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'Gaia' Scientist Admits Mispredicting Rate of Climate Change
DesScorp writes "James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the 'Gaia Theory' and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing 'before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.' Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says: '"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added.' Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."
Turning off the lights in the room you're not in is dismantling western civilization ?
Don't just whine about it, do something! Personally, I plan on running my air conditioning all summer with my windows and doors open. If we all work together, we can turn this thing around. WHO'S WITH ME!?
Yes, but Lovelock is a nut; he was on the alarmist edge. Always was. The "Gaia" model is a cool thing to talk to the public about, but it's not real science.
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change. If you look at the data from models from 1979 (the National Academy of Science study), or even the models from 1967 (the Manabe greenhouse-effect calculation)-- the actual data fits the model very nearly exactly.
The lesson to take home is that denying climate change is wrong, but exaggerating it is also wrong. Pay attention to the real scientists, and try not to give the fringe too much credance. Look at the data.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"if it is it ain't happening at anything like the rate that would justify dismantling civilization"
And this is where anti-AGW is at its most dishonest.
No, but the anti-consumer, anti-consumption attitudes most greenies have, is.
No, the original poster is right, regardless of what public sentiment says. What Lovelock says is that what he expected is that we'd be halfway to a cooked planet, and instead, climate is doing its thing, which is to behave unpredictably.
There's one kind of scientific corruption, which is obvious and easy to see - saying something you don't believe is true. This is easy to avoid. The more insidious form of corruption is to overstate one's degree of certainty in what you do believe to be true: "You don't understand - if I include all of my doubts, outliers and provisos, a non-scientific reader is not going to understand." That's the kind of corruption that, unfortunately, is at play here. Lovelock is calling this out.
This pretty much brings James Lovelock into agreement the mainstream science, where the consensus prediction is for anthropogenic warming of at most a few degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. And hey, that's exactly what you're supposed to do when confronted with actual data, isn't it?
I'm still waiting for the deniers to do the same.
So we shouldn't have saved the ozone layer from CFCs, because nobody was certain about it? Because in science, nothing is ever really certain.
"Most" is an utter lie. Maybe most of the ones you see on Fox are like that, but in reality most people who are interested in and concerned about anthropogenic climate change realize that we need to balance economic necessity and long-term conservation priorities, and we aren't even remotely beginning to do that. It's very convenient to paint the people who disagree with you as enemies of civilization, unfortunately it is completely dishonest and counterproductive.
Conversely: Anthropogenic global warming would very convenient for all the scientists researching it, as it brings in tons of research money, therefore it must exist, and be ridiculously powerful. (The thing is that GW as a whole is being exaggerated by both sides one way or the other, and I fear not enough unbiased info is being collected either way.)
So where's the news here? This nut was never a credible climate scientist in the first place, and I don't think any of his previous views were shared by anybody who is a credible climate scientist.
Lovelock makes a living out of making sensational, half-baked pronouncements and selling them as science. Good for him for admitting he was wrong, but that doesn't discredit any of the actual science.
Actually, I was pretty sure because we had computer images that showed the hole, showed it was growing over time, and most importantly we could reproduce the effects of CFCs on ozone in a lab instead of just in a computer simulation. It also helps that we didn't have to dismantle civilization to get rid of CFCs.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Sorry, this doesn't vindicate climate denial at all. He's just one scientist who made kooky predictions and if you think he's at all important then you need a remedial course in logic. As a matter of fact, climate change has been occurring shockingly fast, faster than even the worst case scenarios were predicting (source http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/06/us-climate-canada-idUSTRE6145KP20100206). Due to a complete political failure to address the issue, an 11 degF rise in temperature is expected.
Since when is James Lovelock a climate scientist ?!? His predictions on the subject always had the same value as just about any other rambling slashdoter.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
1. Stop building Coal power generation plants
2. Build a single Thorium power plant, then activate all others after it with that plant to save money.
3. Dismantle all non-thorium power plants
4. Profit
Thorium is safe, a non-sustainable reaction. Ergo, if the heat sink fails (Japan + Tsunami) the reaction stop by itself. There is plenty of it, enough to keep the U.S. running for a 1000 years, it's cheap, and it takes a mere 100 years before it's not dangerously radioactive anymore. And most of all... ITS CLEAN.
I hate governments saying: "We all have to do our bit for the climate, so we raise taxes on fuel", while building a shitload of coal power plants. So why aren't we using thorium yet? Very simple, it's expensive to put the first one there (even though all others would be cheaper), and, this is the big one, you can't make nuclear weapons with it.
See how easily the problems in the world would be solved if we didn't have retarded politicians?
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem, if there really is a problem. Witness the latest insult by the UN that basically taxes the hell out of leading nations to support "green project" in third-world countries. There are ALWAYS sticky fingers in schemes like this. It would be one thing to require a leader nation to actually procure the solar plant equipment and set it up somewhere but that's not what they want. They just want the money.
That aside, if global catastrophe is such a big deal e.g. An asteroid is headed directly for Earth, every person is going to be affected in the same way therefore every person is equally responsible for dealing with it. There will be no "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" here. So, by that logic, nobody gets a pass on carbon emissions. Nobody gets to buy their way out of it and no industry or enemy of the regime gets punished. Note that the carbon trading in commodities markets has be severely scaled back if not eliminated. Take money out of the equation and oh look, gee whiz, the problem isn't such a big problem anymore.
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?"
The guy's not a climate scientist by profession or education. He's as useless as the Heartland Institute. Even now he's getting basic facts wrong.
>we still aren't sure whether it is us or a natural cycle we don't undertstand,
Isotope ratios and measurements show that we're producing the CO2, and the pattern of warming (colder stratosphere, warmer nights, less longwave radiation escaping to space) matches causation by CO2.
Yes, Lovelock was being overly alarmist. He also has no expertise in climate change prediction, so his guess is as good as yours. The fact that he's wrong doesn't mean that actual experts who've made less extreme predictions are also wrong.
Lovelock is a black-and-white kind of guy(*), who tends toward hyperbole. His Gaia hypothesis is the same way: he takes a small truth about negative feedbacks in Earth systems and blows it up into some huge quasi-religious theory of everything.
* Yes, that was a Daisyworld joke.
There are (hopefully) experiments on the effects of CFCs on O3 molecules, that made us come to the conclusion that CFC damages the ozone layer. That was simple in my opinion. AGW/ACC on the other hand is far from being simple. I for one am very sceptical about the pace and the amount of global warming happening because of humans.
