Cost plus margins, effectively driving people away from fossil fuels, lowering Big Oil revenues and dividends … no, I think you’ll have a big fight on your hands. We have to somehow bring venture capital into these power plants to make these modifications, and that requires a return on investment. Would we have to add the capital repayment (and margins there) to end-user costs? I, of course, completely agree it should be the polluters who pay (especially since it won’t be me). This is the brilliance of the wedgie world wolfpup brought to the table, we don’t have to implement this all at once, but by degrees, allowing the overall economy to adjust rather than just one big potentially huge jump.
Deniers love simplicity, (in general) so how about a simple question.
Do you honestly think you can take a system like the earth, cut down truly massive swaths of forest (and burn much of it) Dig up mega tons of coal ( and burn it) Drill for unimaginable amounts of oil (and refine then burn) Propane in similar amounts (and burning it) Natural gas in smaller amounts but still huge (and burning it) and not have an effect on the earths atmosphere that just might cause some problems?
We have set fire to more stuff in the past couple hundred years than burned on the entire planet in well over 10,000 years (note that number is pulled straight outta my ass, if you can find a search that works I would love to see the comparison) So in comparison you can try this experiment at home, burn a candle. Then see how much your home has changed. Now burn 600 candles at the same time and compare notes.
Its really kinda like that…sorta
(shortened for clarity. Bold and underline added.)
I’m sure the ol’ “pulling numbers out of ones ass” has been considered an extremely scientific method in some circles. I just don’t know which circles that maight be.
How many of your candles would be required to produce the same effect as one massive volcanic eruption?
This is to alleviate the carbon emissions, not to try and fix a social problem. Social attitudes will not change in the near future and trying to muscle them out with taxes doesn’t work. It’ll take several decades of education to get there. How long have we been fighting, for instance, racism? How much is still left? How long have we been telling people that smoking gives them Miner’s Lung? How many people still smoke?
In the mean time, we can do actual clean up based on the emissions being made without associating a “behavior change” to the charge, which will mingle with politics and get it pulled out before there’s an effect.
The “Wedge” strategy is a narrow precipice that will fall out from under foot once someone can convince the populace that it’s a bad idea. When that happens, all progress will be lost very quickly. No one cared that the government made loans to corporations to advance technologies that would be beneficial. No one cared that developing and testing, via government dime, alternative fuel sources such as solar and wind. No one cared that environmental regulations made businesses do things they didn’t want to, either. Until, that is, AGW was made into a boogey man the leftist liberati were using to control your thoughts. Suddenly, it wasn’t the government trying to keep waters blue, it was evil environmentalists that hated humanity doing it, and they are crazy and bad, mmmkay? (No, seriously. Some environmentalists are nuts. To associate with them is not the best course of action for people who want the bulk of support, at least in the US.)
The AGW activists have given groups like “big oil” way more power than they should have. Now it’s a debate about freedom and apple pie instead of a debate about what can be done and what sort of time frame is acceptable.
Can you give me 3 specific examples of things which qualify as “some problems” so I know what you are talking about?
The difficulties being what Sam Stone pointed out a while back - we aren’t sure that the goals are worthwhile, since our cost-benefit analysis is not informed, and it is going to be really, really difficult to get China and India to abide by agreements to reduce CO2 emissions. Note that I said “abide by”, not “agree to”.
Regards,
Shodan
Frankly I do not think that he is telling us that we have to wait only for their agreement. Remember, I already accept that they are not going to agree, the pressure is geared to show the people at large that indeed the [false] skeptics are only attempting to fool others.
It is also a political fact that many of the current deniers that were elected to congress got in by disparaging cap-n-trade. And with the help of money from the fossil fuel industry.
The main point stands, all Americans that pay attention to science need to work to throw those rascals out.
And one side is not lobbing hand grenades, they are going nuclear. (You are not aware but in other places in the SDMB politeness is not a thing I would think the contrarians have)
My “denialism” is focused on carbon dioxide and natural gas as greenhouse gases. The first thing done in the coal mining operation is driving a shaft into the bottom of the seam to drain out the fuming carboxylic acid, which in turn is just dumped into some poor river. This is horrific to the environment, and scientifically proven to be bad. Yet the practice is allowed, and the costs of clean-up rest with the water-users downstream. So, yes, I’m denying that the carbon dioxide output is a problem with coal production. The money to mitigate is better spent on all the other nasties that burning fossil fuels causes … then let’s see where we stand.
I found with an outdoor temperature of 20ºF, I can effectively heat one room in my home with 10 candles.
Its just an analogy after all. 
Can you give me one specific example of you, reading a response to one of your direct questions and understanding that you were in fact wrong in your previous assumptions and as a result of this actually changed your mind? If not when why would anyone spend time engaging you on this board for any reason other than convincing the lurkers?
3 examples, please. It’s an honest question, it deserves an honest answer.
I have no idea what you are asking about here. Please show me an example of a previous assumption I made which was wrong. Please use quotes.
Please resist the temptation to just make something up.
First please tell me why you are interested in having a meta-discussion. Also please let me know why anyone would engage with you.
Also, please answer my question from before:
Can you give me 3 specific examples of things which qualify as “some problems” so I know what you are talking about?
Yes, vetting is important. even when it disagrees with your opinion, and should still be discussed. Even when Hansen’s GISS was supply inaccurate temperature readings, the IPCC report was still, somehow, considered “vetted”. Inaccurate but vetted none the less.
*NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—known as GISS—was forced to admit it committed an egregious error when it publicly claimed October 2008 was the warmest October in history.
…After GISS generated substantial media attention with its claim October 2008 was the warmest October in history, a number of global warming “skeptics” smelled something fishy and examined the data themselves. They soon discovered NASA and its partners at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had copied the September 2008 temperature data from Russia into the October Russian temperature dataset.
…In late 2007 McIntyre discovered GISS had been systematically reporting overly warm U.S. temperatures. McIntyre caused a sensation in late 2007 when he proved NASA had been unjustifiably adding a significant 0.l5º Celsius to its U.S. temperature reports since the year 2000.
…Since McIntyre discovered GISS’s error and similar statistical errors in prominent global warming alarmist Michael Mann’s famous 1998 “hockey stick” graph purporting to show more rapid global warming than has in fact occurred, GISS scientists and their allies who claim humans are causing a global warming crisis have been remarkably unwilling to share their data with McIntyre. GISS climate modeler Gavin Schmidt refuses even to acknowledge McIntyre by name.
…Hansen has publicly called for Nuremburg-style “high crimes against humanity” trials against people who dispute his alarmist global warming claims*.
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2009/01/01/warmest-october-claim-was-wrong-nasa-admits
I question the basic building blocks of the “man-made-CO2-must-be-at-fault” camp while others insist that the public simply accept anything the IPCC publishes as fact and jump to the next step of addressing the (questionable) problem. In order to change peoples opinions, you need to answer there questions. Not tell them that their “record player needs a whack”.
Will there be another ice age?
Not sure where you are, for ages the environmentalists have made the point that there is no such thing as clean coal, and not because it produced CO2, but for all the items you mention.
(shortened for clarity)
Or the voters weren’t convinced by the poorly framed and supported arguments in favor of the CO2 tax-and-trade bills and removed the legislators who tried to foinst it on the voting public. Maybe the voters objected to constantly being referred to as ignorant?
Many environmentalists do not want any money, time, or effort spent on creating clean coal. They demand that alternative energy sources, and only alternative energy sources, be used. Tax and legislate the coal industry out of business and replace it with energy sources which can’t possibly duplicate the amount of energy lost.
Less energy that costs more. That sounds like a sure fire vote getter.
It will happen the day when contrarians stop using Heathland Institute as a source of information.
To being with, I have found the author to not be a reliable narrator before, then he is using discredited researchers that are not climate scientists like McIntyre. The error he is talking about was acknowledged a long time ago and it made very little difference to the overall picture a decade ago; in fact if you notice, the author here is just declaring that the same error or a new one is now happening, but there is no single bit of evidence offer for that inference.
So once the underhanded nature of the article is clear, then we can look at why that source is likely to get their bias.
Look or read the Frontline Report, powerful interests are constantly making efforts to keep many ignorant.
That is nice, it does not deal with any of the reasons why coal is one of the worse sources to use.
Coal is not cheaper when the costs of the damage (before and after its use) are accounted for.
This reply is before reading anything but the OP.
Yes, and even worse, they claim they are not really problems. Denial is often the default position for anyone polluting or destroying resources. Or, “you can’t prove it”, or “you green nutjobs are making it up”.
*air pollution aka smog - POTUS Reagan (and others) claimed trees produce air pollution
water pollution, plus damming and diversion of rivers - people have always claimed water naturally clears itself, plus animals poop in the water and natural run off is a bigger source of pollution, but yes, in order to avoid liability people have denied it was them causing the problem
deforestation (beavers don’t knock down millions of acres) - yes, people claim naturally occuring forest fires would cause more loss, management actually improves the forest, there are more tree now because of planting, ect
overfishing (many ocean species are in serious decline) - usually disease, weather or other predators are blamed, especially other countries are balmed
ocean dead zones due to agricultural runoff - very much denial over this, especially from farm run off
loss of biodiversity - yues, denial is rampant
species extinctions (see “The Sixth Extinction”) - yes, denial is rampant
topsoil loss and erosion (often tied to deforestation) - yues, a lot of denial, especially from the logging industry
soil salination from over-watering - complete denial or avoidance by many
desertification and dust bowls (e.g. U.S. 1930s) - yes, natural climate change blamed, not farm practices,
unnatural chemicals in food and the environment - oh hell yes, huge denial
radiation far beyond natural levels** - don’t get me started. Huge denial, especially to the long term effects and risks, so much that the talking heads speak of “background levels of cesium”, like radioactive cesium is a naturally occurring substance.
Well, reasonable people know we damage things, and cause things, but when it comes to pollution, land use and agriculture, things get crazy quick. Be it mercury from coals stacks or industry, to radioactive cesium, or pesticides and herbicides, birth defects or cancer, denial is overwhelming. You can even have the same person passionate about one thing, but in complete denial about another.
You want to see outright denial at work? Mercury in dental fillings. There a lot of people who flat out deny it is any problem at all. At the same time they are deeply concerned about something that they think will happen in a hundred years. It’s baffling.
I’m sure it’s very important to you who wrote the article while you attempt to brush over the fact that Hansen’s GISS, the IPCC, and others used faulty data. The faulty data use must not be allowed to considered as important as an attempt to “kill the messenger”.
The man-made global warming camp suffers from a credibility problem with the public. Since Hansen’s original data was supposedly vetted, what does that say about the other, alledged, vetting done on behalf of the man-made global warming camp? I know, I know, everyone else is ignorant and should not be asking uncomfortable questions.
At least you admit that there will be another ice age.