You and many like you are lying if you maintain that there is a way to provide enough energy for everyone in the world to live the lifestyle Al Gore lives and still diminish the current level of fossil fuel use.
I am not nearly equivalent to Al Gore, whose lifestyle uses vastly more total energy than does mine–perhaps on the order of ten-fold as much energy.
The idea that we should consider high-energy users as good standards for the ACC cause is a matter of interpretation. I have likened it to commending a wife-beater because they are the largest funder of shelters for abused women. YMMV.
Yes, I am suggesting that making cars more fuel efficient means more of them will come online around the world. You see, the cheaper you make a car to operate the more in reach it is for every man. To the extent we are operating fewer motor vehicles in North America, it’s because of inconvenience for car travel; not environmental altruism. C’mon…if there weren’t so damn many cars on the road here, I’d be happy to drive one.
I don’t disagree that many lifestyle changes are transformational. I hold that for the general population of the world, the current lifestyle is so far behind those of us in the developed world that the energy needs required to bring them up to any reasonable par are some large multiple of current energy production. Therefore, all energy from all sources–fossil and renewables–will be consumed as those sources come online.
Since we are already fat and happy, it’s easy for us in the developed world to show developing nations how to be environmentally responsible.
“Hey; save that rainforest. It’s precious! Don’t burn it to feed China!” (Meantime, we’re making a corn-based fortune because we plowed over our prairie before anyone could tell us not to.)
“Hey; you gotta wait until wind and solar come online. Maybe nuclear, but not fossils!” (Meantime, we’re already living very comfortably thank-you-very-much because we didn’t have to wait for those sources to mature.)
I’m sticking with Pollyannish, naive and hypocritical as the right (cynical) adjectives for the guy who has traded in his Hummer for a Prius and now feels like he’s ready to preach to the Tanzanian riding a bicycle on the approach to taking care of Gaia. Once the developing world is living richly, their hearing may improve.
Already happened in India, or is happening. The Tato Nano is not only fuel efficient, it’s the cheapest car in the world. But it didn’t sell like it was hoped, which has little to do with this topic of course.
Can we get back to how the evil energy producers are actually behind every effort to debunk bad science and scare tactics about climate change? But they try to make it look like they are actually worried about global warming?
What? No, the evil energy producers aren’t behind the efforts to debunk bad science. They’re funding the bad science; why would they then turn around and debunk it?
As I’m not saying that, you are indeed just fighting straw.
So, as at last you admitted it, you only need to acknowledge also that he is putting his money where his mouth is and stop the nonsense of the false equivalence you continue to use, besides being wrong you only show a lack of any originality.
And as pointed before you are grossly wrong, as civilization will not end and rich people will still be there, they are only required to be aware of their footprint and responsibility for it; it does not mean foolishly that we are saying that all people will be as rich or will have a footprint like the average rich person. And as pointed many times before:
This ignores the current efforts to use solar and other alternative methods in places like Africa, incidentally the ongoing efforts from the developed world to offer the new technologies to the developing one were mentioned before, but as usual you forget.
Yes, Gb; I admit Al Gore “supports” climate change and “supports” alternate energy.
Nor have I ever suggested otherwise.
He also uses some grand multiple of energy more than the average person on earth to support a wealthy lifestyle.
Were everyone on earth to use that much energy, we’d be burning fossils at some very high multiple of what we burn now, because we already need every btu from every source to give everyone even their current lifestyle.
You are fixated on this idea that pointing out Mr Gore’s total consumption of energy is an ad hominem attack on climate science, and is therefore a valueless straw man attack.
Would you consider trying to see past that point and simply accept that there is no way everyone on earth can live the lifestyle Al Gore lives without a huge increase in energy production, and that such energy production would necessarily mean a huge increase in fossils because every possible energy source would have to massively scale up (and there still would not be enough energy for us to all live like Al Gore)?
So if you want to make him a positive icon for “supporting” climate change efforts, that’s a personal decision. What he’s not–by an order of magnitude–is an example of how much energy each of us should be budgeted if we want to minimize AGW.
So from my perspective, it’s like congratulating a wife-beater for supporting shelters for abused women.
And, I hasten to add, as a person living a reasonably rich life, I am also such a wife beater. I do not exempt myself from the criticism that all of us in the developed world consuming such a disproportionate share of energy while we fret about ACC, are hypocrites. For this reason I consider most ACC fretting a recreational Great Cause, and not a concern about which we are so vested that we think we should actually personally sacrifice…
And we can stop here, it is clear that you do not care to repeat day in and out that you are like him, so, so much for that.
And it is clear that on the rest you are still grossly mistaken on what I think, you are still going on with the straw man that I’m talking about looking to “everyone on earth can live the lifestyle Al Gore lives.”
