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Paris Summit Finds New Money, Tech To Fight Climate Change (apnews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Associated Press report: World leaders, investment funds and energy magnates promised Tuesday to devote new money and technology to slow global warming at a summit in Paris that President Emmanuel Macron hopes will rev up the Paris climate accord that U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected. Trump wasn't invited to the event but his name was everywhere. One by one, top world diplomats, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, business leaders like Michael Bloomberg and even former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that the world will shift to cleaner fuels and reduce emissions regardless of whether the Trump administration pitches in or not. Central to Tuesday's summit was countering Trump's main argument that the 2015 Paris accord on reducing global emissions would hurt U.S. business. Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker, argues that the big businesses and successful economies of the future will be making and using renewable energy instead of pumping oil. Macron's office announced a dozen international projects emerging from the summit that will inject hundreds of millions of dollars in efforts to curb climate change. "The United States did not drop out of the Paris agreement. Donald Trump got Donald Trump out of the Paris agreement," Schwarzenegger said. The projects also aim to speed up the end of the combustion engine to reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming. With that aim, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced that his agency would stop financing oil and gas projects in two years, except in special circumstances for very poor nations.
I will be the devil's advocate here. The money will be coming out of the US Treasury sometime, a "pay me now, or pay me later" item.
Pay me now means working ways to reduce the carbon footprint, redoing arrangements for corporate responsibility so nuclear power (like thorium reactors) can be widely used, allowing trees to grow and work on better carbon sequestering, and food research.
Pay me later means spending money to have troops ready to shoot starving people protesting in the streets in a food riot, dealing with revolutionaries storming the borders because their place of living is underwater, constant unrest in cities, all the while having to deal with constant warfare world-wide, between people whose land has turned into desert or gone underwater versus people with food/land.
The "pay me later" is a far greater cost, and may cost us our country. However, the idea of looking at consequences or long term thinking is not a Randian ideal, so maybe it should get thrown out. Five Year Plans are socialist, and all that jazz...
The Paris Accords are entirely and solely about extracting money from the US Taxpayer - and we are going to meet and exceed the emissions goals even without it.
I've always said that even if you don't buy into climate change that simply ignoring it is stupid because it's a huge economic opportunity. I think it's simply been that politicians have been paid enough to turn a blind eye and keep the status quo for as long as possible. The reality is that renewable energy sources are not limited to locations that a small collective of companies own which means that there can be lots of competition that will drive the price of energy way down. Energy companies want to bleed the all the money they can out of people and some idiots think that's a good thing.
The age of hydrocarbons is coming to an end... and now we have to clean it all up.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Err...just because the US govt. isn't obligated by treaty to participate, there is nothing stopping our private industries from participating, which they will if they do indeed see a profit in all this as Macron alluded to.
Err...this is pretty stupid. The US did not enter into a real treaty, as that congress did not vote on it to be a binding treaty.
Trump merely pulled out of an agreement that Obama entered into on his own....live by the executive pen, die by the executive pen.
I happen to agree pulling out...no reason to obligate $$$ from the US treasury that is already quite stretched with domestic needs.
Again, the US pulling out of this agreement, doesn't at all prohibit US industry from participating in it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
>Spend all the money you want. As long as it doesn't come out of the US Treasury we're all good.
Yep, you wouldn't want to do anything to better your world with that money, it's more important to give tax breaks to the ultra-rich.
Better cut back on health care, too, just to be sure.
The conference was more political posturing to little effect, otherwise they would have all done a large group video chat instead of expelling 30K tons of CO2 in air travel alone.
Is there warming? Yes. Is there a crisis? It would seem not since the people that claim there is a crisis are not acting like there is a crisis. They act like used car salesmen telling you how very much they want you to do something, which they themselves will not do.
I'm sure it did make a lot of climate posers feel better about themselves though, so there's that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No you're not. Climate change is climate change. Doesn't matter what or who causes it. At the end of the day we are getting bigger storms, bigger floods, and bigger disasters. You think the past 10 years have been bad? The US is going to spend trillions rebuilding cities and infrastructure or else face succession of multiple states that are pissed about FEMA fucking up over and over again. You know what? Just get a blue crayon so you can start filling in those stars. You should be able to afford that.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
Bettering my world means spending money on roads, schools, and children, not on killing people.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Much like Obama became the greatest gun salesman of all time, it appears like Trump might actually save the environment.... by trying to ignore it.