If you find a typo, you may keep it.
Lovelock's climate change, the stuff he predicted 30 years ago and which he's now saying was inaccurate, was the stuff of bad science fiction movies and bears very little resemblance to the actual predictions made by climate scientists. No serious climate scientist has ever predicted 90% of the worlds surface being uninhabitable. Compared to his predictions, the less than 1 degree C rise in temperatures we have seen is "nothing much", the problem is that 1 degree C is more than enough to screw up all kinds of stuff. It's just not enough to drive humanity to the brink of extinction like he predicted two decades ago.
Lovelock is a chemist, not a climatologist, and his hypothesis is clearly a chemists view. Also, no living organism supports Lovelocks theory; which shoots it in the foot. In other words: Natural selection would need a means of cross species reproductive communication.
Consensus of actual experts in the field did no agree with the pace of his predictions. Media loved it "FEAR NOW!" and Hollywood used is to spawn another round disaster movies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Conversely: Anthropogenic global warming would very convenient for all the scientists researching it, as it brings in tons of research money, therefore it must exist, and be ridiculously powerful.
People keep making this assertion over and over like it is proven fact, but nowhere have I ever seen any proof that there is substantial economic incentive for any given scientist to come out in support of global warming theory. In fact, the most likely Nash equilibrium if they were to game it would be to have half of them come down on either side of the issue so that they could use the debate to fuel research dollars. That is absolutely nothing like what is happening.
The thing is that GW as a whole is being exaggerated by both sides one way or the other, and I fear not enough unbiased info is being collected either way.
Okay, let's pretend that there is a bunch of bias like you are talking about. What portion of the 90+% of climatologists who purport to believe AGW is a real and dangerous thing do you think are being manipulated? Can you pick a high enough number to convince anybody that we shouldn't at least be highly concerned without also picking a number so high that it would be impossible without a massive global tinfoil-hat conspiracy?
I may not be so well informed on this, but I don't believe Mr. Lovelock took any of your tax money for climate or weather science. For starters, he lives in Great Britain, and is a British citizen. According to the Google.
But if you're paying taxes in Great Britain, he still hasn't taken any of your money. Mostly he just writes books. There's no public subsidy for what he does, and very little science involved. He's essentially a crank.
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening.
That statement is absurd. I cannot believe there are still people pandering this and similar opinions. Read Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William Nordhaus. Climate change is happening, and human activities are likely causing it.
[Not at] the rate that would justify dismantling civilization over...
Nobody is suggesting that. This is nonsensical hyperbole on its face. However, the scientific community is suggesting that we: use less energy, find renewable energy sources, and make less babies. The first two are profitable investments we ought to make regardless whether the climate is changing.
As glad as I am we got rid of CFCs, it's actually a bit of a funny story where things went from there. The replacement chemicals for CFCs are greenhouses gasses over 4,000 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901817.html
No one is saying that.
What is being said is that climate is incredibly complicated.
What we know for sure is that we do not know. They were not a little bit off here. They were way off the mark.
Not because they are stupid. Not because they want to lie.
There was a TED talk on this. Where we think we can understand things that are really way too complicated for our brains to ever understand.
Luckily he does also point out that just because we can not truly understand something does not mean we can not solve it.
Everyone should watch this TED talk.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
We didn't dismantle civilization to get rid of CFCs... we just got rid of the McDLT.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
That, Little Johnny, is what we call "over-the-top hyperbolic rhetoric spawning from extremist zealots."
Typically, when someone starts screaming that this or that will lead to the end of civilization as we know it, you're best off to just keep on truckin' by...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There are (hopefully) experiments on the effects of CFCs on O3 molecules, that made us come to the conclusion that CFC damages the ozone layer. That was simple in my opinion. AGW/ACC on the other hand is far from being simple. I for one am very sceptical about the pace and the amount of global warming happening because of humans.
Uh, the science of AGW is so simple that it has been known since the 19th century. It's way simpler than the effect of CFC's on the ozone layer.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No. Weather is chaotic. Climate isn't.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
How did this make the front page of Slashdot??? James Lovelock is not a Climate Scientist, he's and an independent scientist and environmentalist who is famous for the Gaia Hypothesis a half-scientific half-philosophical metaphor for understanding Earth's biosphere. There is no reason anyone should give this man any credibility when it comes to speaking on the subject of Climate Change projections.
Do you know who is qualified to speak on this subject? James Hanson, and a 1981 paper he published in a peer-reviewed journal attempted to project the rise in temperatures over the next 30 years. Those projections still managed to underestimate the observed rise in temperatures by 30 percent and even the worst case scenario of those projections managed to underestimate the observed trend.
So no. You are not vindicated. You have demonstrated that you have no understanding of how science works, elevating the opinion of someone speaking outside their realm of expertise over the peer-reviewed published research of an expert with over three decades working inside the subject of climate change.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
He's a Gaia "scientist". May as well cover "Creation Scientist Admits Earth May Be a Bit Older"...
MC
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
James Lovelock is 92 years old. Born in 1919. He is not a climate scientist. He did not speak for climate scientists 20 years ago when he claimed the world was ending. He does not speak for climate scientists now. Ignore him and he will go away. Soon.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I think the science shows that our planet has gotten warmer by some small %, but science does not _clearly_ show that it is man made. It would be prudent to treat it as such and start changing our habits. A vast swath of moderates and 'average joes' hold this as a palatable view.
However, liberals and Democrats (the primary voice of the AGW fight) will need to distance themselves from the climate extremists, scientologists, and alarmists, in order to gain any traction. I'll be ironic (considering my previous statement) and say no one likes polarization. Dimiss pseudo-science, even it 'agrees with' your cause.
I'm honestly ready to stop buying gas. I'm tired of $100/tank fillups, but hybrid's suck and public transportation isn't convenient. Unfortunately, investment into better options won't occur with high taxes and weak economy.
> Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
If there isn't anything to change to it is. And there currently isn't. Name one potential source that could replace fossil fuels and I'll show you a source the same greens are already trying to deem unacceptable. Lets review:
1. Nuke. Do I even have to go there? Even if we perfect fusion the greens will still wet themselves over the notion of power from anything with the N word attached.
2. Hydro. Disrupts Gaia. Harms fish reproduction and prevents 'healthy' rivers. And there is some point to their arguments. If nothing else our attempts at dams for flood control have certainly had a mixed record of success.
