emissions

From the Washington Post: The Obama administration formally declared Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation.

Tens of thousands of modern-day crusaders, charlatans, Nobel laureates, CEOs, quick-buck artists, earnest politicians, and assorted movie extras of every conceivable socio-political-ethnic-economic background will descend on Copenhagen for the next three weeks to participate in an orgy of carbon-bashing and flag-waving.

I know of a scientist who wrote that changes in small constituents of the atmosphere-namely carbon dioxide-could greatly influence the heat budget of the Earth. He predicted Arctic temperatures would rise about 8 or 9 degrees Celsius if atmospheric carbon dioxide was increased 2.5 to 3 times its present value. He later became concerned that man-made carbon dioxide pollution could contribute to this warming, and he even published a few books on the subject.

It would be an interesting exercise to inventory the "things" we have in our homes and offices—the objects, the equipment, specialized things, electronic and otherwise, that occupy space. Along with this accounting, might be some estimate of how recently the thing has actually been used, and how frequently. My hunch is that much of our home "inventory" consists of things that are used rather infrequently, if ever.