'Considered' being the operative word here. It means they were taken into proper account for what we knew about them.
I can 'consider' the intelligence of the average GOP voter and then dismiss it as people voting against their own economic interests and therefore not terribly intelligent.
Believe me, there's literally BILLIONS of dollars just waiting for anyone who can produce results disproving global warming. The oil/coal companies would make said person very very wealthy overnight.
The problem is there isn't any solid evidence disproving it. Hell even scientists do try to disprove it...it's why in the 70s they were worried about global cooling but after more study they determined warming was much more likely. They see new data and adapt too it. As opposed to the climate change deniers who question everything that produced the data when they can't disprove the data itself. Then they go after the people who produced it...
Methane under glaciers is going to be a fairly small amount given surface area. The permafrost of the arctic contains vast amounts of methane and CO2 that is currently frozen in organic material...as it thaws and decays it gets released. The amount of permafrost area is huge.
Likewise, the methane substrates that exist in deep ocean water also start to sublimate into gas as oceans warm.
Those areas are much more likely to have huge effects than just the area under glaciers, which according to wikipedia actually aren't likely to have permafrost under them as the ice is an insulating blanket.
The problem is that we can already take the 'coarse less accurate' models from 30 years ago and see that the realized effects are literally off the scale past the worst case scenario predicted.
Newer more accurate models are still predicting worse and worse. So #1 is already here.
The freedom argument is mostly about prices and costs - some realized, others unrealized. The 'cost' of driving a Hummer isn't limited to the vehicle and the gasoline, but that's the only price that is paid by the vehicle owner. So by placing costs on the release of CO2 you are making the Hummer more expensive and thus reducing the 'freedom' of someone to own it.
Realistically it's no different than the gas guzzler tax placed on foreign car imports like Ferrari's and such. Just that the average Joe can feel the difference since they actually buy the SUV's as opposed to the wealthy buying supercars who don't really care about the price much.
Nice idea in theory...unfortunately if we'd done it 25 years ago, I'm not sure you'd be able to collect as there haven't been catastrophic changes just yet.
That's the problem with putting human time frames on geologic/environmental processes.
The better path is to get people educated and call out the people spreading false propaganda so as to have a chance at solving something.
No, it's 'warm' water that happens to be fresh that will cause ice to melt. Heat tends to do that.
The fun part is when it starts affecting the global currents that keep Europe warmer than it should be at that latitude. So you end up with massive heat stratification; super heated equator and frozen northern climates. 'Average' temps won't reflect that, but it still makes the planet damn inhospitable to us.
What happens it the fresh water is less dense than salt water and it will not sink in the North Atlantic. This is against the gulf stream current flowing up to the north and then sinking as it cools (and transfers heat to Europe). Since there would now be a big patch of fresh water...this 'conveyor belt' gets disrupted and all sorts of fun climate effects start happening. Likewise, if Greenland melts, the same thing happens.
A good lesson to not let a single business become the dominant player in a town's economy. Sure it might cost you some in wages initially, but the knowledge of a steady and decent wage compared with the risk of the entire town going unemployed at the whim of the owner....seems a wee bit better to me.
I grew up in Rochester, NY. Kodak just filed bankruptcy, Xerox long ago moved it's corp HQ to CT, yet it's still relatively thriving. No one company, lots of smaller businesses that work locally as well as outside.
I vaguely remember something about the satellites used to detect these types of events being near their useful life expectancy and that there wasn't money to replace them being allocated.
Anybody have anything on that? googling didn't seem to turn up much wheat vs chaff... or maybe I'm thinking of earth weather satellites not being replaced...
We don't litter because we don't want to ruin our environment. We don't run red lights because we don't want traffic chaos. We wear seatbelts because we want to live.
Rational? This is using 'physical' world situations with real and dangerous results to try and compare something that has no physical harm whatsoever.
Sorry folks, Morris is, and always will be, a political shill.
Why do you think China is investing so much in battery technology?
To make money maybe?
