People who would not consider quitting their current jobs with employer provided health insurance because otherwise they would be unable to afford it on their own could then consider doing that to start a business. Small start-ups don't have to worry about whether to provide health insurance coverage for their employees and the employees are likely to be more productive since they have easy access to health care when needed.
The fundamental difference between voting and those other transactions is that voting is a secret transaction where you can't be able to connect a particular vote to a particular voter. Those other things don't require that level of secrecy.
The "bug" is the fact that it's an electronic system. Improperly conceived paper systems can fail but the failure is usually obvious. Electronic systems can fail without it being obvious.
Listen, we already pay the bill for those people who can't afford their own medical care in the form of higher prices to cover the cost of unpaid medical care. Would you propose that we turn people away from the Emergency Room if they can't pay? Costs will come down if everyone pays their bill.
I would say you just have a failure of imagination. Already it's cheaper to power a car by electricity than it is by petroleum. All we need is better batteries. Solar photovoltaic modules have dropped in price by about 60% in the past couple of years, so much that some coal power plants have been cancelled recently because the solar power will be cheaper by the time they get built. There are some applications like aviation where liquid fuels may still be necessary for a while but most energy needs can be met by renewable sources without much difficulty. All that is required is to build up the production capacity enough to replace those other sources.
It's an example of the corporatization of the US media. Get 100 TEA Party members together to protest Obama and the media is all over it, it's big news. Get 1000 people together to protest Wall Street or the Keystone XL Pipeline and it barely gets mentioned unless there is violence.
Actually, retired politicians of Lieberman's stature can often collect 7 or 8 digit pay after retiring by going to work as a lobbyist or for a think tank.
Um, Venus doesn't need any more CO2. The atmosphere there is 96.5% (965,000 ppm) already.
What we're engaged in now, carried to a ridiculous conclusion is "Venus" forming the Earth increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. There is some speculation but plenty of disagreement that we could release enough CO2 to cause a runaway greenhouse effect as has happened on Venus. That would require burning nearly all of the available carbon sources such as tar sands and oil shale and I don't expect it to happen but it's not totally out of the question.
Do we really have to make do with less because of AGW or can we just make do with something different? Starting around 200 years ago we transformed our economy to one based on fossil fuels. Why can't we make a similar transformation to renewable energy?
As I understand it the Affordable Care Act doesn't make it mandatory to buy health insurance. It just imposes a tax to help cover the uninsured and gives you a tax credit if you do have insurance.
But isn't that what entrepreneurs do? Take advantage of opportunities to make a profit. I thought that was what our capitalist system was all about. Are you suggesting that green tech and renewable energy should be non-profit?
Huh? I don't believe that science has anything to say about the existence of God since it is a supernatural phenomenon and science is all about natural phenomena.
I know the scientific method just fine thank you. Deployment of the current set of Argo probes was not completed until November 2007 so I'm not sure there has been enough time to collect enough data and analyze all of it yet. I look forward to the science that will be coming out of that dataset in the future.
Increased GHG's were obviously not the cause of the warmth during the age of the Vikings. There is some evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was not global and confined mostly to the northern hemisphere, particularly in regions around the North Atlantic. It appears that where I live in the Pacific Northwest was anomalously cool during that period. There are plenty of things that affect the temperature of the Earth. Among them solar radiation, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, volcanic activity being the most prominent. When you examine what is happening currently against the known factors affecting temperatures greenhouse gases are what stand out.
It's warm enough to grow wheat there right now and has been since Viking times. But it's so marginal that it makes no economic sense to try to in the way that it might have when the Vikings colonized it. I'll grant that it may have been a bit warmer in Greenland during Viking times than it has historically been in the past century but there was not significantly less ice then than there is now.
Heat in the ocean is transported primarily by convection, that is by water currents. The heat is transported down to the depths in limited places. The Argo probes aren't ubiquitous enough to capture all of the dynamics of ocean heat transport.
Thanks for the [joke] tag. Sometimes it's hard to tell but I think it would have figured it out with the Indiana reference.
The problem with trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by artificial means is that it takes more energy to remove it than was produced when it went in in the first place. I think we could do that to some extent by using excess power when it can't be used. For instance last spring the BPA asked several wind farms to reduce their output because they had more than they could use and they couldn't shut down the hydropower along the Columbia River because putting it over the spillways would kill salmon. Once wind and solar power installations get built out that situation will happen more often. Another semi-artificial way to remove CO2 is with bio-char.
But my preference is a straight up carbon tax that is redistributed in equal shares to all citizens and legal residents less up to maybe 5% of it for administration and research. It would start out so low that you wouldn't notice it for the first few years but grows each year so in 30 or 40 years it becomes prohibitive. You could charge it at the wellhead, mine entrance and import point and let the producers/importers pass the costs on up the chain. It's relatively simple to administer that way and is difficult to game. That is market based and allows time to phase out the fossil fuels and build up the infrastructure to replace it.
Not at all. I would support going back to the original corporate laws where corporations were formed for a limited time and at the end of that time had to dissolve and distribute the assets. But I'm also a pragmatist and don't see the current situation changing any time soon. The problem I have with any ideology such as libertarianism (and socialism and communism, et. al.) is they assume an ideal human to make them work. The real world will never be that pure.
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People who would not consider quitting their current jobs with employer provided health insurance because otherwise they would be unable to afford it on their own could then consider doing that to start a business. Small start-ups don't have to worry about whether to provide health insurance coverage for their employees and the employees are likely to be more productive since they have easy access to health care when needed.
