I don't care if you don't like the questions posed, if they are legit then they deserve a legit answer.
From what I've seen, the skeptics do their best to present very well reasoned criticisms and questions of the accepted knowledge. The defenders are the ones that act unscientific and just shout the other side down.
The Intelligent Design thing is often brought up, as an attempt to shut down skeptics. They say "This is just like Intelligent Design and thus shouldn't be listened to!" Only it isn't. Intelligent Design makes a positive claim (that god created creatures as they are now) but the real problem is it makes an untestable one. Might be they are right, but you'll never prove it. Since according to them god is outside of nature that makes god untestable. Well if it's not testable, it's not science, pure and simple. However GW skeptics are just questioning a theory. Also, they aren't saying "No, your theory is wrong because god says so," they say "Your theory is wrong because of these reasons." That's science right there. Doesn't mean that the skeptics are right, but it does mean they are doing science as it is meant to be done.
Real science isn't about making a claim and then trying to shout down anyone who says you are wrong. Real science is about trying to prove yourself wrong. It is about trying to think up every way you can that your theory might be wrong and then testing those. Any alternative you can think of. Only when all those tests fail to prove it wrong, do you believe it is true. It's not a matter of trying to run one test and saying "There, I've proven it true!" and getting mad when people don't agree, it is trying to run as many tests as you can and then saying "There, I've tried every way I can to prove it false, and I just can't." Then if someone has a way you didn't think of, you try that too. You just keep on trying too, you keep working on the theory. No theory should ever be considered proven beyond the need for reinvestigation. All the time new areas of science open up that reveal that a long accepted theory was, in fact, an oversimplification. Doesn't mean it was a bad theory or didn't do a good job describing the facts, just that not everything was understood and now we have a better one.
So to me, it seems like it is the GW proponents putting their fingers in their ears. They don't want to hear any arguments and so any time someone makes one, they pretend like that person didn't and just shout them down.
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I said that "I would advise [people] to look at Reason's articles ... and, with all due consideration, study, and time, try to develop a healthy attitude about the reality of global warming." It is apparently obvious to you that basing your ideas about Science on political groups is Not Healthy. So, umm...
no, you shouldn't do that.
And I think a Healthy attitude is not particularly well served by breaking out the "omg Pope Middle Ages" comparisons on your opponents. There was a Slashdot article some time back about a study finding how political thought is essentially emotional, and not rational [wikipedia.org]:
I worry that this is the case here. You appear to appeal to the Scientific. If you do, indeed, value reason and logic, then I hope that you can quash the emotional reaction and see the reason in Reason's articles, and elsewhere, evaluating it on its own merits rather than how well it serves your biases....
On a related note, I wasn't able to tell: are you coming from more of a "pro-global-warming" angle or a "global-warming-is-fake" angle?
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Re:What do you know (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, rebuttals: Carl Wunsch [mit.edu], one of the people on the show has since come out with a public letter where he explains that he was systematically misquoted and misrepresented, and has come out with a public letter [realclimate.org]:
When a couple of noted British scientists tried to engage him in debate about some issues in the show, he answered "You are a big daft cock." [timesonline.co.uk] and "Go and fuck yourself" (respectively). Channel 4 themselves now say the show is basically polemic. Of course, as a modern TV channel they don't care for a second about science or truth, they care about generating controversy so they get more viewers.
And then we have some people who go into the claims of the show a little bit more in depth here [antarctica.ac.uk], and here [guardian.co.uk], and here [scienceblogs.com] and finally here [typepad.com].
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Re:What do you know - spotty... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Funny)
Increased greenhouse gasses caused by human use of fossil fuels. Duh!
Why don't you neo-cons get with it and watch Al Gore's movie already. He proved this very thing.
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Interesting)
So the article says that the sunspots have reached 1000-year peak, but the NASA article says that sunspots are at the minimum right now (Solar Minimum). Which one is correct?
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Informative)
Both are correct.