What about massive investment in wind and solar power?
see above.
I suppose an ignoramus such as yourself would write off such long term efforts as conspiracies
Actually it's a communist government (China) handing a capitalist government (USA) it's head on a platter when competing at actual capitalism. The US, and I'm an American, has become a bastion of conservative religious politicians who won't allow any actual facts to cloud their world view. Even when shown a market poised to grow by 1000's of percent for decades, they wouldn't allow any money at all into it's birthing.
China, having no such imaginary ideals to protect, has gleefully plowed lots of the money the US is sending them into the Next Big Thing (tm) so that we'll yet again under their thumb financially.
If the GOP was so damned 'business' oriented, don't you think they would have run headlong to provide this service and product to a world literally BEGGING for it? Whether it's a real or made up controversy, there is vast amounts of money to be made. And the GOP wants none of it. Except now to complain about the Chinese undercutting our non-government funded solar/renewable energy industry.
What roils the deniers even more is that *science* is itself trying to disprove it. There are studies determining whether the Sun plays more of a factor than we currently believe.
Even 'science' is willing to disprove 'science'. Shame the deniers can't say the same.
Picking one specific item whose magnitude is greater than the deficit and blaming it alone for the deficit, is inherently unfair.
you know what is even worse? Picking a study that has NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Are we looking at massive red ink for quite a while? Sure. Care to guess where that red ink came from? Tax cuts, a housing bubble pushed by both parties, deregulation pushed by the GOP (and agreed to by Dems) and the biggest economic collapse since the great depression. All of which happened under the GOP watch.
Also, it's impossible to prove the Bush Tax cuts did not work
Actually it is. You have the tax cuts and you have the lowest economic growth in any period in decades.
Were there other things that happened? Sure. But if you're saying that those *other* things are what caused the low economic growth, then you're saying "it would have been worse without the tax cuts".
It's basic economics. You put a change into the system and then you see the outputs of the system and compare it to *decades* of past performance. If the measured period is the lowest in decades, it's pretty clearly a failed policy.
Actually it's not. CBO projections at the time showed this very point. [linky][http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/06/bushtaxcuts_anniversary.html]
Notice the relative flatline over time comparing debt to GDP. Meaning it's under control and manageable.
All that and we had the worst economic performance post WWII. And if you try to say "well it would have been worse" then Obama gets to use it as a rational defense of his policies recovering from the recession.
The Bush Tax cuts did not work and have basically bankrupted us.
So in the wake of the worst oil spill in our nations history...you'd do what? Keep on drilling with wild abandon? Or put things on hold to try and figure out 'why' it happened so we can try and prevent it from happening again? Of course you also know that we don't have enough oil to remotely make a dent in our needs right? ANWR would supply a 'single' years worth of oil if we could get all of it out. Spread that out over 20 years and that's 5% per year...or $0.20/gallon roughly at current prices. It's just not worth it.
stopped the Keystone pipeline from starting
Despite the fact that it will create relatively few jobs? They 'claimed' 250,000 jobs, but independent studies put it closer to 5000-6000 jobs. Perhaps it's not worth the investment and risk to critical water aquifers for such a small thing? Funny how someone would decide to investigate the potential returns on investment before allowing something to go forward. Where I come from that's called 'sound business management'.
prevent Boeing from opening a plant in SC
And have them put it in Washington state instead. Net effect on jobs? ZERO. What's your point?
we have a dictator in the White House? Yes, dictator.
You mean one who spies on Americans? Tortures people? Lies about it? Covers it up? Gives fat contracts to political supporters? Yes Bush was a disaster. Obama has sadly continued some of these policies but seriously? Dictator just confirms your wild racist opposition in spite of clear evidence refuting your claims. Yes, you are racist. Or would you like to retract the dictator hyperbole?
