they go beyond claiming to combat “the effects”.. cooler streets > cooler buildings > less energy used to cool > less pollution > less climate change... oh - and its suppose to cut down on “deaths” due to heat.. yup.. they said that..
If you elaborate on their claims - one could make a connection that paving our cities has lead to climate change. Maybe thats the greater cause after all, and not cow farts.. their $40,000 a mile expense is sold as returning “priceless” benefits.. yet 2 streets over there may be a few hundred people living in tents passing their free gov needles around.
The point was - nobody ‘KNOWS’. Nobody fully understands. Its a living planet which has undergone constant change, and to claim that glancing at a millisecond of data in the lifetime of a planet, validates using scare tactics to advance their agenda or personal belief is irresponsible. Especially when their ‘science’ behind it cannot answer the most basic of questions. They are not even sure how many planets are in our own solar system anymore. Not to mention the THOUSANDS of other that have been found outside of it - when ‘science’ knew there was only 9 when i was in school.
While one side is yelling that CO2 is killing the planet, another is pointing out that Plants breath in CO2, and the climate getting SLIGHTLY warmer has resulted in a greater overall mass of plant life around the globe - living off the CO2 and producing more oxygen. Yes sea levels have risen, they have been rising for thousands of years. Has the rate increased? Yes. Thats usually how ice melts in water.. The idea that one day an instant flood will suddenly wipe out most of humanity instead of a slow rise resulting in people just figuring out they can just walk uphill i guess is the new debate. The thought that children are being TAUGHT or told, that the slightest increase in temp means they wont be able to survive on earth - and the answer to that is banning leaf blowers...... [rolls eyes].. I’m not a fan of extremism. Lets leave it at that. I dont subscribe to the equivalency of leaf blowers = asteroid strikes. But i will make this claim - if people have neighbors that have trees - expect to hear a leaf blower. If they cant handle that - go live on a glacier, or ya know - close the window..
Dude - you're mixing a lot of partial facts with non-facts, emotion and preference. There aren't sides. There's the scientific community and the rest of us. The scientific community is overwhelmingly united in agreement on this topic. Yes, there are naysayers who are accredited scientists, but I haven't seen or heard any widely peer-reviewed scientific argument that contravenes the warnings we get. Mainly it's scientists who have decided to enter the political side of the discussion, which isn't the same thing as doubt.
Let's take the simplest part: The ice isn't melting in the water - the vast majority of the ice we're talking about is on land. It's melting into the oceans with two effects: the first is adding to the volume of water, making the sea-levels rise. Since most of the population centers are on or very close to the water, that's going to be a problem. Ask folks who live in Miami, New Orleans, Florence Italy how things are with the water these days - and that's before the levels have achieved critical levels. And that's just the simple part of what's happening there. The other effect is that the melted ice covers a bunch of dead grass and other organic material that will now rot and release a massive amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. It's not entirely possible to predict how bad the effects of that will be, but it's unbalancing to the environment and bad, at least if you care about what happens when things like more frequent and powerful hurricanes hit the East Coast (where I live), the effects of too much rain in some places and far too little in others, etc. The unbalancing will accelerate the downstream effects (strictly-speaking, that acceleration is already happening - it's measurable).
None of the above is opinion. It's science that has been vetted from every direction possible. Politicians and people to find the science inconvenient have muddled the discussion and added emotion to it, but what they're doing is saying 2+2≠4 in the face of mathematicians who have proven it. They think they can do that because there's uncertainty in predicting exactly how these changes are going to occur and how quickly, but that's just a complicated model, not uncertainty of the underlying scientific truth. While it's hideously complicated to explain the parts of this that are 100% proven fact and multitudes more complicated to figure out the full answer of what's on the other side of the equal sign (much less explain it to the rest of humanity), the facts above are no different than 2+2=4.
The US isn't the single biggest offender, but as the world's largest economy we have the effect of accelerating things or slowing them down. It's far harder for the rest of the world to do it if we don't. And we're not. Kicking the can down the road while we argue why it should be us to lead and trying the science with the scientists is going to lead to a much different world for our kids.
So yeah, I got the 80v blower and trimmer. I love not mixing oil and gas. I love not priming the damn things and fighting to make them run, especially after a winter in the garage. I got to geek out a bit and shop for some tools, and did my tiny, tiny part. I'll buy a battery-powered mower on the same platform when my gas mower gives up the ghost. The practical change to the vast majority of home-owner types is essentially zero. We'll nanny the batteries instead of liquid fuels. The effect on pros will be more, but it's manageable and getting rid of the sea of these things in private hands should allow for professional use of gas power in the spots where sheer size makes batteries an issue until the industry catches up to the cars.
Honestly, if we're going to subsidize the electric auto industry I don't know why we're not doing the same thing for this kind of stuff. I took the Federal tax credit when I replaced my heat a few years ago too. I'm sure the folks who make the battery stuff would dig that idea.
