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Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic To Lead EPA Transition (cbsnews.com)
Billly Gates writes: Trump's transition team is steamrolling ahead to transition the government. Trump chose Myron Ebell to oversee environmental policies. Myron Ebell is chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of climate change denialists and alarmists. Scientific American provides some background information about Ebell in a report from earlier this year: "In a biography submitted when he testified before Congress, he listed among his recognitions that he had been featured in a Greenpeace 'Field Guide to Climate Criminals,' dubbed a 'misleader' on global warming by Rolling Stone and was the subject of a motion to censure in the British House of Commons after Ebell criticized the United Kingdom's chief scientific adviser for his views on global warming. More recently, Ebell has called the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan for greenhouse gases illegal and said that Obama joining the Paris climate treaty 'is clearly an unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate's authority.' He told Vanity Fair in 2007, 'There has been a little bit of warming ... but it's been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it's caused by human beings or not, it's nothing to worry about.' Ebell's views appear to square with Trump's when it comes to EPA's agenda. Trump has called global warming 'bullshit' and he has said he would 'cancel' the Paris global warming accord and roll back President Obama's executive actions on climate change."
Well the white baby boomers have now solved the problem of leaving a shitty planet to the next generation ... they are going to help end it themselves.by electing trump and his clown show. They don't give a crap they won't be around in 10-15 years anyway. They just want to go out on top, even if noone is left to see it.
#dumptrump!
America, seriously, what in the actual fuck have you done.
The sixth mass extinction that is.
Here we go...
So. Trump & Ebell? Whatever. Let them think themselves important.They are not.
Unfortunately, we have made them important
(assuming you are in US, that is).
I'm tired of the election news, I waited anxiously for your election to be over so it would stop. Please, help a brother out.
I doubt that this will be the end of humanity, as we've lived through the ice age as well. But certainly parts of the planet that were inhabitable before will become uninhabitable in the future, and this will create wars and maybe our whole civilisation will collapse. Maybe we will lose everything industrialisation has brought us, and likely it will be harder in the future to get a similar industrialisation going due to the energy resources of the planet being depleted. But at least those coal miners could keep their jobs... or wait, they were replaced with machines. Well, whatever.
We were going to ride it out to the end anyway. People don't stop breeding, and everyone wants to eat - how dare they!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The article is so non-newsworthy that I have NO reaction except "Of course." Alt-Right has the Trump card and they are going to play it hard until the rest of us drown.
I'm only reminded of a prediction webpage I wrote when Dubya staggered into the White House. My predictions were kind of broad, divided into the categories of education, federal courts, economy, environment, military, war, Internet, and public trust in government. No details, but just probabilities and some wild estimates of recovery times. Back then I though I was just being a gloomy Gus, but looking over the predictions after 15 years, it now makes me look like a Pollyanna with rose-colored glasses. Is it worth making such an effort for the Donald?
Right now a question of some interest to me is how long it will take the angry losers to learn they are still losers. Might make them angrier, but of course no one really cares about losers, especially losers who were stupid enough to believe silly promises for a vote. Even more obviously, no one cares about the mindless always-R (or always-D) voters. It's the cold-blooded haters who worry me.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
EPA needs to be dis-established and its employees rounded up, incarcerated, rendered and arraigned to stand before Justice.
Donald Trump - the great filter...
People don't stop breeding,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually, between education, economics, and so forth, yeah they do. Several countries already have negative or neutral birthrates and are only net positive due to immigration.
There is no reason to beleive humans could not acheive equilibrium.
People don't stop breeding
Some of us don't breed, by choice. And I've been dumped over that particular issue, it's not for lack of opportunity. It's for lack of desire. I don't need to inflict myself on a child, a child on myself, a child on a world, or the world on a child.
I do like to eat, though
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Finally someone with the nads to stand up to these nozzles spewing junk science.
I didn't realize how political it had gotten. The Wicked Witch of the West probably got a better write-up from them.
As I said in a thread the other day the policy is unfortunately a choice between the US starving itself of resources and energy while the world keeps moving, or we try our best to move forward with a different mindset. Pollution and deforestation is a bigger problem than CO2 emissions, yet the same groups wanting to take your cash for carbon put forth no projects or proposals to deal with those issues. They are more than happy to watch China build more and more polluting industry, and we even pay them to take all of our trash to dispose of as they see fit.
The power struggle is not simply a matter of fixing the West (US, UK, France) but a world wide issue. Are we demanding that the UAE stop destroying massive amounts of ocean with cool looking projects? Are we demanding that Saudi Arabia stop pumping oil? Why is it always one side being blamed by the people holding power? Then we get to hear all of he people claiming that the US needs to be punished, which if you wish to be an annex of China or Russia in the future is a good position to have.
Trump did tell people fair and square that he wanted deregulation to stimulate the wheezing and gasping US economy. That does not mean we stay that way forever, but in my opinion we could probably start with a clean slate given all of the cruft put into our regulations over the last 30 years.
Lets also not forget that a Free economy has a built in check and balance system. If you don't like pollution don't use products that pollute. People selling products will be forced to come up with better, cleaner solutions. Power plants product what people use, and very little more. Awareness and boycotts are very useful tools when used properly.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
She exported fracking the world as Secretary of State. She waged war on Libya and Syria to keep the supply of energy moving. She was going to continue in the fine tradition of Obama - who was a bigger oil man than Bush and Cheney combined.
That's the problem with all the whining and bitching from Dems and the media, before the election, now, and after Trump takes the oath of office - every criticism you can make of Trump applies to Hillary Clinton, as much if not more so. The only "difference" here is that Hillary would utter the occasional platitude that we need to do something about climate change, while continuing to drill for more and more oil, and mine for more and more coal.
The Scientific American article is dated Sep 26th.
This post isn't news, just someone looking for today's "how fucked are we?" reaction in comments.
No, WE ARE NOT FUCKED ANYWAY, it is because people like you the planet is fucked. Willingness to take responsibility and take preventive action that will save billions of life in the future is still a possibility. No matter how small the possibility is, it is still a fucking possibility. If you think your luxurious lifestyle and posh jobs is worth more than the future of mankind, you can go fuck yourselves.
Meanwhile, I wonder Trump thinks he can cancel the Paris Climate Accord? WIll he take take some white out to cover over the names of the other signatories?
"a group of climate change denialists and alarmists."
The guy is a geologist, the enemy of WWF, Sierra club and Greenpeace. They explain that the climate is always changing because that is what humans have discovered after hundreds if not thousands of years of investigation. To toss that aside immediately because he disagrees with Obama's hand picked ex head of the UN WMO John Holdren?
But it also shows that you do not need to have any understanding of science, economics, history or even culture to post anything to /. and immediately assume it is correct.
Have these environmentalists proven there is a hot spot of CO2 feed backing heat to water vapour? UNSW has! They used wind-sheer off the coast of NSW to prove there is a hot spot over the equator. Sarcasm aside, no, we measure that area of air and it is either the same temperature or has actually decreased. Have you heard? If you havnt, you've been reading the MSM and /. and soylent news. It is as if these places are gatekept for consistency of this unproven science.
The inability to think is anti-science. Anti-philosophy. It is parallel to the inquisition where society all agreed that WITCHES caused the climate to change. These people need to be locked up before they ruin more lives on imaginary quests which only require more of your money to make happen - otherwise we'll threaten your children's unborn children with unjustifiable temperature or sea level rises. Or we'll rename man made global warming to something else and ask for twice the amount of money (83 trillion isnt enough?!)
Disgraceful.
People need to start thinking otherwise they will fall for other scams which use the same tricks.
This is one of the scare pieces the media ran to frighten liberals into destroying trump.
The article was written BEFORE Tuesday.
And judging from the cesspool responses in this thread, I'm also going to be exiting from reading and commenting here.
Beau, you should be ashamed of yourself. Either you aren't doing your job and being an editor, or you are abusing your job and being a jackass.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Slowing down population growth only postpones the inevitable. It does not avoid it. IF global warming is anthropogenic then it is a direct function of population size. The more people there are, the more goods have to be produced, the more land has to be farmed, the more pollution is created. But there is only ONE way to reduce population size in anything less than a period of thousands of years. Any volunteers?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good to read something that's logical and not another confirmation-bias-whine.
The US needs energy independence. Renewables are now providing some of the cheapest electricity (recent bids for offshore wind power in Europe are at levels below electricity from coal). Renewables employs more people than fossil fuels in the USA. Renewables don't rely on a politically unstable region of the world, where the US has had to spend huge resources to ensure continued supplies.
We need oil today, but our investment should be in renewables. Focusing on fossil fuels is not an economically sound decision, even if you discount global climate change.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Eating less beef
Eating less things with palm oil
Have no more than two kids
More ideas here : Before the Flood
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=codqzJ4onGc
IF global warming is anthropogenic then it is a direct function of population size.
Nonsense. We could build things to last and keep them longer. We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil. We could make hay while the sun shines not just literally but also in manufacturing so that we can use more wind power and the like which goes through production cycles. It's affected by population size, but there's a whole lot of other factors. Right now the primary driver is greed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm sure that Trump is just doing this to screw with those who still thought this country could be saved.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I realize this. I have two children with my first wife. My second wife chose not to have any which is fine because I got a vasectomy after the birth of my second anyway. I always felt I was entitled to replacement - a child for each parent, but that more kids was unreasonable in a modern technological world - and expensive to boot. So between my first and second marriages I've had below replacement value of children, on average.
But there are people who feel that it's not a problem or worse, that it's some sort of divine mandate to have as many children as they possibly can. Worldwide the global population is still exploding especially in the poorer countries. And unfortunately politicians panic, for very selfish reasons, when they see their country's fertility rates plummet (as is normal as high socio-economic development is attained). This doesn't work when you're running deficits and trying desperately to grow your tax base to make up shortfalls. So you import foreigners from poor countries to breed and keep your fertility rate HIGH. And then you complain about all the pollution, and how water has to be rationed because the water table is disappearing, etc...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”
Wait for it...
"President Obama"
The world can fight climate change only if it can keep uninfluenced by the anti-science movement in the US.
That can happen only if we deny them influence over global politics and the global economy. The rest of the world has relocate its interests elsewhere, and learn to stand up and say no to USA.
It may seem radical and impossible and not particularly constructive.. but I don't see any other way forward.
The point is to allow the civilized world to stay constructive and progressive about the climate issue.
Trump and his supporters does not want global trade? Fine!
They want a wall against Mexico. Then let's build one along the Canadian border to USA as well.
Welcome Californa and New York as free states in the new world if they chose to leave the union. By all means, let the Red(neck) states keep to themselves as much as they want. They chose disaster for themselves. We should not let them chose disaster for us.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I love skeptics. People should be skeptical of EVERYTHING the supposed world government is demanding of them.
Whether you believe in "Global warming" or not, the bigger picture is about control of power source (e.g. solar, oil, etc..). If you are unable to provide a future of continuous power, then your country is screwed. If your power can be disrupted or runs out, then your country is screwed. A major challenge for most third world countries is power. So the smart strategic choice is to invest and increase use of renewable power sources to ensure power stability and control for the future.
then you need to make more insulation. I looked at having my insulation increased in about a $5,000 deal. It would save me about $200/year. Probably making the insulation creates more polution than the energy wasted because I don't have it.
People don't stop breeding
Some of us don't breed, by choice. And I've been dumped over that particular issue, it's not for lack of opportunity. It's for lack of desire. I don't need to inflict myself on a child, a child on myself, a child on a world, or the world on a child.
