True, someone would need to actually -try- and sell it, and AGW provides that impetus. But as soon as half the nation gets up and says, “Well I don’t believe in that!”, you’re just as well to tell everyone that there’s not a measure being proposed that they would have any personal objection to so belief or disbelief is irrelevant. Personally I’d be perfectly happy to get up and tell people, “There’s no argument against bettering the technological footing of our nation, so that’s what we’re doing.”
What luxury do I need to give up by having the nation switch to nuclear energy?
What luxury has anyone ever proposed be removed to deal with global warming?
You are not being very clear here, but you seem to be saying that there is absolutely no cost whatsoever to anyone from any of th solutions either proposed or implemented to combat global warming.
I that what you are saying? Because if not I don’t see what any of this has to do with what I posted.
You can answer that yourself by answering why the nation hasn’t already switched to nuclear energy. The technology has been around for 50 years. If your claim that it costs nobody nothin’ to make the transition then explain why the transition hasn’t already been made?
I’ll let you ion on a simple truth: if something commonly known appears beneficial but isn’t being used then it must have some sort of cost that outweighs all the benefits. Any other explanation runs counter to 6, 000 years of accumulated evidence on human behaviour.
This is a joke, right? You are aware that all the solutions to deal with global warming demand that people give up either luxuries or rights?
If you really are ignorant of this then I really don’t think we have much to discuss on this issue. But in the interests of fighting ignorance you can simply put [
You are not being very clear here, but you seem to be saying that there is absolutely no cost whatsoever to anyone from any of th solutions either proposed or implemented to combat global warming.
I that what you are saying? Because if not I don’t see what any of this has to do with what I posted.
You can answer that yourself by answering why the nation hasn’t already switched to nuclear energy. The technology has been around for 50 years. If your claim that it costs nobody nothin’ to make the transition then explain why the transition hasn’t already been made?
I’ll let you ion on a simple truth: if something commonly known appears beneficial but isn’t being used then it must have some sort of cost that outweighs all the benefits. Any other explanation runs counter to 6, 000 years of accumulated evidence on human behaviour.
This is a joke, right? You are aware that all the solutions to deal with global warming demand that people give up either luxuries or freedoms?
If you really are ignorant of this then I really don’t think we have much to discuss on this issue. But in the interests of fighting ignorance you can simply put [“air travel” “global warming”] or [“suv” “global warming”] into Google.
But I am genuinely shocked that anyone wold be ignorant of the fact that every proposal to combat global warming proposes removing luxuries, freedoms or rights in order to do so. Once again it’s not just the sheer ignorance of the issue, it’s the ignorance of human nature. If the proposed changes didn’t curtail any luxuries or freedoms then why would they need to be mandated by law? The fact that you apparently haven’t even considered that boggles the mind.
Let’s limit ourselves to -real- proposals. Yes there are morons who think that everyone should plant a tree, ride a bicycle, and live without air conditioning. And the big fuss over the power usage of Al Gore’s house seems to back that the average populace thinks that these are the sort of measures being proposed, but frankly they aren’t. You’re never going to see any of that put into policy, because frankly that’s all stupid. Mankind isn’t going to use less energy (or at least we won’t unless we move to something which accomplishes the same result more efficiently), we’re going to use more and any proposal which doesn’t make that assumption, is blissfully unaware of reality.
Real proposals are:
Move to alternate energy sources both on the national infrastructure and portable motor front. Develop oil-independence.
New coal energy plants need to capture CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions.
Design buildings that are more energy efficient, retrofit older buildings as possible.
Increase the energy efficiency requirements of new electronics. (E.g. try to phase out incandescent lights.)
Update the national power grid to be more efficient.
Work with developing nations to get them on the newest, cleanest technologies as they come up.
Which one of those deprives me of luxuries? And note that this is a complete list of suggestions I was able to find proposed by all the Democratic presidential hopefuls for the last election. Only a subset of these are being proposed by any one person.
Wow! Each of these items cost money, lots of money, above and beyond the current conventions. Costing extra money certainly deprives you of luxuries. I’m not disagreeing about the desirability of some of these things, but don’t be deluded that there aren’t very significant costs and sacrifices.
And each one of those also has benefits above and beyond trying to stop AGW- so much so that I’d be willing to bet that they’d pay for themselves in the long run.
Pretty much all of those except #3 are pretty guaranteed to happen at some level or another. Pushing them to go faster probably does more for the economy than hinders. Letting technology get old and decrepit is actually not as good as creating keeping everything updated, economically speaking, because the creation of wealth comes from increasing the efficiency of the world.
I sure wish it were true. I hear that said all the time but never see actual numbers that back it up. If you’re sensing a lot of resistance to implementing those wonderful new technologies, have you ever stopped to wonder why that might be?
Inertia. A lot of companies have quite a bit invested in the status quo. Unfortunately, what keeps their shareholders happy isn’t necessarily good for the rest of us. Research and Development, especially of new technology, costs a good bit of money- money that isn’t recouped immediately. Exxon, for example, has entire factories devoted to processing oil- changing over to another energy source would require years of investment. The payoff, though, for introducing a new energy source would be astronomical.
