I don't recall Gore having proposed anything radical.

He makes a point of listing some simple tips.

Is replacing your incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent really all that radical?

How about cleaning/changing air filters?

Moving your thermostat 2 degrees?

Turn off electronic devices you're not using?

Carpool?

Keep your car tuned up?

Put more air in your tires?

Next time you buy a car, try to get one that gets 3 mpg more than your old one?

Is this really radical? Or just common sense? (Or: what should be common sense) I can't see how implementing any of these--or all of them, if you can--is going to bring society crashing to the ground.

Would-be hypermiler

Drive cars that get 80 MPG, the "High Mileage Vehicle" program that GW killed to fund the hot-air hydrogen fraud. In the meanwhile, drive a fuel efficient car . . . like a Honda Civic Hybrid.

Bob Wilson

Operation Iraqi Oil Freedom:

Automatic, stock, project car.

My other 1500 cc car:

Automatic, stock, backup car.
Free speech, dialog and knowledge thrives without the poison of SPAM.

See below for inserted answers to your questions:

Is replacing your incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent really all that radical? - Nope, and in fact my house has 99% CFL bulbs. The problem is that some people do not like those bulbs - they have "tried them and do not like them." My boss. My ex father-in-law.

How about cleaning/changing air filters? - I have a "lifetime" filter I clean every two months, and have been using it since 1996. My sister, on the other hand, bought a new house in 2004 and the FIRST TIME she changed her filter was this June when I noticed it was filthy. Some people don't do that kind of thing in their normal procedures of life.

Moving your thermostat 2 degrees? - I have a programmable and when I am home it never goes below 82. My sister and mother run theirs at 76 in the summer and say, "the cost of staying cool is worth it to me."

Turn off electronic devices you're not using? - Always do.

Carpool? - Would if I needed to, and I used to do it when I lived 32 miles from work. I now live 5.3 miles from work, and I use my Segway for 7.2 miles of the commute.

Keep your car tuned up? - always do, but a lot of people can't afford to keep their car tuned up. There were times in my life when I could not.

Put more air in your tires? - I run mine at 46 PSI.

Next time you buy a car, try to get one that gets 3 mpg more than your old one?
- Hoping to get a 2009 Prius at 94 MPG !!

So, yes, I get your point. Common sense will help. Some people can and will do those things, others will not or cannot.

My thought is that any little bit will help, but that the sky is "NOT" falling....

I get my science from news.science.com, which prints synoposis of peer reviewed papers.

Car and Driver has a different perspective and I don't think their articles are peer reviewed. They lack scientific credibility.

He is evading the direct evidence from ice cores and recorded, global temperature. Worse, he claims it is Al Gore's evidence when the actual science comes from papers by climate reserchers. So what we have is an ad homin (attack the man) instead to addressing the original scientific papers.

Time is the gardner for the weeds of fuzzy thinking. If global warming is occuring, the sea level will rise (early data confirms this.) Furthermore, the correlation between industrial CO(2) seems to correspond with a rise in temperature not explained by other means. Not counting the annodotal claims (i.e., "it isn't warmer right here") but science invites criticism subject to peer review . . . which Car and Driver is not. But you asked for an answer.

Fossilized carbon, hydrocarbons such as methane, liquid and solid hydrocarbons, come from the Carboniferous age, 293-362 million years ago, when the Earth was much warmer. The fixing of carbon in deposits of natural gas, oil and coal, freed the earth from a blanket of CO(2).

The Industrial age is, as rapdily as possible, returning the fossilzed carbon back to that early high CO(2) atmosphere. Small wonder if the earth's temperature returns to that of the earlier Carboniferous age.

The real question is whether or not we are laying the ground work to become like Venus. That plant's CO(2) retains so much of the solar heat that the surface is much hotter than ordinary radiant heating. It was Venus that gave us the first clues about the greenhouse effect.

Bob Wilson

Operation Iraqi Oil Freedom:

Automatic, stock, project car.

My other 1500 cc car:

Automatic, stock, backup car.
Free speech, dialog and knowledge thrives without the poison of SPAM.

Car and Driver was at the forefront of opposition to airbags and emission controls back in the 1970s.

Yep, when I want meaningful insights on matters of social concern, I'll go to a motoring writer, who is indirectly on the payroll of the carmakers, LOL!!!!

2008 Mercedes-Benz B 200
2005 smart fortwo cdi pulse cabriolet
1966 Peugeot 404 Coupé Injection
1989 Peugeot 405 DL

Yeah, after I wrote that, I thought "that sounded a bit preachy, better go back and clarify," but you beat me to it.

The point I was trying to make is that I really didn't interpret his message as being all gloom & doom, as it's being portrayed in the media. From my perspective, it was "we have a problem, we have the ability to fix it, and here's how we start."

And in the news, we get, "Al Gore wants us to walk to work."

This stuff really isn't news. Before I ever started driving, we knew there was a limited amount of petroleum. We knew we had to conserve energy and reduce emissions. So even if Global Warming turned out to be a false alarm--which I don't believe--solve that and we've already solved the other problems we *know* we've got.

Oh, and tell whoever didn't like the fluorescent bulbs to go down to Home Depot and look again. They've got some new ones with either an incandescent-like spectrum or a natural-daylight spectrum, and they come on as quickly as a regular bulb. I tried fluorescents before and hated them, but these new ones are pretty impressive.

Would-be hypermiler

Emitting water vapor from a car does not cause an increase in atmospheric water vapor concentrations. Here on earth, the water is in constant (and relatively fast) equilibrium between solid, liquid, and gas phases. If you inject some water vapor into the atmosphere, it will just work it's way back to solid or liquid form. In general, the only way to increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is to increase the temperature.

On the other hand, CO2 is not in a natural equilibrium with various phases. It mostly stays in the gas phase. I believe I have read that it is in a very slow equilibrium with dissolved CO2 in bodies of water (mainly ocean). However, CO2 is being produced at a much faster rate than the ocean can take up.

I did the research on a Segway because it sounded like a great idea. I'm only 6 miles from work, and I would have loved to be able to justify it even if I could only use it 6 months out of the year. The truth is, it has operational costs similar to a Chevy Suburban because the batteries need to be replaced frequently, and at significant cost.

The Segway is terribly inefficient because it expends a bunch of unnecessary energy trying to keep you from falling on your face.

Who told you that? Stay tuned, and I will let you know what the batteries cost me to "replace" after they "wear out."

And it's not "terribly inefficient" at all. It lasts 21 miles on a 10 cent charge of electricity. That computes to the equivalent of 620 miles per gallon while I'm riding it. The powered act of balancing uses very little energy - it's the motors putting motion to the wheels which uses the energy.

Someone filled someone full of misinfomation.....

For NiMH:
* A set of batteries costs $600
* Their useful life will be 450 full charges (perhaps too unreliable, limited or disappointing beyond this point)

OK. My commute would be a little over 6 miles per day. I am at the max weight capacity for the machine and there are hills, so I don't anticipate getting much further on a charge.

I can commute 225 days for $600 + electricity, which at 10c per trip, is $45... a total of $645 for 2700 miles.

If I drove a 13MPG Suburban for 2700 miles, I'd use 207 gallons of fuel. Even at $3 a gallon, it's $623.