Walk Score & Walking Footprints:
Finding useful crap near you


The boys over at the oildrum recently reported on a new website called WalkScore. It basically finds all of the restaurants, bars, movie theaters, parks, bookstores, coffeshops, etc near you and then calculates their distance from your home address. It's a good tool to use if you want to find a neighborhood to move to or even find stores near you (wherever you are) that you didn't know existed. I'm sure I will be using this a lot whenever I travel. Heck this might even be a good aid in choosing a location for a business.

Recently the Times Online reported that walking produces more CO2 than driving. The problem with their study is that they calculated the emissions of the entire life cycle of beef production (which happens to use 6 barrels of oil per cow) while ignoring the life cycle costs of automobile maintenance and construction. They also assume that everyone eats a pure meat diet and walks as far as they drive. There are many other flaws in this argument highlighted at TreeHugger. The Times Online study does indirectly illustrate a critically important point though.

Conservation seems to the hip thing in Hollywood and nothing illustrates that better than Sheryl Crows recommendation of one square of toilet paper per restroom visit. Conservation is also the main focus of many liberal politicians like Al Gore. Unfortunately while conservation and efficiency will play an important role it will never be able to solve the problem of climate change. According to Chevron conservation won't even solve our supply problem:

Efficiency, improvements, and conservation are part of the solution, but will not, in themselves, meet the need for more energy.

Again, I'm not belittling conservation efforts. Conservation will play a key role but it is simply not the 800 lb gorilla that will change society and "save the environment". Something much more revolutionary in science and politics will have to take place. I will back this statement up with hard data in future posts.

Sources:
TimesOnline, Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’, August 4, 2007
Treehugger, Ask the EcoGeek: Walking Worse than Driving? No., EcoGeek.org on 08. 9.07
FoxNews, Report: Sheryl Crow's Solutions to Global Warming, Monday, April 23, 2007
Digg, Sheryl Crow Suggests Limiting Americans Use To One Square Per Sitting,

Al Gore was too late!!!!!!!!!!!

glumbert.com - Global Warming in 1958

For everyone that says global warming is a "recent theory" here is video proof from 1958 that the science has been around for a long time.

Source:
The Unchained Goddess, 1958

Stephen McIntyre says 'Al gore is fat, should "lead a penguin army"'
He Then Indirectly Admits a Consensus.



The global warming skeptic/denier and mining executive Stephen McIntyre that runs Climate Audit has some not so nice things to say about Al Gore's presentation at the fall American Geophysical Union conference:

Gore has gotten a little stout over the years and a little jowly, as though he was subconsciously morphing into a shape more suitable to lead a penguin army.

Ladies and gentlemen, once again the Denier's have removed their gloves and are hitting below the belt. There is nothing like good old fashioned demagoguery. Yet in the comments McIntyre follows up:

.... try to be a little bit funny, not just juvenile. Gore’s a public figure and fair comment. If he chooses to comment on this blog, we will treat him politely as we expect you to treat other participants here.

So calling someone fat and and comparing their looks to a penguin is polite? Ok. What I find most interesting is it seems as if he indirectly admits there's a consensus on global warming. For all of those that don't know, the fall AGU is the largest convention on the subject of climate change. And this is how McIntyre describes the meeting:

Al Gore was welcomed by a standing ovation from about 4,000 scientists from the AGU convention.....

and here too:

Then Gore’s friend and mentor, Gore himself said, “Now is the time”, before leaving to a standing ovation.

So if global warming is a hoax, why does the "penguin general" Al Gore get a standing ovation by 4,000 scientists? For all of those who are still unsure about the consensus please read this rather long list of quotes.

Disclaimer:
Please keep in mind I do not advocate personal attacks. I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy in those that resort to non-scientific ad hominem attacks.

Source:
Climate Audit, Day Four - Al Gore, Steve McIntyre, Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 11:47 pm