I do like to eat, though
Wow, a considerate, yet hungry, sociopath. Don't see many of those.
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves. Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil.
That insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
While you are suggesting techniques that would "stretch" our resources if they were even possible, this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another. Since killing millions or even billions of people is not an acceptable solution to our morality (unless their invisible sky wizard says something offensive about our invisible sky wizard), this problem is one we are irreversibly stuck with no matter what we do - especially IF we have already crossed this mysterious threshold that sends our planet into an irreversible plunge into greenhouse mode.
Right now the primary driver is greed.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life. It's easy to blame it all on "the corporations" or "the 1%", but in reality we are to blame. You. Me. Each and every one of us. After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You can't compare the price of coal in Europe to the price of coal in the US.
I'm all in, 100% for letting China and India, the largest polluters in the world lead the way to burning less coal, dog shit, cow shit, wood, plants, and any other kind of shit. I will bow to their economic lead.
Come on everybody, repeat after me: "We are all individuals!"
and it cost her Ohio. Coal's pretty worthless if you're not willing to allow massive pollution of the kind that has immediately negative consequences for people's quality of life. Sure, you can make steel with it instead of burning it for power, but there's a glut of Chinese steel that's not going away anytime soon.
The thing about Hilary is she wasn't going to make things better but she also wasn't going to make them worse. Trump will accelerate all the bad stuff while his running mate + supreme court picks take away women's reproductive rights. If you have a wife, girlfriend or daughter and no anything about the terror that is child birth left up to God's whim you know this is terrifying...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But the short term stimulation will come at medium and long term costs that will outweigh any short term benefit. It's like a guy who makes money selling blood who thinks if he just ups the amount he sells by a couple of pints a day, he'll have more money in his wallet. Well yes, for a very brief that's true, but then he's going to end up seriously anemic, extremely ill, and whatever he made in selling blood, and more than that, will have to spent to get him healthy again.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1. The SA article is dated September 26, but the submitter carefully worded the opening sentence to make it sound like a post-election event ("Trump's transition team is steamrolling ahead to transition the government"). Those people we call "editors" either didn't check it or didn't care.
2. The SA article presents this as an absolute fact, but then essentially says "a little birdie told me so." Other sources (including one written today) are honest enough to call it what it is: a rumor.
But reversing population growth, where the death rate surpasses the birth rate, avoids the "inevitable" quite nicely. And that's happening in places, and the number of those places are growing.
Nonsense. We could build things to last and keep them longer.
We "could" do many things... but we aren't likely to do so...
You're just having a bout of wishful thinking...
he put cronies in charge that had no idea what the hell they were doing. That's a large part of why New Orleans was such a cluster fuck (aside from diverting billions meant for their levies to the war in Iraq). The Trump presidency won't just be about corruption. They'll be plenty of gross incompetence to go around. I pity anyone who lives in a state with real natural disasters. Jesus I hope the weather holds...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Old news, it is from almost two months ago. http://www.eenews.net/climatew...
You mean this EPA?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That's true, but the latest bids for European offshore wind power are at rates that are comparable to US prices for electricity from coal (less than .05 euro per kWh). Prices for solar and wind power are dropping very quickly, whether residential or utility-scale projects.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
According to Wikipedia he's got a BA in philosophy and a M.Sc in politics. Between getting out of school and setting himself as a climate expert he worked as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry.
He has never done anything STEM related or worked in any other field but politics.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Unrelated to this article but thought others would find this interesting. It's only one lobbyist's opinion but...
"The chamber already knows there are certain items Mr. Trump has said he will not support, like the current versions of trade deals with Asia or comprehensive changes in the nationâ(TM)s immigration laws, which the chamber pushed during Mr. Obamaâ(TM)s tenure. But there are aspects of each of these plans, like increasing the number of visas for highly skilled foreign workers, that Mr. Josten said he expects Mr. Trump to endorse."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/us/politics/lobbyists-trump.html
We pay about 2.5 cents per KWh for coal power (wholesale), give or take...
Wind may well get there, but it has another problem... 24/7 uptime...
And if your next reply is "but storage" or "but it is always windy somewhere", then you don't understand 2 things.
1. Math
2. Geopolitical borders on maps
You are attempting to compare apples to a literally hundreds of disparate communities. No, ou won't be able to do it with a car analogy either, because it's a complex social issue.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
>> If you don't like pollution don't use products that pollute.
I don't see any child slaves or smog clouds at WalMart, so their products must be fine.
... when now even biologists can detect the impact of global warming on the biosphere.
I am sure if we just keep ignoring the problem, it will go away.
What you don't understand: weather forecasts and how costs reduce over time. We can forecast the wind, allowing wind power to be used effectively alongside other technologies. What's the real cost of extracting that coal, when all the effects on the landscape and the environment are taken into account?
Can wind power replace coal today? No. But how much electricity is generated by natural gas today? Wind power is potentially cheaper than natural gas today.
The issue is not what should be used today, but where should our investments be? You can invest in technologies that will make life much more difficult and expensive in the future, or technologies that will reduce global climate change and reduce global tensions.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Trump is also floating the name "Ben Carson" as Sec'y of Health and Human Services. Ben Carson is a creationist who hawks vitamins to cure cancer.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, it was funny for a day or two.
I always felt I was entitled
Indeed you do. Self centered, selfish cunts such as yourself sum up the whole climate denier mindset It's all about meeeeeee. The only consolation is that your kids will hate you as much as everyone else's kids do.
Pollution and deforestation is a bigger problem than CO2 emissions, yet the same groups wanting to take your cash for carbon put forth no projects or proposals to deal with those issues.
From which orifice did you pull that "fact"?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Western culture is already in decline, "breeding" is not what people with "tvs" do.
Seriously when are you going to stop living in the fantasies of the past
"The population bomb"? The famines of the last century were fueled by politics and war. The people who need help most with sustenance farming are the ones who are still breeding. They are also the ones most hurt by aggressive planet loving environmentalism. Simply giving these people basic lifestyle improvements is enough to westernise the culture and reduce birth rate.
The western world has been under 2.0 births for almost 30 years. That includes all of eastern asia and western europe. The trend leading to the decline started well before this. The entire world is on track to be in decline in 60 years. The USA Seems to be the exception because of 3rd world Mexico and the poor catholic immigrants. Even Latin America, central asia and africa are trending into this decline. Almost every segment including those with strong religious beliefs in the usa have seen a birthrate decline
The future belongs to muslims who reject western culture and replace it. They may or may not care about global warming
90% of the posts on this site are utter Bullshit. WTF is the point?
No, it's a direct function of the aggregate amount of heat-trapping gasses put into the atmosphere by all of the people on earth. If you could magically lower the rate of population growth to zero or below tomorrow, yet at the same time more and more of the developing world adopts more carbon energy demanding western lifestyles, you still won't have fixed the problem. Conversely, if we could magically make it so that we could have an equivalent lifestyle on a small fraction of the carbon-producing energy we use now, we could still maintain population growth with greatly reduced carbon output.
I'm not arguing in favor of continued population growth, anything but. But population alone is not the driving factor.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
How progressive
> But there are people who feel that it's not a problem or worse, that it's some sort of divine mandate to have as many children as they possibly can
Yeah, they make TV shows about those folks, and they're by and large Christian. You know, the dominant religion in the states that's against birth control, abortion, and just voted in the President?
"Old man yells at systemd"
There could be a way for getting the message through to all deniers. All deniers think that there is a God and that this is his Plan. He will set everything straight in the end. But what if:
Last man on Earth arriving at the Pearly Gates: "Lord, why did you increase the Earth's temperature and killed everyone there?"
God: "I did not forsake you"
Man: "But you did! I was the last survivor"
God: "I warned you in advance!"
Man: "No you didn't. My pastor told us that this was your plan and that you would set everything right"
God: "Oh, all pastors were on the Devil's payroll. Your pastor must be roasting down there by now"
God: "You couldn't think that I would raise the temperature. Only the Devil's minions would try to deny my warnings"
Man: "Warnings? What warnings?"
God: "All the serious scientist were spreading my word. They were warning everyone."
Man: "Scientists? But they don't believe in you"
God: "I loved them even so. Now they are here with me"
God: "And you... mmm.. off you go, send regards to Satan for me"
What if gobal warming is the plan of the Devil, and that God is trying to show us the way using those least expected (scientists) to lead us back into His path?
People don't stop breeding,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually, between education, economics, and so forth, yeah they do. Several countries already have negative or neutral birthrates and are only net positive due to immigration.
There is no reason to beleive humans could not acheive equilibrium.
The population decline is nearly worldwide. It may not be reversible.
Last one out turn off the lights
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_exploding.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html
specially in the poorer countries
This is a cultural result of lingering agrarian traditions, though poverty itself can be a contributing factor, in that these traditions still make sense if kids are the best way to ensure food security and health care into old age, or a source of free labor in mid-life. Providing social services could help make those traditions look sillier faster.
Someone had to do it.
If Trump throws away progress on carbon reduction his legacy will be to be remembered as outdoing the Nazi's in murdering people through the resulting climate change. Populist leaders with bad ideas have a history of doing very bad things. Sadly the USA is about to become the most despised and hated country on the planet.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Yeah. I'm going to walk outside and turn my back on D.C. come inauguration.
Someone had to do it.
Pollution and deforestation is a bigger problem than CO2 emissions, yet the same groups wanting to take your cash for carbon put forth no projects or proposals to deal with those issues.
What is just maddening to me is the trend for using wood for heat and energy. While I'm not sure that deforestation is really an issue I do understand that wood is a multipurpose crop (and it is a crop, just like corn or watermelons are a crop) and burning wood means less of it for building material, paper, and Parmesan cheese filler.
I've seen AGW believers get pilloried by their own for advocating that trees should be grown and used for building material to sequester carbon. I guess, somehow, it's better for the carbon cycle or something to burn those trees for heat.
I do agree that carbon taxes are a loser, both as public policy and as a means to reduce carbon output. As a policy people don't want to see their costs go up for fuel (vehicle and heat), electricity, and everything really since most every product we buy needs to be shipped, refrigerated, heated, and all of those processes take energy. As a means to reduce carbon output it fails because energy use is a largely inelastic demand. Even if prices for fuel go up people still need to eat, drive to work, use lights, and so on. It might keep people from taking a drive to visit Grandma but then it's less about reducing carbon and really sinking into quality of life, mobility (social and transportation), and just generally making life worse.
After something like 40 years of being told to "reduce, recycle, reuse" we are running into diminishing returns. We've cut all the fat and now we're cutting into bone here. Don't tell me I need to reduce my energy consumption, tell me that we are going to see some nuclear power plants built. Nuclear power will save the trees, provide inexpensive energy, and replace dirty coal.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I didn't know Bush Jr was in charge of State or Local New Orleans government?
It was a disaster because of incompetent and corrupt state and especially local government.
What is the speculation based on?
Science.
It is too late. There is no going back. Now we ride it out to the end. The end of us.
If by 'us' you mean you, then by all means, feel free to ride it out any time. In fact, why wait?
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Bzzt, not quite. Let's rephrase as "I don't like you polluting the air I breath, and I know that myself choosing to not buy your products isn't going to change that, so here's the deal, and here's my leverage."
Let's push the true cost of our ignorance down to our kids and our kid's kids.
Don't worry - with the education they are getting they are sadly far better equipped to deal with ignorance than we were.
