Dylan Phillips: Global Warming

Allies in the Fight for Sustainable Energy Policy

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 19:21:41 GMT

Evangelical Climate Initiative
Congressional Republicans on Climate Change
Pat Robertson Converts - (That might just be a miracle)

Notes on Global Warming Oration at Unitarian Church

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 19:13:29 GMT

Florida Maps - There is a 5 foot elevation contour map available of Florida. This would provide an excellent opportunity to show how a 20 to 40 foot rise in sea level would devistate the Jacksonville Geography.
American Ingenuity Domes - This particular method of construction, while not terribly visibly appealling, is a extreme energy efficient and durable.
Sun Works - This company provides all kinds of Solar Services for homes, everything from Heat Pumps to Solar Electric.
Seattle Mayors Initative - A mechanism by which local mayors are calculating their carbon footprint.
Things I need to research
- Mechanisms used to provide electricty via Tidal Action.
- JEA's plans to develop a Coal Fired Power Plant to meet Jacksonville's future
- Mechanism to cool houses using the naturally cold ground, approximately 6 feet under the ground soil. Apparently pumping water into that area of the soil and using a type of coil mechanism to cool the air around it.
- JCCI's initative to have a critical review of environmental impacts in a study. Don't know the type of Study.
- Project to be delivered in two years time that will provide a map of Florida at 2 foot gradiation.
- If rain projections are true, we need to be thinking about capturing water during these rain events as the aquifirs do not effeciently refill with heavy rainfall, rather they refill with steady rainfall.
- Diesel Hybrid technologies. Audi car in Europe currently gets 90 miles to the gallon.

Finally, Global Warming will not be solved with Heroic Individual Effort as this will only lead to a localize solution. We need to, as a community, recognize this as an issue an work towards a resolution.

Why Global Warming is important to me

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 18:55:23 GMT

A fairly improbable set of circumstance have been occurring me to over the last ten days. A few weeks ago, my father told me that I should see “An Inconvenient Truth.” He used to have a Ziggy cartoon where a caricaturized philosopher stated, “The truth will not only set you free, but it will also scare the be-jesus out of you.” I loved that cartoon, as a child, and it still has great meaning to me today.

I was in Seattle for a convention two weeks ago, and I scheduled a red eye flight home. By the way, this was a terrible mistake; they don’t call it a ‘red eye’ for nothing. I was rooming with a great friend of mine, who like me, is a Systems Engineer and views the world from a Scientific Perspective. He is also a man of great Christian Faith. In the course of a walk to the convention hall, we were discussing the particular difficultly reconciling a Systematic Mind with deep Faith. This led to the first in a series of events that I could consider to be “divine circumstances”. Here are the events that I recall in their particular order:

·    My friend mentioned the book Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. Not two minutes later, he pointed out a young woman reading it behind a desk.
·    The next day, having accepted that something divine may have happened to me, I prayed, and I don’t pray often. I prayed about what God wants me to do with all the marvelous gifts that I have been given. I specifically remember stating, “If I have to face St. Peter, I don’t want the account of my life to be the accumulation of wealth.”
·    Before my 12:30 AM flight home, I planed to see X-Men III at a movie theatre by my hotel. When I arrived, the movie was not playing at all, but there was a showing of An Inconvenient Truth.
·    When I arrived home on Saturday, I turned on the television while I rested. Within 2 or 3 hours, the Discovery Channel Special “What you need to know about Global Warming” poped on the television.
·    When I felt sufficiently guilty about my impact on the environment, I went to investigate what I could do to help offset my carbon footprint. Eventually, I clicked my way to American Forests and I found a link to their study of Jacksonville, my home town.
·    On Sunday, feeling that something divinely inspired is definitely going on, I go to the Unitarian Church. There Allen Tilley of UNF is discussing the impact of Global Warming on Jacksonville.

Now remember this is in less than 10 days. So now I need to evaluate whether this series of events was just an alignment of media conscienceness around Global Warming, or there was something more here. Only time will tell.

Given that I am a man of fairly deep faith, I want to believe that this may be a divine purpose in the story of my life. I guess I can’t complain. I was praying for this, but I think I was expecting something a little less daunting.

So this is the birth of the Global Warming Category on my blog. I expect that this will be a relatively well populated category, given that fire and brimstone could result in my ignoring this particular facet of my life. J