Alfred E. Newman redux (global warming)
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Charlie Monoxide
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I suspect (my opinion), that in 5 or 10 years we will feel more pronounced effects of global warning. At that time we will all agree that post-industrial revolution mankind was partly responsible. A good analogy would be the "cigarette causing cancer" debate that raged for years since the 60's.
Are we just going through a "natural" cycle of global warming? Not sure, but with the documented melting of North American glaciers (as shown in Scientific American Frontiers on PBS last night), something is definitely heating up Gaia.
Perhaps as Reagan's EPA director Watt implied, "why worry, the 2nd coming is imminent?"
Charlie (rapture ready?) Monoxide
Are we just going through a "natural" cycle of global warming? Not sure, but with the documented melting of North American glaciers (as shown in Scientific American Frontiers on PBS last night), something is definitely heating up Gaia.
Perhaps as Reagan's EPA director Watt implied, "why worry, the 2nd coming is imminent?"
Charlie (rapture ready?) Monoxide
Charlie Monoxide
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Hmmm, I didn't research whether the quote was true or not. I stand to be corrected if so.Silicon said:
Please don't take my "Skeptic Membership Card" away for one indescretion.
Charlie (fallible) Monoxide
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Climatology as a science has been progressing rapidly over recent years, but the White House position remains the same. No surprises there, then.
(My jasmine is flowering again. That is one confused plant.)
Bikewer
Penultimate Amazing
I watched part of the senate hearings on climate change a few weeks ago, and the lead scientist (didn't catch his name) was being questioned by John McCain.
McCain asked what would be the effect if the US signed on to the Kyoto protocol now. The fellow said rather simply, "it's too late."
He pointed out that Kyoto was at best a limited, initial response, and that conditions at present would continue to escalate regardless of our involvement.
McCain asked what would be the effect if the US signed on to the Kyoto protocol now. The fellow said rather simply, "it's too late."
He pointed out that Kyoto was at best a limited, initial response, and that conditions at present would continue to escalate regardless of our involvement.
Just thinking
Philosopher
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varwoche said:
Wasn't there some study that discovered in the 1500's or so that the Earth went through a much greater "warming" period than what is being observed (and forcasted) at this time? I'm not sure of the exact methods used (tree rings, perhaps?) to confirm it, but there certainly was no major industrial input to cause it.
I will check further and get back.
Bikewer
Penultimate Amazing
Not if you're a member of the administration, apparently.
Though I did listen to a Republican senator last night on one of the NPR news shows busily backtracking.
He said, in effect, that they now accept that global warming is taking place, and though the cause is still "controversial", they have to do something about it.
However, whatever is "done" should be market-driven, so as not to slow growth....
Though I did listen to a Republican senator last night on one of the NPR news shows busily backtracking.
He said, in effect, that they now accept that global warming is taking place, and though the cause is still "controversial", they have to do something about it.
However, whatever is "done" should be market-driven, so as not to slow growth....
SlippyToad
Critical Thinker
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Anti-Kyoto fallacy: Efficiency is better for the economy!
However, it's been obvious for some time that oil and coal interests have an unfair advantage, and the rhetoric of the Administration supports that completely. Oil and coal (and natural gas) were once ridiculously easy to get out of the ground, and that made the initial producers excessively wealthy and influential. Once their influence corrupted US politics, they proceeded to retard any progress towards greater efficiency of the use of their own resources or the competition with any others. During the last 1970's I remember clearly my father going into a 'solar' business with a friend. The product was those huge panels you still sometimes see on houses, which heated water flowing through it, and the idea was to get rid of the gas-powered or electrical water heater and supplant it with a solar powered one.
As a 6th grade project I made a miniature of the panel, and my science teacher duly observed the 1 1/2 degree rise in temperature out of water flowing through my aluminum and rubber-hose solar collector.
At any rate, the problems with those original panels were of course numerous, but they were a beginning. They actually did work if properly maintained. Until we completely took ours apart, it was left dry for several months (or even years) and I clearly recall it firing up every morning as the sun hit it and making this tremendous clicking sound as it tried to cycle the air and water vapor left in it.
But what happened in the 1980's was that ideology won out over reality, and as Reagan entered office he explicitly yanked any developmental support for the budding solar industry, going to the extreme of having the solar panels atop the White House removed. If anyone ever asks me why I despise Reagan, it's for that supremely spiteful act more than any other. It showed his true character.
Solar cell development now is continuing, again under the pressure of high oil prices, and amazingly enough things get more efficient every year.
The point of this rather long preamble is to pose to anyone who has drunk the anti-Kyoto Kool-Aid on economic impact this question:
How can it be a net loss to the economy to improve energy efficiency? We are told continuously how increased productivity boosts our GDP. We are told how outsourcing boosts our GDP by improving costs on the bottom line. How could using less energy more effectively not boost our GDP?