It's not taxation. Just merely preventing externalization of costs. No more free rides.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Most hated country? It won't be because we elected a populist leader, it'll be because we are about to shit can every crappy trade deal and treaty we've ever signed up for. The easy money from the US is about to dry up.
This here is the problem.
Correct, and the logical thing is for the rest of the world to stop buying US products...... for our own benefit.
That of course puts 2 1/4 trillion dollars worth of exports at risk, which puts tens of thousands of jobs at risk , which may be just the smack around the head Trump needs so he will listen.
What's really going on? There is so much nonsense being spewed...
Yes there is but the evidence that the climate is warming is pretty much incontrovertible. It also seems true that the rise in the last century or so has been extremely fast compared to changes over the past 100k years and the period of rapid rising coincides with our increase in fossil fuel burning so it seems reasonable to conclude that GHGs are responsible for a good deal of the warming.
At least that's my take as a non-climate related scientist.
I doubt that this will be the end of humanity...
Just wait until he appoints an anti-vaxer as head of the CDC. Life was so much simpler when the only anti-vaxers were those who hated VMS.
What you don't understand: weather forecasts and how costs reduce over time.
Wind could be free, it will never be base load. Or at least, not in my lifetime.
What's the real cost of extracting that coal, when all the effects on the landscape and the environment are taken into account?
That doesn't matter because I don't pay it.
Now you could debate if you like if I SHOULD pay it, but I don't, so that is a moot point.
Can wind power replace coal today? No. But how much electricity is generated by natural gas today? Wind power is potentially cheaper than natural gas today.
Natural gas is even less expensive than coal, at about 2.2 cents per KWh, coal is having trouble because of natural gas at the moment. Wind is about double the cost of natural gas, give or take.
In any case, natural gas is "cleaner" than coal, but not by enough to change the outcome.
The issue is not what should be used today, but where should our investments be? You can invest in technologies that will make life much more difficult and expensive in the future, or technologies that will reduce global climate change and reduce global tensions.
Did I say I was against wind and solar? I'm not, they are fine for producing perhaps 25% in the near term and up to 50% in the long term of our total power needs. Where do we get the rest from?
The primary problem is point 1 above, Math... people simply suck at it, unable to understand how much energy is used, consumed, and what it would REALLY take to stop the rise in CO2 levels.
It will take more than we're willing to do, full stop. Everything else is just fantasy and expensive.
The point of no-return probably passed 30 years ago, we are way, way beyond that point, adaption to the new world is where we should be putting our money, not trying to keep the Titanic from sinking after it has already hit the iceberg.
It is too late. There is no going back. Now we ride it out to the end. The end of us.
Just because we're already in the rapids doesn't mean we shouldn't try to avoid the waterfall. Things can always get worse.
Oh, and in no way will this be the end for humanity, almost certainly not even for civilization. "Too hot to grow tropical crops in Antarctica" is way beyond any of the current predictions, and with wind and solar and batteries improving and cheapening by the year, we'll eventually drastically cut CO2 emissions if only out of greed.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
They both held a lid on the islamists in their countries, and the West had no business destabilizing them. The results of Western meddling in those shitholes is clear: they've become much, much worse shitholes.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Wrong. Their people decided to remove them. That is why they must be removed. All they require is military assistance to prevent civilian massacre and implement their will. It is in America's interest to provide it now, and they've waited too long because of fucking Republican cowards.
Now that Tesla's fucked all Elon's got left is his Mars project.
If you'd asked me last week if I'd go to Mars I'd have said "no way".
Where do I sign up?
Exactly, realistically Trump's policy mean that he's setting the US on a path to be left behind.
The US will still be digging coal, something that we started doing seriously in when America wasn't even a country, whilst the rest of the world will have whole new economies and industries based on renewable power.
It really is a journey back to the 17th century for America, whilst the rest of the world will see massive economic growth from the new and growing industry of renewables as fossile fuel use continues to decline everywhere else. America wont find many allies to invade middle eastern nations for oil and gas when no one else actually has much use for it anymore.
" but in my opinion we could probably start with a clean slate given all of the cruft put into our regulations over the last 30 years."
How long do you need to reinvent the legal system to actually protect the Earth, biodiversity and human civilization generally? The clock is ticking and all you've done to date is kick cans.
Trump is undoing what precious little forward momentum we had. The frog is boiling, he's turning up the stove and saying boiling water is a hoax.
Just don't buy into the whole base load thing.
Load varies and there is a minimum and a maximum. The reason we call the minimum "base load" is because steam engine like generators like coal and nuclear are extremely bad at handling a varying load so we have invented the concept of a constant base load and dumped it on them.
What is left over is a load with extreme variation that pretty much only hydroelectric is capable of handling.
Hydroelectric is mainly limited by dam size. It needs support from other energy sources but it doesn't really care about if the other energy sources have a constant output or if they are spotty. The only thing that matters is the average output, and it is over a very long time. The dam fills up during the wet season and is emptied over the rest of the year.
Solar, wind and hydroelectric works very well together since hydroelectric can compensate for both load variation and the output variations of the other two.
Still doesn't hurt to have nuclear in the mix but there is no real reason to have anything with carbon output.
Seriously, let him roll back O's regulations on coal plants. At this time, they have done NOTHING. Prior to O, we were like China and was growing our coal plants. However, it was not O's regs that have stopped this.
It was 2 things which was the Mercury regs ( while we are already way below Europe, Asia, but this will bring our mercury down to near zero) being moved to end of 2016, along with W's push for drilling and fracking. That fracking provided CHEAP CHEAP nat gas at a time when coal plants had to decide on shutting down or putting on scrubbers. As such, we went from ~60% coal (and 15% nat gas) to 27% coal and 33% nat gas at end of this year. So, our fossil fuel has converted to clean fossil, but also dropped.
So, what will happen over the next couple of years? Trump and GOP want to push both COAL AND DRILLING. If both are done, then nat gas will remain low costs, and no American utility will want coal plant. OTOH, China, japan, and south korea might pick up more, but I doubt that it will be too much. Australia is now heavily automated on their coal. So, cheap coal is going NO WHERE in America.
UN-Subsidized Wind is already cheaper than coal. Solar is more expensive, but that is the average. Solar City has the lowest installed costs and with their new plant should be cheap than coal. So, America's electricity will continue to move towards being cleaned up over time.
That leaves vehicles. Tesla's M3 will be cheaper and superior compared to its ICE competitors. Who will want to buy a BMW 300 series when they can buy a Tesla M3? Few. The fastest competitor will compete with the slowest version of the M3. That will no doubt cause buyers of some of the most polluting cars (luxury cars such as Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Caddy, Porsche, Lexus, Infiniti, etc) to continue losing shares. As it is, Tesla MS already sells 1/3 of the full size luxury market and should move up to about 50% by summer 2017. Tesla MX is expected to hit 33% of is market by summer 2017. Basically, Tesla will force car makers to move to DECENT EVs or die. And by decent EVs, we are not talking the leaf, bolt, I3, i5 type garbage. All of those have been gutted so that they will not compete against ICE vehicles. Tesla will force them to produce cars that compete against tesla and will destroy their own ICE.
So, for those of you concerned with where America is going, do not fret. While we will likely drop paris, we will continue to clean up regardless of what trump and his ilk do.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
> Trump has called global warming 'bullshit' and he has said he would 'cancel' the Paris global warming accord and roll back President Obama's executive actions on climate change."
Of course, some us us pointed out that Obama's penchant for executive orders was NOT the right way to go about running the country, that he needed to work with Congress to affect lasting change, and if he had done so maybe his progress would have been less, maybe even MUCH less, but then the progress he made would not have been so easy to unmask as purely illusionary by Trump undoing it with a simple sweep of HIS pen and HIS phone. Oh, if only he would've had to go to CONGRESS and NEGOTIATE such a rollback - but no, the Liberals took the easy road, cheered on Obama's irresponsible ways, and now they reap what they sowed. WE TOLD YOU IT WAS STUPID WHEN HE DID IT, BUT LIBERALS NEVER LISTEN!
Moral: PLAY BY THE DAMN RULES BECAUSE YOUR OPPONENT WILL USE THE SAME TACTICS YOU PUT INTO PLAY!!!
Not My President, amirite?
And you don't understand how big the USA are. .... and those are at sea.
Yes, you always will have enough wind.
Just like Germany, which is how big? A 1/50th of the United States?
Wind less zones big enough to cover a whole country only exist on a few isolated places on the world
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You still have not grasped what base load is ... :)
Germany now is producing 'around base load' capacity with wind alone. Hence our base load - nuclear and lime coal - plants are becoming obsolete.
'Base load' does not mean what you think it means, I suggest to read it up. Probably from a lexicon and not wikipedia
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
All right.
https://thinkprogress.org/excl...
IF global warming is anthropogenic then it is a direct function of population size. ... which has an extremely small population and Kuwait which has a mini population.
No it is not. Most CO2 per capita is produced in the USA
CO2 production is tied to energy usage, industries, house heating, car travel etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves. Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
We could use more insulation so that we use less heating oil.
That insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
While you are suggesting techniques that would "stretch" our resources if they were even possible, this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another. Since killing millions or even billions of people is not an acceptable solution to our morality (unless their invisible sky wizard says something offensive about our invisible sky wizard), this problem is one we are irreversibly stuck with no matter what we do - especially IF we have already crossed this mysterious threshold that sends our planet into an irreversible plunge into greenhouse mode.
Right now the primary driver is greed.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life. It's easy to blame it all on "the corporations" or "the 1%", but in reality we are to blame. You. Me. Each and every one of us. After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
Your arguments boil down to, "you can't completely eliminate it so there's no point in doing anything", "we're all to blame so everything is pointless", and "delaying the problem is as bad as speeding it up". Are those really the ones you intended to make?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Clean energy is a huge opportunity for the US economy, not a threat. China is now doing more than the US to clean up, so don't give us that "it's futile if no-one else does it" shit.
If the US wants to build up manufacturing again it will either have to clean up, because the EU requires it if you want to sell your products here, or it will have to limit itself to selling into developing nations.
Plus, you should stop being selfish libtard fucks.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If this moron in Inferno had just introduced the virus he developed somewhere secretly instead of shouting about it all over TV and internet first he would have saved the world :-).
-- Cheers!
Anti-science comments surrounding AGW on slashdot were actually worse before 2003. Public opinion has changed for the better, eg: most people on slashdot would now accept the fact it's getting warmer, very few did back in 2003.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Straight from the gut, no doubt.
And you don't understand how big the USA are.
Oh, you again, the idiot from Germany who has his head up his butt?
You missed point #2, geopolitical lines on a map, the USA doesn't have a national power grid and we aren't going to any time soon.
Yes, the nanny-state will sort everything out. Who's going to pay for these socialIST services? If you think it's me you better have a gun when you come to collect.
--
roman_mir
You still have not grasped what base load is ...
Hello fool, still walking around thinking you know anything?
I figured you might have had a chance to buy a clue, but it seems not...
Germany now is producing 'around base load' capacity with wind alone.
You're going to bankrupt yourselves trying... Watch what happens when you actually have to defend yourselves and spend money on your military.
Trump just got elected, he likes Russia more than Germany, you will have to change your budget soon... the USA is not going to cover for you anymore, or did you miss the news?
