I realize this is considerably longer than normal get printed as a response, which lessons the chance of it getting printed as a letter to the WSJ editor.
If anyone would like to use any of the information here for their own letters, feel free to do so as needed. Thanks. Mike "The only thing in American politics that speaks more loudly than money is a riled-up citizenry. So get riled up!" - Dennis Hayes, "The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair", 2001. http://danenet.danenet.org/bcp/neuman_gw_letter.pdf http://danenet.wicip.org/bcp/neuman_gw.pdf http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html --------- Forwarded message ---------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 20:31:21 -0600 Subject: Comment on Bicycling Fee Editorial Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dear editor, I believe the bicycle commuters are justified in claiming "not fair" about Dane County making them pay a Capital City Trail user fee, when highway drivers in Dane County pay no such user fees. When you bicycle, you don't pollute the air. You don't add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. You don't add to traffic congestion, or to the"need" for the state to further widen the highway system, or build by-passes, or 4-lane highways to Sauk City. With the possible exception of the concrete that is poured to build the new highway to Sauk City, and the new bridge over the Wisconsin River, all these other "costs" of automobile commuting to Madison are by no means covered by the gas tax. The burden of these costs fall upon all of us, including those vocal community minded bicyclists who's commutes are made more difficult by ever increasing levels of motor vehicle use and auto exhaust. Researchers have from time to time attempted to estimate the total of these "other costs" of automobile driving that are not included in the subsidized price of gasoline at the pump. In their study on the real price of gasoline, the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA http://www.icta.org/projects/trans/rlprexsm.htm) identifies and quantifies the many external costs of using motor vehicles and the internal combustion engine that are not reflected in the retail price Americans pay for gasoline. These include: (1) Federal tax breaks that directly benefit oil companies so that the oil companies can keep the price of gasoline low for consumers (a subsidy of $784 million to $1 billion per year); (2) Subsidies that support the extraction, production, and use of petroleum and petroleum fuel products ($38 to $114.6 billion each year); (3) Funding of research and development ($200 to $220 million); (4) Government expenditures on pollution cleanup, and liability costs( $1.1 to $1.6 billion) (5) The cost of military protection for oil-rich regions of the world ($55 to $96.3 billion per year); (6) The environmental, health, and social costs represent the largest portion of the externalized cost of gasoline use in the U.S.. The internal combustion engine contributes heavily to localized air pollution; in fact, researchers have conclusively linked auto pollution to increased health problems and mortality. Other motor vehicle operation costs positively associated with localized air pollution from auto exhaust include decreased agricultural yields, reduced visibility, damage to buildings and materials, water pollution, noise pollution, and improper disposal of batteries, tires, engine fluids, and junked cars. (7) Last but not least, global warming, now positively correlated with too much fossil fuel burning throughout the world, in coal and gas fired power plants, in planes, trains, trucks, ships and automobiles, all of which release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide which is accumulating to high and higher concentration level in the atmosphere, yearly. The CTA estimates that the environmental, health and social costs of automobile driving in the U.S. amount to between $231.7 and $942.9 billion every year, exclusive of the global warming costs. The total cost of global warming to the U.S. over a ten year period (to the year 2010) could range from a total of $616 billion to $3.357 trillion. [Source: Dr. Paul Ekins, Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment, Keele University, U.K., from "Economic Implications and Decision-Making in the Face of Global Warming", published by the "International Environmental Affairs: A Journal for Research and Policy," University Press of New England for Dartmouth University, Vol., 8, No. 3, Summer 1996.] *For every gallon of gasoline burned in a motor vehicle, 22 pounds of carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere, where it will remain upwards of 120 years, continually heating the planet. Multiply that by all the cars and miles being driven daily in the U.S., alone, and that amounts to quite a slug of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere. Those who contribute to those amounts are not paying for the future damages global warming, which scientist now tell us is inevitable. Documentation of rising global