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
I've always said that even if you don't buy into climate change that simply ignoring it is stupid because it's a huge economic opportunity.
I totally agree, which is why I see no need for giant government programs costing billions of dollars. The economic benefit of moving to renewable sources is eventually so cost effective it is inevitable; so we do we need to try to force people into something we know is eventually inherently compelling?
There's no way the larger warming predictions are accurate because they are all predicated on CO2 levels staying where they are. That's simply not going to happen as people everywhere switch to cheaper non-carbon energy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The value of the fishery is much greater than the value of the lost farm output. It's about Salmon, not delta smelt.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, because driving up the price of gas and electricity and food only hurts the ultra-rich and never hurts anyone outside of the 1% at all.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
The "pay me later" is a far greater cost, and may cost us our country. However, the idea of looking at consequences or long term thinking is not a Randian ideal, so maybe it should get thrown out. Five Year Plans are socialist, and all that jazz...
Hopefully that's gonna be postponed 'til I'm dead. As the Germans say, "hinter mir die Sintflut" (it loses a bit in translation, basically it means "for all I care, the deluge may follow when I'm gone"). Literally.
I tried to talk sense into you, I tried to leave your kids a world that they can live in. I honestly don't care anymore. I just really, really hope that all these assholes and idiots that prefer to believe what corporations with a vested interest in pumping pollution out instead of having to pay for your kids' clean future told them about those climate weenies trying to take away of life, I hope that your way of life leads straight into hell.
I just want to live long enough to see you cry over your kids not being able to grow up because there is no place for them to grow up in because of your ignorance and outright stupidity. No tears will have tasted sweeter ever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Climate change is climate change.
Tautology detected in an attempt to beg the question. Opinion discarded.
It's all been about the capital to switch to more efficient, cheaper renewables.
That problem has been solved, and as a bonus, every dollar spent on renewables cuts Russia and Saudi fossil fuel revenue by four dollars.
Commence the industry-paid whining about how the world is changing and we must protect buggy whips and whale oil and baleen corsets.
Climate Change is here, and we ran out of time for discussions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... and use that money to invest in clean energy.
Yes! They should have all backpacked to the summit!
V I D E O C O N F E R E N C E
Also, it goes without saying RTFA which covers exactly what is meant.
A few people's actions don't make a measurable difference.
To the contrary 30,000 tons of anything is a very measurable amount.
We need a global solution
Translation: *I* don't have to change anything, everyone else does.
Good luck with that!
Real change starts with local changes across many areas, not idealistic and unrealistic global change. Real change is made up by the kind of small choices you are handwaving away as meaningless.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Those few small islands include Manhattan, not to mention Miami and most of Florida.
Do you think the US will be getting free pass forever? Eventually other countries will start taxing US goods based on their carbon footprint.
Then why haven't you been screaming about them subsidizing coal and oil for the past century?
I've not been "screaming" about anything but I agree that is also equally not needed. I'd be just as happy to see that go.
It will cost more to clean up the longer we pump CO2
Pretty stupid to say when you understand what plants are and how they work. The entire Earth is nothing but a giant CO2 recycler, given time. You do realize that historically the Earth has had different levels of CO2, right, including some higher? If it's not possible for the Earth to re-absorb it, what happened in your mind, hmm?? Aliens, obv.
The difference government can make is perhaps a decade earlier adoption, if that... in the meantime wasted vast sums of money that could have been used to address REAL POLLUTION, like environmental toxins. Which I guess you are not in favor of? That's right, just like you accuse me of supporting oil, because you made no mention of pollution I will assume you are a filthy pollution mongering son of a bitch.
and trees are not going to be able to "suck it all up" because that's not how trees function.
The biosphere is not just trees you know... it's true mature forests do not sequester carbon but there are a lot of plants that do. Also of course as plants process CO2 some of that is stored in the soil rather than being released.
