Max Heiman of Rockefeller University's "How Green R U" blog points out one thing that's missing from Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC: a mandate for improving the fuel efficiency of New York's taxis. The city has begun experimenting with a small number of hybrid taxis, and as Heiman argues, the logic for converting the whole fleet is pretty compelling:

As this op-ed in the Times City section points out, there are nearly 13,000 taxis in NYC, together driving on the order of 800 million miles per year. More than 9 out of 10 cabs on the street are Crown Vics, which are lucky to get 18 mpg.

The entire fleet turns over every three years, so a fuel efficiency standard put in place today would convert every taxi in the city to a higher standard by 2010. The authors say that the Taxi and Limousine Commission has looked at hybrid taxis that get 39 mpg and average just about $2500 more than the Crown Vic, while saving $3700 in gas each year.

This just seem like a no-brainer to me, and I don’t get why it wasn’t in Bloomberg’s plan.

I agree.

In many ways NYC is a big mess. I thought that when I first moved here and I still think that. But both then and now I always recognized that NYC, in its own haphazard ways, sometimes gets it right.

Let's talk some greenhouse gas numbers. The United States is the single largest contributor to global warming. With only 5% of the earth's population we contribute 25% of the human-contributed greenhouse emissions. Per capita that pretty much sucks. Those conservatives who want to say population growth and China are the worst of the problem have to explain those numbers. Not that population growth and China aren't PART of the problem, but the USA is the biggest part of the problem.

According to Salon.com, NYC by itself contributes nearly 1% of America's emissions, making NYC an equivalent contributor to Ireland or Portugal.

Sounds bad, right? A single city contributing 1% of America's entire global emissions or .25% of the emissions of all humans on earth. But then you realize that NYC contains 2.7% of America's population. We in NYC produce only a little more than a third of the emissions as the average American.

BUSY DAY! I don't like writing this many posts in one day, but the Democrats are keeping me busy!

This comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

The composition of the new Congress offers us the brightest prospects we have seen in years to pass strong federal renewable energy policy through a renewable electricity standard (also known as a Renewable Portfolio Standard or RPS).

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), head of the Senate Energy Committee, has said he will support a 15 percent national renewable electricity standard.

As of April 4, 2007, 48 Senators have signed a "dear colleague" letter supporting the renewable electricity standard.

The House renewable standard bill, introduced February 8, 2007 by Tom Udall (D-NM), Todd Platts (R-PA) and others, would require that utilities generate or buy 20 percent clean, renewable energy by 2020. Fifty-nine representatives have co-sponsored the bill.

Clean sources of renewable energy like wind, solar, geothermal, and energy crops reduce global warming pollution, create jobs, save consumers money, and increase America's energy independence and security. A bill expected in the Senate would require utilities to have 15 percent of their electricity come from these clean, renewable sources by 2020.

One of the main issues covered in John and Teresa Heinz Kerry’s book, This Moment on Earth, is energy. The Kerrys highlight what companies and cities are already doing in America to reduce energy use. Texas Instruments hired people do design a manufacturing plant with energy efficiency as the primary concern…and would up saving gobs of money. Portland, Oregon, has carefully redesigned itself to cut back its carbon emissions…and has done so WHILE experiencing a period of economic growth. This Moment on Earth shows that not only CAN it be done, but it is BEING done and done at a profit. Any excuse to ignore global warming and continue on our old, destructive way is obsolete. The entirety of chapter 7 and Appendix A are dedicated to energy policy and are worth reading.

Two cornerstones of what can be done, should be done, and increasingly IS done, are increasing energy efficiency (as Texas Instruments learned) and use of renewable energy sources (currently primarily wind and small hydroelectric and, on a smaller scale, geothermal). John and Teresa Heinz Kerry cover this very well in their book. But about a month and a half before their book came out, the February 9th issue of Science (subscription only...go to your nearest university science library to find it) came out covering some of the same ground: the future of energy. In fact, this particular issue of America’s foremost scientific journal was titled: “Sustainability and Energy.”

Energy will be one of our number one issues in coming years. The conflicting pull of increased demand overwhelming our grid and the need to cut carbon emissions to battle global warming before our 10-year window has passed. Both of these conflicting needs are critical needs and we have to find a way to address both.

The 21st century solutions, as seen by scientists, is increased efficiency, reforestation and new energy solutions like wind, biofuels, geothermal, tidal, and solar energy. But too often the American solution is a 19th century solution: coal. Using dirty coal, which affects our health, and adds carbon and pollutants to the atmosphere, is a relatively cheap solution to increased energy demand...but is completely stupid when we have only 10 short years to address global warming. Clean coal, which still adds carbon to the atmosphere but doesn't have as many problems as dirty coal, costs about the same as wind power...which is one of the cleanest and most practical solutions we have. Denmark, a much smaller economy than our own, generates more wind energy than the entire United States.

One problem is investment trends. Banks are slow to change their investment practices. The Union of Concerned Scientists is lobbying banks to change their investment practices to favor alternative energy over coal. I should note that I personally have profited from investing in both solar and geothermal.

Ah, the global warming Denial Lobby. They are tenacious, if nothing else. Despite the fact that every single global warming scientist, every single peer reviewed article on the subject and every single respectable conference on climate pretty much agree that the evidence is rock solid that human-caused global warming is happening, is affecting us, and, at best, we have a 10 year window of opportunity to do something about it, I still get whining emails from Denial Lobby hacks that question my ability to understand science, but cite no scientific evidence of their own.

