Cleveland's economy is on life support, but we have a low carbon footprint! Hurrah!

[Ted Turner and his eco-minion Captain Planet; a billionaire really should have made sure his superhero's tights don't have a baggy crotch.]

According to the Plain Dealer's Laura Johnston, when decades of lousy politicians hand you lemons, make lemonade!

"Cleveland has low carbon footprint"

Clevelanders are getting something right when it comes to global warming.

The five-county, Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor area has the 31st smallest per-capita carbon footprint among the 100 largest American metropolitan areas, says a report to be released today by the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Yup...turns out our crappy regional economy, caused by decades of high taxes, over-regulation and moronic, venal leadership is good for Gaia! Yay!

We each spew 2.2 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year by driving on the highway, heating our houses and running our appliances. Carbon is the standard currency that scientists use to talk about air pollutants, encompassing the carbon present in coal, gasoline and carbon dioxide emissions.

In weight, that beats the 1.44 metric tons of solid waste each of us Cuyahoga County residents throws out each year. In the form of carbon dioxide gas, that much carbon would amount to a million gallons - enough to fill 1 Olympic swimming pools.

According to Wikipedia and some quick math, a typical Olympic size swimming pool's volume is a minimum of 660,430 U.S. gallons, depending on its depth. A pool containing 1,000,000 U.S. gallons would have to be slightly over 50% deeper than a typical pool of this size.

50% is not a trivial difference.

Additionally, the volume of a given amount of gas is highly dependent upon its pressure. The more pressure it is under, the less volume it occupies.

Lastly, "weight" and "volume" are apples and oranges; they have no direct correlation to one another.

But hey...let's not worry about any actual science, because we don't want to harsh the buzz brought on by this stellar news about the environment!

Still, the number pales next to the 2.6 metric tons of carbon emitted by the average American. And that matters since carbon dioxide accounts for about 84 percent of the U.S. greenhouse gases scientists say are accelerating climate change.

Wow...I'm pretty certain that I'm not personally emitting anywhere near that much carbon, else I should expect my apartment would require significantly more vacuuming and dusting. With a leaf blower and bulldozer.

"The fact that Cleveland wasn't at the bottom of the list is very exciting," said Andrew Watterson, Cleveland's sustainability program manager.

Ooooh...that is exciting! We're going down the tubes economically, but that makes Gaia happy, so it's actually good news! Whee!

The good news contradicts a Purdue University report last month that ranked Cuyahoga County fourth worst among more than 3,141 U.S. counties for carbon dioxide emissions. The Purdue study looked at industrial sources of carbon dioxide and ranked counties based on Environmental Protection Agency figures and local air pollution records.

But, but, but...I thought the "science" of global warmening was settled. Albert "Wide Carbon Stance" Gore and the UN IPCC say so. (Except for all of the scientists who have repeatedly asked the IPCC to remove their names from reports because they think said reports are complete shite. But what do they know, they're only, um, like, scientists.) Additionally, oh, look...a drowning polar bear!! Awwwww...poor thing.

[*Snip* a bunch of figures which I'm certain are meaningless, given the author's demonstrable utter ignorance of the most basic high school science.]

Regardless, local officials and national policy gurus are pushing us and every metropolis to do better.

Regardless? Freakin' regardless?? When it comes to real science (as opposed to "Pseudo-Science People Conjured From Their Gastrointestinal Tracts"), data that are so far apart mean that something's very seriously wrong. You can't just make the problem go away by saying "regardless".

Jesus H. Christ and His Orchestra! This woman is clueless and feckless.

"We've got a long way to go," said David Beach, director of GreenCityBlueLake Institute at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. "The good news with that is we can make a lot of progress by building cities with dramatically more efficient and nonpolluting energy systems, transportation systems and buildings."

Sure...we'll just get rid of the old cities and build new, non-polluting ones filled with hydrogen powered vehicles, bicycles, buildings cooled by lawns growing on their roofs, "Kumbaya" blasting from the solar powered public address system, rainbows festooning the skies and populate them with unicorns, puppies and hippies redolent of organic patchouli.

One small problem: I suspect that properly disposing of all those old cities is gonna put a little strain on landfills; just sayin'...

Watterson wants to improve buildings' efficiency, invest in public transportation and rethink the way Clevelanders live. But he's thrilled we're talking about carbon emissions and fuel efficiency.

I hope Watterson is planning on "investing" his own money, but suspect that he actually intends on extracting it from me at the point of government's guns. Hey, Andy...is that a carbon nodule in your trousers or are you just "thrilled" at the prospect of controlling others' behavior?

So is Andrea Sarzynski, an author of the Brookings report.

The study lists ways the federal government should battle climate change, such as putting a price on carbon emissions, investing in research, promoting public transit and creating incentives to buy energy-efficient houses.

Except we clearly have no method at present of accurately measuring carbon emissions for an individual or a city; it's all done by computer modeling or simply inventing numbers, otherwise their wouldn't be such a disparity between Purdue's and Brookings' "conclusions". And "creating incentives" almost surely means even more wealth transfer via ridiculous "tax abatement" schemes and other foolishness which makes sense only to government officials and ecoweenies.

But state and local governments, as well as average citizens, matter too, she said.

Of course...because the forthcoming tomfoolery will require productive individuals (aka "citizens") in order to generate the enormous monies required for state and local governments (made up of totally non-productive individuals) to skim while transferring it from one sector to another.

"It's not just the green-minded people," she said. "Basically gas prices are going up to the point where . . . we're all talking about things we can do to conserve. Where it hits people in their pocketbooks, that's when they're going to start thinking about their own behavior and improving their own carbon footprint."

Actually, the reason that fuel prices are currently so high is largely due to the actions of the U.S. Congress and the environmental movement for the past three decades...but that's a screed for another time.