Star Tribune: City residents greener than country cousins

We've been exposed to established dogma on global warming; we humans are to blame, led in the forefront by the Great Satan, the United States.

Let's establish right from the onset: there is no PROOF that global warming even exists. In researching "global warming," I came across just as much opinion that global warming either is not perpetuated by humankind or doesn't even exist.

I stumbled upon this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune; essentially, we city folk are more "green" than our country brethren.

My initial reaction: big f*cking deal.

Typical leftist banter from a liberal mouthpiece: "we 'city folk' are more refined and cultured while you country hicks know nothing of climatology and global warming."

We're awash in mainstream propaganda from supposedly politically-neutral mediums, in this case, the shockingly liberal Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the notion of "global warming" has permeated our daily lives to such an extent that we cannot put fuel in our vehicles our buy food without being affected; DESPITE dissenting opinions, global warming has been accepted as face value: we humans are to blame. Those who dare to speak against the established global warming demagoguery are ostracized.

The following links provide a different on the myth of global warming; first from the Canadian Free Press:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm

This second article refutes certain long-held beliefs on global warming, courtesy of the Middlebury College State Weekly:

http://media.www.middleburycampus.com/media/storage/paper446/news/2006/03/02/Opinions/Think.About.It.Global.Warming.Does.Not.Exist-1649115.shtml

Here's the complete piece:

(by the way, if you read some of the comments, you can see how the liberals react when a "conservative nut job" dares to proffer an opposing viewpoint: name calling, primarily).

WASHINGTON - While cities are hot spots for global warming, the people living in them turn out to be greener than those living in the countryside.

Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitans areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average, researchers at the Brookings Institution say in a report being released Thursday.

Those 100 cities still account for 56 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide pollution. But their greater use of mass transit and population density reduce the per person average. "It was a surprise the extent to which emissions per capita are lower," Marilyn Brown, a professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the report, said in an interview.

Metropolitan area emissions of carbon dioxide are highest in the eastern U.S., where people rely heavily on coal for electricity, the researchers found. They are lower in the West, where weather is more favorable and where electricity and motor fuel prices have been higher.

The study examined sources and use of residential electricity, home heating and cooling, and transportation in 2005 in the largest 100 metropolitan areas where two-thirds of the people in the U.S. live. It attributed a wide disparity among the 100 cities to population density, availability of mass transit and weather.

Lexington, Ky., had the biggest per capita carbon footprint: Each resident on average accounted for 3.81 tons of carbon dioxide in their energy usage. At the other end of the scale was Honolulu, at 1.5 tons per person.

Carbon dioxide is released from burning fossil fuels and is the leading "greenhouse gas." It drifts into the atmosphere and forms a blanket that traps the Earth's warmth. About 6.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into air annually in the United States.

From 2000 to 2005, carbon dioxide from transportation, electricity use and residential heating in the largest metropolitan areas increased 7.5 percent. For the entire nation, it rose 9.1 percent. The average per capita footprint in those 100 cities rose at an annual rate of 1.1 percent a year, half the average yearly increase of 2.2 percent nationwide.

Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington's carbon footprint from transportation and residential energy use increased 3.87 percent between 2000 and 2005.

The transportation portion increased 0.2 percent during the period.

In 2005, the average resident emitted 2.440 tons of carbon from highway transportation and residential energy, 45th among the 100 largest cities.

The average resident of the Minnesota cities emitted 1.346 of carbon from highway transportation, ranked 38th, and 1.094 tons of carbon fro residential energy use, ranked 62nd.

In explaining differences among cities, the researchers cited weather, the type of fuel used for heating and cooling, the development of rail transportation, the amount of urban sprawl and the cost of energy.

Cities with the largest carbon footprints are mostly in the eastern half of the country from Indiana to western Pennsylvania — areas that rely heavily on coal for electricity production and natural gas for heating.

The smallest carbon footprint was in cities in the West and New England.

Half of the dozen cities with the stingiest carbon output were in California, where electricity prices and motor fuels are expensive. Also cited was the Seattle-Portland, Ore., region, which relies heavily on hydropower.

Cities in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana dominated the bottom tier of high carbon emitters.

These urban areas are "kind of a poster child of what high carbon intensive growth looks like," said Brown. She noted their reliance on coal for electricity and natural gas for heating, a shortage of mass transit, and often older, energy-inefficient buildings.

Brookings Institution: http://www.brookings.edu