Were are at the low point of the 11-year sunspot cycle [nasa.gov].
The 1000-year peak is measured over the average of the last 11 years, so the fast cycle is evened out.
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Interesting)
The NASA article talks about this minimum, and the science article talks about the average Sun spot number increasing over the last 1000 years. This is surely interesting, as it explains quite a lot of the global warming. The astronomical influence on the weather system should be studied in more detail. For example, it is believed by some scientists, that the Sun's orbit around the Galaxy is causing Ice Ages as well. At the moment, this is all far fetched, but if we do not understand it better, we will never know for sure what is causing how much of the observed global warming.
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Informative)
French President Jacques Chirac and saluting Kyoto as a "genuine instrument of global governance," [sovereignty.net]
I orginialy saw it here [nationalreview.com]
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
The real battle is between Authoritarians (left and right), versus Minarchists (Libertarians, Anarchists, etc.). Chirac's ideology is consistant with the totalitarian ideology of the "Leftist" European political elite, even if he is "Right Wing".
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
That is classic ad-hominem, you are attacking the messanger rather than discussing the issue. This is especially irrelevant since we are discussing a scientific issue, you are talking about war and conflict areas.
Can anyone list a single doomsday environmental prediction that has come true? Just one. That's all I ask.
If by doomsday, you mean end of the earth, then.... *looks around* nope. Seems not. On the other hand, if you mean heavy human impact on the environment, then yes, there are plenty of examples. The Newfoundland cod stock collapse [bbc.co.uk] for instance. Plenty of environmentalists were warning for years that a collapse was happening. Warnings were ignored, then it happened.
Or take the deforestation of Easter Island [wikipedia.org], or this list of disasters [wikipedia.org]. It happened on a local scale, yes, but with the population and technology we have today, we MIGHT affect ecology on a larger, perhaps even global scale.
And now for some environmentalist quotes
More ad-hominmens. Random quotes by fringe nutters does not a coherent argument make.
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, we affect ecology simply by existing. Fishing changes fish population patterns, man's spread to every corner of the Earth has caused a decline in certain species and a (relative) increase in others (check out the pigeon population of NYC, for instance). In that sense, environmentalists who say the only way to 'reverse the damage' is to 'remove man' are right, and in fact intellectually honest -- although their PR skills are questionable.
However, most environmentalists grandly over-estimate our ability to cause global-scale disasters. Re your local disasters, disaster size does not scale linearly with technological growth, and ecosystems have a way of correcting themselves -- deforestation in England was a 'hot topic' in 16th and 17th centuries, with people complaining as England's forests were denuded for wood for stoves and ships. In time, the ecosystem bounced back (helped by the shift to steel for ships and gas for stoves) -- there are fewer trees in England now than c.10th century, but more than the 16th and 17th!
One of the best known debunked examples was Sagan's rapid-cooling scenarios [wikipedia.org] ("nuclear winter"). The other problem is environmentalists refusal to see Earth's ecosystem as a evolving system, instead harking back to the past as a ideal that the future should aspire to. Ecosystems don't work that way! Millenia ago, most of Europe was an icy wasteland and the Sahara was an oasis. An observer then might decry the loss of the Sahara, but would they have predicted the advantages a temperate Europe would have brought?
Bottom line: there's nothing more arrogant than the assumption that a given region has the right to enjoy a static, unchanging climate for all of time.
I should probably add that this does not mean that polluters are let off the hook. On health grounds alone, we already regulate most pollutants. As for CO2 emissions (which is what most global warming campaigners campaign for), I would suggest that the "the end is nigh" scenarios many campaigners paint is both scientifically inaccurate as well as damaging to their cause. Rather, they should encourage (through various methods like research grants and tax breaks) use of a basket of energy sources, including solar, wind and nuclear. Nuclear is crucial -- solar and wind are nice but large markets need reliable electricity sources.