As it currently stands, the beneficiaries of our current energy policy are the few. The few oil producers, coal field owners, etcetera, who are squatting atop either the natural resources themselves, or the distribution systems of the resources, or in many cases both. The losers in the current system are everyone else. We have to pay for every nervous fluctuation in the price of oil, along with constantly shifting prices in gas and coal. I just paid a $300 utility bill last month, and I'm still not sure why, but I was unable to use that money (about $200 more than I'm used to paying) to do a large number of other things that would have benefitted other, broader sectors of the economy. Instead of being distributed evenly, our cash is being funelled down a narrow pipe to an undeserving handful of people whose only claim to success is that they or their ancestors were there first.
This is entirely outside of the economic impact that global warming, now undeniably happening, will have on the rest of us. What exactly have we purchased with this shell game, and who do we think is going to be paying in the future?
The final irony: I think once the current cronyist party gets kicked out of office over their excesses we might see the return of the massive nasty class-action suit -- from landowners on the coasts suing the oil companies over their vanishing property values.
The ridiculous fallacy that controlling pollution means wrecking your economy is based on calculations dreamed up by coal and oil barons. In reality, if the unwarranted support given to energy producers of one kind (and not another) was dismantled, and the market allowed to seek the most efficient sources of energy, and was duly informed of the uncharged costs of using one kind of energy over another, a true free energy market would rapidly seek such sources as wind and solar.Bikewer said:
However, it's been obvious for some time that oil and coal interests have an unfair advantage, and the rhetoric of the Administration supports that completely. Oil and coal (and natural gas) were once ridiculously easy to get out of the ground, and that made the initial producers excessively wealthy and influential. Once their influence corrupted US politics, they proceeded to retard any progress towards greater efficiency of the use of their own resources or the competition with any others. During the last 1970's I remember clearly my father going into a 'solar' business with a friend. The product was those huge panels you still sometimes see on houses, which heated water flowing through it, and the idea was to get rid of the gas-powered or electrical water heater and supplant it with a solar powered one.
As a 6th grade project I made a miniature of the panel, and my science teacher duly observed the 1 1/2 degree rise in temperature out of water flowing through my aluminum and rubber-hose solar collector.
At any rate, the problems with those original panels were of course numerous, but they were a beginning. They actually did work if properly maintained. Until we completely took ours apart, it was left dry for several months (or even years) and I clearly recall it firing up every morning as the sun hit it and making this tremendous clicking sound as it tried to cycle the air and water vapor left in it.
But what happened in the 1980's was that ideology won out over reality, and as Reagan entered office he explicitly yanked any developmental support for the budding solar industry, going to the extreme of having the solar panels atop the White House removed. If anyone ever asks me why I despise Reagan, it's for that supremely spiteful act more than any other. It showed his true character.
Solar cell development now is continuing, again under the pressure of high oil prices, and amazingly enough things get more efficient every year.
The point of this rather long preamble is to pose to anyone who has drunk the anti-Kyoto Kool-Aid on economic impact this question:
How can it be a net loss to the economy to improve energy efficiency? We are told continuously how increased productivity boosts our GDP. We are told how outsourcing boosts our GDP by improving costs on the bottom line. How could using less energy more effectively not boost our GDP?
As it currently stands, the beneficiaries of our current energy policy are the few. The few oil producers, coal field owners, etcetera, who are squatting atop either the natural resources themselves, or the distribution systems of the resources, or in many cases both. The losers in the current system are everyone else. We have to pay for every nervous fluctuation in the price of oil, along with constantly shifting prices in gas and coal. I just paid a $300 utility bill last month, and I'm still not sure why, but I was unable to use that money (about $200 more than I'm used to paying) to do a large number of other things that would have benefitted other, broader sectors of the economy. Instead of being distributed evenly, our cash is being funelled down a narrow pipe to an undeserving handful of people whose only claim to success is that they or their ancestors were there first.
This is entirely outside of the economic impact that global warming, now undeniably happening, will have on the rest of us. What exactly have we purchased with this shell game, and who do we think is going to be paying in the future?
The final irony: I think once the current cronyist party gets kicked out of office over their excesses we might see the return of the massive nasty class-action suit -- from landowners on the coasts suing the oil companies over their vanishing property values.
SlippyToad
Critical Thinker
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Re: Re: Alfred E. Newman redux (global warming)
What would be the difference? A large climate shift is a disaster regardless of what causes it. It's just more tragic that we could be preventing it instead of accelerating it.Just thinking said:
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Re: Re: Re: Alfred E. Newman redux (global warming)
(Yeah, Wales is wet, well duh, but there's a difference between wet and sodden.)
Quite. The global cooling between 535-540 (caused by a massive eruption in Indonesia) brought down civilisations around the world. There were far fewer than 6 billion people then, and the world economy was far less integrated. Our urbanised world is based on climate being pretty much as it has been for the last century. Large changes in fresh-water distribution are deeply scary. Not to mention irritating, given the amount of rain we've been getting around here over the last few years.SlippyToad said:
(Yeah, Wales is wet, well duh, but there's a difference between wet and sodden.)
Just thinking
Philosopher
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Re: Re: Re: Alfred E. Newman redux (global warming)
Or we may not be able to anything about it.
What if somehow all humankind stopped all pollution (however one may define that word) and the climate still increased in temperature at the same rate as measured? What then?
