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NASA's Hansen Calls Out Obama On Climate Change
Hugh Pickens writes "Dr James Hansen, director of the NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who first made warnings about climate change in the 1980s, writes in the NY Times that he was troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves 'regardless of what we do.' According to Hansen 'Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.' Hansen says that instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world's governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year."
The level playing field for carbon neutrality is a sham designed to do nothing more than transfer wealth from first-world economies to third-world economies. In the process, all you really do is set a soft cap on carbon emissions without reducing actual dependence upon fossil fuels.
We can achieve the same goal of reducing carbon output by instead investing that money into first-world research and development of alternative fuels. Full implementation then eliminates carbon emissions altogether, a goal which can't be achieved by market-based carbon neutrality alone.
Blame Canada!
Overpopulation.
If you want less carbon emitted, reduce our population.
We are not going to achieve zero carbon emissions, but we need more (a) natural land and forests to absorb that and (b) fewer producing sources.
All people produce some carbon. Having seven and then nine billion people guarantees we will be unable to stop the increase even if we all live in mud huts, eat vegetables and bury our poop.
Futurist Traditionalism
Every political debate about climate change countermeasures comes down to the same fundamental conflict:
Politician: "My advisers inform me that if we do not take action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, there will be serious global climate repercussions."
Public: "Well, reduce emissions then."
Politician: "This does mean some unavoidable increase in gas prices, but -"
Public: "FUCK THE CLIMATE! Give us cheap gas!"
People are happy to do something to help reduce emissions, providing this something doesn't involve any expense or inconvenience for them personally. Politicians know this. There is a big public demand to exploit every drop of oil that can be found in order to keep gas prices down, and it's very difficult for anyone hoping to get elected again to go against that.
The reality is that global warming probably sounds kind of good to most Canadians, and billions of dollars in oil revenues probably sound even better. (Whether it should is, of course, a different question.)
The ONLY way to prevent future global warming due to Carbon Monoxide emissions is to develop a credible alternative to petroleum for cars. I suggest a small "carbon tax" that is, by statute, 100% dedicated to alternative fuels research. The Chinese are actively pursuing this. Do we (as Americans -- sorry to all those not American) want the 21st century to be the "Chinese Century"?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Jonathan Adler agrees, and thinks Hansen's proposal is a viable market-based approach, and better than the cap-and-trade approaches that have been getting more press.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That's a good point. What I said was that even if we cut emissions to the bare minimum by living in mud huts, subsistence farming, etc. we're not going to be able to stop carbon emissions.
If we visualize this as an equation:
P x R = I
Population times average Resource use equals total Impact.
Then we can see that if we decrease R, but raise P, we cancel out any benefits gained.
Even more, there's another variable, which is the only truly fixed commodity we have -- the open land that replenishes our water, air, etc. and filters out toxins.
P x R = I - F
If we reduce the amount of Forest, we have more impact. There is also a minimum amount of Forest below which we start losing natural species and living in a toxic gasmasks-required Fallout 3 type world.
Futurist Traditionalism
So on this website whenever Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, etc. do anything that America doesn't like it's universally applauded as "standing up against evil imperialist right-wing Chrisitan America" No matter how bad or destructive the action, it's OK because it's "speaking truth to power" or some nonsense.
Now we have Canada basically saying that it's going to use its own oil, and the exact same people are going apoplectic. International intervention suddenly become
Note that these same people are strangely silent when Brazil or Venezuela develop new oil resources, and I haven't heard any huge outrage over the fact that drilling off the coast of Cuba will put oil rigs just a few miles from the Florida Keys. The same people who complain that America == Somalia (you've seen those posts) because we don't have the federal government in control of all economic activity never complain when foreign corporations drill for oil righ in the middle of sensitive areas.. as long as the money will be going to a government they approve of.
I've come to realize that environmental movement doesn't really care about what is done to the planet, only on who is doing it. Put up a windmill in America that a bird might run into? Destroying the world! Use nuclear power in Japan? CHINA SYNDROME! Setup nuclear plants in Iran that are known to be using unsafe designs that are intended to produce weapons-grade plutonium instead of producing electricity? No problem. Put an oil pipeline directly through the rainforest in Venezuela to prop up Hugo Chavez? That's a wonder of the world showing how great socialism is!