When your premise is wrong, there is no surprise when the rest of opinion is bull.
And a hijack in the end. We are dealing now with the damage done to a political party what needs to be fixed by the fossil fuel companies. It requires public shame of members that are denying what many companies are reporting officially, and to stop their surrogates from supporting denier politicians and supporting the ones that are in favor of part of the solution like carbon taxes or cap-n-trade.
This entire post is nonsense. Gore uses more energy than some because he’s rich. If you owned a mansion, you’d use more energy too. There are few possible futures where Gore’s level of consumption will become average. Not everyone will have a mansion, or the need to travel around the world.
Gore doesn’t say that people should sell their mansions and live in cargo containers with herb gardens on the roof. “HAW HAWW, he’s rich and he rides on a plane, why doesn’t he bike to Hong Kong? HAW HAWW” :rolleyes:
You don’t have to do away with air travel and large homes for the super-wealthy to deal with climate change. You don’t have to bike everywhere. I know you think you’ve got this amazing point, but it’s just rubbish.
I didn’t, and it is inaccurate to pretend I did by putting in a partial quote.
GIGObuster challenged my point that Al Gore and I were equivalent in the sense that we both are equal participants in making AGW insolvable because we are both wealthy and we both live richly, thus creating an insatiable energy demand that means “alternate” energy will be unable to replace fossils.
Specifically, GIGObuster called this a “silly act of equivalence” and asked to me to say “on record” that he and many were lying if I wanted to defend my position:
by GIGObuster: “The real truth was that Al Gore is not at all like you, so unless you are willing to say on the record that I and many are lying on what he is doing you need to drop your silly act of equivalence.”
In response to his personal and direct request to call him a liar on record, I posted this:
by CP:
**“You and many like you are lying if you maintain that there is a way to provide enough energy for everyone in the world to live the lifestyle Al Gore lives and still diminish the current level of fossil fuel use.”
**
I was careful to make add the “if” and I was responding to a direct challenge by another poster. I hardly think that context rises to a violation of the GD rules. I was challenged to be willing to call someone a liar; my position was misrepresented; and I made it clear that the poster would be “lying” (their term; not mine) should they hold that deliberately distorted position. It’s highly unlikely Gb actually holds the position that everyone in the world could live Al Gore’s lifestyle and we could still diminish the current level of fossil fuel use.
I don’t think I have an amazing point, but neither do I think you understand it.
My point is not to make scapegoats of the wealthy. I am, figuratively, Al Gore. I am personally wealthy, and live richly. On a scale relative to the rest of the world I am in some tiny fraction of the top one percent for wealth and income. This also means my lifestyle consumes a disproportionately large amount of energy to support it. Everything from the stuff I own, to the size of the house I live in, to the means I choose for transportation, to the secondary consumables created for me such as traveling at the Four Seasons instead of the Campground, creates a demand for energy.
Because almost everyone I have ever met prefers to live richly instead of poorly, I hold that the demand for energy is insatiable. And because of that insatiable demand, the idea that we are going to replace fossils with greener energy is misguided. We will replace fossils when we run out of them, but in general, we will consume all energy from all sources to create as rich a life as possible for the 9+ Billion of us coming online this century.
The AGW alarmists are alarmed because even at current levels of CO2 output, substantially negative effects are predicted. While this is a reasonable cause to sound an alarm, I am underwhelmed about the idea that we will be able to ameliorate it by bringing greener energy online because all energy from all sources will simply be added to an insatiable demand created by the fact that the other 99% would like to join Al Gore and me living richly.
It may be the case that the other 99% never get there, but they sure as hell are going to do their best, and only a teeny tiny percent of them will ever be persuaded to live less richly until the energy grid catches up. Like me and Mr Gore, they’ll take a private jet if given the option; own as much housing as they feel like; stay at the best facilities; take whatever vacations they can afford–on and on…leaving future generations to sort out whatever AGW ACC comes their way.
You seem to be blissfully unaware of the many important changes that have been occurring over the past number of decades, some of which I already mentioned – cars, appliances, and other forms of energy use getting more efficient, sometimes dramatically so, new forms of cleaner energy getting deployed, and initiatives like recycling programs becoming widespread. You’re also ignoring the growing sense of environment responsibility in our society, and the fact that those “coming online this century” will be our kids, many of whom are growing up with a much greater sense of environmental stewardship than we oldsters were ever taught.
The idea that we will just continue to be mindlessly reckless in our energy use and our plundering of the environment, and that we will do all manner of nasty things simply because we can, is just absurd. I’ve already shown you that despite population growth, car use has actually declined in North America in recent years, not just in number of cars but in VMT – vehicle miles traveled – as we adjust to more efficient and more ecological lifestyles.