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
I could quote areas where UN has suceeded (as I said, the UN works with more than peacekeeping issues), but it would just divert the issue and attract anti-UN trolls. Let me come up with a counter example: the UN is not the only player who has failed in the countries you mentioned. So has NATO, the US, the African Union, the EU... Should we discredit everything these agencies say? No, because they work with many other things too. The people working on the peacekeeping missions [un.org] are NOT the same people working with The Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change [www.ipcc.ch]. So again, what you are doing is ad-hominem.
Still, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if I keep chopping down trees that deforestation would occur.
Or that if we burn things that emit greenhouse gasses, the planet gets warmer...
Still, good examples, but nothing compared to the Global Warming scare tactics of today or the Ozone depletion
Oh, the Ozone "hole" is still there, it is just not mentioned often in the media these days. Ozone depletion didn't turn out quite as bad as some people warmed, BECAUSE WE DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Even some politicans, like Margaret Thatcher (who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford University), realised the dangers and helped drive through the Montrol agreement which caused a gradual reduction of manmade ozone destroying gases [wikipedia.org]. The thinning is still there, but it is finally stabilizing and may slowly heal over decades. If you think the ozone whole was a myth, ask people in Australia about increased rates of skin cancer the last decades.
, global cooling
Myth [realclimate.org], it was the popular press talking about it for a while, you did not have anything near the scientific conscencus we have on global warming today.
Fact is that the climate changes all the time. We have global cooling and enter ice ages and then we have global warming to get us out. Sometimes we cool form within an ice age and warm we are not in one. It's 100% natural.
No, it is not.
Besides, RTFA is about the possibility that the main source of heat in our solar system may be responsible for all this heat. Why is that such a far fetched idea?
Why is it such a far fetched idea that gases that trap heat locally (a process known to science since the 19th centruy), if released in sufficient quantities globally might have the same effect globally?
Those are examples from former leading environmentalists to show how wrong they've been in the past
Irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. They are not the people presenting the data, it is scientists.
and to show their true agenda (the end of capitalism)
Also irrelevant. If someone has a political agenda, we might suspect that they slant or distort the data, then we check the data through a peer-review process.
Parent
Re:What do you know (Score:4, Insightful)
Make up your mind, is it Gore or his "faction"? Do you have an example of such vitriol performed by Al Gore himself? I Googled for a while after it, and gave up after paging through hundreds of hits of Lindzen talking about Gore....
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Informative)
Why would I place a scientific rebuttal to a political document? I mean, the friggin title of the damn thing is "Summary for Policy Makers". It is "Cliff note for the Corrupt". OK, here is a scientific rebuttal [msn.com] (from a scientist, not me)
Yes, I know more cutting and pasting, this time, though, real science from a real scientists, not the anti-science drivel I posted before from honest to goodness environmentalists
By the way, rather than insulting me, have you been able to come up with a single environmental doomsday prediction that has come true? The way I see it, alarmist climatologists are batting at exactly 0%. Why should I believe them now?
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Informative)
I can't take any text seriously that uses this old chestnut - totally ignoring that meterology and climatology are _not_ the same thing.
An analogy: take a pan of water, and put it on a gas stove. The meterologist's job is to predict where convections will occur at some time (a few seconds) in the future. In this chaotic system, it becomes harder and harder to predict the exact position and strength of individual convections on a period greater than a few seconds. The climatologists job, on the other hand, is to say if you turn up the heat by 50%, the water will boil in X minutes, and if you also cover the pan with a lid, the water will boil in Y minutes (were Y X). The climatologist can predict this with a fairly good degree of accuracy, given that he knows how much extra energy turning up the heat puts into the water (analagous to the sun warming up), and how much energy the lid traps (analagous to greenhouse gases).
It does not follow that climatologists are wrong, just because a meterologist can not tell you with much confidence whether it will be raining at 11:30 two weeks on Tuesday. Climatology and meterology are two different disciplines, and anyone who's argument includes the old saw about "climatologists can hardly be right if they can't tell me the weather at 11:30am two weeks on Tuesday" is almost certainly making an extremely dubious argument to begin with.
