By S.R. Nunnally

Yesterday, during a break in the work day, a coworker sent around an “inspirational” website. I'm putting it in quotes because the website is www.despair.com.

This site pokes fun at those motivational posters that you see all over the place today, like the ones that say, “Leadership: Be the calm after the storm and the light that leads the way towards excellence.”

Despair.com calls its posters “demotivators,” and has such cynical sayings as “Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others” and “Ineptitude: If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.”

Under the posters, Despair.com offers some suggestions for whom these posters would be perfect for. For example, the site says “Ineptitude” would be perfect for “those who love skiing a lot more than it loves them”, “the soon to be humiliated”, and “disaffected college students.”

I have to say, I got a real kick out of a lot of these… but there were two that struck me as near truisms:

“Irresponsibility: No one raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood” and “Problems: No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them.”

Now, the “Irresponsibility” poster sounds like a Chinese proverb, but the second one, I'm really interested in. Despair.com says that “Problems” is perfect for:

Internal-combustion-engine-driven economies…

And disaffected college students. (But that's the only funny part about this poster.)

It got me thinking about the global warming argument. I was listening to NPR yesterday and the station was profiling those speaking out against it. Many are claiming it to be a hoax or mass delusion. Some are even saying that we should be emitting more greenhouse gases so that we avoid another ice age.

My own colleague, Andrew Mickey (editor of BreakAway Investor and the new Taipan Level 6 Trader), quipped, “When you're eating corn from the Saharan Desert, then come talk to me.”

Here's the problem with those arguments: The impacts greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide have are altering climates too drastically, and in ways that will have severe negative consequences long before we see corn growing in the Sahara or another ice age descend upon us.

I'm not trying to be all green and liberal here. I'm looking at the numbers. The U.S. emits 25% of the world's greenhouse gases and has only 5% of the population.

The U.S. has 600 coal-burning power plants in use that provides approximately 50% of our power. These power plants are responsible for spilling tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

The U.S. has 210 million vehicles on the road - about 30% of the world's cars. With a population just passing 300 million, that one car for every 1.43 people. But get this: U.S. cars account for 45% of the greenhouse gases attributed to vehicles.

Just look at these statistics from Environmental Defense:

* Carbon dioxide emissions from personal vehicles in the United States equaled 314 million metric tons in 2004. That much carbon could fill a coal train 55,000 miles long - long enough to circle the Earth twice.

* U.S. cars and light trucks were driven 2.6 trillion miles in 2004, the equivalent of 10 million trips from the earth to the moon.

* U.S. automobiles had an average fuel economy of 19.6 miles per gallon in 2004, for an average annual consumption of just over 600 gallons of gasoline.

* Gasoline in the United States contains 5.3 pounds of carbon per gallon. All of that carbon ends up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in automobile exhaust when the fuel is burned. So the average car in the U.S. puts more than 1.5 tons of carbon into the air every year.

Environmental Defense notes, “U.S. drivers average 11,000 miles per year, 29 percent above the global average, and U.S. autos consume more fuel, emitting 15 percent more carbon dioxide per mile than the average vehicle in the rest of the world.”

Let's get back to the arguments against global warming for a moment. The world does need the greenhouse effect - which is the process of greenhouse gases trapping heat so that it dissipates slowly from the atmosphere.

Without the greenhouse effect, the world would be 30 degrees cooler - a temperature that is far too cold for our environment.

But the effect becomes a problem when human activities add too much greenhouse gases too fast. This increases temperatures (we've already raise temperatures one degree in the 20th century), and that's not necessarily a good thing - even if we enjoy 75-degree weather here in Baltimore in early December. Here are some of the effects:

Rising sea levels, reduction of fresh water supplies, heat waves, droughts, extreme precipitation events, wildfires, heat stress, vegetation changes.

Most scientists who study how warmer temperatures affect our plant do not paint a pretty picture.

I'll leave you with these three simple tips that'll help you do your part.

http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/tp/globalwarmtips.htm

As for me, I've been splitting time working from home and car-pooling to work this past month. In the New Year, I'll be researching hybrid vehicles for myself.

I'll keep you posted on what I decide.