I've seen it all before and this is just a thin coating of green paint on a corrupt and broken set of ideas.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Consider the vast amount of energy the sun is pumping into earth (not to mention all the stuff that doesn't hit earth....). We need to get to that, instead of plundering resources that could be used for other things other than just burning them, or in some cases even are best just left there. If worst comes to worst, we let "elites" and private, short-sighted interests run amok with this, and when they're done with it let it serve as an excuse for even more control and subsidies (for more stuff that does more harm than good, ofc). Instead of, you know, being gentle(wo)men and trying to get free energy, shelter and food for everybody. How can we even look in the mirror.. Oh wait, we can't, that solves that.
I know this is a rather random rant off-topic; I have no clue about the details about any of this, anyway... but "the big picture" gets me every time. It's just nuts! No convincing me otherwise.. we have a veritable Garden of Eden on one hand, and New York and Calcutta is what we turn it into. WTF.
That's a debate between an adult with an assertiveness problem and a child acting out its candy seeking behavior.
The adult doesn't have to justify anything to the child who will throw up when he inevitably fails to regulate his intake.
It ended with we are all a bunch of retarded commies and the world is going socialist and the sky is falling.
Take the Red Pill.
What Hansen doesn't say about the Pliocene is that back then, North America and South America were divided continents.
What we call the Gulf Stream today (and some people seem to be quite impressed by it) would have been the Pacific Stream back then. It transported a much larger amount of heat to Europe and beyond than it currently receives from that puny bathtub called the Gulf of Mexico. Of course that had a large influence on the amount of ice in and around the arctic sea and the global sea level.
There is no causative link from higher CO2 levels during that age to higher sea levels, it is merely a correlation.
From http://stoptarsands.wordpress.com/:
Cows and sheep eat grass. Humans cannot eat grass. It's pretty simple. It doesn't matter how much grass and scrubby plants cows need to eat to produce a kilo of beef, because it won't do us a bit of good if they don't.
Unless you've got some genius idea, of course, for how we can suddenly grow an additional stomach and majorly rejig our gut bacteria. That could work too.
I don't think China's track record on the environment is anything for others to emulate...
As a lay person, I have honestly tried to follow all the arguments and counter-arguments about catastrophic AGW, the only kind of climate change that matters -- and that we could do anything about. One thing is clear to me: claims of imminent catastrophic changes such as 50-foot elevations in sea level are all highly exaggerated. Yes, the climate is changing -- as it ever has -- but it is doing so much more slowly than predicted: my layman's sense of it is that for each foot of claimed rise there's been a half-inch actually observed.
The other Chicken Little angle on this is that yes, there have been huge changes in climate -- but not caused by Man (at least, not yet). The cafe where I'm writing this comment was under a mile of ice not too long ago, in geologic terms. It has never been shown to my satisfaction that the last ice age was caused by CO2. There are a lot of competing theories, and CO2 is just one of them. Until there is clear proof regarding the mechanism for ice ages, why should we believe anyone who claims to know the mechanism for warming ages?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Great principle. What about charging for the environmental destruction many third world nations are guilty of? What about charging for the enormous population growth that Asia and Africa are imposing on the world? What about charging for the stupendous costs environmental destruction in Europe over the last 5000 years has imposed on the rest of the world, not to mention the consequences of European colonialism and emigration, which kick-started these processes all around the world?
Depending on how you account for these factors, you reach very different answers about who should pay for carbon emissions. There is no objectively right answer, and that's why there won't be any meaningful agreement on carbon emissions.
...nuclear energy is bad, nuclear energy is bad, la la la I can't hear you nuclear energy is bad.
Hansen would be garner more support from a wider base and generally more acceptance if instead of trying to stop people from doing things he encouraged them to do something...such as invest in nuclear power.
If the AGW crowd expended only half as much energy advocating and educating the public about nuclear power, and how it could solve the AGW problem, as they do with silly stunts and way over the top scenarios (50 feet higher eh?), it would be a win win. CO2 would be cut and we could tell the Oil Tyrants to fuck off and die.
I know that Hansen supports nuclear, including Breeder reactors for waste recycling, but he's not very vocal about it.
People respond better when you come to them with a solution rather than admonishments, guilt and doomsday predictions.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Hansen says that tar sands contain a lot of carbon. Duh.
Obama realizes that Canada is going to exploit this resource no matter what we do, which also sounds correct to me.