---
Further point, if your tiny little brain can try and hear it... Germany is a small, wealthy nation, it does not reflect the world. Even if you turn off all your power tomorrow, it doesn't mean anything. We all share the same air. You REALLY fucking suck at math, you have no idea what it will take to stop CO2 rise in the air, it is simply not going to be stopped.
And then you have conservative idiots who like to loathe over the poor masses and overpopulation but are against birth control and abortions because every sperm is sacred.
Well, they need a steady influx of poor black people to fill the jails with and keep the prison industrial complex running, so I guess it all does make sense.
Then make up your mind ... ... so wind from A can not be transported to B
Wind is not working because:
1) there is no wind/might be no wind
2) the country is so small, that the whole country has no wind
3) there is no grid 'big enough'
Or any other bullshit? You are arguing against wind all the time ... ... surprisingly second world countries like, Rumania, Belarus, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Georgia (the country, not the stats) and a few dozens more are interconnected in an international grid, and you can not even manage a national one?
The lack of a national grid can be fixed
And that is your argument against wind and so,ar?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Finally the propaganda will be stopped! The GW bullshit spreaded by the same media that spreaded false polls on the upcoming election.
Fuck the EU.
whoosh
Yes, you always will have enough wind. Just like Germany, ...
Germany is a very poor example for electricity generation. It showed us how insanely expensive electricity bills can be.
" If you don't like pollution don't use products that pollute. People selling products will be forced to come up with better, cleaner solutions"
Laissez-faire neolibertard detected! This doesn't work because there are whole classes of products and services that cause pollution that you are required to use in order to live within modern society for which there are no alternative non polluting choices or sensible ways to opt out and remain living within society. Quite literally in many areas the market is blind to your choice because the market doesn't offer you one. The _only_ way this kind of "market doesn't offer choice and has no incentive to offer choice" problem can be tackled is by regulating that market.
There was about 280 ppm CO2 in 18th century. There is >400 ppm CO2 at voting booths now. At least, given that they are in closed spaces.
The stupid thing is that coal is dying in the USA for exactly the same reason it died in the UK; natural gas. In the UK it came out the North Sea, in the USA it is coming from fraking. It would be utterly stupid to try and roll back from this and go back to coal. It would make energy more expensive not less.
The other thing is that simply switching from coal to gas you lower your CO2 emissions (burning methane produces less CO2 per Joule of energy released), the tonnes of uranium (burn a million tonnes of coal and if uranium is present at 1 part per million in the coal then a tonne of uranium goes into the atmosphere), all that acid raid producing sulphur.
Reopening coal mines is simply not going to happen ever. Heck even China has realized that coal is not a good idea and is looking to migrate away.
I very much in principle would love to agree with you.
Unfortunately we've learned that democracy is not perfect. I call it the BoatyMcBoatFace effect. Left to our quixotic whims, we voters have a tendency to make some pretty silly choices.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Under the Obama administration, the US EPA was already used very effectively for protectionist means. Given Trumps agenda, I would expect that this would only increase.
I presume that's a metaphor for bombing the crap out of other countries and forcing mass migration of refugees and minority populations.
You're right - the American oligarchs do not want Europe and Russia to have any ties at all, because a stronger Russia undermines American hegemony.
Why would Russia cut off Europe, when we're their best market? You pose stupid assumptions.
Pretty soon, we'll all have our own Trump clones as presidents of our countries, because America always does everything right, eh?
Brawndo.
Because plants crave electrolytes.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I do like to eat, though
Children?
Silence is a state of mime.
Then make up your mind ...
You're still a fool? Yep, pretty sure on that one...
Wind is not working because:
You continue to not see it, either because:
1. You are an idiot
2. You choose not to see it
3. You're a troll
Pollution and deforestation is a bigger problem than CO2 emissions, yet the same groups wanting to take your cash for carbon put forth no projects or proposals to deal with those issues.
From which orifice did you pull that "fact"?
Why? Is he wrong? Or are you just another one of those idiots like Trump who sit there with their hands over their eyes and their thumbs in their ears singing: LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALA I CAN'T SEE YOU.!!
Deforestation is proceeding all over the world at alarming speed and pollution isn't helping either. To take just one example you cannot get any marine seafood anymore that isn't full of microscopic plastic particles and has chemical traces that are not normally found in nature. The result has been a massive extinction wave which makes deforestation and pollution at least as big a problem as climate change.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed.
If you think that, it's because you completely failed to understand what I'm saying. This is about the broken window fallacy. People make garbage that will fail so that they can sell more garbage that will fail. People then buy the garbage because it's all they can afford, and the end result is that the biosphere is a toilet. I do not do a shit job to produce more work, so no. I am not guilty of the very same greed, and fuck you sideways for suggesting that I am. My fucking hobbies are all about re-use; I wrench, I repair, I modify used beat-down things and then I use them. I am the opposite of this problem.
After all, if no one bought the products, no one would waste time selling them...
If no one were allowed to profit from making garbage, no one would waste time selling it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First EPA regulation: it is hereby decreed that the motherfucking SWAMP shall be motherfucking DRAINED!
TRUMP 2020 MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
Do you feel better now?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
And then you have conservative idiots who like to loathe over the poor masses and overpopulation but are against birth control and abortions because every sperm is sacred.
Except you're completely wrong. See - you're arguing with yourself, not me. You don't know me. First I don't loathe the poor. In fact I have probably done much more to help the poor than you have. I also live in Latin America where poverty is MUCH more serious and widespread. In the US poverty is not being able to buy things. In Latin America poverty is about not being able to eat.
And second, I am absolutely not against birth control (reading failure, I stated that have a vasectomy and limited the number of kids I have. My wife takes contraceptives. That's birth control.). As a physician I AM against abortion as a form of birth control, however I recognize that in some cases it is better to terminate a pregnancy than to allow it to reach term with horrendous malformations or tremendous health risk to the mother. I think there are times when abortion is justified but there is a huge moral risk if abortion is made "too easy" that it becomes a solution just because someone is too lazy to use a condom or take birth control pills. And I am an atheist - by the way. Whoops - see how wrong you can be?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
But there is only ONE way to reduce population size in anything less than a period of thousands of years.
There are at least 2 very obvious ones. Sterility, and death camps.
The idea that you won't breed will make the world ever so slightly better...
Thank you
You're welcome. The sad part is that most of the people who think they're making the world a better place by having children are dead wrong.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Children?
I was going to make a joke about being a crypto-Jew but it would have sounded a lot funny in an America without a president Trump. Suffice to say that I did leave that comment ambiguous for your amusement during the editing process.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What's the going price for a ticket to Mars these days, on ebay or elsewhere?
I think I might need one.
I am 100% for getting out of every climate change deal and scrapping all of these climate change rules. Climate change is basically a bunch of scaremongering which is an excuse to reduce the USA to a third world condition and a Marxist scheme to basically redistribute the Americans hard earned accomplishments to already third world countries. Its an out and out globalist scam and a fraud. Its a computer generated fraud created by people who have an ulterior motive which is to economically bring the USA to its knees. the Climate change treaties tend to slam the USA hard with draconian restrictions on fossil fuels that will destroy jobs here and throw many people into poverty while allowing China to do nearly anything it wants. This would have devastating consequences, not only direct losses in the US energy sector but the fact that there would be manufacturing jobs lost because the energy to run factories would be much more expensive here.
Here the liberals show what a fraud they are. They are a bunch of globalist maniacs that use enviro-whackoism to throw the US into a third world state and to make china a global superpower because they are totalitarian psychos that admire China where you can be tortured and murdered for criticising the government and to bring the USA to its knees because they have a pathological hatred of the USA and its people.
I thought you liberals were the ones who were worried about the poor affording heating oil? Well, this is just a scam for you to dupe people into voting for you because your climate change garbage is going to make energy much more expensive and unaffordable, and getting rid of your regulations will make energy cheap, affordable and abundant, leading to our prosperity, to great reductions in poverty due to the jobs that cheap energy will create here, in conjunction with Trumps plans to get us out of bad trade deals
If you global warming people are so worried, why dont you and Al Gore give up your cars, smart phones, planes and everything else. Instead al gore and other global warming kooks fly around in airplanes powered by fossil fuels, because their mentality is that the greenhouse gas rules do not apply to them and are only intended to throw average common americans into poverty, thats because global warming a fraud designed to turn the US into a third world country run by a small liberal elite who ignore the greenhouse gasses because they dont believe in the claptrap themselves, its just an excuse to attack the American middle class and keep people in poverty and thus easier to control.
Fuck off you global warming environ-whacko commies.
Are those really the ones you intended to make?
I realize I may not be the most effective communicator, and I am quite the cynic. Ultimately all our environmental problems are a consequence of our massive human population. Anything you propose is merely a rationing system, nothing more. Rationing does not solve problems therefore I hate seeing it portrayed as a solution. The ONLY solution is reducing the size of our population. There are ways to do that involuntarily at huge moral and ethical cost via war, hydraulic despotism, or just out and out murder. And there are ways to do it voluntarily and morally, through education - teaching people why it's important that many should abstain from breeding and encouraging them to abstain.
Unfortunately we live in a world where our leaders feel that investing in bombs and jet fighters is far more worthwhile in terms of return on investment than education. So for all you propose, and for all you complain - nothing is going to change - even under a rationing system.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You can't use logic or reason here. We are in the Great Dumbing Down period. You are going up against people who think they are geniuses. I tried to pull this exact same argument with a super smart fellow yesterday. This guy is so smart, he only reads things that tell him EXACTLY what he wants to hear. So free market forces or improving our trade imbalance be damned, it's all political. You can't go against 10,000 hours of Alex Jones with something sensible, here.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Sorry, misunderstanding. I was not arguing -against- you, I was just adding a few additional considerations to what you said without intending to attack your arguments.
If no one were allowed to profit from making garbage, no one would waste time selling it.
True. But this would require re-working the economic models of our societies and re-educating our consumers. For example how can you have a society that discourages innovation (via a patent system) and yet penalizes less sophisticated products? If I make the best widgets and tomorrow you come out with a way to make better widgets then you have just put me out of business if you don't allow me to immediately upgrade my process and improve my widgets - since my product is now an inferior product.
And yet still, this is all just a rationing system. Resources are finite. Human expansion is infinite (or at least can theoretically reach the critical point where remaining resources per capita are simply no longer sufficient to sustain life). Rationing can help stretch out resources - as can technology. Slowing down the population growth rate can help us survive longer in time. But ultimately we are doomed as long as our growth rate is positive.
Heck we're doomed in all cases, but population is the more immediate problem. I don't care what the statistics say because statistics are political tools. I take a more empirical approach: When I was a kid there were almost 4 billion people in the world. Now we're closer to 8. You can argue percentages and rates and everything but reality is, we are doubling in size every 40 years or so. This is not sustainable. If we're affecting global temperature now and have been for some time according to AGW pundits, we won't be affecting it less in 40 years with 16 billion people. Taxes will not avoid the fact that people need to eat, people need to work, and people need to travel from A to B to do those things.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's the internet. I have thick skin :)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Apparently, /. has decided to post every second or third article with a Trump headline to generate more clicks.
Better all head for Canada now. Your safe spaces are about to disappear.