3. Wind. Assume it could actually produce enough energy. (Work with me here.) NIMBY is already rampant, greens are up in arms because when you fill square mile after square mile with windmills birds die. Who would have thunk it?
4. Solar. Makes sense as a source of off-grid energy but will never compete on a cost basis. And that is if you ignore the horrid ecological side effects of making the panels. And again, now that there are plans to actually cover over mile after mile of desert with the things the usual suspects are aghast.
5. Geothermal. Causes earthquakes.
6. Biofuels. Will cause widespread famine long before providing a noticable fraction of world energy production. Take the recycled plant waste, switchgrass on land unusable for more productive use but don't plan on it being anything but a boost. Not a primary source.
And if I have left your pet alternative energy source off this list be assured that it won't work either. It is great for soaking up grant money, deploying on a small scale to give egoboo to celebs but the second someone things it can be produced at a profit the downside will become clear.
Democrat delenda est
"the usual statist stuff"
Thank you for using the term "statist" so early in your post so I could stop reading it early on and automatically dismiss you as a crackpot.
This guy is saying the sort of things that have been getting me downmodded here on slashdot for years.
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening. But if it is it ain't happening at anything like the rate that would justify dismantling civilization over, we still aren't sure whether it is us or a natural cycle we don't undertstand, etc. And he doesn't go there but I will: too many politicians with a preexisting anti-civilization (Western industrial captialism based ccivilization that is...) bias glommed onto AGW with the willing consent of a lot of brand name scientists, thereby (rightly) harming the public's trust of all science.
Have you ever considered the possibility that you got downmodded because you conflate acceptance of man-made global warming with "an attempt to dismantle civilization"?
Our current civilization is built upon the ability to have relatively cheap and dense energy.
Currently nothing comes close to hydrocarbon based fuels in these areas. That is not even taking into account all the non energy uses for hydrocarbons.
Drugs, and Materials. Make all oil disappear tomorrow. You will see a very harsh dismantling.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Problem is the market forces types are the ones that said put a profit incentive into reducing reducing carbon emissions and then let the market take care of it. Me I would just rather have the EPA make rules about carbon emissions and then you meet them or go out of business. CAFE is the government mandating vechicle mileage and seems to have worked.
You might be interested in reading some actual analysis - the Rocky Mountain Institute has done great research for years on this. Reinventing Fire What you have above is a good case study of a set of logical fallacies. How many can you find?
People got alarmist over Global Cooling then Global Warming and then Climate Change when the first two didn't pan out by name at hyped levels. The biggest problem is that people are fighting the wrong fight, being too concerned about CO2 levels. These energies are well intentioned, however they are misplaced.
Climate change is inevitable no matter what we as a species do or don't do. We have a fossil record going back billions of years proving this, forces like plate tectonics and changes from our own solar system or even supernova's all impact our climate.
People have forgotten their environmental basics and in their zeal have created a self feeding hype machine. Scheduled catastrophes kept turning out to be false alarms. The problem is that this is causing a loss of credibility in scientists and science. People need to be concerned about pollution, for the sake of fighting pollution.
Were spending so much time worrying about whether or not the concrete being poured for a windmill is going to have the proper carbon offset. As a result were forgetting about bigger things like rampant unregulated coal power plants in China and the smelting of old electronics by hand in Africa.
We need to get back to science, back to fighting pollution and away from the hype.
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem,
Ah, but that's a very different question from the question of whether carbon dioxide emissions are affecting the climate... and it is a question that gets almost no discussion at all, because the people who think that carbon-credit trading is not a good idea don't address it, but instead argue that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist, or it exists but is saturated, or it exists but volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans so it doesn't matter what we do, or the weather data is wrong, or the scientists who study the problem are all frauds, or the cosmic rays are changing the climate more then humans do, or solar activity has gone up recently, or solar activity has gone down recently, or some hithertofore unknown feedback mechanism cancels out the changes created by humans, or... every six months there's a new purported explanation for why human-generated carbon dioxide doesn't affect the climate. (Yes, I've heard all those arguments, and many more that make even less sense.)
By denying that a possible problem even exists, the discussion of solutions ends up being completely one-sided. No one critiques carbon-credit trading, because the people who would do so are spending their efforts denying that the science.
if there really is a problem.
See? You can't even complete a single sentence before you start suggesting the greenhouse effect isn't real.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So because fringe enviro-kooks have a problem with anything other than reverting to bronze-age living nothing is viable. Nuke, wind, solar, plus hydro and geothermal where they won't cause too much harm should be fine. And don't forget tidal.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You know what would bring in REAL cash? As in, prizes, accolades, grant money beyond your wildest dreams? Proving that everyone is wrong about AGW. If there is money in AGW research, it is in proving it is wrong, not in proving what everyone knows.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The non-energy uses of hydrocarbons can continue (although fossil-sourced fertilizers should probably be the first to be phased out). Grid power and most cars don't need fossil fuels, switch those off of it and go from there.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I would prefer a straight tax on carbon over cap and trade, but cap and trade demonstrably worked with SO2, so is it really rational to be so worked up about it now?
If it is mandated by the government agencies, enforced by government violence and inflated and fake money, then yes.
You can't handle the truth.
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be. Wind, hydro, tide .. these are all bullshit: they will never matter in the big picture, they'll feelgood measures that's don't actually accomplish anything large scale, just like most green initiatives.
Solar is different. There's plenty of solar power. But current solar-electric panel are still bullshit (I drive past the Soylendra buildings every day). Solar-thermal remains viable (just heat a working fluid so that it pushes a turbine). Solar thermal can be baseload if you supplement with natural gas for the cloudy days. California did a plant like that - it was great, and 90% of power came from solar overall. It was shut down, due to concerns by the environmentlists.
And where's the actual proof that CO2 does harm? We're still in an Ice Age. We're still in an interglacial period that has lasted thousands of years longer than they usually due. When the climate reverts to the long-term norm, all of Canada and most of Europe and the old USSR states will be covered by glaciers, a far worse fate than the seas rising a few meters. Even if mankind's CO2 release actually matters (and we don't understand the usual mechanism by which CO2 falls significantly every 100k years, so we don't know that it matters), do we want the climate to be warmer or colder than its likely to become without us?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Exactly! Follow the $$$ and you'll see all these scientists folks living high on the hog, flashing their bling as they drive past in their Corollas and Preludes.
I drank what? -- Socrates
And citizens all over began to wonder, what new technology would rise to take the place of CFCs in keeping the hot side hot, and the cool side cool?