Liberalism has completly failed
Really? How so? Our current debt crisis is almost ENTIRELY of GOP/Convservative making. Without the Bush tax cuts we would literally have NO National Debt right now. Literally none. Are there costs associated with 'liberal' programs like SocSec and Medicare? Sure. But SocSec is perfectly fine for decades and if we start slowly fixing it now it won't cost much of anything over time to resolve. Even if we do nothing it will pay 75% of benefits for well over 70 years into the future. Hardly 'broken'.
Medicare? Itself isn't really that big a problem, but healthcare costs are making it massively overextended. Solutions by the GOP so far are to simply end Medicare and force seniors to buy insurance on the private market. How do you think that will happen? Who is going to insure a 70 year old?
Even if you believe medicare is massively screwed up, then there's lots of room for improvement to fix it's financial issues.
'Liberalism' has built the middle class in this country. Without it we'd all still be living in company towns paying for company food at company stores.
We need controls on the free market because left to their own devices bad things happen. Or can't you remember 3-4 years ago?
Funny, something like 1/3 of the current debt was accumulated *solely* due to due to the Bush tax cuts. Of that roughly a quarter was due to the uber rich. That's right around a trillion dollars.
Call it 1/15th of the debt. That's hardly 'not a dent'. And that's just ONE friggin bill that we let expire and poof a trillion dollars is now not added to the deficit. Over and over and over.
While we can't cut/tax our way out of this mess, you have to have people with money paying their fair share too. GE paying ZERO in taxes.
Here's a radical suggestion. Increase the taxes on corporations and they will start reducing their tax burden by 'investing' in their equipment, factories and other deductible expenses. Right now, these corporations are simply sitting on the money not doing anything with it. Call their bluff and tax it so they start spending it to offset the taxes.
You mean answers like "No we won't treat that child of an illegal immigrant at the hospital"?
He seriously wouldn't agree that you simply treat children regardless of their circumstances during on the GOP debates. Took him almost 5 minutes to come around to a 'maybe but it depends' type of answer.
Ron Paul is right on somethings but he's frigging loony on too many more to be taken seriously.
How about Iran can have a nuclear bomb. Really? you think that's a good idea?
Then came "global warming" where human life overheats the planet.
Funny how that is actually happening.
The solution? Lower CO2 so life dies.
Hyperbolize much? Show me *anything* supporting this that comes from Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change supporters.
More CO2 means more plants
Any evidence supporting this theory of yours? Not assumptions like more food = more organizms...actual studies and supporting evidence.
means more food
Again, any evidence? More CO2 will may or may not increase plants in general, but they also increase plants that overtake areas (kudzu) so it just as easily could harm our crop production.
means warmer earth
Wait, now you believe in global warming?
means fewer human deaths from weather
Except for the pesky heat waves which killed hundreds of people in Europe just a few years ago.
with less ability for a few people to control the food supply
Land area is finite. Oh, except for the land that will be underwater due to 100 ft sea level rise. Vast sections of the far east under water that used to grow rice. Land will both become usable and become unusable. I've seen no studies that show an increase in arable land due to rising temperatures...you? In fact it is much more likely to make less land available for farm use. Why? Because a warming temperature over a century doesn't change permafrost to usable soil. So now the current places are drier and less useful, but the new warm places are simply swamps and bogs.
My point was if you have a magic box that gives you hydrogen you can remove carbon from the picture completely.
It doesn't remove CO2 from the picture. It's still here in the atmosphere heating things up. It might remove it from the energy production/consumption cycle but you still have to deal with what has already been put into the air.
It won't be removed from the atmosphere naturally in any useful time frame to prevent massive global warming on the way.
Slashdot Mirror
'Considered' being the operative word here. It means they were taken into proper account for what we knew about them.
I can 'consider' the intelligence of the average GOP voter and then dismiss it as people voting against their own economic interests and therefore not terribly intelligent.
To be fair having a one 500 year flood every 500 years *isn't* unusual :)
Having 2 or 3 a century would be by definition unusual.
Believe me, there's literally BILLIONS of dollars just waiting for anyone who can produce results disproving global warming. The oil/coal companies would make said person very very wealthy overnight.