Just another day in Paradise
No, you'd have to be a scientist with a working understanding of the greenhouse effect. You can measure the heat trapping ability of CO2 in a lab or test it yourself by building a greenhouse, we can do the math on it and figure out how much an increase in CO in the atmosphere traps more heat. It's not the only controller of heat in the atmosphere but it is the most prevalent and therefore most important
Do you understand that increasing the greenhouse effect has real life implications really fast: sea-levels rising, rainfall increasing in other areas whereas droughts will increase alsewhere, more and bigger storms etc. Plus there's the risk of chain-reactions occurring: once the northern permafrost starts to melt it will release methane which is 20 times stronger as a greenhouse gas the CO2, which will them increase the warming yet again melting more of the frost and creating an unstoppable feedback loop.
We're not in complete control of the climate but we're having a major impact on it in ways which do not bode well for the future. The oil and coal companies are racking up short term profit the total cost of which will be seen in the daces to come when coastal cities start to get flooded and people start dying more from food shortages and droughts. If the oceans get acidified enough for mass extinction of plankton to occur that puts a stop to major oxygen producer and has the change to quite literally wipe us out as well.
These being the realities of the situation anyone favoring oil or coal for energy production at this point has to be an idiot, ignorant or just self-destructive.
Wrong. Their CO2 emissions are rising because of among other things cars/traffic until 2030 when they're projected to peak and turn it around. Providing clean energy for over a billion people is not exactly a project you can achieve overnight. As for coal itself: they're already planning restrictions on coal mining/use because major cities have severe issues with smog/pollutants causing significant damage to the people and industries, they have a vested interest in fixing this stuff.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
The "solution" in the Paris accords are indeed taxation on the entire population to offset production of CO2 by industry not just in their own country but worldwide. I don't know how you solve the climate problem by extracting money, we all know government doesn't actually handle it all that well.
The solution would be to tax the producers but we can't enforce that in China or India, therefore China/India can promise to purchase offsets instead for every ton they produce and in theory for every offset purchased, the developed nation should produce less CO2. However China is never going to purchase any so we just tax the people to pay for the offsets. It's a huge scheme to pay for our trillions in Chinese debts by tax.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
China is now doing more than the US to clean up
Jesus AmiMoJo why are you constantly talking about subjects that you know literally nothing about?
My source is that right wing nut job think tank known as greenpeace
Yet China has another 200,000MW of coal-fired capacity under construction, and a new Greenpeace analysis has identified a further 150,000MW of projects potentially able to enter construction — despite recent suspensions.
I have an idea though... why dont you just fucking stop making shit up on every story they you "feel" for?
"His name was James Damore."
The date on the article is more than a month before the election.
I seems a bit premature to say what will actually happen.
It might be healthy to have somebody on board to ensure a clear picture of what the climate scientists do and don't know.
It would not be useful to pack the staff with folks trying to railroad a particular agenda.
Either tree hugging or big oil.
Hopefully, the pendulum will swing from far left to center, not to far right as this article predicts.
I assumed you'd suddenly vanish after the election but nooooo, you're still here shilling for Hillary (although I note your tone has changed, she's no longer your Queen/Goddess).
So, you weren't getting paid by the DNC but by some other anti-American Soros fund.
1) you haven't heard of clean coal technologies, now decades old
2) suddenly Hillary is just status quo instead of the best thing since fire and the wheel
3) and you're now spewing the old canard about republicans revoking roe v wade to scare women.
You missed one: Trump is going to revoke the 13th amendment and reinstitute slavery. I've been reading your fellow Soros puppets post that on sites with less intelligent and aware readers than /.
I look specifically for your posts every day to see what the morning memo is from Soros/DNC. Thank you for continuing to provide an inside look at what Soros will be talking about for the next few weeks through his media slaves and online puppets.
Better all head for Canada now. Your safe spaces are about to disappear.
You reckon? Because your first lady to be wants to make the internet a safe place.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Shit, we've been saying that for years. You didn't need a Harvard study to tell us that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide turns people into morons, you can just open the journals and start reading. The apparent IQ of climate "scientists" is quite obviously inversely correlated, and has been since at least the 90s.
See that "Preview" button?
Whatever else you feel about this article based on a rumor, there is no way US citizens or a substantial portion of the US military would allow the UN to come in and set up any provisional government. They would jointly decimate any such attacks and retaliate against the places of origin of the attackers within hours. If you're angry or dismayed at Trump winning, start a protest outside the HQ of the DNC and all the major social/MSM organizations to start acting ethically and regain the respect of the electorate that Hillary and her allies alienated so utterly.
There is no reason to beleive humans could not acheive equilibrium.
Hooray!
A neutral and reasonably stated hypothesis that carries some weight!
I'd only correct the misspellings, and change "equilibrium" to "steady-state". Humans birth and die. If the two rates match, then we are in a steady state.
"Equilibrium" would imply interstellar maximization of entropy – in other words the heat-death of the Universe – so we won't go there today.
There is no reason to beleive humans could not acheive equilibrium.
Well, we'll certainly achieve equilibrium, one way or another
Everywhere is "at sea" by some definition, and that is the one you must to use to support your claim. Otherwise, have a look at the experiences of the United Kingdom and Australia for a dose of reality. Perhaps a few days without heat in the dead of winter would correct your propensity for lying.
All over the world, there are extended periods where wind generates zero power. Even if you have a super-grid on the scale of the world, there is just as much guarantee that the wind isn't blowing somewhere. For this reason, and the fact that prime locations are chosen first, the marginal effectiveness of wind and solar is reduced at larger scales. The inescapable fact, is that wind and solar need massive overbuild, interconnection, and storage on a scale that is completely impractical. Clearly you have not done or even looked at the math.
Are those really the ones you intended to make?
I realize I may not be the most effective communicator, and I am quite the cynic. Ultimately all our environmental problems are a consequence of our massive human population. Anything you propose is merely a rationing system, nothing more. Rationing does not solve problems therefore I hate seeing it portrayed as a solution. The ONLY solution is reducing the size of our population. There are ways to do that involuntarily at huge moral and ethical cost via war, hydraulic despotism, or just out and out murder. And there are ways to do it voluntarily and morally, through education - teaching people why it's important that many should abstain from breeding and encouraging them to abstain.
Unfortunately we live in a world where our leaders feel that investing in bombs and jet fighters is far more worthwhile in terms of return on investment than education. So for all you propose, and for all you complain - nothing is going to change - even under a rationing system.
Well, if your goal is to eliminate people, then investments in bombs and fighter aircraft are a very worthwhile investment for the environment :)
Speaking frankly, I agree with that sentiment. Our planet is overpopulated, and policies like insisting every married couple have children aren't helping with that. However, you also have a pretty nihilist attitude on this - even though encouraging energy efficiency isn't going to eliminate our pollution problems, it is going to slow them down and lessen their severity. Likewise, keeping garbage off the streets is healthier for our environment, even if it doesn't reduce Co2, it's still going to drastically improve the quality of life for not just humans but animals and plants as well. To suggest a darkly accurate metaphor, if you have cancer, that doesn't necessarily mean it's fatal if you attack it while it's still small, and even if it is, at least you can reduce the suffering. The alternative is either twiddling our thumbs and saying it's impossible or actively living in a delusional fantasy, and I'd rather be harpooned through the ear than sit around and die from a problem we could have prevented had we taken action sooner...
Of course, we all have to actually come together and want to save our planet, and I'm not really getting the impression that's the case...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
We need oil today, but our investment should be in renewables. Focusing on fossil fuels is not an economically sound decision, even if you discount global climate change.
Yep. Fracking wells tend to get tapped-out very quickly.
Some drillers simply "flare" off the natural gas that comes up because it's not "cost-effective" to pipe it to a near-enough LNG plant. And the helium that is sitting there with it goes up in that flare (some isotopes of which are critical to fusion power), but instead it just rises up-and-up into stellar space – irretrievable. Despite this fact, and that there is a US (global, too) shortage of the stuff, alternative-energy R&D suffers. What a surprise!
They just want that orangey-brown gooey juice.
Drown out the coastal blue states and profit!
Is it my fault, she literally stole the Democratic nomination from a very intelligent practical leader?
Is it my fault that the DNC itself uses "Super Delegates" to make sure that these types of events will occur with predictable frequency?
I voted for Johnson. The only candidate who is against war, understandable on immigration and free trade. Is it my fault, 95% of the country is locked into the Democrat and Republican mind control?
Frequently I rage that our problems are due to ourselves. In this case, I'm excluding myself. While I would much prefer Trump instead of the One World Order continuation I by no means liked him -- ever. Until more people think instead of react, nothing is going to get better no matter who or what is at the steering wheel.
Anyone who voted for Trump or Hillary is part of the problem.
They picked a leading gravity skeptic.
I've seen AGW believers get pilloried by their own for advocating that trees should be grown and used for building material to sequester carbon. I guess, somehow, it's better for the carbon cycle or something to burn those trees for heat.
I don't claim to know what AGW believers you're talking about, or what goes on inside their heads, but one theory that springs to mind is that they're concerned that if heat isn't being produced by burning wood, it will inevitably be produced by burning fossil fuels. Burning wood at least has the advantage that it's net carbon neutral over the life cycle of the trees, while fossil fuels are carbon positive on any timescale less than geologic.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Dissenting voices need to heard, sorry but some balance is always needed and the data right now is suspect based on the interference from UN and grant giving process.
I hope Trump doesn't listen to a word all of the whiny losers have to say, completely neuters the EPA, and does everything else he said he was going to do that lead to his victory. Liberals only care about unity and working together when they're not the ones in power. They just lost big time and don't deserve any concessions.
However, you also have a pretty nihilist attitude on this
Not really. Humans tend to think punitively. How can I make people obey. Force them. Punish them. I'd like to think the other way. What if somehow we could figure out how to reward those who choose to abstain from breeding. Reward them either with status, wealth, privilege or a combination of all. Then our collective need - reducing our population footprint - can be addressed in a morally acceptable way. Don't punish people for having kids with fines or mandatory sterilization or worse - like has been tried in the past. Educate people as to why it's necessary to reduce our vast numbers and then reward those who willingly make this sacrifice. I think it's possible but it requires a rethink of our priorities as a society.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Not real sure what the big deal is here. Trump never hid that he was a climate denier while he was running. That's who America voted for, so that's what they were asking for. From a political standpoint, it would be wrong for him not to appoint climate deniers to head environmental agencies. That's how Democracy is supposed to work.
I hope nobody thought all this was some kind of joke.
I'm not the original poster, but it's common sense, jackass. What do you think pulls CO2 from the atmosphere? What happens when you don't have that any longer? Now that you're done with that little mental journey, what problem is China having right now with the air in its cities? The current people worrying about the climate are too one-dimensional. They also do not understand what is needed to actually implement anything, and the most they can come up with is trying to force people to do things. It'll never work.
We could save the trees for building material if we used nuclear power for heat instead. Of course we need heat but we don't need to burn wood, coal, or oil, to do it.
What we also see are AGW types that lobby against nuclear power as well. Some AGW types leave us in a corner of where we cannot burn fossil fuels, cannot use nuclear power, and so we are left with burning wood, which even then some are unhappy with. These kinds of AGW types are insane and cannot be reasoned with. The AGW types that advocate for nuclear power are at least reasonable since it leaves us with an "out" from returning to hunter gatherer society.
As you may have guesses I am skeptical of AGW but I will play along with the AGW theory so long as we can have nuclear power. No fossil fuels and no nuclear means living like cavemen or an environmental disaster as we fight over the last of the trees to cut down, and then we live like cavemen.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
time for all the mother earthers to move to Canada with their like minded celebrities
Exemptions for hydraulic fracturing under United States federal law. The fossil fuel industry and geothermal also get a pass on nuclear regulations, and continue spewing radioisotopes into our environment. As long as nuclear is severely disadvantaged and excluded from clean energy initiatives, the question of who heads the EPA is largely irrelevant to climate concerns. Interestingly, striking down the unfair regulations may yet produce a better outcome for the environment, if the party lives up to their claims on supporting nuclear.