If we are to somehow stop using coal and oil, we'd have to turn over to nuclear power. Our economy couldn't survive any other alternative. And who's up for having those industries in their back yard?
Right now we have basically zero emission vehicles in production -- problem is, everyone wants a huge SUV or pick-up with 800 horespower. I have a 20 year old collector car that was inspected (in 2003) and showed zero emissions in NOX and less than 2% in CO levels that are tollerated for today. That was 20 years ago when it was built! So the technology does exist -- people simply don't want it. Forcing them to buy it is not going to make anyone happy.
All the homes being built by me are mansions ($500,000 +) that must take an awful amount of fuel to keep warm (or AC to keep cool). How do you change that dynamic without costing a lot of people a lot of jobs?
Unfortunately people are like cars riding on a road that's headed for a cliff -- everything is fine until the edge is right under you, then it's too late. If someone can tell me how you change the living habbits of a 300+ million population overnight that will still keep the economy alive (and people working) and 'fix' an environmental problem that is quite possibly out of our hands, I'd like to know.
SlippyToad said:
Or we may not be able to anything about it.
What if somehow all humankind stopped all pollution (however one may define that word) and the climate still increased in temperature at the same rate as measured? What then?
If we are to somehow stop using coal and oil, we'd have to turn over to nuclear power. Our economy couldn't survive any other alternative. And who's up for having those industries in their back yard?
Right now we have basically zero emission vehicles in production -- problem is, everyone wants a huge SUV or pick-up with 800 horespower. I have a 20 year old collector car that was inspected (in 2003) and showed zero emissions in NOX and less than 2% in CO levels that are tollerated for today. That was 20 years ago when it was built! So the technology does exist -- people simply don't want it. Forcing them to buy it is not going to make anyone happy.
All the homes being built by me are mansions ($500,000 +) that must take an awful amount of fuel to keep warm (or AC to keep cool). How do you change that dynamic without costing a lot of people a lot of jobs?
Unfortunately people are like cars riding on a road that's headed for a cliff -- everything is fine until the edge is right under you, then it's too late. If someone can tell me how you change the living habbits of a 300+ million population overnight that will still keep the economy alive (and people working) and 'fix' an environmental problem that is quite possibly out of our hands, I'd like to know.
WildCat
NWO Master Conspirator
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Alfred E. Newman redux (global warming)
It's quite simple - everyone else should live in smaller houses, drive more fuel efficient cars, walk more, turn down the heat in winter and reduce their A/C in the summer. I'll bet 99% of us can agree on that!Just thinking said:
WildCat
NWO Master Conspirator
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Has anyone here read the article in this months Scientific American about how human induced global warming may be responsible for avoiding the ice age that should be starting about now if past history is any indication? And it (human-induced GW) has been happening for over 5000 years now.
The real problem w/ climate change is that curently the human population of the earth is so large, and so constrained by political boundaries. that it reduces our ability to adapt (move to better climates) to any natural or human-induced climate changes. We're basically in a situation now where we are trying to accomplish something unprecedented in the history of the earth - to maintain a stable and constant climate that doesn't change for many millenia. A few degrees too warm, and it's disaster. A few degrees too cold also means disaster. Quite a task we're faced with, is it not?
And why are'nt Canadians fighting for global warming anyway? As it stands now, 90% of their country is uninhabitable.
The real problem w/ climate change is that curently the human population of the earth is so large, and so constrained by political boundaries. that it reduces our ability to adapt (move to better climates) to any natural or human-induced climate changes. We're basically in a situation now where we are trying to accomplish something unprecedented in the history of the earth - to maintain a stable and constant climate that doesn't change for many millenia. A few degrees too warm, and it's disaster. A few degrees too cold also means disaster. Quite a task we're faced with, is it not?
And why are'nt Canadians fighting for global warming anyway? As it stands now, 90% of their country is uninhabitable.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
I would appreciate it if the anti-GW people would get their story straight. They have been telling us that there is no way humans could be affecting the climate, now it appears that we have been affecting it, but that was a good thing.
As for the 'we're stuffed anyway so what does it matter' attitude, that's like saying we all may as well smoke two packs a day, since we'll die anyway. I think the quality of life is better under one scenario than the other, and as the recent tsunami showed, nature is capable of throwing up disasters of it's own making. If we are already in deep trouble of our own making, a disaster from nature is going to make it much worse than it originally would have been.
As for the 'we're stuffed anyway so what does it matter' attitude, that's like saying we all may as well smoke two packs a day, since we'll die anyway. I think the quality of life is better under one scenario than the other, and as the recent tsunami showed, nature is capable of throwing up disasters of it's own making. If we are already in deep trouble of our own making, a disaster from nature is going to make it much worse than it originally would have been.
Just thinking
Philosopher
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Alfred E. Newman redux (global warming)
Yeah, as long as it's everyone else.
My 2 cents --> it ain't gonna happen.
WildCat said:It's quite simple - everyone else should live in smaller houses, drive more fuel efficient cars, walk more, turn down the heat in winter and reduce their A/C in the summer. I'll bet 99% of us can agree on that!
Yeah, as long as it's everyone else.
My 2 cents --> it ain't gonna happen.