Hansen seems to be shooting the messenger, but that doesn't alter the fact that the message is correct.
Let's put this alarmist prediction into context:
Liberty in your lifetime
We aren't going to stop using whatever kind of oil we find, obviously. So we need to clean up this carbon out of the air. Classically, nature does this for us but we seem to have overloaded that mechanism. Trees have been the acme of biological agents for scrubbing the air, but we need a new one.
We need a plant that grows fast, and by growing and producing it's seeds/fruit it consumes a lot of carbon. We have just such a perfect candidate, but leave it to politics to forbid it. I am talking about hemp. Hemp has the bulk and the seed production that will yank carbon out of the air by the scruff of it's neck. It grows small tree tall in a single season and it sucks so much carbon that the seeds are teaming with a hydrocarbon.
Historically, it's a weed that farmers hate because it leaches soil quickly of nutrients. To me this isn't a problem with modern hydroponics. We have plenty of recyclable products and our own sewer to feed a hydroponic system that would feed these hemp plants. It would process waste and carbon into a plant that has more uses than I can count.
With hydroponics, lots of real estate that is worthless to build on can be used for hemp patches, piping a rich slurry to feed them, processing our own waste. We don't need to cut into crop lands, hence the "leaching" effect can be controlled.
Of course there are roadblocks to this solution. The cotton industry has been an enemy of hemp, mostly out of fear that it will replace them. Of course we have the anti-drug crowd that will insist that hippies are going to smoke it. Counters to that are that is creates new industry and innovations from a very "green" resource that is not only renewable, but it helps scrub the air. Everyone wins. Except for the hippies who tried to smoke it, who are wreathing in agony from a "ditch weed" headache.
Take the Red Pill.
I hate to say Obama's right, but he's right that the Canadian shale oil will be mined and used regardless of what we do (unless we intervene militarily, of course). From an environmental perspective, it is better that the oil be refined in the US where we can have stricter rules on the refining process to limit pollution. From a strategic perspective we should want that oil coming our direction so we don't need to import so much from unfriendly countries and so that we have a secure supply (and one less supply for China). Obama should have approved the Keystone pipeline a long time ago instead of trying to postpone the politically dangerous decision until after the election.
I have concerns about global warming but not being heavily immersed in the science I have to made my judgement largely based on how much I trust the people and the motives of the people on each side. I have to say that the pro-warming side lost a lot of credibility with me when they started trying to slander their opponents with the word "denier' (which was before then usually part of the term "Holocaust denier"). Such behavior suggests they feel they can't win a fair debate and have to resort to name calling.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Demographers expect the world population to stabilize by approximately mid-century. Sure, population growth until then will increase CO2 emissions. But it won't increase them nearly as much as previously poor populations industrializing and dramatically ramping up their energy consumption. Rising energy demand in currently developing nations, not rising population, is the real problem.
As a scientist, I'm frustrated by the apparent fact that most people don't care about the science.
When people care about something, they become involved. When they become involved, they ask questions. Sometimes the answers make sense, sometimes they don't. When they don't, they'll call you on it, whether it's valid or invalid. And what do they get in return?
"You are not qualified"
"You are a denier"
"Shill"
etc.
For me, I have a real problem wit the whole temperature reconstruction based on tree rings. First, the divergence issue that started in the fifties. No one has an explanation for it. If the trees and temps don't jive now, then why is it valid to say they jived a thousand years ago? Any reasonable person would think that would invalidate the entire correlation between tree rings and temps because you don't know when else there was a divergence.
And even without that issue, there is the paucity of actual data itself. If tree rings ARE valid temp indicators then they should have tens of thousands of samples from throughout the world. As far as I can tell there are not that many samples. Since these provide pretty much the entire context from which we evaluate todays temps, it makes no sense to rely on such few samples.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Hansen says that instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs,
Pay to whom? There may in fact be legitimate science behind this whole global warming thing. But when we start talking about paying, I've got to wonder who is collecting the money. If in fact there is a relationship between tons of CO2, temperature and sea level rise, then I'd expect my payments to go to buying up land in low lying places like The Netherlands or the Seychelles which will be flooded. But somehow, I doubt that this will be happening. Someone (namely governments or carbon traders like Gore) will be the recipients of these payments. But they incur no actual loss from this hypothetical sea level rise, or coral reef death, or whatever. So, in the final analysis, imposing fees for CO2 production will do little or nothing to compensate the people suffering from these effects.