Nuclear is the leading source of clean energy, and had the renewable-only party won the presidency, the situation could be worse. Any proposed climate solutions which exclude nuclear energy are utterly impractical, and leading climate scientists like James Hansen acknowledge that reality. Nuclear is also the only source that has demonstrated decarbonization on a large scale. Any benefits that renewables might have produced have been squandered by foolish efforts to retire clean nuclear power, replacing it with an increasing reliance on burning fossil fuels.
But there is only ONE way to reduce population size in anything less than a period of thousands of years. Any volunteers?
Yep. My SO and I are both sterilized, and neither of us had children first. So that's two adults who aren't reproducing. Not sure what you mean by 'thousands of years', though. I'm pretty sure we'll only live another 50 at best. And without reproducing to provide replacements, we'll be removing 2 from the population upon our deaths.
So no, it's actually pretty easy to reduce population size even within a century. You just have to convince people that popping out kids is not the purpose of their life, nor do they need offspring to have a full life. Might be a bit tricky though, as evolution has hardwired people to want exactly that, and then society and religion has reinforced the delusion that procreating is the honored highest-calling for any person.
China is growing fast, but has committed to limiting itself and is installing more renewables than the US. Just because you guys are further along in terms of development isn't an excuse.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE. How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2? You still need to build the factories that build these durable things, and build the things themselves.
Sure. energy is needed. It won't have to come from carbon though. There are solar & wind as the green options, there is nuclear if you need lots of energy. Neither make CO2.
Getting rid of CO2 is not free - but you don't have to quit using energy altogether. There are plenty of alternatives to plastic too - wood & metal being two prominent ones.
Since 2014 and until recently, the US has been the world's largest oil producer. We're a net exporter, in a big way.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-13/saudi-arabia-overtakes-u-s-as-largest-oil-producer-iea-says
That's not fair. Germany was, until not so long ago, not even *allowed* to defend itself.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Nothing you just said contradicts the fact that you lied. You made shit up. You did it because you "feel."
China emits over twice as much CO2 as the US and the rate this growth of its emissions is still increasing you fucking fucktard lying twat.
My source is again that right wing think tank known as greenpeace.
Being a transvestite doesnt give you permission to lie about all the shit you feel for, fucker.
"His name was James Damore."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nuclear fission as an energy source. Eventually we will realize it's the only way forward and we will adopt it and perfect it and stop burning our plastic (er, I mean oil) for energy. We can keep denying this and put off the inevitable, or face the fact and start sooner. We need energy, period, and we're going to have it. Sooner we face that and then move on with the next step the better.
Is he a climate skeptic or a climate change skeptic?
I love my parents, always have. What a crap life you must have.
No matter what your political views are, those maps are very interesting. We have something of a culture war going on, and it may be about to escalate. War is the continuation of politics by other means...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
In all those films, just substitute.
If you get a little bit of it on you somewhere, then you sell out too.
Those unwilling to sell out to cynicism, well..., keep fighting I guess.
They can't live forever.
We need to find ways to mitigate climate change despite the post war zombie generation.
Let them have their moment. But never forget.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Andy May (at Watt's Up with That)
Andy May
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
This begs the question whether corruption or plain old incompetence is better. After all, the corrupt ones may possibly still be frightened into doing a reasonable job when things get really bad, while no such possibility exists for the incompetent.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If no one were allowed to profit from making garbage, no one would waste time selling it.
True. But this would require re-working the economic models of our societies and re-educating our consumers
That is self-evident. However, it's going to have to happen barring the discovery of a science-fiction level clean energy source, a magic CO2 conversion process, etc.
Heck we're doomed in all cases, but population is the more immediate problem.
I agree that it is a problem, but the immediate problem is waste which exists specifically due to greed, namely to keep prices high. Not just building shit that will fail, but also things like building cars that nobody wants so that they can be registered by dealers to artifically inflate sales figures. Thousands of automobiles are created for this purpose every year. That has a measurable and significant environmental impact.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, you, "fredrated" - I don't know what your real name is, because you're hiding behind that pseudonym, in order to maintain anonymity, like the parent - can go fuck yourself.
just because u dont understand something doesnt make it wrong
u fucking trumpite imbecile
but i repeat myself:-/
After all, the earth is only 6,000 years old. *cough*
We could build things to last and keep them longer.
That fixes a problem with GARBAGE.
The rate at which things turn into garbage directly affects the amount of energy that has to be spent replacing them.
How will you magically build these durable things without producing CO2?
There's nothing magic about it; you build less stuff, and you plant trees or bamboo or whatever it is that's convenient to fix the CO2 emitted by what you do produce.
Plus entropy works against you - there's no such thing as a product that will last forever.
Perfect is the enemy of good, and you are moving the goalposts. I never said forever.
insulation has to be manufactured. It has to be shipped to where you need it. It has to be installed.
Good news, everyone! Most of the houses built in the last forty years are total shit-shacks, and the nation has been hit with more and more flooding and earthquakes, so there is substantial turnover in homes. We can simply institute sane building codes and make a real substantive difference going forwards. Passive solar, meaningful insulation...
this merely postpones the problem. As long as the population growth rate remains POSITIVE, we are inevitably going to hit the wall one way or another
Yes, that's where education comes in, since educated people have less children and many nations are now actually having problems replacing their populations.
Assuming you are not living in a hippy commune in the woods somewhere (and you're not, because you're using a computer and connected to the internet) you are guilty of that very same greed. Greed for the convenience of modern life.
And yet, the situation can be improved considerably using technology and philosophy which has already been invented, and yet we're not even doing that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
so u r ok with rising sealevels drowning the worlds poorest peoples?
fucking selfish trumpites
You don't look very good here.
The point was that climate change over 100,000 years is less challenging to the biosphere than a similar amount of climate change occurring in 100 years.
That's not assurance that said 100-year change is going to actually happen as the various attempts at models depict -- those are predictions, and none of them take into account any ameliorative technolg(y/ies), because of course no one has any good way to measure what the impact of such things might be.
One thing I am pretty sure of is that we'll be transitioning to EVs fairly rapidly now (in terms of a 100 year time period) and that will push the rate of human-generated CO2 downwards by some significant amount [waves hands.]
Personally, that's what I'm looking for from whatever leadership we end up with next year: get us off the oil teat as fast as possible. For many reasons. It may be Trump and crew or it may not be, but whoever it is, that's the responsible thing to do.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think the world was in debt when Americans took Hitler out of the picture, but now that they introduced a new one I think the score is settled. You guys are just repeating what happened back in Germany, hidding behind a symbol (flag) and blind following a racist piece of shit, I mean, a leader.
Sea levels could rise 100 feet and not a single creature would drown.
The more education and prosperous the less babies. The problem with this is capitalism, which demands endless growth.
Note I did not say free enterprise, which is not capitalism.
A wise society would plan for a transition to renewables, no one doubts they're the future, and at some point we run out of oil/coal, but fossil fuel industries want to continue making a profit.
A wise society would plan for a transition away from a "jobs and consumption" based economy because there are not enough jobs for everyone, and this will grow exponentially with IA and robotics. Self driving cars/trucks/farm equipment alone will take 8 million jobs over the next decade or so.
Capitalism hates climate change so capitalists deny it exists. Capitalism has no concern for humans.
And I like capitalism, at least up to a point.
Leftist Caused Climate Hysteria is a HOAX to Control and Steal from YOU! It is beyond me how the collective of /. can buy into the Human Caused Climate Change Stupid. Do some Fing Research on the subject.
I totally agree with you we should be all-in on nuclear power, especially developing and deploying more modern, safer and cheaper fourth-gen plants, and building a waste reprocessing infrastructure. I also think AGW types who lobby against nuclear are silly. It's obviously because many are the same people who were worried about nuclear waste, etc., years ago, before AGW came on the scene as a concern. The old "greenies" are a big component of the new AGW movement and they've brought their biases with them.
However, I think you're silly to be skeptical of global warming. The evidence of warming, global and unusually rapid, is abundant. It's less certain (though very, very likely) that it's anthropogenic in nature, but that doesn't really matter. Regardless of the origin, it looks like it's going to cause us big problems so we should be working out what to do to prevent the worst of it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That's because climate science, in the sense of the "A CO2-induced catastrophe is imminent" message, predicts a future result that has no historical analog (we've never, ever seen this happen), and does so in such a way as to bring a message that massive financial and behavioral change is outright required.
You have to expect people to hold a prediction like that to a much higher standard of proof than either a claim that has no significant immediate consequences for individuals regardless of its factual nature, or not; or claims that have such impacts, but for which we actually have historical precedent, such as "Tsunamis here will destroy your beachfront house."
It's perfectly natural for people to resist those who insist they change their behavior when you cannot demonstrate the validity of the impetus -- there has been a lot of variability between the predictions and the actual circumstances, depending on which claims one looks at.
Expecting the "common person" to grasp the scientific arguments... that's so overly optimistic as to be fairly characterized as outright ridiculous.
Assuming the suggested consequences are coming and are pendent upon nearly or exactly the CO2 levels and rate of increase that we have now, there's a huge amount of physical inertia to the whole process, and between that and the social inertia inherent in a mostly non-scientifically literate populace, you'd best be thinking ahead, because there isn't any way to really put on the brakes at this point.
And as someone else noted above, if it's not going to proceed as predicted, then anything you do that has no other benefit to you... is a waste of your time and resources.
I honestly don't know why either side really expects the other side to grasp the arguments of the other. The one strongly resists anything that might interfere with their lives or cost them time and resources, the other relies on extremely technical arguments that are both hard to grasp in toto, more than a little vague in many ways, and suffer from no historical precedent to point to.
TLDR: Quit arguing about it. How often have you seen these arguments actually change anyone's mind? I don't think I've ever seen that happen.
You want to have an actual effect, convince a legislator. Bring an envelope full of money.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What is just maddening to me is the trend for using wood for heat and energy. .
I and all of the people I have ever known who heat with wood burn scavenged wood which would otherwise have sat and rotted, returning the same carbon to the ecosystem as if burned.
burning wood means less of it for building material, paper, and Parmesan cheese filler.
No, it does not. Those end uses do not source the same lumber as is scavenged and burned. Commercial use is sourced from large-scale commercial producers. The farmer who saws up the fallen tree limb lying along his fence row and chucks it into his wood stove next January does not have as an option selling it to Kraft for Parmesan filler instead.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
As usual. The entire paragraph:
"For example, cold winter storms kill a lot of people. More people die from blizzards and cold spells than from heat waves. Increased death rates usually persist for weeks after the unusually cold temperatures have passed, which suggests that the cold is killing people who would otherwise live into another season at least. Mortality rates during heat waves are just the reverse. The increase ends and often the rate drops below normal as soon as temperatures cool, which suggests that the higher temperatures are killing people who are likely to die soon anyway. It is true that mortality rates from both cold and hot weather have been declining in rich countries for a long time. That’s because wealthier societies can adapt and protect themselves better from temperature extremes. But it also appears that deaths from hot weather have been declining more rapidly than those from cold." http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1225/038.html
I agree with sentiment if you replace Fossil Fuels with "Cheap Energy". There are plenty of options to generate more energy that don't necessary come with a cost increase in health care due to asthma, etc.