The problem is there isn't any solid evidence disproving it. Hell even scientists do try to disprove it...it's why in the 70s they were worried about global cooling but after more study they determined warming was much more likely. They see new data and adapt too it. As opposed to the climate change deniers who question everything that produced the data when they can't disprove the data itself. Then they go after the people who produced it...
It's called denial for a reason.
Methane under glaciers is going to be a fairly small amount given surface area. The permafrost of the arctic contains vast amounts of methane and CO2 that is currently frozen in organic material...as it thaws and decays it gets released. The amount of permafrost area is huge.
Likewise, the methane substrates that exist in deep ocean water also start to sublimate into gas as oceans warm.
Those areas are much more likely to have huge effects than just the area under glaciers, which according to wikipedia actually aren't likely to have permafrost under them as the ice is an insulating blanket.
The problem is that we can already take the 'coarse less accurate' models from 30 years ago and see that the realized effects are literally off the scale past the worst case scenario predicted.
Newer more accurate models are still predicting worse and worse. So #1 is already here.
The freedom argument is mostly about prices and costs - some realized, others unrealized. The 'cost' of driving a Hummer isn't limited to the vehicle and the gasoline, but that's the only price that is paid by the vehicle owner. So by placing costs on the release of CO2 you are making the Hummer more expensive and thus reducing the 'freedom' of someone to own it.
Realistically it's no different than the gas guzzler tax placed on foreign car imports like Ferrari's and such. Just that the average Joe can feel the difference since they actually buy the SUV's as opposed to the wealthy buying supercars who don't really care about the price much.
Nice idea in theory...unfortunately if we'd done it 25 years ago, I'm not sure you'd be able to collect as there haven't been catastrophic changes just yet.
That's the problem with putting human time frames on geologic/environmental processes.
The better path is to get people educated and call out the people spreading false propaganda so as to have a chance at solving something.
No, it's 'warm' water that happens to be fresh that will cause ice to melt. Heat tends to do that.
The fun part is when it starts affecting the global currents that keep Europe warmer than it should be at that latitude. So you end up with massive heat stratification; super heated equator and frozen northern climates. 'Average' temps won't reflect that, but it still makes the planet damn inhospitable to us.
What happens it the fresh water is less dense than salt water and it will not sink in the North Atlantic. This is against the gulf stream current flowing up to the north and then sinking as it cools (and transfers heat to Europe). Since there would now be a big patch of fresh water...this 'conveyor belt' gets disrupted and all sorts of fun climate effects start happening. Likewise, if Greenland melts, the same thing happens.
Well melting sea ice increases the heat absorbing ability of the ocean, thus warming the planet and increasing the rate at which land ice melts...
While it won't directly affect sea-level for the reasons you imply, feedback loops are a bitch....
You mean Cap and Trade? You realize that was a GOP idea right? It was, then, called using the power of the 'free market' to drive solutions.
Funny how the GOP is anti free market when it suits them....
Flying is a privilege..he could have planned ahead and driven himself back to DC. Might take a while, but sorry, it's not a 'right' to fly....
A good lesson to not let a single business become the dominant player in a town's economy. Sure it might cost you some in wages initially, but the knowledge of a steady and decent wage compared with the risk of the entire town going unemployed at the whim of the owner....seems a wee bit better to me.
I grew up in Rochester, NY. Kodak just filed bankruptcy, Xerox long ago moved it's corp HQ to CT, yet it's still relatively thriving. No one company, lots of smaller businesses that work locally as well as outside.
To paraphrase the article:
'Slavery, it gets shit done'
Next question?
I vaguely remember something about the satellites used to detect these types of events being near their useful life expectancy and that there wasn't money to replace them being allocated.
Anybody have anything on that? googling didn't seem to turn up much wheat vs chaff... or maybe I'm thinking of earth weather satellites not being replaced...
Just randomly thinking out loud.
We don't litter because we don't want to ruin our environment. We don't run red lights because we don't want traffic chaos. We wear seatbelts because we want to live.