> And don't forget tidal.
You mean forget the horrid ecological cost to vital spawning grounds for (whatever blah blah).
> So because fringe enviro-kooks have a problem with anything...
Yup, because they are the, to a high enough percentage to ignore the outliers, the exact same set of people who are pushing AGW. Whether AGW is true or not doesn't really matter either. It is just one weapon all leading to the same result. In the 1970's it was Global Cooling. Same policy prescriptions. When the Soviet Union fell and the ChiComs moved to a more viable mixed economy the Reds occupying our elite institutions (universities, media, etc.) simply took down (well some of em) their Che and Lenin posters and replaced them with Green ones. And suddenly almost all of the same policy prescriptions were rebranded as saving the earth. Now we need a world government regulating every sparrow that falls to control carbon instead of the equally dishonest redistribution of wealth/elimination of poverty, etc. crap.
The only answer is to realize that playing their game at all is to lose. So don't.
Democrat delenda est
What amuses me about this is the total lack of irony or self-awareness. You are accusing jmorris42 of "hyperbolic rhetoric spawning from extremist zealots" for saying that the prescriptions of CAGW "extremist zealots" are aimed at "dismantling civilization," while ignoring that the CAGW zealots themselves frequently engage in "hyperbolic rhetoric" about the end of the polar bears, the end of the ice caps, the end of winter, the end of life on Earth and the like. Even ignoring that, yes, many of the policy prescriptions of the CAGW extreme (not all CAGW advocates, mind you) would in fact be adequately and accurately summarized as "dismantling civilization," the failure to note the extreme of one claim while noting the extreme of the other is beautifully obtuse.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Japan has just finished turning off all nuclear power over a "disaster" that proved just how safe modern nuclear can be
And this is why no one takes you or your kind seriously.
#1 Japan didn't turn off all nuclear. For one, it would take far longer than a few months to do so. For two, they're taking them offline for security checks. They plan on bringing them back online. It just so happens that there will be a period of time when no nuclear plant will be online.
#2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half. You mean they can't replace coal by themselves by tomorrow? SHocking. They must be useless and tossed out.
#3 One solar thermal plant wasn't built because the company didn't want to immediately fork over the money to alleviate environmental concerns brought on by the government. You should know better, considering you seem to live in the Bay Area.
#4 Even if we are in an ice age (and we really aren't), that doesn't matter one lick. What matters is that there are drastic changes coming to our civilization, which has been built according to the climate variations of the past 300 years. That's going to cost money.
#5 And the rest of your arguments are just total nonsense (long-term norm? glaciers in Europe? a few meters of oceans rising is not a problem?)
Seriously, I'd love to hear a good argument about a) why AGW isn't real, and b) why we shouldn't worry. Instead, I get the worst Monday Morning quarterbacking possible.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Why's that? Not many people would stop using refrigeration just because the coolant is more expensive. The cost of coolant is a relatively small factor in most Americans' lives.
On the other hand, AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive. So you've got increased costs in many areas, plus legislation that often comes off as petty or patronizing. I mean, a tax on plastic grocery bags? And the point is to get all those evil oil users to change their behavior and be more good and eco friendly.. that's a far bigger role for government than I'm comfortable with.
From where does the grid power come, though? Generally from fossil fuels or nuclear power.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
^ ironically, that's precisely the sort of banal oversimplification that you think you're mocking.
In point of fact, leaving room lights on where I live (Minnesota) for much of the year is actually MORE efficient than turning them off, at least so I was told by the guy that came to evaluate our home's energy efficiency. Further it provides point-heat in places of use, which is far more efficient than generally heating the whole structure an extra degree or two to keep everything comfortable.
Electric lights produce copious amounts of heat; turning them off just means that the home furnace has to work harder to heat that (dark) space.
-Styopa
I think (and I could be wrong; it's been a while since I read on this) that the posited mechanism is that CO2 absobs more heat before it re-radiates it than many other chemicals. That would then imply that more energy would be trapped in the system (though I'm unclear on whether it's latent heat, and thus doesn't change the temperature of the system, or sensible heat, though I'd guess the latter), rather than being radiated out of the system into space. There is really very little question about CO2 being a "greenhouse gas." Fundamentally, without it, Earth would be a ball of ice, and in the past has been very nearly that when exceptional dips in CO2 have occurred.
My understanding is that the debate is not over which mechanisms in the environment increase the heat of the system, and which ones decrease it, but over which ones should be taken into account in models, to what degree, and whether the total overall balance leans towards increasing heat, decreasing heat, or equilibrium. It always made me shake my head a bit when Lovelock became a CAGW zealot, because that is in direct contrast to the Gaia Theory, which is Lovelock's most significant contribution to climatology. The Gaia Theory is often misstated as the idea that the Earth is a single living organism. In fact, it states that the Earth acts like a living organism in regulating its temperatures to remarkable stability through a system of feedback mechanisms which act in tension to prevent extremes in either direction. I never did hear an explanation of how Lovelock reconciled the two ideas, but apparently he's come back to the Gaia Theory.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Right now, yes, but nuclear can provide the base load (comes from the ground but doesn't release fossil CO2 into the air) and a range of renewables can do the rest. Then over time we can shift to less nuclear and more renewable as the tech matures.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What pisses me off are the people who think that wealth redistribution in the form of carbon-credit trading will do anything to solve the problem
It pisses you off? Should that persuade me, or think you are just angry and ranting?
It's no coincidence that the angry people are the climate change deniers and the anti-tax Birch Society. It's just old-fashioned populist manipulation; they are being used.
if global catastrophe is such a big deal e.g. An asteroid is headed directly for Earth, every person is going to be affected in the same way therefore every person is equally responsible for dealing with it. There will be no "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" here. So, by that logic, nobody gets a pass on carbon emissions.
* Those who emit carbon should be responsible for cleaning up their own mess, not redistribute the costs to everyone else. That includes industries (e.g., oil) and countries (e.g., the United States, by far the largest emitter over history). Why should I pay for someone else's carbon emissions?
* The wealthy can contribute much more easily than the poor. The billionaire can contribute $10,000 more easily than the person with $20,000; the person earning $1 million/year can contribute 10% of their income much more easily than the person earning $1,000/yr. To ask the same amounts or rates of all is unequal, as is obvious.
#2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half. You mean they can't replace coal by themselves by tomorrow? SHocking. They must be useless and tossed out.