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Re:What do you know (Score:4, Informative)
Lindzen, R.S. (2003) The Interaction of Waves and Convection in the Tropics. J. Atmos. Sci., 60, 3009-3020
There are quite a few others in the past twenty years. I'm no great fan of Linzden myself but there's no denying that he has contributed quite a lot to the literature on climate science.
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Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a political commentary show, that's one thing. I wouldn't watch "The O'Reily Factor" or "Countdown with Keith Oberman" to get an unbiased reporting of the news, but really, your 9pm news broadcast shouldn't pander to a political agenda, even if the producers have mores based in that agenda.
It seems that nearly every news organization on the planet does so. Even the BBC is only telling you want they want you to hear [telegraph.co.uk].
So, is intelligent satire that lampoons BOTH sides, yet somehow manages to cover the news more clearly than most news outlets Kool-Aid? If it is, I'd rather be drinking that than the ditch-water folks like you seem to hold so highly. Face it, the news media has sold out to government and industry across the planet - and subscriptions are starting to feel it. Look at the viewer numbers for most national "news" programs! It's insanity, but with respect to news, the world culture has turned into the Jerry Springer show circa 1994.
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What happened 1000 years ago? (Score:4, Funny)
1000 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:1000 years ago (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:1000 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait
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Re:What happened 1000 years ago? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What happened 1000 years ago? (Score:4, Interesting)
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That doesn't debunk global warming (Score:4, Insightful)
the answer is absolutely undeniably: Yes
it's never been stated that we're the only cause.
Re:That doesn't debunk global warming (Score:5, Funny)
Oh please... you expect us to believe that humans cause sunspots???
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Re:That doesn't debunk global warming (Score:5, Funny)
1) Reading Comprehension
2) Manners
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Re:That doesn't debunk global warming (Score:4, Interesting)
See this: http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/cl
"The amount of sulfur-rich gases appears to be more important. Sulfur combines with water vapor in the stratosphere to form dense clouds of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. These droplets take several years to settle out and they are capable to decreasing the troposphere temperatures because they absorb solar radiation and scatter it back to space."
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Scary? (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, could the noise corrupt the GPS signal and offset the readings (but still be understood by the missile), or would it mess-up the system up completely to become totally incomprehensible?
1000 peak? (Score:4, Insightful)
How can we know we're at the peak if we're also at the highest level we've been? Won't we have to wait until we dip for a while?
Climate (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the last thing most
Just a thought.
Re:Climate (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness, when I was working on my M.S. in Astronomy (circa 1993), we had a seminar given by solar physicist on sunspots. She showed two slides that were quite interesting: The first slide showed a plot of "global average" CO2 concentration and "global average" temperature and the second slide showed sunspot activity and "global average" temperature. From her brief look into the topic (by her own admission), sunspot activity appeared to correlate better than CO2. She submitted a NSF proposal to study it further and was rejected on the grounds "the cause of global warming is well understood and further research is not warranted.'
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Re:Climate (Score:5, Informative)
This is an excellent comment. I received my B.S. degree in physics and have seen a great deal of legitimate data against humans as the predominant cause for global climate change. Much of the data is refuted by department chairs or the most zealous members of the physics department. Why? You ask. Because those people are the best at delivering funding. Physics, like many other scientific (read: non-engineering) fields, requires a great deal of government funding for research. Those that often receive funding are good at politics, both within the department and outside. Very much like CEOs are often the best at delivering sales or profits, without being the most expert on a subject.
To dispense with my ad-hominem argument, I would suggest any interested party to look into Milankovitch cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles [wikipedia.org].
These cycles show how small oscillations in some of the Earth's angular parameters impact radiation and hence temperature.
