They were probably compelled by the easy, compelling narrative:

1. Our industrial activities put CO2 into the atmosphere.
2. CO2 traps heat.
3. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more heat it traps.
4. The more heat you trap, the more CO2 escapes from the oceans.
5. And look! All these icecaps are melting, including these handy CGI glaciers I stole!
6. We’re All Gonna Die!

It’s an easy narrative to understand, whereas the true story of the climate–and CO2 and information cascades and the perfidy of some scientists and how doomsday sells better than Nothing To See Here (especially in the world of grant proposals)–is not easy to comprehend, especially when the information is hard to come by.

It’s also hard to explain, because you have to sit there and describe so many different elements that contribute to the problem, and it’s also not anywhere near as interesting as We’re All Gonna Die.

Bury them? Nonsense, just build cities with those trees.

“hybrids get great gas mileage but it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make a Toyota Prius. Because there are about 113,000 BTUs of energy in a gallon of gasoline, the Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it reaches the showroom. Think of it as a carbon debt — one you won’t pay off until the Prius has turned over 46,000 miles or so.

There’s an easy way to avoid that debt — buy a used car. The debt has already been paid. But not just any used car will do.

It has to be something fuel efficient. Like, say, a 1998 Toyota Tercel that gets 27 mpg city / 35 mpg highway miles. The Prius will have to go 100,000 miles to achieve the same carbon savings as the 10-year-old Tercel. Get behind the wheel of a 1994 Geo Metro XFi, which matches the Prius’ 46 mpg, and the Prius would never close the carbon gap, Power writes.”

But the feeling from putting less than 10 gallons in the tank after 500 miles makes it all worthwhile. I am sure there is a reason WIRED says a used car is better, but I can’t figure out why.

Try one!

If you want to freak the ecofreak out, suggest we cut down the redwoods to save the planet.

Alex Sherman, a geographer with the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, a private, nonprofit educational and research organization, suggested that the carbon dioxide exhaled by the 5.3 billion people on earth might have a considerable effect on the total amount of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

If all 5.3 billion of us cut our wasteful breathing in half, just imagine how much we’d be doing for Gaia!

Has anybody seen an econo-hybrid? Why is that hybrid cars come fully-loaded, with all the extras? If saving the planet is really the point, shouldn’t hybrid cars be stripped down to the bare essentials with no A/C, a basic radio, manual transmission, manual windows, etc., etc.?

BTW: It’s been scientifically proven that hybrid cars cause excess smug, which is bad for people.

Every time that someone re-cycles paper they make it less profitable for another person to plant a tree which could take CO2 out of the atmosphere while it grows before it is chopped down as a mature tree it is changed into paper and finally buried in landfill. Recycling paper also creates nasty toxic waste as the paper is chemically cleaned and the ink removed, whereas making paper from wood pulp is relatively kind to the environment.