Oh, when you said "10x" you were using binary. ;)
The fundamental difference between voting and those other transactions is that voting is a secret transaction where you can't be able to connect a particular vote to a particular voter. Those other things don't require that level of secrecy.
The "bug" is the fact that it's an electronic system. Improperly conceived paper systems can fail but the failure is usually obvious. Electronic systems can fail without it being obvious.
The problems with DRE's are not fixable in any way.
Listen, we already pay the bill for those people who can't afford their own medical care in the form of higher prices to cover the cost of unpaid medical care. Would you propose that we turn people away from the Emergency Room if they can't pay? Costs will come down if everyone pays their bill.
I would say you just have a failure of imagination. Already it's cheaper to power a car by electricity than it is by petroleum. All we need is better batteries. Solar photovoltaic modules have dropped in price by about 60% in the past couple of years, so much that some coal power plants have been cancelled recently because the solar power will be cheaper by the time they get built. There are some applications like aviation where liquid fuels may still be necessary for a while but most energy needs can be met by renewable sources without much difficulty. All that is required is to build up the production capacity enough to replace those other sources.
I'm thinking you meant Terri Schiavo, not Cindy Sheehan who is still very much alive. Otherwise I agree with you.
It's an example of the corporatization of the US media. Get 100 TEA Party members together to protest Obama and the media is all over it, it's big news. Get 1000 people together to protest Wall Street or the Keystone XL Pipeline and it barely gets mentioned unless there is violence.
Reading fail! The economic adviser you're referring to is the head of GE (General Electric), not GM.
Actually, retired politicians of Lieberman's stature can often collect 7 or 8 digit pay after retiring by going to work as a lobbyist or for a think tank.
Um, Venus doesn't need any more CO2. The atmosphere there is 96.5% (965,000 ppm) already.
What we're engaged in now, carried to a ridiculous conclusion is "Venus" forming the Earth increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. There is some speculation but plenty of disagreement that we could release enough CO2 to cause a runaway greenhouse effect as has happened on Venus. That would require burning nearly all of the available carbon sources such as tar sands and oil shale and I don't expect it to happen but it's not totally out of the question.
IOW, Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Do we really have to make do with less because of AGW or can we just make do with something different? Starting around 200 years ago we transformed our economy to one based on fossil fuels. Why can't we make a similar transformation to renewable energy?
As I understand it the Affordable Care Act doesn't make it mandatory to buy health insurance. It just imposes a tax to help cover the uninsured and gives you a tax credit if you do have insurance.
But isn't that what entrepreneurs do? Take advantage of opportunities to make a profit. I thought that was what our capitalist system was all about. Are you suggesting that green tech and renewable energy should be non-profit?
What point would that be?
Huh? I don't believe that science has anything to say about the existence of God since it is a supernatural phenomenon and science is all about natural phenomena.
I know the scientific method just fine thank you. Deployment of the current set of Argo probes was not completed until November 2007 so I'm not sure there has been enough time to collect enough data and analyze all of it yet. I look forward to the science that will be coming out of that dataset in the future.
Increased GHG's were obviously not the cause of the warmth during the age of the Vikings. There is some evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was not global and confined mostly to the northern hemisphere, particularly in regions around the North Atlantic. It appears that where I live in the Pacific Northwest was anomalously cool during that period. There are plenty of things that affect the temperature of the Earth. Among them solar radiation, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, volcanic activity being the most prominent. When you examine what is happening currently against the known factors affecting temperatures greenhouse gases are what stand out.
It's warm enough to grow wheat there right now and has been since Viking times. But it's so marginal that it makes no economic sense to try to in the way that it might have when the Vikings colonized it. I'll grant that it may have been a bit warmer in Greenland during Viking times than it has historically been in the past century but there was not significantly less ice then than there is now.
Coral reefs are not in trouble because of rising sea levels but because of ocean acidification, another consequence of adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
Heat in the ocean is transported primarily by convection, that is by water currents. The heat is transported down to the depths in limited places. The Argo probes aren't ubiquitous enough to capture all of the dynamics of ocean heat transport.
Thanks for the [joke] tag. Sometimes it's hard to tell but I think it would have figured it out with the Indiana reference.
The problem with trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by artificial means is that it takes more energy to remove it than was produced when it went in in the first place. I think we could do that to some extent by using excess power when it can't be used. For instance last spring the BPA asked several wind farms to reduce their output because they had more than they could use and they couldn't shut down the hydropower along the Columbia River because putting it over the spillways would kill salmon. Once wind and solar power installations get built out that situation will happen more often. Another semi-artificial way to remove CO2 is with bio-char.
But my preference is a straight up carbon tax that is redistributed in equal shares to all citizens and legal residents less up to maybe 5% of it for administration and research. It would start out so low that you wouldn't notice it for the first few years but grows each year so in 30 or 40 years it becomes prohibitive. You could charge it at the wellhead, mine entrance and import point and let the producers/importers pass the costs on up the chain. It's relatively simple to administer that way and is difficult to game. That is market based and allows time to phase out the fossil fuels and build up the infrastructure to replace it.
The Argo system of oceanographic probes only go down 2 km (6500 feet). The average depth of the oceans is over 12,000 feet.
Not at all. I would support going back to the original corporate laws where corporations were formed for a limited time and at the end of that time had to dissolve and distribute the assets. But I'm also a pragmatist and don't see the current situation changing any time soon. The problem I have with any ideology such as libertarianism (and socialism and communism, et. al.) is they assume an ideal human to make them work. The real world will never be that pure.
Not much different than it is now.