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Panelists fire up global warming issues
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The topic centers around change. Change in global climate and in the actions of the world populace.
The consensus of The Frank Church Conference on Public Affairs panelists Monday in the Jordan Ballroom at the Boise State University Student Union Building was that the earth is undergoing a change, and that it is the duty of the American society to adapt to that change. The precursors to Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore met in the SUB to discuss issues that not only affect global warming, but subjects and methods by which we can adjust our society to affect change in the climate of politics, policy and daily life.
What you can do
The panelists gave the usual solutions, which we have known for years. Recycle damn it! Every time you re-use a fabric or product, you are not using something for the first time, and hence save more for the future. You can recycle hundreds of products. Glass can be recycled an infinite number of times. Every piece of paper you use came from a tree, which had to be cut down, which then doesn’t recycle CO2 into oxygen and hence doesn’t help cure the problem of global warming and CO2 density in the atmosphere.
Conserve water and power by using it less. Use energy-efficient light bulbs and don’t leave the sink running. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. These are simple solutions, but each only helps a tiny bit. What is really needed is social change in the cultural atmosphere of America, the country with by far the largest “global footprint.” The footprint is calculated by showing how much of the world’s resources the Unites States uses.
The largest fear among the panelists is not just that our country uses the most resources, but that developing countries want to live like we do, and hence, are also consuming resources at rapid paces.
Affects of global warming
Despite the dispute over what is actually causing global warming, whether or not it is caused by human activity and the tons of CO2 we produce every year, it is in clear effect that the temperature of our planet is rising.
The average world temperature last year was 58.2 degrees F, the highest on record. The most evidenced of examples given at the Frank Church Conference is the changes taking place in Glacier National Park in Northern Montana.
The glaciers for which the park earned its name are shrinking, some to level that they are no longer considered glaciers at all. Of the nearly 60 glaciers noted at the park’s inception in the early 1900s, only 29 remain. Al Gore hiked the Grinnell Glacier in the park in 1997. No one can today. It’s 90 percent gone. The ice is melted; the layers of ice that took 8,000 years to form are now grasslands and forests. The ancient tundra is disappearing and in its place new forests are forming.
That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, but with less ice and water retention, the forests below and in the park are drier and hence more volatile, therefore at risk to widespread fire, a facet of forest management that was nonexistent 100 years ago. The glaciers are poignant examples of climate change because they are stagnant and immobile.
“They are simply a lump of ice that sits there and responds to climate change,” Global Change Research Coordinator of the U.S. geologic Survey at Glacier National Park Daniel Fagre said. “We’re watching them disappear.”
Consider the glaciers as storage facilities for water. When the water melts, it leaves the mountains and travels downstream. The temperature in the mountain streams rises and the organisms, which need the low temperature to survive (and the fish which feed on them) will die off, Fagre said.
The effects of global warming on the park are devastating. Avalanches are more frequent, as are rockslides and violent storms. The avalanches destroy the roadways in the park. The species of wildlife living in the park lose their habitat. Fires will chase away mountain goats and grizzly bears that live in the park and they will have to relocate and find a climate that suits their lifestyle. Fagre said that 13 percent of the park burned in 2006. The newly formed forests dry up in August, rather than retaining the frozen water all year.
The park does what it can. It offers free bicycles to people in the park and free bus rides so that people won’t drive as much. But it will take a change in world views to really excite change in the climate.
“This is not just our problem,” Fagre said. “Now that we know we have a problem, what the heck do we do about it?”
Solutions:
Construction
One Boise developer has started to change the way he builds,
not only because it is more environmentally friendly, but because it is more cost efficient for his business in the long run.
Gary Christensen developed the new Banner Bank Building in downtown Boise. The building uses new technology by which he was able to cut the energy use by nearly 50 percent. Facets like actual structural integrity planning enabled the building to use 50 percent less concrete than is normal for a building of its size (11 stories, 180,000 square feet). The building uses radiant heat, installed in the floor, rather than the ceiling. The HVAC ducts take up less space because they are modulated by computers. Each office has its own thermostat.
Each room is lit by a lighting system without switches. The lights only come on when someone is in the room and go off when you leave. It also uses geothermal heat, which cut the heat energy cost by 30 percent.
“Now that we’ve done this, nobody is going to go back,” Christensen said. “It’s more simple, more efficient, more elegant.”
The building used zero sheetrock. All of its walls are set in tracks, which can be relocated, reused in other rooms. Instead of remodeling by taking down walls, Christensen can merely move the walls. 98 percent of the building can be recycled directly back into the building. It uses runoff from rain to flush it’s toilets. It has hand blow dryers in bathrooms rather than paper, lowering janitorial work by up to 80 percent.
The beams in the building’s framework used less metal, by
cutting circular holes in them, to save money. The metal cut out
was recycled.
The building saves $80,000 a year in energy costs, $4,000 in
elevator maintenance, $4,000 in water usage and $25,000 in
janitorial costs. All of these tools do cost more than the way the job is usually done, but in the long run, the building will save money because it is so efficient.
“This is good business,” Christensen said. “It saves you money; it saves me money.”
The building was only one of five in the United States to earn a platinum seal of approval from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Wind
The use of wind energy could save the United States from its
dependency on foreign oil, according to Michael Heckler, director of marketing and development at Windland, Inc.
“In Idaho, we have enough wind to give everyone on Idaho a gallon of gas every day, forever,” Heckler said. “It’s real good economics.”
U.S. vehicles use 1,400 billion gallons of gasoline every year. Heckler said that Idaho is good for wind energy, but the real
cash region is the Great Plains of the United States. The region gets more wind from all directions. It gets wind form the Arctic,
the Gulf Coast and the East and West Coast. Heckler’s main change exampled was in vehicle use.
The switch to electric cars is on the horizon. He said that as the market increases and gasoline gets more costly, car manufacturers will need to compete with each other to fir
the market.
Buying vehicles that at least partially use electric batteries can greatly limit CO2 levels in the atmosphere, Heckler said.
No matter which methods are used to fix this problem of global warming, it is assured that there are people out there who are working to eliminate the risk this rise in temperature presents.
Dustin Lapray