The chain of events is very clear: 1) astronomical variations -> 2) temperature change. Furthermore, the data from the insolation parameter correlates very well with the ice core data used as a CO2 proxy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok_420ky_4
The scientific community generally regards Milankovitch cycles as being in large part responsible for non-industrial era warming. Yet, when it comes to industrial era warming, proponents of human-caused global climate change say that CO2 emissions are driving temperature. This is a logical departure from the previous theory because it readjusts causality.
If from that above graph you believe that in ancient eras radiation drove temperature which drives CO2, then why the switch? Am I to believe that somehow in the modern era CO2 drives temperature which drives solar radiation levels incident at the Earth?
The sun is a massive fusion reactor 330,000 times the mass of earth. Even small fluctuations matter.
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Re:Climate (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, a lot of climate scientists do tackle the questions of solar and orbital cycles effecting, and temperature causing CO2 emissions at the start of historical warming cycles rather than the other way around [realclimate.org].
With regards to the lady in question from the original poster, I agree with the AC. Could we have a name to verify the claim? Does she still claim this more than 10 years later? If so, resubmit. There is an enormous amount of scientific research being done in this area, and there are organizations willing to fund research debunking global warming (mainly in the petrolium industry)... I don't mean this as a smear, honestly, I am serious. No matter where the funding is coming from, if the research is sound and stands up to scrutiny it would make her world famous. It would also be a big relief for me actually, it would remove a great cause of worry for me.
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Author Mistates & Fails to Explain Well (Score:4, Informative)
The relationships between where Beryllium comes from, the solar wind strength, number of sunspots and cosmic rays is not explained in a coherent manner with simple statements that could be made.
The number of sunspots has been near constant (on average) over the past 20 years, yet they are at the highest level in over 1000 years for the last 60 years "yet the average temperature of the earth has continued to increase". This shows the author doesn't understand lag times between applying extra energy input to the atmospheric system versus the time required for the large mass of the Earth's ecosystem to respond by warming land, sea and air to the point where average temperature changes can be measured.
These sort of incomplete descriptions give the average reader a bad view of what is really going on. It gives journalism a bad name.
Right now is a minimum (Score:5, Informative)
The article says:
> Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant
This is a weird statement. In last 20 years we've had two solar cycles and the number of sunspots has varied dramatically over the period as it usually does. You could interpret this statement as saying that relative to the cyclic average the number has remained constant - but that's certainly not how it reads, and 20 years is a bit of a short time over which to make such a judgement.
Re:Before the smarmy comments start (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
With all due respect, Mr. Smarty Pants... (Score:4, Funny)
People don't read links or articles here.
You must be too good for this here place. Why don't you run down to some fancy website [digg.com] where you'd feel more welcome.
Damn kids. Come here and start reading links and articles. No respect for tradition. No honor. All he had to do was post a pithy comment and get his +5 insightful, but noooo... he had to read the article.
Why can't you just be like the rest of us, and argue past each other without doing any research while stubbornly holding your own ground, peppering your posts with links you know the other side won't read? Geez...
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Re:Global warming on Mars, also? (Score:4, Insightful)
And that informs us about our planet's sensitivity to GHG forcing how?
It's funny that climate change skeptics used to try to pick apart the global surface temperature record, which involves data collected from hundreds of locations for over 100 years, but are so quick to grab onto a 6 year regional trend on Mars as proof of something.
Can you show me the climatic feedback that minimizes the impact of the well-understood thermal forcing of CO2 (and methane, etc.) and the well-understood increase in atmospheric CO2 (and methane, etc.)?
Then we can talk.
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Re:Sssshh! (Score:5, Informative)
So if there is global warming, then this argues *against* the sun as an explanation.
That is a common misconception. Direct satellite measurements of irradiance have shown that solar irradiance increases as the number of sunspots increase.
According to current theory, sunspots occur in pairs as magnetic disturbances in the convective plasma come close to the surface of the Sun. Magnetic field lines emerge from one sunspot and re enter at the other spot. Also, there are more sunspots during periods of increased magnetic activity. At that time more highly charged particles are emitted from the solar surface, and the Sun emits more UV and visible radiation.