Well, if that happens, just remember: the cost of products like steel and phones and laptops and desktops and RPIs and toys and chips and televisions and audio systems and cars and so on are going to spike immediately. As in, the moment associated trade barriers, in whatever form, go up.
I'm not insisting that's a bad thing in the long run (I have mixed opinions on the matter, and they're far too involved to go into here), but you'd best be ready to reap what gets sown, because if nothing else, you're going to feel it. (BTW, my advice for keeping the personal impact lowish is to buy the stuff you want in the "made overseas" category now, before the impact of trade barriers makes them much more consequential to purchase.)
Trade between entities with unbalanced cost of production costs jobs on one side and gains them on the other, while providing less expensive products to the side that loses the jobs. That's pretty much right where the US is right now: cheap products and lost jobs.
Stifle that trade, or eliminate the disparity between cost of production with tariffs, and costs of products will go up, consumption of same will slow, and some jobs may return, depending on just how needful the market is for the product in question.
Right now, a TV can be had for $100, no problem. Balance the cost of production in China with the cost of production here using tariffs, or block such imports entirely, and a TV will become much more expensive. Probably a large number of people will buy them anyway, but I guarantee it will be a more carefully vetted and far less casual purchase when the entry cost rises to $200, $300 or even higher.
Same thing for everything else. You want jobs to come back here, okay, but don't run around thinking it's all going to be flowers and candy. It's going to hurt.
Also, there will be the amusement of watching China continue to sell televisions and the like inexpensively to everyone else: basically, it's going to be harder for consumers to swallow that they have to pay $2x or more for what people in the EU pay $1x for. The butthurt will be profound -- because if there's one thing I am absolutely sure of, it's that the average Trump voter doesn't see this coming at all. But come it will.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Thank God. Now maybe the biggest fraud in history can come to an end.
What you're missing is that if the thing lasts longer, fewer of them will be produced, and that reduces the CO2 of manufacture, transport and so on.
What the GP is missing is that in a very large number of product categories, low endurance products are a significant part of keeping costs low and sales high, profits likewise. The consequence of that is it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to get manufacturers to actually make more durable products.
For instance, if we want our refrigerators to last longer, that can certainly be done, in the engineering sense. Those cheap little compressors and thin-walled heat exchangers will have to go, the seals around the doors will become much more expensive, the lighting and defrosting mechanisms will have to be changed, the hardware in the icemaker will no longer be able to use plastic gears, and so on. This will cost a lot more, and when it's done, far fewer refrigerators will be sold. Good for the environment; not good for the manufacturer. Guess what that means... Right: we get cheap refrigerators with short lifetimes. Welcome to profiteering 101.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So it's Bush all over again? And you're surprised by this because...?
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Those of us who remember history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
It's not idiocy. It's corruption based on pure selfishness in the form of influence flowing from oil interests into the legislative process. Money, favor, power... you name it, it's in play here. Re-election coffers swell, cousin Cletus gets a great deal on land / home / boat, etc., that post-political book deal, speaking tour, think-tank position... sexual favors, access to art, collectables, stock tips, club memberships "somehow" become readily available...
Yep, it's great to be in congress.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The know nothings are at the wheel now and you can't stop them. They feel empowered and think you can vote facts away. They don't want to know, they want to believe. And now they have found their prophet.
So just lean back and enjoy it.
to the Cabinet of Deplorables.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
u r a fucking moron
Even if you doubt the science and don't believe that humans are screwing up the planet, there are still plenty of selfish reasons to "go green"
First and foremost is money. At a personal level, solar panels are cheaper than coal-fired grid power for many people. On a broader scale, an energy company that has fewer options will charge more. Here in San Diego, they decommissioned our nuke plant a few years ago, and home energy prices have increased significantly as a result. People should be supporting alternative energy sources to reduce their bill.
Secondly is supply. We are going to run out of oil at some point. Coal, too. It's already getting harder and harder to dig up. Check out how deep the Deepwater Horizon drill actuall was. The oil pocket was 2/3 down the Mariana's Trench. That reeks of desperation. Fracking is even more desperate. It's like trying to wring the last few drops of booze out of a bar towel.
The sun, on the other hand, isn't going anywhere. Not for a few billion years at least. Wind, tidal, geothermal, and nuclear power are similarly long duration. Even if you believe that "clean coal" is actually a real thing, it would behoove you to move away from a power source that might not last your lifetime
Thirdly, smog. Have you been to Beijing? The air is insane over there. It's like London pea soup fog, except with dirt and soot instead of water condensation. There is seriously a business selling cans of air in China. Whether or not you think that's bad for the planet is immaterial. That's bad for YOU. And if you think "it's on the other side of the world, I'll be fine," I would like to introduce you to the concept of wind.
Be selfish. Go green.
This signature is false.
More like a sign of disgust at the country, not just the president. If you knew me you'd know how loathe I am to engage in any ritual or symbolism, so that's how bad I feel for this nation. I didn't do it for dubya either time even though I hated his guts. Trump is just beyond the pale.
Someone had to do it.
Allow me to sarcastically paraphrase you:
"Ha ha, Russia is going to invade and tens of millions of your citizens will die! America could step in and stop that, but fuck you, we don't owe you anything."
The fact in question is "the same groups wanting to take your cash for carbon put forth no projects or proposals to deal with those issues". No argument about the need to combat deforestation and pollution.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Humans are a naturally tribal species. You can pick them from the savana and put them in a modern industrial setting, but the instincts will still assert. They will always divide into tribes - perhaps along racial lines, or political, or even over something as trivial as which football team to support. The members of any tribe will then always put the interests of tribe-members above those of outsiders, and at times may even be actively hostile towards rival tribes.
Change.org has a petition to encourage electors to vote for Clinton. I really think the electoral college needs to end. States tend to be locked in for the most part which results in micro targeting people in swing states for their votes. That is _not_ better than just letting everyone have an equal voice. I encourage everyone to sign the change.org petition, not because it is good for our country, but because it would give us a foothold in ending this electoral college nonsense.
People need to be more educated in the issues and in what is true and not, but they also need an equal voice.
We have to invent a way to convert atmospheric CO2 + sun into fuel (cheap and at scale) or we are doomed.
/. and associated comments were about how much Linux rocked and Window$ sucked. Good times. Good times.
I'm pretty sure even the lowliest creature on earth can outrun water rising at 0.04 inches per year. You're the moron who isn't capable of independent thought.
However, I think you're silly to be skeptical of global warming.
I'm okay with you disagreeing with me on AGW so long as we can agree on solutions. I believe that we have bigger problems with importing oil than the carbon output, if we can agree on strategies that can reduce oil importation then I don't care what you think about AGW.
What I have found out is that burning plant matter for energy is demonstrably bad for the economy and bad for the environment. People need to eat and people eat plant matter. Burning plant matter is burning food. The whole idea of "agricultural waste" is laughable. Those corn stalks and soybean hulls that some people want to burn is wasteful. That plant matter is erosion control, nitrogen fixers, and all kinds of good for the soil. If we don't put that plant matter back in the fields then farmers have to use artificial fertilizers, the kind made from natural gas mostly, to make up for it.
Ethanol is a real bad idea too, I'd go into it but this post is long enough already. Any kind of bio-fuel is a bad idea except perhaps those that are dangerous to human health in some way, like sewage and medical waste, I'm not terribly opposed to burning that kind of material generally because we will often burn it anyway to dispose of it so we may as well derive energy from it.
I can get along with AGW people, just so long as they don't lobby for things that destroy the economy and my standard of living to "save" the planet. The planet is going to be fine, it will still be here even if the seas rise and ice caps melt, it's people we need to worry about.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
no u r the moron who doesn't realize that rising sea levels increase the danger of typhoons' flooding:-\
Fact: Climate can either cool or heat up. It depends on the following.
Mental Thoughts:
1. How much monies does the SuperPaC have to give to me & my family?
2. Should I really make a fair tax law. The difference between millionaires & people making $5 thousand dollars per year?
3. Should I create laws to prevent politicians from getting monies from SuperPaC, Fund Raisng, Lobbiests.
4. How can I grow companies if I am Pro or againsts Climate Change?
5. How can I create a huge usa dollar surplus from a huge crazy deficit?
I'm gonna buy stock in a company that makes ventilators. I get to both laugh and get rich off your liberal tears.
I bet most politicians have no idea what is meant by order of magnitude. They argue over millions and leave 10's of billions at stake. OK, we need a scientific equivalent of the supreme court. A completely (or as close to completely as possible) non-partisan group who are experts in a variety of scientific fields. Experts who know a little of politics and a lot of math. Their job will be to analyze disagreements pertaining to key issues that are scientific in nature being discussed in another branch of government. After hearing both sides of the argument they will perform a "peer reviewed" report of each side and cut through the bullshit. I'm just getting kind of sick of politicians arguing (half-assedly) about subjects which they cannot hope to understand because they have the wrong background. Even worse than arguing half-assedly about subjects they don't understand, politicians (predictably) politicize things that aren't even political!! Statements of fact should not be considered partisan, ever.
Spoken like a true 'believer' but little did you know...
"No, you'd have to be a scientist with a working understanding of the greenhouse effect."
O'rly?
Remember that meme?
"The greenhouse effect is an increase in the average temperature of the Earth. It happens because certain gases absorb infrared heat that would normally be radiated into space. Infrared light is what you feel as heat from heat lamps used in restaurants to keep french fries hot."
So you're claiming that something so easy to understand can only be understood by those who study it which means that everything you've said is complete an utter horse shit.
"You can measure the heat trapping ability of CO2 in a lab or test it yourself by building a greenhouse, we can do the math on it and figure out how much an increase in CO in the atmosphere traps more heat. "
Oh, so do these lab test also account for CMEs and cosmic radiation both of which are well known for quake activity and cloud seeding rates?
Care to explain to me what cause the atmosphere to expand and contract?
"It's not the only controller of heat in the atmosphere but it is the most prevalent and therefore most important"
Based on what?
So you're saying if the Sun vanished tomorrow that the CAGW hypothisis would be unaffected?
"Do you understand that increasing the greenhouse effect has real life implications really fast: sea-levels rising, rainfall increasing in other areas whereas droughts will increase alsewhere, more and bigger storms etc. "
Aside from your bogus claim of anthropocentric sea level rise,( check the sites that gauge that shit idiot, they can't even align the norther and southern hemispheres)
Where has rain fall or droughts increased?
You do realize that 4 thousand years ago that the Sahara desert (the worlds largest desert) was a jungle right?
YOu're a fucking idiot, we're living in the most stable climate in all of Earths history which is why we've been allowed to progress so far.
" Plus there's the risk of chain-reactions occurring: once the northern permafrost starts to melt it will release methane which is 20 times stronger as a greenhouse gas the CO2, which will them increase the warming yet again melting more of the frost and creating an unstoppable feedback loop."
Oh like what?
Increased foliage in places like deserts and arctic tundras?
Stupid ass.
Name one period in Earth History where increased cooling triggered increased life...Oh that's right, there is none. Every single time there's been increased cooling, it's been met with mass extinctions...However, increased warming has ALWAYS 'triggered' the mass emergence of life. Fucking idiot.
Clearly you're a fucking brainwashed shill....so I won't reply to the rest of your bogus comments.