I recently highlighted the debunking of one global warming Denial Lobby effort, the British docudrama, one might call it (propaganda piece would be an accurate term) called “The Global Warming Swindle” which was soundly repudiated by the very scientist they were trying to use to support their claims that global warming is a myth.

Well, one response I got via email in regards to this was from someone who refused to even discuss the actual scientific literature, and who immediately called into question my understanding of science (then objected when I questioned the scientific basis of his statements). His fairly long series of insulting and insulted emails boiled down to two questions, poorly presented, which probably represent the latest in right wing talking points on the global warming issue. Here are his two questions (gleaned from a great deal of creationist style posturing):

I was surprisingly inspired by John and Teresa Heinz Kerry’s new book, This Moment on Earth, coming out March 26th, 2007. This inspiration snuck up on me around the third chapter. Prior to that, I found the book good, well worth reading, but a little bit like just one more book outlining what humans are doing wrong. Starting around the third chapter I realized I was referring to the book in several conversations and several blog diaries and that several of the people and organizations featured in the book I mentally filed away as worth looking into for future political connections, diaries and general research.

In short, almost without my realizing it, John Kerry’s book was getting into my brain and inspiring me. The book starts a bit dull but by the end is excellent.

My earliest impression, from the press material that arrived with the book and from the introduction, was that this book promised something really new and welcome. The book was billed as the next step in the evolution of the environmental debate. I was ready for a book that took as given the problems and focused primarily on solutions. Having been through way too many “debates” online where I yet again outlined the very clear scientific evidence for global warming only to have yet the same false claims that global warming was some kind of scam or myth (these claims are never backed up by scientific evidence of any substance), I really was ready to have a book that moved beyond that.

(Author's note: Yes, I'm doing a little bragging here, but I deserve it, and besides, it's just a little bit.)

On the day former Vice President Al Gore testifies on Capitol Hill, I bought a new light bulb. It cost me over $16, and I’m saving money on it.

Yes, you read that right. The savings come because I didn’t buy the usual, or incandescent, light bulb. Instead, I bought a “compact fluorescent” light bulb, which is more expensive to purchase but ends up costing a lot less.

What’s that? You’re not willing to take me at my word? You want me to prove it? And you’re wondering what my light bulb has to do with Al Gore? All right, I’ll prove it, and I’ll tie the light bulb in with the former Vice President.

First of all, I’ll explain the savings from my new light bulb. My old incandescent light bulb used 75 watts of power and lasted somewhere between 750 and 1,000 hours. The new bulb uses 20 watts and will last about 6,000 hours. As a result, I will be using 55 fewer watts, and that adds up. Based on the rate charged on my latest electric bill, I’ll save...

What will I save? Read on.

When I was a kid my family recycled. We were very unusual in doing this and had to go to great lengths to get our recyclables to a place we could drop them off. By the time I was in grad school, it was much more common to recycle and even some Republican-leaning friends of mine were recycling.

Then city after city started making separation of recyclables mandatory. Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and NYC are the last three American cities I lived in and all three have laws requiring recycling. This is real progress that is often overlooked.

But there is another and probably even more important side to the equation: a market for recycled products. If there is no market, then recycling does little good.

Metal recycling is always worthwhile because there is a large market for them. The market for recycled glass is much smaller because bottlers find it easier and cheaper to make bottles de novo. In between are the different kinds of paper and plastics.

But one disturbing trend is a DECLINE in the market for recycled paper. This comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

My wife, as I have often mentioned, is a climate scientist. And sometimes she hears some great stuff at seminars, hearing the facts straight from the horse's mouth. A couple of times she passed on stuff I REALLY wanted to blog but was a little confidential. You should have heard what the NASA administrators were trying to tell the scientists during the whole censorship scandal. Pretty scary stuff. But not something I can pass on.

Something she passed on to me recently, though, really got me thinking and doesn't involve any inside secrets as far as I know.

Some scientists have been advocating some pretty radical ideas to deal with Global Warming. One such idea is to lace our atmosphere with sulphate particles to increase the albedo of the atmosphere. This idea seems pretty crazy: possibly acidifying our atmosphere at who knows what cost to take a chance that it will reflect back enough solar energy to reduce warming. Apparently another such idea is even more crazy: increase the albedo of the ocean by covering large areas with white styrofoam. Hmmmm...

But back to sulfate particles. Apparently, one problem here is that no one actually, until recently, actually did the calculations to see if it would work or if it would cause massive acid rain. Well, according to data submitted for publication, calculations show that it COULD work and that the amount necessary to make a difference shouldn't have a large effect on acid rain. So, that actually is kind of promising. But...and here is where things get sticky when dealing with such ideas: the cost would be in the trillions (on a ROUGH calculation) AND no one knows what the dynamics would be. In other words, how long the sulfate particles would stay in place and how they would be distributed globally are completely unknown. I suspect that lack of understanding of the dynamics would include not being sure that LOCALIZED acid rain problems might not happen if concentrations became unusually high in spcific locations. A similar situation arose with the chemicals that caused the ozone holes: they reached exceptionally high concentrations at the polar regions and the specific dynamics of those locations made them particularly potent. We don't know what would happen with the sulfates in terms of the dynamics of the situation.