How about deciding to not pollute at all in the first place
Sure, that's a nice goal, but you're not saying how to reach it. Do you really trust politicians to judge what kind of technology we should invest in, for example ? I'd rather let the free market come up with solutions. They have more people, and a lot of them are smarter than a few politicians.
We can shut down fossil fuel plants, but when are you going to do that, and what are we replacing them with ?
There's a difference between air pollution like smog and CO2. A motorbike produces a lot of dirty crap in the air, which is very noticeable to a casual observer. A nice clean car on the German Autobahn produces virtually no noticeable pollution, but a ton of CO2.
Worldwide there are about 3x as much cars as motor bikes, and the cars consume a lot more fuel (both by higher consumption/distance and longer distance traveled).
It would make it more cost-effective to generate power in a CO2 neutral way. If you turn part of the CO2 taxes in additional subsidies for clean energy production, it would be even more cost effective.
I think you missed the part were the anthropogenic global warming theory is already a century old, and has been increasingly well supported by peer-reviewed scientific papers long before this self-promoting narcissist failed politician started to make noise about it.
I didn't say that electric scooters or bikes can't replace petrol bikes, but that electric bikes are mostly bought by people who aren't fit enough for a regular bike, but don't like petrol bikes. I see a lot of older people on electric bikes, using them for leisure purposes. This only adds to CO2 production.
Besides, this is a drop in a bucket. CO2 production by petrol scooters/motor bikes is insignificant compared to cars, and the electric scooter is not a viable replacement (and neither is the current generation of electric cars)
Most scientists just observe what has happened, and predict what's going to happen. Very few scientific papers have any kind of policy recommendation.
Of course, the governments are free to choose any kind of policy they want. There is no reason it has to involve taxes. Taxes are just an efficient way to impose a policy while letting the free market decide on the most profitable way to implement it. Usually that's better than governments micromanaging directly, but if you disagree you're free to vote differently.
No you fail at comprehension. It was a joke. The reason a Christian doesn't believe in thousands of different gods is pretty much the same as the reason the atheist doesn't believe in them.
The only difference is that the atheist also doesn't believe in the Christian god.
Sure it takes energy to maintain an old growth forest, but it doesn't take any net CO2 absorption. The CO2 that is fixed by photosynthesis is released when those sugars are used again (either by the plants or by other organisms such as bacteria, fungi, or animals).
A fully grown forest does not absorb CO2, as old trees die at the same rate that other trees grow. Obviously you have a point that deforestation produces more CO2, but that's only a one-time event.
The CO2 directly produces by people themselves (as exhaled air) is not a problem. That CO2 will be reabsorbed by the growing plants that we eat.
Our problem is the release of million year old carbon that has been tied to oil, coal and gas reserves.
It's a lot easier with FPGAs, because the synthesis tools will make sure you meet all the timing constraints and setup/hold requirements, or will complain if it can't. They will also complain if you connect two outputs together, or do other silly things. With real hardware you have to do all of that yourself.
Go ahead and show the averages of the temperature stations that are not anywhere near asphalt, or population centers. Or show the satellite temperature record. Or show any solid that supports your point.
The graph goes on until 2010, and the 10 hottest years are all in the last decade. The only exception is 1998, which was exceptionally warm due to a extreme El-Niño event. Last year, which didn't have such a big El-Niño was just as warm.
No, climatologists listen to astrophysicists to explain what the sun is likely going to do, and then the climatologist put those results in their model.
And no, the sun is not the biggest factor in climate change. The sun variability is about 0.1%, that's much smaller than the changes due to the increased greenhouse effect.
How exactly does 'responsible parenting' work in this case ? Imagine sitting behind the computer, together with your kid, and the kid wants to find some pictures of beavers. Are you going to let them type that in a search engine, not knowing what kind of stuff could turn up ? Are you going to come up with a lame excuse ("let's go find pictures of elephants instead") ? Or are you taking this fine moment to explain the alternative uses of the word beaver ?
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Sure, that's a nice goal, but you're not saying how to reach it. Do you really trust politicians to judge what kind of technology we should invest in, for example ? I'd rather let the free market come up with solutions. They have more people, and a lot of them are smarter than a few politicians.
We can shut down fossil fuel plants, but when are you going to do that, and what are we replacing them with ?
There's a difference between air pollution like smog and CO2. A motorbike produces a lot of dirty crap in the air, which is very noticeable to a casual observer. A nice clean car on the German Autobahn produces virtually no noticeable pollution, but a ton of CO2.