Rational? This is using 'physical' world situations with real and dangerous results to try and compare something that has no physical harm whatsoever.
Sorry folks, Morris is, and always will be, a political shill.
Why do you think China is investing so much in battery technology?
To make money maybe?
What about massive investment in wind and solar power?
see above.
I suppose an ignoramus such as yourself would write off such long term efforts as conspiracies
Actually it's a communist government (China) handing a capitalist government (USA) it's head on a platter when competing at actual capitalism. The US, and I'm an American, has become a bastion of conservative religious politicians who won't allow any actual facts to cloud their world view. Even when shown a market poised to grow by 1000's of percent for decades, they wouldn't allow any money at all into it's birthing.
China, having no such imaginary ideals to protect, has gleefully plowed lots of the money the US is sending them into the Next Big Thing (tm) so that we'll yet again under their thumb financially.
If the GOP was so damned 'business' oriented, don't you think they would have run headlong to provide this service and product to a world literally BEGGING for it? Whether it's a real or made up controversy, there is vast amounts of money to be made. And the GOP wants none of it. Except now to complain about the Chinese undercutting our non-government funded solar/renewable energy industry.
Absolute fucking morons.
What roils the deniers even more is that *science* is itself trying to disprove it. There are studies determining whether the Sun plays more of a factor than we currently believe.
Even 'science' is willing to disprove 'science'. Shame the deniers can't say the same.
Way to regurgitate The Register article
Picking one specific item whose magnitude is greater than the deficit and blaming it alone for the deficit, is inherently unfair.
you know what is even worse? Picking a study that has NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Are we looking at massive red ink for quite a while? Sure. Care to guess where that red ink came from? Tax cuts, a housing bubble pushed by both parties, deregulation pushed by the GOP (and agreed to by Dems) and the biggest economic collapse since the great depression. All of which happened under the GOP watch.
Also, it's impossible to prove the Bush Tax cuts did not work
Actually it is. You have the tax cuts and you have the lowest economic growth in any period in decades.
Were there other things that happened? Sure. But if you're saying that those *other* things are what caused the low economic growth, then you're saying "it would have been worse without the tax cuts".
It's basic economics. You put a change into the system and then you see the outputs of the system and compare it to *decades* of past performance. If the measured period is the lowest in decades, it's pretty clearly a failed policy.
That's an inherently unfair way of looking at it.
Actually it's not. CBO projections at the time showed this very point. [linky][http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/06/bushtaxcuts_anniversary.html]
Notice the relative flatline over time comparing debt to GDP. Meaning it's under control and manageable.
All that and we had the worst economic performance post WWII. And if you try to say "well it would have been worse" then Obama gets to use it as a rational defense of his policies recovering from the recession.
The Bush Tax cuts did not work and have basically bankrupted us.
prevented oil exploration/drilling
So in the wake of the worst oil spill in our nations history...you'd do what? Keep on drilling with wild abandon? Or put things on hold to try and figure out 'why' it happened so we can try and prevent it from happening again? Of course you also know that we don't have enough oil to remotely make a dent in our needs right? ANWR would supply a 'single' years worth of oil if we could get all of it out. Spread that out over 20 years and that's 5% per year...or $0.20/gallon roughly at current prices. It's just not worth it.
stopped the Keystone pipeline from starting
Despite the fact that it will create relatively few jobs? They 'claimed' 250,000 jobs, but independent studies put it closer to 5000-6000 jobs. Perhaps it's not worth the investment and risk to critical water aquifers for such a small thing? Funny how someone would decide to investigate the potential returns on investment before allowing something to go forward. Where I come from that's called 'sound business management'.
prevent Boeing from opening a plant in SC
And have them put it in Washington state instead. Net effect on jobs? ZERO. What's your point?
we have a dictator in the White House? Yes, dictator.
You mean one who spies on Americans? Tortures people? Lies about it? Covers it up? Gives fat contracts to political supporters? Yes Bush was a disaster. Obama has sadly continued some of these policies but seriously? Dictator just confirms your wild racist opposition in spite of clear evidence refuting your claims. Yes, you are racist. Or would you like to retract the dictator hyperbole?