It is most likely that the sunspots do not cause more radiation, but they instead are caused by the same events that cause the Sun to emit more radiation.
Regardless of what happens, it is clear that increased sun spot activity increases the radiation and therefore the heat that is transferred to the Earth from the Sun.
--
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Re:Keep in mind Indep Search: (Score:5, Informative)
"The most dramatic is a 10Be peak ?40,000 years ago, similar to that found in the Vostok ice core, thus permitting a very precise correlation between climate records from Arctic and Antarctic ice cores."
There is a lot of scientific data and the summary article (as poor as it was) did not even start to touch on the breadth of what is currently known from the analyses.
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Trust the scientists... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just how are they dating these samples? Is there an assumption that each layer is a year? Are they assuming there has been no meltbacks removing several years records?
I am not a paleo-climatologist, but I think we can safely assume that the scientists who are analyzing ice cores are taking these sorts of things into account. Much like a sysadmin reading a log file or processing tcpdump output looking for evidence of hacking, you can safely assume that yeah, the experts did think of that.
When you have expertise in a particular field you tend to become better at perceiving patterns in the data sets you have. The open source 'many eyes' rule of thumb comes into play here, too.
Thus I think we can assume the PhDs in this field would notice an anomaly indicating that their data set may be corrupted, just like I could analyze a suspicious HTTP traffic log file, profile the activity from a specific IP address, correlate it with other sources of information, and make reasonable hypotheses as to what actually was going on, whether the activity was a bot or a human, etc. Or even whether the activity was a human trying to disguise itself as a bot (or vice-versa). And I don't even have a PhD, I just have a decade or so of experience.
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Re:To all you people (Score:5, Interesting)
Nevertheless, IMO the global warming alarmism being used to push a neo-communist agenda stinks. I've looked at the evidence, and humans as *the major* contributor just doesn't add up. I'm not convinced by "all the real scientists say so" either. There is too much censoring of dissenters for that to be convincing.
In many cases, the cures exacerbate real problems. For instance, demand for ethanol is causing more rain forest clear cutting to grow sugar cane. Paving large areas causes local warming (urban heat island effect) far in excess of the worst case estimates of global warming, and loses even more ability to recycle CO2 in the air. Eating beef/pork for breakfast, lunch, and dinner has causes a 10 fold increase in methane, much more that the increase in CO2. All the driving causes stress, and the fatty, sugary fast food combined with the lack of exercise has made most of us fat, driving up health care costs.
My point is that I would like to see a positive agenda. Keep and expand greenspaces and forests. I'm not a stickler for "everything wild" like Gore - parks are fine. Walk, ride bikes, use mass transit. Rent a car for vacations. Use a ZipCar for trips to the store to pick up heavy items. Eat meat only on feast days (e.g. Sunday - modify for your religion), like we used to, and observe a Sabbath (on a day appropriate for your religion). Getting rid of my car saves $300 to $800 dollars a month (depending on how nice a used car I would have gotten to replace it). I have a ready excuse why I can't jump up and drive all over the county on a moments notice. Stop the rushing around. Relax, enjoy your food instead of wolfing it down in a hurry. Eat slowly. Eat less. Fast on a regular basis - if only so you know what it feels like to be hungry. Eat only when you are hungry, not when you are bored, or pressured by friends.
Use our own oil (offshore drilling, Alaska, and/or plant it instead of corn for the cows you aren't eating as much of) instead of buying it from our enemies and carting it over the ocean. Save the oil for the truckers so your fresh veggies won't cost an arm and a leg. The trees will slowly take care of the CO2 if we don't cut them down and pave them over. Whatever you do, don't give control to the government to "fix" things. They will only make it worse. Sufficiently large corporations are indistinguishable from government in their capacity to foul things up.
Take these suggestions slowly so the affected industries have time to adjust.
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