Global Warming

Is global warming caused by man or not? Is it really meaningful? Despite what the media pushes, it is by no means certain in either case. Regardless, there is a simple solution that the tree-huggers do not want to see or implement because it would solve the warming problem and put them out of the whining business. It is based on volcanoes and nuclear winter. Remember the good ol' cold war days when scientist said if a bunch of nukes went off they would throw up so much debris into the atmosphere that it would reflect the sun and the earth would cool, thus "nuclear winter". This theory was backed up by strong evidence of temperature declines after large volcano eruptions of the past. I heard a well respected scientist on NPR say that Al Gore is right, but he is not even "right enough", things are much worse. Even if we all threw away our SUVs and switched to 50 mpg hybrids or rode bikes to work, it could not make a difference: we are too far past the point of no return. He then went on to rationally say that the only way to make a difference fast enough would be to slightly increase the sulfur content in airplane fuel. This would add enough reflective material to the atmosphere to reflect the sun enough to drop the temperature and regrow the ice caps and save the cut little polar bears.

So simple, so easy. Why aren't the global warming alarmist jumping on this solution, it would cool the earth with a much higher chance of acceptance and success then current ideas. The environmental impact would be much smaller then letting the earth continue to warm.

Subprime Loan Problems

Several problems here to solve: people are in loans they should have never qualified for in houses that are too expensive and they can't make payments when their rates are adjusted. These loans are on houses that are now worth less than then loan the a lot of the "buyers" probably did not put any money down, so essentially they have nothing to lose by walking away. The banks don't want these houses and the secondary market that holds the loans does not want the houses either.

Solution: create a special Fannie-Mae program that allows these people to refi into a 40 year fixed rate loan. The homeowner gets a chance to stay in the house, but does not get a free ride. The mortgage holder gets to hold a new loan with less chance of default, but worth less than the original loan, so they don't come out whole either. Everyone wins a little and no one loses big. Simple. Too simple to be implemented.

China: Growth and Polution

China has two problems: fast growth and pollution. For some time now China has been trying to slow its growth by making small tweaks to things like interest rates. Because of this growth, China has become the biggest carbon and emissions polluter in absolute terms (it was already far worse than US relative to GDP).

Two problems, one solution: China should require US-like emission controls on all vehicles and it should require all new coal plants to have strict emission controls. This will raise the price of cars and electric, thus taxing the economy a bit and slowing down growth.

Easy as pie ;-)

Farming

Here is my favorite type of solution, one that solves two problems (or more).

Problems:
1) the Gov pays farmers tons of money to NOT grow. While I would love to get paid to not grow, as I don't grow a lot of things, it is stupid.
2) Framers that do grow tend to over use fertilizer and the run off makes significant impacts on the environment.
3) Organic farming is good, but too expensive to be viable for most farmers, and organic food is too expensive to buy much of. Farmers complain it is to inefficient and low yielding.

Solution:
Only subsidize farmers to grow organically or in certified ways that minimize fertilizers, pesticides and impacts to the environment. This should be especially emphasized near waterways where run off is particularly harmful. The farmers that are not growing can now afford to grow "inefficiently". The price of organics will come down for the consumer. The environment will be less impacted. The Government may not spend less money, but at least all of it goes to actual production of food.

I had been waiting for years to meet Al Gore when he was VP to lay this on him, but never quite got the chance. Only recently have I been hearing others talk about this seriously.

Simple Solutions

Most problems have such simple solutions, the problems lie in the people that implement them. Everyone is so wrapped up in their own point of view and vested interest that good simple solutions rarely get implemented. This blog is just a random sprinkling of simple things I have thought of over the years. So simple they will never get implemented.