The word "great" is highly suspect there and rather nebulas. What you mean to say is, the capital expenses are extremely high and the return on investiment is extremely long. Furthermore, expect to make the same investiment just about every time you've re-couped your previous investment. All the while creating an environmental smudge, contrary to the intire intent most people go with solar. And given loss of opportunity costs, few people who bother to do the math an/dor can understand it, are the least bit interested in solar for anything other than commercial use.
So yes, clearly, "great", doesn't mean what you pretend it means in this context.
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Actually, the cooling industry for many enterprise systems was very happy they got to retool entire cooling systems as it made them tons of money.
As I posted elsewhere, it's important to distinguish between what serious climate scientists are saying (which lines up with your post) and what Lovelock was forecasting: he predicted near-total annihilation of the human race, and the Earth rendered uninhabitable except for the poles.
Where does all this "dismantle civilization" stuff come from? Changing power sources is dismantling civilization?
No. ELIMINATING power sources is dismantling civilization. We could gladly change power sources. Unfortunately, none exist.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The mainstream climate scientists are not and have not been mispredicting the rate of climate change
Pardon my ignorance, exactly what *is* the mainstream prediction?
The currently published consensus (IPCC AR-4) is that climate change will be 2 to 4.5 C temperature rise per doubling of CO2, with a current best estimate of about 3 C (another source, Rahmstorf 2008, says 2.6 to 4.1 C, with most modeled results clustering around 3 C.)
If you want to turn that into a temperature prediction, multiply that by the log base 2 of your prefered prediction of carbon dioxide in the year you want to predict for (divided by the carbon dioxide in the year you take as baseline). The climate science part, however, is not the prediction of carbon dioxide emission (that's sociology and/or politics and/or economics), it's the response of the climate.
(Yes, it's a little annoying that the climate community settled in on log base 2. Temperature is logarithmic in greenhouse-gas concentration-- that's the Arrhenius relation-- and the earlier modellers decided to model the effect of doubling carbon dioxide, hence the log_2.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Why's that? Not many people would stop using refrigeration just because the coolant is more expensive. The cost of coolant is a relatively small factor in most Americans' lives.
On the other hand, AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive. So you've got increased costs in many areas, plus legislation that often comes off as petty or patronizing. I mean, a tax on plastic grocery bags? And the point is to get all those evil oil users to change their behavior and be more good and eco friendly.. that's a far bigger role for government than I'm comfortable with.
Everything that should have been more expensive to begin with. I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor. How about spending 25%. I really don't care about people's corporate propaganda induced need for "small government". If it wasn't for government regulation and unions, you'd be working 7 days a week, breathing foul air, drinking very filthy water and God even knows what else. Left to its own devices, business is pretty nasty and only out for one thing: profit at *any* cost. The bastards need more regulation, not less.
You are wrong in fact and wrong in logic.
The impact of climate change is not equal. The poor live disproportionately in vulnerable areas. This is true not just for climate change, but for environmental disasters in general. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live on the deforested hillsides that collapse in landslides. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live in flood-prone areas. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who make a living from dry and marginal soils susceptible to droubt. And it is the poor who lack the resources to cope when the water dries up, when food prices rise, when hit by torrential rains or brush fires. Global warming is not like an asteroid. It will not wipe out all life. But it will create great suffering, and that suffering will fall disproportionately on the poor. That is your error in fact.
Your error in logic is your claim of equal responsibility. If you and I are in a car crash, are we equally responsible because we both suffer the same loss? Even though I was speeding, talking on my cell phone and weaving in traffic while you were driving predictably and defensively, but were unable to avoid me when I suddenly swerved in front of you? Of course not. Responsibility results from the actions we take and the choices we make. We in the developed countries have produced most of the emissions and reaped most of the benefits. We are far more responsible for climate change than the peasants of India or Mexico or Bangladesh. Responsibility flows from actions, not consequences.
I do not think that means what you think it means.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Turning off the lights in the room you're not in is dismantling western civilization ?
If that were all the "greenies" wanted, what was the "Cash for Clunkers" program all about? Why did Obama say that he would make coal power plants too expensive to build?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You do realize that the term "global warming" implies that it is global right? The sea ice in the Arctic has indeed been on a decline in the satellite era, however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
That doesn't even cover the fact that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from various sources which predate the satellite era which suggest that there has been as little or even less ice in the Arctic as there is now. Uh oh.
"Modern"? That plant was built in the 60s.
According to wikipedia, Portugal produces 52% of its energy from renewable sources, with a combination of hydro, solar, wind and geothermal. Do you see 52% of the energy produced in a country with a population of 11 million as "all bullshit" and a failure to "actually accomplish anything large scale"?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
They are growing, but at a much slower rate than you predicted.
[Alarmist]
Have gnu, will travel.
This is the reason that the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was such a spectacular failure. The proposed fix was a massive wealth transfer to "most vulnerable" developing countries under the supervision of the UN. No way developed countries were going to let the UN imposed taxes on them, and developing countries that were not identified as most vulnerable wanted a bigger piece of the pie.
Maybe that doesn't count as dismantling civilization, but the One World Government guys tried to use AGW as a way to push their agenda. The backlash was swift and firm.
Where are you getting your info from? If it's from Fox News you might want to read deeper into the issue. Yes it's growing but.... there's a lot more to the story!
This myopic view that global warming is supposed to have the same effect everywhere at the same time is disheartening and counter to the discussion that the vast majority of conservationists are trying to have, which is better use of our resources which is actually good for everybody in the long run. I am saddened that people haven't learned from the era of lakes catching on fire prompting the creation of the EPA to begin with. We have to live in our environment, using resources responsibly shouldn't be that controversial.
That said, many predictions about global warming actually are accurate, those that thought the sky were falling were and are just as foolish and those that don't think there is a problem. The people in the middle are capable of making a better world for the people that come after us as opposed to raping all resources until they are gone.
AGW proponents want us to change transportation, construction, agriculture, etc, making almost everything in life more expensive.
It's odd that so few /.ers seem to know this, but "going green" is actually much cheaper than business as usual. Amory Lovins has been demonstrating this for decades already. RMI makes most of its money by consulting with the likes of 3M, IBM, the Pentagon, etc. on how to save TONS of money by investing in efficiency.
It's time to put this myth to bed, once and for all. Going "green" is NOT more expensive, it's actually much cheaper. And this is why more and more companies are ALREADY investing in this area.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
> #1 Japan didn't turn off all nuclear. For one, it would take far longer than a few months to do so. For two, they're taking
> them offline for security checks. They plan on bringing them back online.