And we all know what happens when we hand governments money for free, so to speak. With no obligation to actually compensate the losing parties, they'll just spend it on whatever. And become dependent on CO2 production as a means of revenue, thus undermining the whole justification for the charges in the first place.
Have gnu, will travel.
It doesn't matter how much grass and scrubby plants cows need to eat to produce a kilo of beef, because it won't do us a bit of good if they don't.
In modern farming, what percentage of cows do you think are fed using only scrubby grass land as a food source? We're talking here about land that is so useless that it can't be used to grow any human consumable crops like rice, wheat, potatoes etc. I would bet that the vast majority of "green grass" cow farms in the U.S. and Western Europe would be just as capable of growing potatoes as grass.
Do these calculations give an argument in favour of vegetarianism, on the grounds of lower energy consumption? It depends on where the animals feed. Take the steep hills and mountains of Wales, for example. Could the land be used for anything other than grazing? Either these rocky pasturelands are used to sustain sheep, or they are not used to help feed humans. You can think of these natural green slopes as maintenance-free biofuel plantations, and the sheep as automated self-replicating biofuel-harvesting machines. The energy losses between sunlight and mutton are substantial, but there is probably no better way of capturing solar power in such places. (I’m not sure whether this argument for sheep-farming in Wales actually adds up: during the worst weather, Welsh sheep are moved to lower fields where their diet is supplemented with soya feed and other food grown with the help of energy-intensive fertilizers; what’s the true energy cost? I don’t know.) Similar arguments can be made in favour of carnivory for places such as the scrublands of Africa and the grasslands of Australia; and in favour of dairy consumption in India, where millions of cows are fed on by-products of rice and maize farming.
On the other hand, where animals are reared in cages and fed grain that humans could have eaten, there’s no question that it would be more energy-efficient to cut out the middlehen or middlesow, and feed the grain directly to humans. - source
I agree with everything you said, btw
In modern farming, what percentage of cows do you think are fed using only scrubby grass land as a food source? We're talking here about land that is so useless that it can't be used to grow any human consumable crops like rice, wheat, potatoes etc.
That would be pretty much all the farming in the Scottish Highlands, for example. You can do pretty well with grazing animals on land that would be damn near impossible to cultivate, because it's too wet, too rocky, too vertical or just plain the wrong sort of soil.
You know that Aberdeen Angus beef you like so much? Guess what kind of farmland the cows are grazed on?
The money is at the crux of the matter. The technology, politics, legislation, public opinion, will all follow once it is decided who gets the money. As I see it, at this point the money basically goes to the auto and fuel industries, and they are behind much of what people are debating about. The people spending the money are mostly disorganized and not aware of the size of their financial outlays, or not seeing many options. If you get together a bunch of companies which spend enormous amounts of money on transportation, and are not profiting from this business, I think we will have a significant lobby group. Supermarkets, stores, consumers, manufacturers, delivery companies, farmers, most businesses simply spend huge amounts just getting their stuff around. They have no option but to pay out for the use of trucks, drivers, fuel, taxes, insurance, and roads, mostly. If a cluster of non-trucks-and-oil companies in big cities get together with city governments to find ways to get rid of their trucks, the traffic, noise, and expense associated with them, that might be successful. Say if 2000 stores in NYC, SF, or London, got allied with city government and some tech companies, to invent some federated-automated-electric-night-truck-drones-delivery system downtown, that might work.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I really don't under Dr James Hansen's complaint about Obama's statement. It seems pretty clear to me that there are three issues at hand: that climate change exists, that Canada (just like about any other nation*) is more interested in its own short-term economic well-being than its long-term economic well-being, and that if there's any real interest in attacking big issues like climate change there has to be a process in place such that short-term interests aren't allowed to override long-term interests except in real emergencies, for which there should be long-term planning to account for the presence of such issues. When it comes to the Keystone Pipeline, as I understand it, Congress was trying to push construction of it unilateral to any standing policy and process to approve such pipelines and other works.