I'll let you have the last response since you are clearly of a one-track mind about this, having been already told what to think and not really willing to divert from your faith on the matter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not that simple -- flooding of industrial infrastructure along the coasts would be environmentally catastrophic. Think Fukushima and Bhopal x1000.
Better than spending the money propping up despotic (Saudi) regimes and murdering people in countries that are barely our enemies. Not to mention locking up 1% of our population. Bad joke.
Well, whoever replaces her will have it. Germany took it and America certainly doesn't want it back. All it does is make everyone hate you. NO REFUNDS.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Fascist, incompetent, and unpopular are not mutually exclusive traits... I don't know of many that would call our current president competent for the job. I'm sure there are a few, but any large group has it's share of nutters.
90% of what the US Federal Government does is unconstitutional. That hasn't stopped them yet, why do you think it will now?
As long as it doesn't come out of the US Treasury we're all good.
Money also will not come *into* US Treasury when US manufacturers like GE get obsoleted by the technological changes in the world around them and will have to fire workers when foreign companies get the contracts to supply the world with the elements of the new infrastructure.
Ezekiel 23:20
Hopefully that's gonna be postponed 'til I'm dead. As the Germans say, "hinter mir die Sintflut" (it loses a bit in translation, basically it means "for all I care, the deluge may follow when I'm gone"). Literally.
You do know that this is just the German translation of the well-known Louis XV quote "Après moi, le déluge", right?
(Wikipedia tells me that is probably better attributed to Madame de Pompadou: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki... )
Doubling down on the crazy "predictions" doesn't fly anymore. Sky didn't fall in two decades, and now no one but the terminally gullible will believe it's ever going to.
But nobody ever predicted the sky would fall in two decades in the first place. People did predict about two degrees of warming by 2100, though, if that's what you mean.
This is a solvable problem.
Really? The 2015 salmon fishery in California had a commercial value of $8.1 million. California's agriculture was around $46 billion in 2013 So AG is about 5700 times as large as the salmon fishery. Since half the surface water in California is used for Environmental purposes, and AG is only about 40%, then it would seem we could add about $46 billion in more AG by re-purposing that delta smelt flow...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That is why I am a BIG fan of a flat tax. Not a scaled tax, a FLAT tax. The Federal Government will spend, this year, $4.1 trillion dollars. There are 323 million people in the US. That about $12,700 per man, woman and child in the US. I am all for handing everyone a bill for $12,700 and saying "pay up". Yes, I am serious. The ONLY way we will scale back Government is to literally force the vast majority of the US population to truly understand just how MUCH is being wasted "in their name". Pay to play. You want to be in the US? Here's your tax - $35 per day, per person. No, I am not kidding - I would love to see this implemented.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Actually, storms are trending down. The cost to replace what was built is going up. Forty years ago, you could buy a 1300 square foot, 3 bedroom/1 bath home in Seattle for around $14,000. Meaning you could replace it for around $7,000. Now today, that same house would cost $400,000 to replace. Even if you have just one storm every 10 years, the costs to replace what is damaged escalates. Inflation and all, you know...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Why more floods? Most of the world is looking at less than 1 foot change over the next century. Some places are looking at more - others are looking at less. But the vast majority are plugging along at a pretty sedate rate... If that is enough to cause a massive increase in insurance, then I hate to see what happens with a 15 MPH wind and a high tide, where your whitecaps might be 1 foot higher than normal...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You think the past 10 years have been bad?
Um, no, not really actually. The previous 10 years were worse (Katrina, Indian ocean tsunami, etc).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Fine, but first, stop taking 300 BILLION to fund ongoing Navy patrols in the Gulf of Oman to benefit Oil companies!
Then take away the 40 BILLION in tax credits Oil magnates get for "Oil Depreciation"
THEN take away the 70 BILLION in healthcare costs from oil-coal pollution
THEN take away the 8 billion in direct subsidies to the Nuclear Power industry
THEN....stop whining about your share of the burden of undoing 130 years of "energy" company corruption of government
Wrong
The Commerce clause clearly covers environmental policy
Even Roberts admits this
Nothing wrong with Florida that a couple of feet of global warming won't fix.....
