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Is the world warming, cooling or does it matter?  Most of us will say it matters, a lot, at least in public anyway.  And especially if you are hoping to pay rent or retire one day with a career based around the belief that Amsterdam, New York and Dubai will no longer exist unless we cut greenhouse gases and stop the icecaps from melting. But what has happened now that the earth cooled over the past year? Not to mention former NASA Chief Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson’s claim last year that now that she is “no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding” that she can publicly say that she “remains skeptical.”  Recently the name was changed from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ – what is really going on?  Or does it matter?

This blog, by the way, is not about proving or disproving global warming, global cooling, or that the earth’s warming and cooling cycles over the past 6 ice ages really were the fault of mankind.  This is about the fact that it does not matter what is happening with temperatures but that reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and energy use and creating renewable energy makes complete sense even without climate change political debates.

Republican, democrat, socialist or communist, the following 3 ideas for cutting greenhouse gases without relevance to climate change are hard to argue, but if you can I welcome you to comment below:

1. Releasing black substances that cause cancer into the air in which we breath is not healthy. As if it weren’t obvious enough, the EPA finds greenhouse gases pose a danger to health.  That’s for any skeptics out there that think that ‘the solution to pollution is dilution’ and that puffing on a tailpipe is good for your skin.  No reference to climate change here.
2. It costs money to put these black cancerous gases into the atmosphere. It is our extreme use of carbon based fuels, oil and coal, for transportation and electricity that our money is going to instead of being used for health care, education, infrastructure and your dividend payout.  Who can argue that energy efficient policy and using energy efficient products, therefore, reduces the amount of these black gases that enter the atmosphere while basically paying you to do it.  More legitimate reasons with no reference to climate change.
3. Politically and financially we cannot afford to continue to use finite sources of fossil based fuels, that create greenhouse gases, to power our lives. Some believe it is the left’s fear factors that say the earth is running out of oil to push their agenda.  Even if true, definitely not the whole picture that really matters.  Briefly, China and India’s population and need for energy is skyrocketing while oil discovery is steadily declining (left).  Therefore the most simple supply/demand curve from your first economics class will explain what that means for our future cost of energy.  Renewable energy that does not create pollution nor depend on other nation’s economies and that does not put gases into the air solves more than one problem without the mention of climate change.

Simple enough?  So depending on your argument there is a way to curb climate change for some, put money in the pockets of others and finally if neither of those are your flavor, how about not breathing poisonous gases?  By using common sense and not trying to pinpoint who is right and wrong, we can appease the masses in one way or another by decreasing energy use and turning to renewable sources of energy.  If you are able, what are some of the ways that climate change can be argued for or against without being categorized in another sense such as above?

This post originally appeared on Clean Techies.

Energy efficiency. Renewable energy. Logistics parks and the supply chain. The first two are easy unless you have been buried alive for the past 18 months. However, logistics parks and the supply chain are possibly two terms many don’t think of on a regular basis and like gravity, you would never know they were there until they failed.

Logistics parks are ‘clusters’ of distribution centers located in strategic geographical zones to aid in supply chain management, which is the science of getting the right thing to the right place at the right time in the right quantity for the right price. Easy enough? Throw pirates, a clogged Panama Canal, a miscount at shipping or miscalculated demand forecast into the picture and you are sitting on a mess. The next time your favorite style sweater isn’t on the shelf at the store or the bread isle looks like a Soviet supermarket, it’s the supply chain that has failed.

What do pirates have to do with energy you ask. Nothing. But where energy is important is in the cost of your sweater or loaf of bread once it gets to the shelf. This is where energy efficiency, renewable energy, logistics parks and the supply chain come together in a x = y, y = z so x = z kind of logic. Not really rocket science, more like 3rd grade reasoning but that’s where the shock of it all comes in. Why and how has it taken until the 21st century for supposedly extremely intelligent operations directors and CEO’s to realize that lowering the expense of producing a product or service raises the bottom line as does selling the product for x cents more per unit, all at the same time retaining a competitive advantage over the guy next door? It is my understanding that that is typically one of the main goals in running a business – use less and bring in more. However I still speak with decision makers every day who just don’t get it, or maybe just can’t admit to the fact that some of these cost saving measures might have kept a few people from unemployment over the past year.

Energy efficiency. As a wool sweater moves from raw material in New Zealand to being sewn into a sweater Taiwan, dyed in Vietnam, buttons attached in Shenzhen and shipped to Long Beach where it is then trucked to Reno for distribution to regional DC’s and then to your favorite shopping mall, there is a lot of electricity used and carbon being emitted by burning lights, A/C, etc, in these separate nodes. So who pays for the energy being used? Yours truly. And what happens when cap and trade becomes a reality and coal burned plants have to buy rights to emit CO2? Yep, you get to pay for those caps as the costs trickle down to the end user (that goes for your direct energy use i.e. charging your iPhone and the cost of producing it). That is, unless energy efficient projects are implemented that decrease the use of energy in a distribution center or factory, making the cost to produce or hold your good or service as low as possible. What about when your competitor implements smart technologies all the way up and down their supply chain, reducing the cost per unit to a point you cannot compete? Well, I hope they’re hiring – or the guy who takes your place likes the view as much as you do.

Energy efficiency implementation is not all because of if you don’t you will suffer. There are great things about energy efficiency that isn’t all about savings. Carbon credits, White Tags, tax incentives and rebates all put money in your pocket for the implementation of new technology while reaping all those savings. In later posts I will write about some of the companies who get it and are pushing the revolution of energy efficiency. Call it fear of global warming, call it making more than the next guy, call it what you want but whatever your reasons, there is financial logic for lowering energy use in the supply chain and in business operations in general. Is your company putting money back in the budget by cutting energy…or you?

This post originally appeared on CleanTechies.

Thank you for visiting my site.  I will focus my blogs on energy efficiency and renewable energy topics that fill my everyday life. Addtionally, I suppose, I will write the occasional off-topic blog as I feel inclined to branch off into other areas.  As I become more familiar with Word Press I expect to add some dazzling effects to entertain you as much as your iPhone or BB could ever do.  I look forward to reading your comments and hopefully gaining insight from your thoughts!