If Hansen's issue is with the policy and process, he should make the case to change the policy and process, not attack Obama for trying to faithfully carry out his duty as Executive of the Government. That Obama's hands are effectively tied in that, only able to make the rhetorical comments of the need for long-term change--which he made--, his duty is to approve the Keystone Pipeline iff the proper policy and procedure is followed and to argue against circumventing that process, either for or against that pipeline regardless of his personal feelings, is entirely proper and right. Hansen's real complaint should be against Canada for not having the policy and process in place to allow for the short-term excavation and exploitation of those tar sands, damn the future, and Congress for not only trying to circumvent the current policies and processes but further that those policies and processes, being insufficient, should be modified to accommodate stricter guidelines such that if and when tar shale, sands, etc are excavated and exploited, there won't be a last-minute appeal to try to the consideration of what, if any, government involvement there should be.
I mean, I know it's fun and everything to attack the President because as he generally has some leeway in how to act when it comes to the law, but do we really want another Unilateral President like Bush, who decides who is or is not a citizen, who is or is not a person, etc and then execute the laws as he sees fit? The whole point of a representative democracy is to have a person that represents you, but clearly a single person as President cannot adequately represent the will of the people. Neither, really, can Congress. Leaning too strongly on the idea of "representative" really just turns the office of President into a four year dictator, and that's clearly undesirable. No, Obama is doing exactly what he is meant to do, to try to speak to the will of the people, even if they're not exactly shouting cries about the environment as loudly right now as they are speaking about the need for jobs. Because, in the end, as much as his words have weight, it's Congress who actually carries out the act of legislation and has the power to have real effect. The President may try to rally the people to direct their Congressmen to act--and to that, I'd readily admit Obama isn't charismatic enough and is failing in that point--, but it's invariably in the hands of the people to effect change. But, I guess it's hard to get Hansen and others to accept that you can't bully a few politicians for the people's own good. And if the people refuse to speak loudly enough, then clearly the people can be fucked over. And since Canada is run under the same sort of system, well, it does little to pretend that Canada isn't just as guilty of being a global warming contributor and failed to meet the Kyoto Protocol--although they finally got around to admitting to it and pulling out of their commitment.
*Democracies behave this way. Even dictatorships behave this way, although they generally have and are more willing to brutally repress any sort of uprising. Of course, given conditions bad enough, that may not be enough. I can only say I'm thankful I've never had to consider the choice between possible slow starvation, torture, death in police custody, or possible martyrdom in an uprising. I certainly don't think I'd really consider rising up over global warming.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
If the trees and temps don't jive now, then why is it valid to say they jived a thousand years ago?
If you throw out the enitire TR proxy the results are virtually the same as only throwing out the divergent part. This in itself strongly suggests the "good" part of the proxy does indeed correlate well with the average of the other proxies wich in turn correlate with instrumental records and/or isotopic 'clocks'. As you say the TR proxy diverges from the instrumental record after the 1950's, and it's unknown why this is so, but it doesn't change the reconstruction in any meaningful way.
You should always consult the primary source, especially when the subject is AGW. If you haven't read the hockey stick paper and it's 2005(?) follow up, then do so, they list the proxies and discuss the tree ring problem. Proxy data sets can be found at Nasa's paleoclimate data repository. I think you'll find there are more than a "few samples" in the 3377 TR data sets they have on their books. Yes, data SETS, not data points.
Speaking of sources, you may want to try running your bullshit detector over the primary source that led you into this well known cul-de-sc of irrelevant trivia.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Overpopulation is certainly a huge problem
Why would you claim that when it's not anywhere near the truth? We have no problems with overpopulation on Earth. In fact, we could easily sustain a tenfold increase in numbers - although that's irrelevant. The rate of population increase has gone done over the last few decades and the medium UN projection is for us to never even reach 10 billion but to max out slightly below that in the ~2070 timeframe.
Overpopulation is not an issue. People who claim it is scare the crap out of me. What's the agenda?
it's in my head
I know, let's subsidize pastureland instead of corn. We can do it by having people install wind/solar generation in their pastures, and subsidize THAT!
Oh, we are you say? Hm.
My geography teacher warned us about it in 1978.
Korma: Good
First off, Canada will simply build a pipeline to the west or the east. Not a problem for them. IOW, this WILL be coming.
.5B each year. Basically, that will spend 10B over 6 years. The money for it should come from a tax on the pipeline.
Instead, what O SHOULD be doing, is pushing as modified NAT GAS act, along with more money for electric cars and bio-energy.
The NAT GAS act should be modified to quickly get commercial vehicles as well NG refueling moving as quickly as possible. Instead of 1B a year for 5 years, it should start out at 3B, and decrease
Likewise, there should be an increase in spending on bio-energy, in particular, for Joules Energy and other Algae based systems.