Hahahahahahahah
You're welcome. The sad part is that most of the people who think they're making the world a better place by having children are dead wrong.
The irony is that you finally said something I agree with!
See, goes to show that one of us is right from time to time.
The real trick is... which one? :)
"Ha ha, Russia is going to invade and tens of millions of your citizens will die! America could step in and stop that, but fuck you, we don't owe you anything."
Why should America care if Germany is under the control of Germans or Russians?
Why is the whole world's problems ours to solve?
I suppose we could rent out our military, how much are you offering?
That's not fair. Germany was, until not so long ago, not even *allowed* to defend itself.
It has been decades, they have had long enough...
Keep in mind that the main gun on the American M1 Abrams main battle tank is a German-designed gun. :)
Germany can take care of itself. If they like, I'd even sell them nuclear weapons from the American stockpile at this point if they'd rather avoid developing their own. A few hundred would be plenty...
since we produce way more steel than we need. We need to be able to export the stuff for it to be profitable and with China dumping steel that ain't happening. Maybe if we really did build that wall (it'd need tons and tons of steel rebar) but other than that...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
$5,000 to buy insulation? Or $5,000 to pay skilled contractors to buy and install it for you?
Scientist: If you cut off your nose you will just spite yourself.
Skeptic: Oh yeah? Says who? Owwwwwwwwwwwww!
We "could" do many things... but we aren't likely to do so...
If we don't do those things, we will die.
You're just having a bout of wishful thinking...
At this point I'm just hoping that it doesn't all go completely tits up until after my death... which I am concurrently hoping will be at least some thirty years into the future, if not more. So far, I'm not encouraged by what I'm seeing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If we don't do those things, we will die.
Not all of us...
Frankly, the real solution is population control, much of the problem is really too many people.
Our rate of pollution per person wouldn't be an issue if we had 500 million total people on Earth. Cutting pollution by 50% per person, then doubling the number of people, doesn't actually solve anything.
If we don't do those things, we will die.
Not all of us...
No, but who suffers will be psuedorandom and chaotic.
Frankly, the real solution is population control, much of the problem is really too many people.
I am not against population control, but we do have the technology to have even more people on this planet without destroying it. What's missing is apparently the will to utilize it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, but who suffers will be psuedorandom and chaotic.
Not really, I'm rich, or at least "rich enough", that it won't hurt me.
I'm not quite to "fuck you money", but I'm getting there...
You'll probably think that is bad or something, but we each do what is in our own best interest...
What's missing is apparently the will to utilize it.
You are correct... it is human nature, you want a lot of people to pay a lot of money to help a lot of other people to harm themselves, that just isn't how humans generally work...
I don't have solar panels on my roof because they cost too much. I can afford them, but it isn't in my own interest to put them up. It might be in "everyone's interest", but I'm human
That is why I voted for this guy...Climate Change is the science of the elite
Ah the classic "Go pee on that forest fire, that will save us!" argument.
Look at the rate of growth in population and then look at the rate of decrease breeding rate due to education.
Education as a fix, is 1 guy trying to put out a massive forest fire by peeing on it. The fire is still going to burn everything including that 1 guy.
When "equilibrium" is attained it is not going to be pretty.
Looking at your Wikipedia link is says we hit 7 billion in 2011 and we will hit 8 billion in ~2025...
If that is the case why are we 5 years later, at ~7.5 billion? http://www.worldometers.info/w...
Looking at the real rate of increase we will see 8 billion in ~5 years not ~10. Your chart is hopelessly optimistic and clearly VERY wrong.
We will all die for babies.
Yes, that's a possibility; it depends entirely on how congress structures any barriers and/or tariffs, assuming they even do. It's one thing to talk about it -- it's entirely another to do it. Lobbyists control what congress does. The process is that of an oligarchy. So in the crafting of any legislative policy, it's all about who has the deepest pockets. American corporations, or the Chinese and Japanese nation states.
We also have to keep in mind that China and Japan opening to our products coming in means they do damage to their own local production. That damage has to be less than the benefit gained -- it may not, in fact, be "half of something", it may be a straight-up loss. And China, at least, is enjoying the fruits of a large population combined with a roaring economic engine because they don't let in other products easily, or in some cases, at all.
It's not a given that any of this will work out well. It's popcorn time.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, that's not what I'm claiming you idiot. The greenhouse effect simply means that certain gases such as Co2 and methane bounce back k heat and thus warm the atmosphere, which can and has been easily proved in a laboratory setting. This effect is not in dispute among scientists.
Yes.
Based on the simple fact that it's the most prevalent greenhouse has in the atmosphere and thus has the most effect in the heat retaining capability of the atmosphere.
No you idiot, I never said that the original source of the heat is not the sun and neither did the scientists. The greenhouse effect works by binding/bouncing back heat from the sun thus warming the Earth. No-one's disputing that the heat itself is coming from the sun, the whole point of global warming is that dumping more greenhouse gases such as CO2 into the atmosphere means it will retain more of the heat provided by the sun thus affecting the climate.
So the sun warms the Earth, and increasing the amount of greenhouse gases increases the rate of warming. There's nothing controversial or disputable about this, it's quite simple science.
More heat --> more energy in the atmosphere --> more rains and storms. This logic is not disputed among climatologists.
No, like such increased rainfall that crops will not grow where they now do. Too much rain will prevent normal food crops from growing, while places close to the equator will get so warm that nothing will grow there,
Yes, but that warming has usually occurred over several centuries and millenia. The problem is that the warming being caused by man is happening at a much faster rate t6han any natural cycles that plant/animal life does not have the time to a
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Yawn. "Global cooling" was the hysteria in the 1960s based on... models.
That turned into "global warming" based on... models. Presumably someone found an erroneous negative sign to a variable and quietly changed it...
When that began to not appear in the empirical data (drat those pesky details), it overnight transmogrified into "climate change."
All along what has not changed? Busy bodies running around to conferences, preening themselves while the press tells them how important they are, AND whipping out proposal after proposal all involving (amazingly enough) huge chunks of taxation, the "benefits" of which remain really hazy, but the negative, prosperity-inhibiting effects of which are well-documented.
Spare me. Keep whining on message boards.
No, but who suffers will be psuedorandom and chaotic.
Not really, I'm rich, or at least "rich enough", that it won't hurt me.
That's not how it works, and that kind of idiotic thinking is why we can't have nice things. None of the fucks responsible think it can happen to them. But that's what chaos means. It can.
You'll probably think that is bad or something, but we each do what is in our own best interest...
No. You're just being an idiot and making excuses. Cognitive dissonance is leading you to believe that acting like a shitheel is in your own best interest, but the fact is that climate change has already affected you negatively, and it's going to continue to do so.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's not how it works, and that kind of idiotic thinking is why we can't have nice things.
No, it is why you can't have nice things, I have plenty of nice things and can afford to move if for some magic reason the oceans rose 500 feet.
but the fact is that climate change has already affected you negatively, and it's going to continue to do so.
How so?
I have all the food and water I care to consume, I can heat and cool my home as much as I want. I can take vacations, drive and go anywhere I want, and do almost anything I want.
How exactly has climate change hurt me?
The hell they did. This is as pitiful as continuing to insist in 2016 that Saddam had to be deposed because of his WMD's and ties to Al Queda, a full decade after even Bush flunkies stopped repeating those claims.
Wind is not working because:
1. You are an idiot
2. You choose not to see it
3. You're a troll
Again: In your country, right now.
There is no reason it could work, as there are plenty of examples of countries where it does.
So in my eyes the troll and the idiot is you. Because you can not look over the brim of your plate. Or simply lack knowledge about simple laws of physics.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Against whom should we need to defend our selves?
Against Chinese? Or the Turkish soon?
On what planet do you live?
The German army/navy/air force is not very big, but belongs to the finest. And most of our stuff is designed for "home defense" and not to bomb third world countries into the Stone Age. In other words, systems like our helicopters and missiles are designed for our terrain. Heavy infantry etc. is basically anti tank defense.
Even if you turn off all your power tomorrow, it doesn't mean anything. We all share the same air.
It would change a lot. That is why you are not very smart. You still forget: 75% of all CO2 pollution comes form USA, EU, and niche countries like Kuwait, Russia ofc. If the developed world would over night go to ZERO CO2 (and Germany plans to reach that till 2030 at the earliest and 2050 at the latest) then only 25% is left. That is a HUGE difference.
You REALLY fucking suck at math, you have no idea what it will take to stop CO2 rise in the air, it is simply not going to be stopped.
Of course it will be stopped. Either when all energy production is green SOON, or after the fall of mankind when people only can burn wood. I hope / assume there is some middle ground in between. E.g. plenty of asian countries could install off shore wind plants. Some are experimenting with it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Depends on the year you pick :D that page lacks the recent years btw. I think peek exhaust of the USA was around 2010 or something, no?
Also most statistics cut out countries like Oceania or Kuwait etc. because they disrupt the big picture.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
On what planet do you live?
The same one you do, the one that passed 400 PPM CO2 and is never going back to 350 in our lifetime.
It will however, hit 600 PPM probably sometime next century, give or take a bit, and the human race will still be here.
You still forget: 75% of all CO2 pollution comes form USA, EU, and niche countries like Kuwait, Russia ofc
Really?
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w...
Who is at the top of that list? Try again...
If the developed world would over night go to ZERO CO2
If unicorns flew out of my butt, that would be pretty impressive as well. Neither are going to happen...
I live in the real world, you live in fantasy land.
Of course it will be stopped.
Yep, you live in Germany where you are fed bullshit by the people currently in charge who are complete morons... In 20 years you're going to be really fucking sorry you let 1 million people from the Middle East in, by which point it will be too late...
So you're wrong, perhaps because you'd fed this nonsense and don't bother to fact check, perhaps because you don't care, and perhaps because the reality would scare you and you like your safe space.
So in my eyes the troll and the idiot is you.
And nothing short of violence will convince you otherwise...
You remind me of my 8 year old daughter when she's being stubborn, you plant your feet and ignore reality.
Think what you want, you're wrong and a fool, but there are many such people like you in the world.
Well, I just could quote you and say the same about you. :)
Unfortunately I have no 8 year old daughter to compare you with
As I pointed out several times before:
a) I worked in the energy business for about ten years - unlike you
b) I live in germany and we show the rest of the world how to do renewables - unlike you
So, my definition of idtiot/troll does definitely not match yours :)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Please, don't link web pages that show that I'm right.
That makes you look very dumb.
Regarding the millions we let in form the middle east: sorry there is no way around that. Or we would be called Nazies and killers and ugly germans or swines or what ever. You can only keep them out by let them starve to death behind the boarder or shoot them.
In both cases you likely would be the first one calling us 'Nazis, ugly Germans, or Swines' again. Thank you.
Unlike your future and former president the High Chancelor of germany has a Phd in Physics. So thank you for your impression that we are 'fed bullshit'.
I'm soon 50, so I care since 40 years, unlike you. Facepalm. An I know about the problems since over 40 years, unlike you. Troll?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
After Trump starts a nuclear war and nuclear winter sets in you'll all be glad that Trump turned up the global warming.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The argument to end all for all of these like topics.
Globalization and Environmentalism
Basically if you try to be a good environmental steward you put yourself at a disadvantage to places with no such restrictions.
You can apply that to just about anything. Until your market attempts to disadvantage other places for not being good stewards, said issue continues.
We can talk circles around the various topics involved, but unless that discrepancy is addressed little meaningful progress is going to be made.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11...