If you seriously think they will ever go back online you aren't paying attention. Nope, the lights just went out over there for good. Germany is shutting their nuke down. Frace would if they weren't so utterly dependent on them, and being French and just electing a Socialist government I still wouldn't bet a lot on them still having nukes a decade out.
> #2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half.
Nope. Take the government subsidies out of photoelectric and you wouldn't have bought them. Because the total value of the electricity derived from one over it's normal service life doesn't equal the TCO of the equipment. Large scale solar is close to net positve vs fossil fuel and will eventually get there but the greens are already mobilizing against the large scale installations that are required to generate useful quantities of electricity.
> #3 One solar thermal plant wasn't built because the company didn't want to immediately fork over the money to alleviate environmental concerns..
Probably because they realized the money would tip the project to uncompetitive, or because they realized that paying off this group would not solve the problem, the lawsuits would be endless until they abandoned the project. Alleviating 'environmental concerns' are like achieving diversity, there is no way to actually do it but you can waste an unlimited amount of time and money trying.... or relocate to a more friendly climate.
#4 Even if we are in an ice age (and we really aren't), that doesn't matter one lick.
Actually, if we are heading into an Ice Age there probably isn't anything we can do about it. WIth the current state of Climate Science we probably can't say and with the politics in it no sane person should trust it anyway.
> What matters is that there are drastic changes coming to our civilization, which has been built
> according to the climate variations of the past 300 years. That's going to cost money.
Considering that the only longterm constant in the environment is change that is almost certainly true. Whether it is going to change in the ways predicted by AGW theory, whether it will change BECAUSE of the influence of man, which influences but doesn't determine the BIG question of whether we can control the changes are all pretty open questions at this point.
Democrat delenda est
#2 Solar panels work great. I have em, and they cut my bill in half.
You cut your bill in half by dipping into your neighbours' pockets. Over here in Ontario, the provincial power company used to pay you $0.80/kWh for any power produced by your solar panels that you feed into the grid. At the same time they charged you only $0.06/kWh for the power from the grid. Guess how they make up the difference. Solar panels, unfortunately, can't stand on their own right now. When they do, it'll be great.
Seriously, I'd love to hear a good argument about a) why AGW isn't real, and b) why we shouldn't worry.
You didn't bother much reading the article. Here are a couple of quotes from a staunch AGW proponent, Mr. Lovelock, from the summary:
There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now, The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that...
You clearly didn't work in the cooling business. To them, they sky WAS falling, and it was falling on them. Until they found a replacement (which was more expensive and less efficient, but legal). Dismantling is a very harsh word.
And I'm sure if the cooling business had its way, we'd still be arguing about CFCs and have a massive, inexplicable hole.
Actually, the cooling industry for many enterprise systems was very happy they got to retool entire cooling systems as it made them tons of money.
It's funny, isn't it? A lot of change works that way. Big money fights it and fights it, and then profits significantly when they finally concede. Think safety regulations in cars. The big auto makers fight every new regulation that comes their way, and then when they're forced to do it, they immediately work to make a selling feature out of it over their competition who don't rate nearly as well in the rating system that they didn't want in the first place.
A few years ago, the IIHS celebrated their 50th birthday by doing a head-on collision between a 1959 Chevy BelAir and a 2009 Malibu. Chevrolet has certainly had their lean years, but in general, it's a multi-billion dollar corporation which has managed to turn nearly every regulation to their advantage. There's no reason to think that stricter fuel standards and alternative fuel requirements couldn't see the same level of success over the next 50 years.
The CB App. What's your 20?
There are no alternative power sources? Better not tell all those countries using nuclear and renewable...oh but wait because the nuttiest eco-kooks have a problem with all energy sources that means they're not a real option while what's currently in place is, the theme that keeps coming up in this discussion.
Nuclear is great for keeping my computer running and keeping my house cool. Unfortunately, nuclear does nothing that will get me to work. And yes, eco-kooks are doing everything they can to block nuclear energy. How many new nuclear power plants have been licensed and built in the past 20 years?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Yes, because a large (massive) government that heavily controls industry is soooo much better for the environment. *cough*China*cough*USSR*cough*.
HA shows how little you know about government and industry. The reason China has such filthy industry is unregulated capitalism and lack or regulation enforcement. Has nothing to do with the SIZE of government, simpleton. The problems with the USSR had nothing to do with the SIZE of government and the government had nothing in common with socialism, contrary to populat opinion. In fact, the propagandists in the USSR wanted its citizens to think they were living in socialism because the people there (rightly) wanted it. It was really totalitarian. That all worked out well for the propagandists in the US who wanted us to think socialism sucks, so they could point at the USSR and say "Look, that's an example of socialism". Same propaganda for different purposes. Pick up a book someday.
What amuses me about this is the total lack of irony or self-awareness.
Like, say, the irony of accusing me of directing my comment at a single individual, whereas the text of it does not distinguish a particular philosophy, thus indicating that it applies to extremists of all philosophies, then subsequently falling into an extremist rant yourself? Here, this should help: http://abcteach.com/directory/reading_comprehension/
Hehe yeah, you sure did turn that around on him didn't you? Sure, if you had a solid position you could have falsified what he said, argued against his reasoning, etc., but hey who has time for all of that? Just cut corners, be intellectually lazy, take a shortcut, fail to admit he made a point because you don't have the integrity, or all of the above?
Just say "well Criminal A is a robber and you might think that's bad, but Criminal B is a murderer so obviously Criminal A didn't do anything wrong!" Or if you point out some of Obama's stupidity and someone doesn't like that, they just have to mention some of Bush's stupidity and that magically makes what Obama did ok!
Do you have any idea how fucking infantile that is and how absurd it is for you to think you're making a point here?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Your post points out one of the problems with progress in a lot of controversial areas. The language is half the problem. You say "going green". The going "green" that saves money is not the same "green" that is being recommended to stop AGW. If you suggest that buying a more fuel efficient car is a way to "go green", that MAY save me money. If you suggest that I get rid of my car and switch to public transportation/bicycles to "go green", it would cost me dramatically more money if it didn't crack my ability to keep my job completely and drive me into poverty.