Also, there are means to convert coal into Methane. One of them is Great Point Energy which just got 1B from China. But there are others.
Finally, a bigger push to instead electric chargers makes sense.
Now, why do this? Because keystone is NOT about bringing oil/gasoline to America. It is about exporting it mostly to China. Great. China will take this from someplace. Since China uses tariffs (both exports and imports) to fund most of its development, it is time to make use of these products destined for China to also make the west move to a cleaner solution.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And that doesn't even take into account carbon sinks. The US still is 30% forested and has 3,000,000 km2 of forests, down from about 5,000,000 km2 preindustrial, busily capturing CO2. For most of its history, the US was almost certainly a net carbon sink, with the switchover probably occurring sometime in the second half of the 20th century.
The UK is 10% forested and has 24,000 km2 of forests, down from about 200,000 km2 preindustrial. Since the start of the industrial revolution, the UK has probably always been a net carbon emitter.
THIS is a great post. Well thought out, measured, reasoning, articulate. Please allow me to respond in the same manner.
OP is suggesting, to borrow your car analogy, that we are not in fact driving off a cliff, but that we ARE in fact, headed down a hill. You look both look 20 miles down the road, and see that it is a thousand feet lower. He is suggesting that there is a road, some parts perhaps steeper than others, that leads down the mountain. You are suggesting a cliff, with no safe way from here to there.
If, over the next 5 years, the global temperature raises 10 degrees, we are indeed going to feel like we drove off a cliff. Millions of homes will be destroyed in floods, global crop failures will cause mass starvation and global resource wars. Granted. If that same change takes place over a hundred, or two hundred years, we will deal with it. Melting icecaps will increase the amount of water in the water cycle, increasing precipitation. People will slowly stop buying beachfront property as it becomes unstable and dangerous, one lot at a time. Huge expanses of land in the north (Think Northern Canada, and Northern Russia, and Greenland!) will go from useless, to marginal, to adequate over a few generations. Billions of people, over generations, will each make small, individual choices that will benefit them, and as a species we will cope just fine.
Most "AGW-deniers" aren't necessarily challenging the idea that average temperatures may be rising, on average, by a fraction of a degree per decade. The challenge comes to one of the following:
1. That the change is primarily caused by man
2. That the change will continue IRREVERSIBLY, FOREVER
3. That the change will at some point become exponential
4. That the change will occur at a catastrophically rapid pace
5. That warming is, in and of itself, A Bad Thing
6. That humanity will not be able to adapt, or will simply sit on the beach and drown
7. That the solution involves allowing someone to create, from thin air, carbon credits, which can then be sold for real money
8. That the solution is to force a reduction of the population, regardless of method
9. That the solution involves creating some sort of super-government to mandate things globally
When one of these points is brought up, and the answer is "SHUT UP YOU DENIER!" the conversation degrades quickly. Thank you for responding civilly, and being willing to listen.
These are the very same lunatics that say they will not vote for Obama because he is not far-left enough for their liking.
Scary shit.
Alternative fuels are unfortunately a sham. No technology or mix of technologies provides even a tenth of the energy output of fossil fuels. Affordability of basic commodities ( plastics) and food production ( fertilisers, without which we could barely feed 4 billion) all depend on petroleum. It's not just energy. The amount of acreage needed to grow biofuels would need to be greater than the total used for food production, and this is WITH synthetic fertilisers made from oil. The whole industrial paradigm is going to rot, a lot of people will have to die before we're anything like 'sustainable' without fossil fuels. Yes, you can help shorten this painful interlude now. Kill yourself.
James P. Hogan on Global Warming: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/hogan2.html
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=1171
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/category.php?id=21
"But even if the recent warming trends were shown to be largely of our own doing, there's more reason for celebration than the panic that we're witnessing. Warm worlds are cheerier, healthier, more secure, and better able to support a richer and more abundant biosphere than cold ones. On land and in the oceans, life thrives in the green equatorial and temperate zones, not the icy higher latitudes. A warmer world would transform the vast wastes of Siberia and northern Canada into forests, gardens, granaries, and habitats, opening up huge areas to accommodate the growing population that some view as a blight, and bring water back to such regions as the Sahara and Middle East, that were once verdant. So, if human activity is capable of making a measurable difference, one would think that a good policy to adopt would be to help things along by using the abundance of energy that the world offers, to increase wealth and living standards generally, and enjoy the environmental benefits."