Liberalism has completly failed
Really? How so? Our current debt crisis is almost ENTIRELY of GOP/Convservative making. Without the Bush tax cuts we would literally have NO National Debt right now. Literally none. Are there costs associated with 'liberal' programs like SocSec and Medicare? Sure. But SocSec is perfectly fine for decades and if we start slowly fixing it now it won't cost much of anything over time to resolve. Even if we do nothing it will pay 75% of benefits for well over 70 years into the future. Hardly 'broken'.
Medicare? Itself isn't really that big a problem, but healthcare costs are making it massively overextended. Solutions by the GOP so far are to simply end Medicare and force seniors to buy insurance on the private market. How do you think that will happen? Who is going to insure a 70 year old?
Even if you believe medicare is massively screwed up, then there's lots of room for improvement to fix it's financial issues.
'Liberalism' has built the middle class in this country. Without it we'd all still be living in company towns paying for company food at company stores.
We need controls on the free market because left to their own devices bad things happen. Or can't you remember 3-4 years ago?
You're example proves my point. Provide them incentives (and penalties) that encourage even more investment.
Lowering their tax rates makes it *less* likely they will spend investment money because it doesn't save them as much due to the lower taxes.
Funny, something like 1/3 of the current debt was accumulated *solely* due to due to the Bush tax cuts. Of that roughly a quarter was due to the uber rich. That's right around a trillion dollars.
Call it 1/15th of the debt. That's hardly 'not a dent'. And that's just ONE friggin bill that we let expire and poof a trillion dollars is now not added to the deficit. Over and over and over.
While we can't cut/tax our way out of this mess, you have to have people with money paying their fair share too. GE paying ZERO in taxes.
Here's a radical suggestion. Increase the taxes on corporations and they will start reducing their tax burden by 'investing' in their equipment, factories and other deductible expenses. Right now, these corporations are simply sitting on the money not doing anything with it. Call their bluff and tax it so they start spending it to offset the taxes.
You mean answers like "No we won't treat that child of an illegal immigrant at the hospital"?
He seriously wouldn't agree that you simply treat children regardless of their circumstances during on the GOP debates. Took him almost 5 minutes to come around to a 'maybe but it depends' type of answer.
Ron Paul is right on somethings but he's frigging loony on too many more to be taken seriously.
How about Iran can have a nuclear bomb. Really? you think that's a good idea?
Then came "global warming" where human life overheats the planet.
Funny how that is actually happening.
The solution? Lower CO2 so life dies.
Hyperbolize much? Show me *anything* supporting this that comes from Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change supporters.
More CO2 means more plants
Any evidence supporting this theory of yours? Not assumptions like more food = more organizms...actual studies and supporting evidence.
means more food
Again, any evidence? More CO2 will may or may not increase plants in general, but they also increase plants that overtake areas (kudzu) so it just as easily could harm our crop production.
means warmer earth
Wait, now you believe in global warming?
means fewer human deaths from weather
Except for the pesky heat waves which killed hundreds of people in Europe just a few years ago.
with less ability for a few people to control the food supply
Land area is finite. Oh, except for the land that will be underwater due to 100 ft sea level rise. Vast sections of the far east under water that used to grow rice. Land will both become usable and become unusable. I've seen no studies that show an increase in arable land due to rising temperatures...you? In fact it is much more likely to make less land available for farm use. Why? Because a warming temperature over a century doesn't change permafrost to usable soil. So now the current places are drier and less useful, but the new warm places are simply swamps and bogs.
My point was if you have a magic box that gives you hydrogen you can remove carbon from the picture completely.
It doesn't remove CO2 from the picture. It's still here in the atmosphere heating things up. It might remove it from the energy production/consumption cycle but you still have to deal with what has already been put into the air.
It won't be removed from the atmosphere naturally in any useful time frame to prevent massive global warming on the way.