Sure, there are lots of things that are both better for our environment, and saves money. Those are not the things that the parent is talking about. The parent is talking about the bad ideas that get wrapped up with the good ones. A large part of the problem for the "green' folks is that they don't recognize this, and keep proposing bad ideas. So, yes. Going "green" IS more expensive if you are going to use the "environmentalist's" definition.
We see the same bad language being used with "Climate Change". Of course the climate is changing. It always has, and always will. What we see is that the AGW alarmists like to use that definition to get everyone to admit that "Climate Change" is happening, and then change the definition of "Climate Change" to "The world is burning up because someone drove to the store instead of riding a bike".
And where's the actual proof that CO2 does harm? We're still in an Ice Age. We're still in an interglacial period
Fail. Temperature changes aren't spontaneous, they happen for a reason. Mostly because of changes in atmospheric composition.
When the climate reverts to the long-term norm...
It won't. Not unless the atmosphere somehow starts losing greenhouse gases. This is very unlikely given all the power stations, cows, cars, etc that are busy belching it out like there's no tomorrow.
No sig today...
The big problem with all of the aforementioned alternative energy sources is that none of them, even nuclear, can come close to providing the 160 exajoules of energy per year currently gotten from oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil#Definition_and_energy_equivalents). All of them work, if you're willing to accept a civilization that uses about 14.3% of the energy used now. On the plus side, you can still do a lot with 14.3%. On the negative side, yeah, you do sort of have to re-organize civilization in a big way. And we will, by 2100-2150 or so.
Oh, and by the way, nuke plants can be made safe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety), hydro needn't involve large dams at all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_head_hydro_power), solar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye-sensitized_solar_cell) is advancing nicely and getting cheaper, geothermal "earthquakes" are trivial for the most part (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity) and biofuels, (inefficient solar collectors with a direct chemical output) will still have spot uses.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I hate to enter this discussion, but you are desperately wrong about CO2 levels. The Carboniferous period (when life * flourished* on Earth) had CO2 levels nearly 20 times higher than current times. Please read your units carefully. 7000ppm is quite a bit more than our current ~390ppm.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Nuclear is great for keeping my computer running and keeping my house cool. Unfortunately, nuclear does nothing that will get me to work.
What about stuff that runs on electricity: trams, railway, subway, electric cars?
Also, given enough energy, we can make synthetic gasoline.
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/01/nuclear-synfuel-economy.html
How many new nuclear power plants have been licensed and built in the past 20 years?
88 new grid connections in the last 20 years, 73.3 GW total.
It is obvious that this build rate could very easily be at least 10 times higher.
http://pris.iaea.org/Public/WorldStatistics/OperationalByAge.aspx
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Yawn. Not that old chestnut again.
No sig today...
I did a quick skim, and it seems to conflate the idea of Lovins saying what 'could be' with what 'actually happened', which of course is comparing apples to oranges.
For example, from TFA:
"The piece predicted that if the U.S. were to embrace Lovins’s vision, by around 2005 more than a third of the country’s energy would be coming from “soft technologies,”"
Then,
"So how did Lovins’s prediction turn out?"
Huh? the US most definitely did not embrace his vision, so of course the prediction is void.
There's a bunch of that kind of stuff in there. Try again.
Slandering scientists by the think-tank approved "they do it for the graaaaants" gives insightful mods these days. Nice to know. /me waves to the shill brigade.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor.
This is because agricultural productivity was so much lower in the past. It's not that food is artificially cheap today – it's that food is much cheaper and easier to produce now due to advances in technology. Mechanization, chemical research (fertilizers) and more recently biotechnology have all dramatically increased how much food you can get out of an acre of land, and decreased how much labor you need to put in to get it. Just 100 years ago, farmers were about 31% of the workforce in the United States. Nearly one of three Americans was a farmer. Today it's one-tenth that and yet we are producing far more food than ever before.
It's time to put this myth to bed, once and for all. Going "green" is NOT more expensive, it's actually much cheaper.
Show me some vaguely credible math.
however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
First of all, it's important that people know what "sea ice" is and its not. It *is* frozen sea water, which in the Antarctic mostly melts in the summer. It is *not* the permanent Antarctic ice sheets, which originate in glaciers (land ice, not sea ice, even though it is on the sea). The ice sheets are losing about 40 gigtons of mass per year[5].
Second, the gain in sea ice in the Antarctic is tiny, and it is not the result of atmospheric temperature decreases. There has been an increase in Antarctic atmosphere temperatures [1], accompanied by a stronger winds blowing cold surface water to the northwest which produces the increase in winter sea ice extent [2]. In the lee of the Antarctic Peninsula, which blocks this surface movement, there has been a dramatic decrease in sea ice [3]. Another factor is that slightly warmer surface temperatures can actually lead to an increase in ice extent by reducing the salinity of water near the edge of ice-formation[6].
Overall, the changes in polar sea ice are consistent with models predicting CO2 induced global warming [2][4], and in any case land ice is a much better indication of antarctic temperature changes, and that has being lost; if the small sea ice increases we've been seeing were due to cooling, we would see an equilibrium or gain in land ice.
CITATIONS:
[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/abs/nature07669.html
[2] http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#wintertimeantarctic
[3] http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/seaice.html
[4] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/278/5340/1104.short
[5] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010EGUGA..12.6127I
[6] http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The solar thermal plant in Cali worked great. We should be building a bunch of these - it's proven as base load power generation, not just powerpoint slides. And if there were any scarcity in natural gas, maybe we would (but wow is the market ever flooded in a glut of natural gas - they'll be paying you to burn it soon at this rate).
We really are in an ice age [wikipedia.org].
You really ought to read your own links. Glasshouses, etc. come to mind. To wit: "Currently, the earth is in an interglacial period, which marked the beginning of the Holocene epoch." Not to mention that wikipedia is NOT an authoritative resource. So really, your correction is.... lacking.
Start here: how does a greenhouse work?
How is that relevant? A greenhouse works on entirely different principles from how greenhouse gases work. I mean, I appreciate that you can probably trip up a lot of people with that question, but you're really not helping your cause here. All you're doing is coming across somebody who reads the first two lines of a Wikipedia article and thinks he has solved every problem in the field.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor. How about spending 25%.
Really now? We can expect this good outcome for the same reason that we can expect not lose half of our children to childhood diseases. We now have the knowhow to produce food at a rate which frees up most of the population for other activities. The world has changed and the old situation is no longer relevant. It should also be noted that our ancestors worked hard to build the future we now inhabit, so their children (us) could live in a better world. Why should we throw away their gift to us so easily?