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
That's not what your cite says. Liar.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Don't you understand that when the USA gives foreign aid it's often with strings attached that require the money to be spent on American products. Yes, some of it gets skimmed off by the elites but not most of it.
Regarding food riots you might be surprised. If food gets expensive enough that people can't afford it there will be riots. That was one of the factors in the revolution in Egypt. The cost of wheat and bread rose so much because of the heatwave/drought in Russia that people couldn't afford it.
Doubling down on the crazy "predictions" doesn't fly anymore. Sky didn't fall in two decades, and now no one but the terminally gullible will believe it's ever going to.
Ah you youngsters with your short attention spans. As XXongo said no one expected it to happen in two decades, just that we're setting it up to happen in the future. I wonder what you'll be saying in another two decades.
I happen to agree pulling out...no reason to obligate $$$ from the US treasury that is already quite stretched with domestic needs.
Then the Congress passes "tax reform" that will add another $1.5 trillion the the debt.
Or maybe give the money back to people who grow the economy. The ultra-rich did not get that way by stealing money from everybody else despite what the SJWs want to believe.
With interest rates so low and investment money searching for things to invest in how do you expect the ultra-rich to grow the economy? If you want to grow the economy give money at the bottom end and it will filter up to the ones on top. Giving it to people already at the top just increases their rent seeking investments. If people down the economic scale can't afford to buy it why would they invest in something productive? Supply side/trickle down economics is a joke that's never worked.
There was no massive hurricane drought. They just didn't happen to hit the United States which for most Americans means they didn't happen.
The 2015 commercial fishery harvested a total of 110,507 salmon, with total landings of 1.3 million pounds and revenues of $8.1 million (NMFS 2017, PFMC 2016).
Now, if you want to talk about all the ESTIMATED add-on, they try to say it was $244 million. But the facts are the commercial fishery received $8.1 million for the salmon. Flat out. My quote for the AG sector was also for the direct income from sales of AG products, not "add-ons" that would inflate the number even higher.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The problem with your Tides and Currents link is they just give a linear trend line. They don't show any curve for changes in the rate of rise. Most scientists studying this expect at least a meter (3 feet) of rise by 2100 and it won't stop there. It will take centuries for the big ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica to catch up with the current forcing. Over 10 feet of rise by 2200 isn't out of the question. I just wish I could live long enough to say I told you so.
Economics is what's putting coal miners out of work. Coal can't compete with natural gas and wind and barely with solar. If coal had to pay the economic costs of it's pollution it probably couldn't even compete with nuclear power.
The rest of the world will make America pay for it now, by setting standards and tariffs that account for emissions and pollution. The US will have to choose between that and isolationism.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's all good...if they follow up with lots of federal budget cuts. Slash programs, slash federal agencies....
One thing at a time, and starting with taxes isn't a bad thing.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yes, I think people should be able to keep as MUCH of their money as possible they earn...and I think they should also be able to hand it down to their children.
The money belongs to the PEOPLE first, not the government.
You've got it backwards, the govt is to be beholden to the people for power and finance, not the other way around.
Why should a family's accumulated wealth suddenly be stripped from them once the parents die?
You seem to act like the money is the governments to give and take, not the other way around....?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Spending money now has been evaluated as being drastically cheaper than trying to fix things up later.
If the glacier dams give way, and we get a fairly sudden sea level rise, flooding most coastal cities, eg nyc, can you imagine the costs, the loss of life, the mad dash of millions to escape?
It sounds expensive. And of course there are humanitarian issues, but these seem to be ignored by the current USA government.
Itâ(TM)ll be way cheaper to dive in now, and get some real reductions, and possibly reduce the temperature rises to something tolerable.
Or do you believe all these scientists, polar bears, migrating trees, and retreating glaciers are all fake news?
"Cats like plain crisps"
And you will live long and prosper because you are deserving.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
It's OK.
We who know which way the wind blows also know that the opportunity to intervene has Went With The Wind.
It's been too late.