The deeper issue is the unfairness that some people benefit from this (Canadians, Russians) while others lose out (islanders, those with beachfront property, those in places where the weather worsens, etc.). Our form of geographical sovereignty and related economics of real estate are not designed to deal with the consequences of global changes from "externalities".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
is looking at the predictions made by climate scientists and the honesty to remark when those predictions fail. Predictions are either accurate or not.
--
damaged by dogma
That would be pretty much all the farming in the Scottish Highlands, for example.
Nobody is disputing that in some geographically poor areas grazing is advantageous - the quote I provided said as much - and the Scottish Highlands is recognised as an agriculturally disadvantaged area. The rest of the E.U. isn't. So, the question is, what percentage of sheep and cow sold in the E.U. is reared on land similar to the Scottish Highlands? Because if it is less than 95%, then your claim that "It doesn't matter how much grass and scrubby plants cows need to eat to produce a kilo of beef, because it won't do us a bit of good if they don't" is invalid, as clearly some significant amount of the land could be used to farm alternative crops.
You know that Aberdeen Angus beef you like so much? Guess what kind of farmland the cows are grazed on?
Aberdeen Angus is a breed that is reared worldwide; the term is not geographically protected for beef farmed in the Scottish Highlands. Aberdeen Angus farmed in southern England is probably fed from land that could just as easily be used to grow human consumable crops, and the diet is probably supplemented with grain and soya.
Bullshit.
In the US fuel taxes pay for 100% of roads AND subsidize mass transit.
Sorry, but no, they don't. They don't pay for the roads, much less subsidizing mass transit. That was the theory behind gasoline tax, that it would pay for roads, but it turns out to be so incredibly difficult politically to raise the gas tax that at the moment fuel taxes don't come anywhere near paying for roads. They should, but they don't.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
...the study of paying people to dig holes and then fill them up again. Of course, the jobs are just what is seen...
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
that you can make ad hominem attacks on the presenter, and be done with it. Ironic.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Everytime a scientist or engineer who is not a "climate scientist" speaks out against anthropogenic global warming, the AGW fanboys (most of whom are not themselves scientists or engineers) flood internet message boards with shrieks that the skeptics are not qualified to speak on the subject because their degrees are not in climate science...
Hansen has degrees in physics, math, and astronomy...
He lacks a degrees in the following applicable fields:
1. Geology
2. Chemistry
3. Petroleum engineering
4. Climate science
He is, therefore (by AGW fanboy standards), speaking outside his field and his input is not valid.
Live by the sword, die by the sword
If it was George W Bush, he would have sent fighter jets to bomb Canada's tar sands. So....there's always that extremely logical option, lol.
I told Enbridge not to put their pipe through my yard, wish me luck.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Looking at the projected outcomes of the climate modification program, I invested in land on the Skeena. (Clean, fresh water. I have no idea what you all are planning to drink.) The atoll drowners in China want to pipe pressurized asphalt through my yard so they can finish the job.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
You mean by doing what America and Europe did?
Except for the solar bit. China is the world leader in wind and solar. The lack of oil has been holding back progress in China. The lack of oil in the US means 400 pound soccer moms can't have three Escalades.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The Deal's been done, I'm just NIMBYing about running the pipe through my yard, when the Fraser Valley is already fucked, er, festooned with pipelines and shit. No one claims to have re-engineered the pipes to handle high-pressure asphalt, and fish still live in my river.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Are they? Here in Paris local taxes are the lowest in the country, in spite of the largest concentration of services, because of the economies of scale.
The great thing about nuclear's impact on the environment is that it typically mostly happens near the point of use. Fukushima is going to have terrible consequences, but mainly local ones; i.e. it's mainly those people who benefited from it that will bear the cost.
Contrast with coal burning: everybody gets hit by the carbon bill, even if you don't have electricity.
I don't know where you get the idea that it's not. It pays for itself, and it translates into the lowest CO2 output in the EU.
The main drawback and the reason why it's being reconsidered is that it's dangerous.
James Hansen is just one of the reasons NASA is fast becoming irrelevant. There will be more funding cuts because the agency lost sight of its primary mission: to explore space and learn about the universe.