Additionally, I don't think you understand just how dire the implications are of raising agricultural prices. It won't be the first world middle class that suffers the most from this, but the first world poor and third world population. If it costs 25% of a first world middle class income to buy food for the year, then that implies it would cost around $10,000 to not starve each year (around $27/day). Anyone making less than that basically starves, which is a LOT of people. Furthermore, we can't just use wealth redistribution or similar methods to solve the problem, as the prices would be higher due to lower supply. With such a large change, even if we were distributing the food fairly we wouldn't have nearly enough to keep everyone alive (and a fair distribution is overly idealistic anyway). Basically, what you're talking about will kill billions. When billions of lives are on the line, then perhaps we should put a bit more thought into how to avoid that outcome, hmm?
Lastly, who are you to tell me how much of my income I should have to spend on food? How about spending as little as possible to get what I want? If only we had some system that would set prices to match the current availability and desirability of goods...
Now that's not saying things should stay the same. The current situation is unsustainable due to resource limitations and/or environmental impact. Plus, new energy technologies will eventually yield much higher levels of energy (nuclear energy [which includes solar] is way better than chemical energy). However, we shouldn't dive headfirst into this without a really good plan...a plan which will not likely kill billions of people and not meet heavy resistance from billions more who know that a better life is still possible...and also hopefully a plan that won't lead to an overcontrolling central government that sticks its nose into every little area of our lives.
You do realize that all those periods had definitely no humans, and only a smattering of mammals around? Yes, evolution was at different stages, but to argue that because we had some giant ferns at that time, that we humans would do well, is... well, worthy of various double-facepalm memes. Not to mention that the issue isn't so much that we can't adapt to a new normal, but that in order to do so, it will cost a shit ton of lives and money. Just look at what the medieval warm period did to Europe.
So really - if you're that worried about the US debt, you might want to look into some long-term climate mitigation, because living in a world of even 1000 ppm CO2 is going to be dramatically different than the cozy setup we have right now.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Unfortunately for wide applicability, 57% of that 52% is hydro power. Hydro is great, but there's a limited amount of energy you can produce with it in any given area. Also, in small areas you can find extreme concentrations of hydro power. The most extreme example is Quebec, which produces 97% of its electrical energy from hydro power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro-Qu%C3%A9bec Quebec has been running on clean energy for decades without much effort, but it is unrealistic to assume that this can be done everywhere.
The other 43% is mostly wind, which also suffers from placement issues.
That said, it's a good thing that Portugal is taking advantage of its natural clean energy resources.
You need to read more about the capitalist paradise of the late 19th century, robber barons, company towns/stores, child labour in factories, the Triangle Shirtwaist and Binghamton fires, etc. Or more recently the pollution of Love Canal and other Superfund sites. Also check out the Pinkerton Agency's role in suppressing labour strife, which they had often exaggerated and escalated to drum up more business.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I don't know where people get off thinking they can spend 5% of their income on food when throughout history it required practically 100% of their labor. How about spending 25%.
Really now? We can expect this good outcome for the same reason that we can expect not lose half of our children to childhood diseases. We now have the knowhow to produce food at a rate which frees up most of the population for other activities. The world has changed and the old situation is no longer relevant. It should also be noted that our ancestors worked hard to build the future we now inhabit, so their children (us) could live in a better world. Why should we throw away their gift to us so easily?
Additionally, I don't think you understand just how dire the implications are of raising agricultural prices. It won't be the first world middle class that suffers the most from this, but the first world poor and third world population. If it costs 25% of a first world middle class income to buy food for the year, then that implies it would cost around $10,000 to not starve each year (around $27/day). Anyone making less than that basically starves, which is a LOT of people. Furthermore, we can't just use wealth redistribution or similar methods to solve the problem, as the prices would be higher due to lower supply. With such a large change, even if we were distributing the food fairly we wouldn't have nearly enough to keep everyone alive (and a fair distribution is overly idealistic anyway). Basically, what you're talking about will kill billions. When billions of lives are on the line, then perhaps we should put a bit more thought into how to avoid that outcome, hmm?
Lastly, who are you to tell me how much of my income I should have to spend on food? How about spending as little as possible to get what I want? If only we had some system that would set prices to match the current availability and desirability of goods...
Now that's not saying things should stay the same. The current situation is unsustainable due to resource limitations and/or environmental impact. Plus, new energy technologies will eventually yield much higher levels of energy (nuclear energy [which includes solar] is way better than chemical energy). However, we shouldn't dive headfirst into this without a really good plan...a plan which will not likely kill billions of people and not meet heavy resistance from billions more who know that a better life is still possible...and also hopefully a plan that won't lead to an overcontrolling central government that sticks its nose into every little area of our lives.
I wasn't really addressing result. I've read plenty of things on both sides of the political fence that predict the death of literally billions. The truth is, food is getting more expensive and that trend will likely continue (trends tend to continue in general). Any level headed assessment will tell you that our farming practices are unsustainable. I'm not anybody to *tell* you what percentage of your income should go to food, but I can tell you that it *will* increase by the day. I'm more the bearer of bad news here, than the person dictating it. What I'm saying is we're 'diving headfirst into this' whether we have a plan or not, so best to have one and the status quo isn't a 'plan'. Truthfully, I'm more interested in saving the planet for the next few generations and making it a more livable place for the people who are born here rather than propping up a few extra billion people artificially and in misery. The planet should probably have 1-2 billion people on it. We don't get along in these numbers, we don't live well in these numbers, several billion people are better off dead anyway. Sorry, but that's my opinion.
James Lovelock's views have always been extreme and have always been well outside the realms of accepted science. He is not a climate scientist, nor does he have any backing from any reputable climate scientist.
Not only that, but he has gone from one extreme straight into another. At first he said climate scientists were wrong and predicted worldwide doom. Now he says climate scientists are wrong and nothing bad is going to happen. So, is he right or are the scientists?
Anyone who still thinks there is a debate about whether or not the climate is changing due to human activities is someone who has not read and understood the science. It's not a natural cycle. Something capable of heating a planet up by at least 1C isn't something thousands of scientists would miss, especially given the short time scale that it has happened over. With no other external input of heat, the only reasonable explanation is that the Earth isn't radiating as much heat away. And it's pretty clear what has changed on the planet over the past 100 years to elicit that kind of response.
In scientific circles, the debate about whether or not it's happening was resolved a long time ago. The debate now is how much of an impact it will have on us.
~X~