Enough is enough and more that enough is too late. ~ © 2017 CaptainDork
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
What a ridiculous amount of shameless fearmongering. If a 2mm/year advancing ocean tears our society apart, we're already done for from a thousand other things.
If they start slashing Social Security and Medicare they'll start losing their seats in Congress. There's not enough money anywhere else except the DOD to make that much difference.
There is no money in the US Treasury. Why do you think we have such an enormous amount of debt? We're at $20+trillion and the "fiscal conservatives" have just thrown on at least another $1.5 trillion on top of that. Over $65,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US. That's $13,000 more than the median family income in the US.
Until we get a balanced budget the US has no money. We have a credit card that we keep piling enormous amounts of debt on.
~X~
You needn't choose a country. This is America, you get them delivered right to your doorstep. For free.
Well, technically it's going to be more like your ISP. You cannot choose. The choice will be made for you, and you can like it or go to hell.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We need better alternatives instead one should use the money to invest in sustainable energy and other alternatives. Infact alternative energy replace many resources leading to sustainability. One has to contribute towards these alternative energy here are some examples read more http://www.publicdebate.in/alt...
a. secession
b. situation now: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, state calls Federal government for help. FEMA comes in and may or may not fuck up.
situation after secession: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, ???
This is a prime example of a situation where a state is better off as part of a union.
French is the most clumsy of all latin languages. 25% of the words in a French sentence have no reason to exist.
If we're going to replace English, let's do it with a modern, verbally economical, unambiguous language. Don't ask me what it is though.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
There won't be because the sea levels won't rise, but sure, I'd be fine with that.
Miserable place. Though I understand the Panhandle region is a bit more civilized.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
I have to agree with that. Cut the taxes FIRST so companies can start generating wealth, then get to trimming down the excess and the waste next session. It's a process; they've been doing it backwards for close to a generation.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
That depends on the time scale of "quickly".
As for developing CO2 clean up technology, I just happen to know one that already exists. Will it make me rich?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
When you say "not a Randian ideal", do you mean Ayn Rand thought it was a lousy idea or do you mean Ayn Rand failed to focus on it, like shitloads of fucktons of other people?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
So what are amendments for then? Your amazing founding fathers, brilliant as they might have been, never saw this one coming.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
And the United States has killed 60 million people since 1973, just on the Sexual Revolution alone.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So remove the industrial infrastructure from the coasts. Turn it into reefs, then fish the reefs.....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's not trivial considering the amount of polluted soil underneath it. We're talking a cleanup that makes Fukushima seem like child's play. Also, do you really want sandy beaches replaced with muddy former forest and swampland?
That trick has never worked. Never. The taxes get cut, tax revenues don't go up as predicted, spending cuts don't happen. That's how the Republicans have run huge deficits since about 1980.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you're considering the Holocaust as only the killing of Jews, 6M is a good estimate. The Germans murdered many more people than that, at least double, and that's only the people they killed more or less deliberately.
Also, 5.5M for Japan is ridiculously low. They killed many more in China alone.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Nowhere near. We didn't overthrow the fascist governments of Spain and Portugal. We've overthrown democracies to install at least quasi-fascist despots.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're about halfway to realization. If sea level goes up a foot, that by itself isn't going to be a big problem. What will be a big problem is hurricane storm surges, which will be a foot higher. Land tends to rise gradually, meaning that in many places a foot extra flooding is going to cover a lot of additional area.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's because none of the Frankish language is derived from Latin
DUH!
Your point is?
My point is that both India and China are enormous countries with large economies doing many many different things that can't really be summarized in two sentences totaling twelve words. Both of them, in fact, are doing a lot of work-- and putting in a lot of their own money-- on reducing their carbon intensity.
And they're also building coal plants. Your point is?
If we did want them to increase their focus on implementing low-carbon technologies, and reduce their focus on increasing their populations standard of living by building more coal plants, it would be useful to come to an agreement to that effect.
Cleanup means you stop evolution. Let the species who can adapt do the cleanup.
Also, most sandy beaches were once former forest and swampland. Or did you think the Earth never changed?
Heck, I know of a beach within 200 miles of my house that was a part of the Columbia River in 1820.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.