Worldwide there are about 3x as much cars as motor bikes, and the cars consume a lot more fuel (both by higher consumption/distance and longer distance traveled).
It would make it more cost-effective to generate power in a CO2 neutral way. If you turn part of the CO2 taxes in additional subsidies for clean energy production, it would be even more cost effective.
I think you missed the part were the anthropogenic global warming theory is already a century old, and has been increasingly well supported by peer-reviewed scientific papers long before this self-promoting narcissist failed politician started to make noise about it.
I didn't say that electric scooters or bikes can't replace petrol bikes, but that electric bikes are mostly bought by people who aren't fit enough for a regular bike, but don't like petrol bikes. I see a lot of older people on electric bikes, using them for leisure purposes. This only adds to CO2 production.
Besides, this is a drop in a bucket. CO2 production by petrol scooters/motor bikes is insignificant compared to cars, and the electric scooter is not a viable replacement (and neither is the current generation of electric cars)
Most scientists just observe what has happened, and predict what's going to happen. Very few scientific papers have any kind of policy recommendation.
Of course, the governments are free to choose any kind of policy they want. There is no reason it has to involve taxes. Taxes are just an efficient way to impose a policy while letting the free market decide on the most profitable way to implement it. Usually that's better than governments micromanaging directly, but if you disagree you're free to vote differently.
No you fail at comprehension. It was a joke. The reason a Christian doesn't believe in thousands of different gods is pretty much the same as the reason the atheist doesn't believe in them.
The only difference is that the atheist also doesn't believe in the Christian god.
Predictions about global warming that were made in the 70's also turned out to be true.
Sure it takes energy to maintain an old growth forest, but it doesn't take any net CO2 absorption. The CO2 that is fixed by photosynthesis is released when those sugars are used again (either by the plants or by other organisms such as bacteria, fungi, or animals).
Look at the price difference between regular bikes in China and France, I bet that's also pretty big.
Besides, electric bikes are mostly bought to replace old fashioned bicycles, not petrol motor bikes, so the CO2 savings would be fairly small.
Go to http://realclimate.org/. Plenty of evidence, and reasoned debate.
Shoot them from the air.
Since taxes are created by politicians, not scientist, wouldn't it make more sense to counter the politicians instead ?
A fully grown forest does not absorb CO2, as old trees die at the same rate that other trees grow. Obviously you have a point that deforestation produces more CO2, but that's only a one-time event.
The CO2 directly produces by people themselves (as exhaled air) is not a problem. That CO2 will be reabsorbed by the growing plants that we eat.
Our problem is the release of million year old carbon that has been tied to oil, coal and gas reserves.
Too bad the rich are also the powerful, and they don't want higher taxes for themselves.
It's a lot easier with FPGAs, because the synthesis tools will make sure you meet all the timing constraints and setup/hold requirements, or will complain if it can't. They will also complain if you connect two outputs together, or do other silly things. With real hardware you have to do all of that yourself.
Or, as the late Carl Sagan said: "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe".
You have to start somewhere, though.
Go ahead and show the averages of the temperature stations that are not anywhere near asphalt, or population centers. Or show the satellite temperature record. Or show any solid that supports your point.
If you want to look at a trend look at the red or blue lines:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/dTs_60+132mons.gif
1998 was a rare outlier event. If you want to argue trends, don't focus on the noise.
The graph goes on until 2010, and the 10 hottest years are all in the last decade. The only exception is 1998, which was exceptionally warm due to a extreme El-Niño event. Last year, which didn't have such a big El-Niño was just as warm.
No, climatologists listen to astrophysicists to explain what the sun is likely going to do, and then the climatologist put those results in their model.
And no, the sun is not the biggest factor in climate change. The sun variability is about 0.1%, that's much smaller than the changes due to the increased greenhouse effect.
Solar output variation due to sunspot cycle is about 0.1%. That's not a "significant drop".
Heat island effects would have no impact on satellite temperature records, which pretty much agree with the ground based records.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif
Since the 1990's, global temperatures have gone up 0.3 of a degree (Celsius). I wouldn't call that "none".
How exactly does 'responsible parenting' work in this case ? Imagine sitting behind the computer, together with your kid, and the kid wants to find some pictures of beavers. Are you going to let them type that in a search engine, not knowing what kind of stuff could turn up ? Are you going to come up with a lame excuse ("let's go find pictures of elephants instead") ? Or are you taking this fine moment to explain the alternative uses of the word beaver ?