There’s lots more that you’re overlooking, too. There’s also the fact that we’re already pushing finite limits on what this poor earth is able to supply for us and tolerate from us. It’s reflected in the prices of things that are finite resources: the price of oil, the price of land and housing. It doesn’t matter how “rich” we get, those resources are finite, and prices increase until demand matches what the planet is able to supply. But the most important of all the things you’re overlooking is that climate change is a real and growing problem no matter how much you prefer to minimize it or ridicule it with terms like “alarmists”, and in coming decades we’re going to be facing the clear consequences – the argument is going to change from whether or not the IPCC is just making things up to one about just how quickly we can act to avert even worse disasters than the ones we’re already facing. No rationalization in the world is going to change the fact that we will have no choice.
You’ve told us I don’t know how many times now that the only reliable thing about predicting the future is that predictions are always wrong. You’ve applied that principle – incorrectly – to carefully calibrated scientific predictions about the climate. In fact the kinds of predictions that are almost always wrong are the kinds of socioeconomic predictions that you’ve been incessantly making, a fact that I find beautifully ironic. Yes, such predictions are almost always wrong. I suggest you take your own advice.
Well…I am unblissfully aware of trends like these.
Perhaps you find real encouragement in looking at those trends apparently reflecting the “important changes” in efficiency from which you draw your positive outlook.
Or perhaps you are confident that once we all wake up, this projection or this one will turn out to be malthusianally laughable since we are so bad at predicting. But I think those projections have enough basis in human nature that I’m willing to bet (literally, from an investment viewpoint) on it.
And while I am on record as being very skeptical about how well we can predict 50 years using modeling, I am not skeptical that population growth will continue in the developing world and that each of us will live our lives as richly as possible, even if the energy demands of such lifestyles have a (modeled) prediction that the cost of the resultant climate change will be born by future generations.
I am skeptical that we will sacrifice now for any putative common good that is not substantially and immediately evident.
I am skeptical that either our kids or the kids in the developing world will put real sacrifice at the top of their to do’s.
FWIW I grew up dirt poor, and “these kids today” have an order of magnitude more than I and my fellow oldsters ever had. That’s human nature.
I am skeptical that any of us who could live like Mr Gore and me would choose not to, and no matter how efficient we become, there just isn’t enough energy for all of us to live richly. So as we continue to multiply our species and invade every square foot of our planet, and continue to try and develop each one of us as fully as possible, there will be no amount of efficiency that offsets total consumption of energy.
He might want to, but if half the coastal US were flooded over and the rest beset by droughts, he might not be able to. The cost of doing so might be beyond the reach of even his wealthy benefactors due to the cost of fuel because of market factors, or because of necessary policies requiring energy costs to reflect their environmental impact, or perhaps because of equally necessary explicit regulations prohibiting it altogether. Or maybe he just wouldn’t get the offer because in the culture of this new world of climate catastrophe no one concerned about their PR image would dare do such a thing, the way that this very thread is telling us that oil companies – at least publicly – are trying to clean up their PR image and greenwashing themselves, or the way that even the largest companies that can afford it are shying away from aircraft like the Boeing Business Jet in favor of smaller planes, because of the sheer extravagance that it projects.
What you’re missing is wrapped up in one sentence I said before: No rationalization in the world is going to change the fact that we will have no choice but to address climate change. When you have no choice in having to address a problem whose seriousness becomes increasingly apparent, it drives you to wondrous heights of focus and motivation. I don’t think you have any appreciation for either the cultural and behavioral changes or the technological changes that the coming decades will bring.
After it’s too late? Sure. Now? We have all kinds of choices, ranging from “do nothing and mitigate the damage when it occurs” thru “take moderate steps that probably won’t help much” up to “ban the internal combustion engine and impose a radically reduced lifestyle on the whole world”. All in a context where, whenever one side wants to do a cost-benefit analysis, the other side responds with unhelpful cries of “Denialistdenialistdenialistdenialist!”.
And that is why, is clear that you are continuing to claim that I and others are lying. and continue to be wrong; it is the emissions, not our civilization that is the target, as much as you want it to be, your premise continues to be wrong and insulting, it is clear that the one thing that drives you is the rotten conservative idea that environmentalists are actually plotting to drive a socialistic scheme, hence the silly idea that we are proposing that all will benefit just the same (or consume just the same) or that this is a fake distribution of wealth scheme.
And you continue to hijack this with no end in sight. **Lobohan **is correct, your points are rubbish. We are dealing here with the corruption that is going on with the American politics thanks to the fossil fuel companies.
have an order of magnitude more than I and my fellow oldsters ever had. That’s human nature.