Phydeaux
Posts: 4828
Joined: 1/4/2004 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen I missed the grannies freezing to death and all of American industry grinding to a halt. http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130730/efficiency-drove-us-emissions-decline-not-natural-gas-study-says Just think of what could be accomplished if it was a national priority. Snicker. Oh sure, you won't accept APRI science - but THIS science is wonderful. Snicker. Well I'll play along.. "what could be accomplished if it was a national priority...." Not much. According to your study -22% of the emissions reductions was accomplished by mild weather. Lets go legislate that immediately. Mild weather for everyone! Now, according to your study - 25% of the reduction was switching to natural gas. But I'm guessing you don't like that... Now about 25% was caused by driving. How they know that is beyond me, but - their math looks suspect. 7% was accomplished because we have less money, we're driving less. I know thats true - but do we really want to make that a national policy? Now how they say that they have an 18% decrease in automobile emissions year-over-year is beyond me. Government figures (http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2013/0406/Average-fuel-economy-of-US-cars-reaches-an-all-time-high) say that we have a 17% increase in fuel economy since 2007 - or roughly 3% per year. And this is only in the mileage of new cars - since we sell roughly 15 mil cars a year and we have 250 million cars on the road - its hard to imagine this making any kind of impact whatsoever, in one year. Additionally, I will note that people are choosing smaller cars for a number of reasons including the fact they are cheaper, and they can't afford larger cars. I'm sure you'll argue its a good thing. But no additional government policies are necessary for this. If oil prices stay elevated consumers will migrate without government prodding. The study puts the remainder at energy efficiency increases in appliances etc. Probably there is some truth to that - but not 25%. The energy star program has been going on for a long long time. People are conserving electricity just like they are driving less - because they have less money. So they switch off lights, turn the thermostats down. I also think that the authors have overlooked a huge renaissance that is occuring in natural gas ranges, dryers and water heaters. Additionally, tankless water heaters (again, usually powered by natural gas) have been having a huge impact. And cine water headers are traditionally 25% or more of a households use - cutting it to 15 or 10% can make a huge difference. Please note that even your study did not find a significant impact of coal or wind power.
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