Citizen's Climate Lobby of Rock County

  To   the Editor,   Sure, it is funny to complain about global warming on the cold, snowy first day of winter. December 16’s editorial cartoon featuring a snowman, who claimed that global warming is a myth, is funny too.    It also has a hard edge of adult irony that is not funny. This joke degrades the serious work to prevent climate change. It breaks-down consensus. It makes people disbelieve. It makes them regret sacrifices to protect the environment.    Let’s keep our holiday-season good humor and dial-back our edgy irony.   Americans – and everyone else – are being asked to pull together to make the world more livable for our children and their children. Let’s not belittle their efforts by acting like children ourselves.    Gregory Turco 4006 Hearthstone Dr Janesville, WI

 

Folks, if our planet could talk it would scream for help! We can no longer assume “manifest destiny” when harvesting and over harvesting earth’s resources without thought to consequences of global warming and climate changes. The International Panel on Climate Change at the UN released the Sixth Assessment Report, focusing on mitigation strategies; how to slow the warming trend. Carbon pricing is mentioned 680 times and called “the most powerful and efficient” strategy available to reduce carbon emissions. This requires putting a price on pollution, to incentivize companies to transition to clean energy, increase jobs in clean energy, and rethink their operations to reduce carbon emissions. The good news is that it is possible here, right now. It has attracted already a great deal of study; and with the right cooperation among our governing bodies it could implemented right now. Even better? A “carbon cash back” from the monies collected from this strategy could be distributed back to ...

Three Ways Global Warming Affects Weather When there has been a big storm it is often reported that it was partly due to global warming.  Not everyone understands or believes it.  I will explain the steps in the process, working from things we already know, so that everyone can be sure it is true. Everyone can see that cloudy nights are seasonably warm and clear nights are colder.  This is because heat, as infrared light, scatters off of cloud droplets, and some of it goes back to earth.  Molecules of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases also send heat back, but in a different way.  They absorb the infrared light, and then radiate it back in random directions.  Some goes back to warm the earth and the lower atmosphere.  Since some of the heat is being sent back down, less goes to the upper atmosphere, so it becomes cooler.  This twin effect of greenhouse gases, warming lower atmosphere and cooling upper atmosphere, is the key to understanding...

 

Fighting Climate Change Requires Cultural Shift  by Nathan Dombeck The Gazette (Janesville WI);  March 31, 2022 As gas prices continue to rise, the narrative is to offer two solutions to ease the pain at the pump: increase domestic production of fossil fuels, or purchase an electric vehicle (EV). The tools to solve this crisis will not be found in innovating a better car or improving miles-per-gallon. We need to look at our societal habits and infrastructure. Janesville is emblematic of towns across suburban US. Housing tracts extend ever further from the town center. The proliferation of strip malls decentralizes the shopping experience, spreading small stores all across the city. Societal norms require that you have the latest and greatest car; you get bonus points if it is an enormous and ostentatious truck, at least in this area (never mind that you may never haul anything in its bed bigger than your groceries). These and many other factors have led to our car-driven cultu...