Boulderites Fight Global Warming

"It's like peeing in the ocean. It makes you feel good, but it doesn't affect the ocean at all."

"Think globally, act locally", or something like that (notice how the article just assumes that Global Warming exists):

Global warming is a hot topic these days and Boulder researchers have an up-close-and-personal view of climate change that most people never glimpse.

Boulder is an internationally recognized hub for climate-change research, with several hundred scientists working at federal laboratories and in various departments and institutes at the University of Colorado.

They measure the gases blamed for global warming, they monitor retreating Alaskan glaciers and melting Arctic sea ice, they use giant supercomputers to peer into the planet's future, and they study clues about past climates recorded in tree rings.

They are on the front lines of the rapidly evolving science, as well as the debate over appropriate responses.

The Rocky Mountain News asked five Boulder climate scientists and engineers what - if anything - they do in their personal lives to reduce their contributions to the heat-trapping greenhouse gases linked to global warming. Those gases include carbon dioxide, which is emitted by automobile tailpipes and coal- fired power plants.

Though motivated by their own research and guilty consciences to "help out", these scientists appear to do little in the way of profound change, other than biking to work (a trendy thing to do in Boulder anyway), and cutting "carbon footprints" here and there. The hypocrisy and self-satisfying smugness of this enviro crowd is captured by one of the scientists in an inadvertent aside:

"A lot of these people who buy those Priuses, they smirk to themselves at being great environmentalists," he said. "Then they jump on an airplane and go to Europe for a trip, and flying uses up a huge amount of fuel and dumps so much CO2 (carbon dioxide) into the air."

And consider China, where a new coal-fired power plant opens every nine or 10 days, Schnell said. The carbon emissions from each new Chinese power plant overwhelm the actions of countless do-gooders around the world, he said.

"When you look at the big picture, these individual actions are doing practically nothing," he said. "It's like peeing in the ocean. It makes you feel good, but it doesn't affect the ocean at all."