temperature and their association with increased greenhouse gas concentrations from fossil fuel burning is provided in forwarded message which follow. "You show me pollution, and I will show you people who are not paying their own way, people who are stealing from the public, people who are getting the public to pay their costs of production. All environmental pollution is a subsidy." - Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in Forward to "Beyond Earth Day", by Gaylord Nelson, with Susan Campbell and Paul Wozniak, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2002. "The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems which cannot be solved by the same level of thinking in which they were created." -- Albert Einstein Michael Neuman 4334 Waite Circle Madison, WI 53711 266-5428 (weekdays) 238-6866 --------- Forwarded message ---------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 23:11:23 -0600 Subject: [POC] Jan through Oct 2002 Global Temperature was 2nd Warmest of Record Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The lower than average temperatures in the U.S. for the month of October were not enough to bring down the near record setting temperatures elsewhere in the world in October. For the combine months of January - October, it was warmer than normal everywhere. GLOBAL TEMPERATURES: JAN - OCT 2002: The months of January-October 2002 were the 2nd warmest Jan - Oct of record. The global land and ocean surface temperature average (January-October 2002) was the second warmest such 10-month period in the 1880-2002 record, 0.57�C (1.03�F) above the long-term mean and 0.08�C (0.14�F) cooler than during the El Ni�o year of 1998 The recent return to record or near record temperature departures is evident, and globally averaged surface temperatures (land and ocean) have been warmer than the 1971-2000 average for the last 78 consecutive months MONTH OF OCTOBER 2002: The global average land and ocean surface temperature was 0.45�C (0.81�F) above 1880-2001 average, ranking as the fourth warmest October in the period of record Microwave Sounding Unit Data: Temperatures in the lowest 8km (5 miles) of the troposphere were 0.10�C (0.18�F) above average during October 2002 Lower tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature data are collected by NOAA's TIROS-N polar-orbiting satellites and adjusted for time-dependent biases by NASA and the Global Hydrology and Climate Center. http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2002/oct/global.html 1990 - 2002 WARMEST PERIOD OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECORD KEEPING: * The top five warmest years in the observed record, in descending order: 1998; 2001; 1997; 1995 and 1990. Eight of the 10 warmest years in the 122 year-period of record since 1880 have occurred since 1990. There have been 21 straight years of above average global temperatures. Source: National Climate Data Center, NOAA -----------Forwarded Message ---------------- Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 19:57:01 -0600 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Climate Change in 50 Years Henceforth This study shows that there will be continued warming in the next 50 years even if GHGs are reduced considerably; but that continuing with the current U.S. "business as usual" scenario, where GHGs continue to increase rapidly, "leads to an accelerating rate of global warming, raising global temperature to levels that have not existed during the past several hundred thousand years". The projected global temperature in 50 years if no major reduction strategies are employed would be an increase of 1.8 degrees F. to 3.6 degrees F above present readings.. Should the increase be 3.6F, that would amount to roughly 7 times the rate of temperature increase in the last century, which was about 1F. If the growth rate of carbon dioxide does not exceed its current rate and if the growth of true air pollutants (things that are harmful to human health) is reversed, temperatures may rise by only 1.35F, or 2.7 times the temperature increase in the last century. "But that scenario will not be easy to achieve", says the lead researcher on the study, Jim Hansen. "It requires that the world begin to reverse the growth of true air pollution (especially 'soot' and the gases that control surface ozone, including methane) and also that we flatten out and eventually begin to decrease CO2 emissions." According to the NASA report, "the GISS "SI2000" climate model provided a convincing demonstration that global temperature change of the past half-century is mainly a response to climate forcing agents, or imposed perturbations of the Earth's energy balance." The study was funded through NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), N.Y, and was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research--Atmospheres. It was identified by NASA as the product of a collaborative effort of 19 institutions, including 7 universities, federal agencies, private industry and other NASA centers. ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