And of course you haven’t seen any numbers to back it up- any numbers would most likely be pulled out of someone’s butt. However, it’s easy to see that any one of those would eventually pay for themselves.
The only one on your list that I can’t see producing a cost savings would be #2- cleaner coal emissions. Does that mean that any present technology already in use to clean the emissions should be scrapped, because it costs money?
Sure (though maybe it’s the drugs…what does 'portable motor front mean?)…but over what time frame? To develop alternative energy sources that are more than just niche power would take years and cost…lots. Even if ‘alternative energy’ means nuclear, it would probably take a decade or so just to cut through the politics.
AFAIK, the technology isn’t ready for prime time…and the CO2 sequestration process hasn’t been sufficiently tested to ensure that it actually works as advertised. Also, it’s pretty expensive.
None of these are show stoppers (that we know of yet), but the technology is only now being tested on a large enough scale to get any meaningful data (in Germany IIRC)…and there are a ton of questions still.
Agree with the first part (you could essentially define new efficiency standards for the building code and make it mandatory to build all new construction to that standard…as long as you were willing to take the initial unpopularity hit due to the higher initial cost of buildings, which I think is workable). I don’t think the latter part is feasible though, as the costs would be rather large…at least not from a mandatory perspective. If folks wanted to voluntarily retrofit energy efficiency standards into existing buildings I suppose you could look at ways to subsidize such efforts. However, just doing the former part would give you, eventually, much higher energy efficiency, as newer construction takes the place of older.
Sure, this is being done now. And again, as with 3, you could mandate new standards and codes. It would, of course, be initially more expensive, like everything else you are listing…but the initial front end costs might outweigh back end energy usage.
In theory, sure. In practice…not a chance. Though, again, like in 3 and 4, you could mandate that any new construction would have to meet new codes and standards…so eventually you’d wind up with a more efficient power grid, as older power lines were replaced by new construction. It would probably take a fairly long time, though I have no idea how long the current power infrastructure lasts.
You would have to essentially buy them off by subsidizing them. After all, it’s simply cheaper for countries like China, with large reserves of coal, to put in cheaper (and dirtier) coal fired plants…and cheap is going to be the operative word there as they are trying to develop their infrastructure as quickly and cheaply as possible. If they could build out newer, cleaner technologies quickly and cheaply they would already be doing it…so you’d have to figure out how to give them an incentive to do so. And that wouldn’t be cheap.
All of them are going to cost money…so, I suppose they would all deprive you and the other tax payers footing the bill of some ‘luxuries’. Some of them are beyond our current abilities (either technically or economically…or both), and others would just be either initially expensive or would put other strains on the folks trying to implement them.
That’s the thing…nothing is free. We HAVE a power infrastructure that took years to build and cost lots of money. If we are going to try and replace that with something else it’s…well, going to take years to build and cost a similar (probably more, initially) money. The best way to do that is through legislature and a phased, gradual approach. I say best, but what I mean is ‘cheapest that still gets us there’ I suppose.
Right. So you are going to force the shareholders to give up their rights in order to implement this solution. Oh and you are going to take money off them, and therfore reduce their luxuries, at the very least.
And who are these shareholders? Well ~40% of the dollars are from people on average or below average incomes, done through various investment and retirement plans. Those people make yup the majority f actual shareholders and IIRC something like 80% of people in the developed world have such invetsments.
So you are proposing to strip the rights and luxuries from 80% of the population, ordinary everyday people, to implement your solution. These people aren’t distinct from the rest of us. These people are the rest of us. Do a bit of investigation into your investments and you will almost certainly find that you yourself are one of these people.
The idea that 80% of the population are going to support your proposal when it will mean they have less money to retire on when it will have absolutely no impact on climate change is just lunacy.
Cite! Seriously, can we have some hard figures done by an economist demonstrating this astronomical (lets set the standard for astronomical at a very low 66%) increase in profit.
No, it isn’t. It’s easy to fantasise.
What is easy to see is that like >90% of R&D it would be financial black hole. There’s no reason to believe that it pay anything at all for the investment.
Well figure that in my life the two largest government deficits were caused by military spending, which provided little to no economic return.
Compared to setting the areas and industries to receive government support and funding over the next 50 years, I think it’s a hard argument to make that this would be time and money worse spent than conquering Iraq or building 20 times the number of nuclear missiles as needed to kill all of mankind.
Cars, etc. Anything not powered directly from the grid.
Considering it takes 20-30 years to build a new nuclear power station, it’s pretty safe to say that the suggestions are all a “going forward” sort of thing. Incandescent lights are being phased out in California over the next 10 years. All of this is stuff that’s going to be 10-50 year projects and likely just pertain to new construction and the choices made at that time.
So what? You claimed that this would not cost any money at all and therefore nobody would object to it without the threat of AGW hanging over their head.
Now you admit that it will cost money your entire, rather silly, position falls to pieces.
We aren’t here to debate whether this is money well spent for other reasons. We are here to debate whether people would be just as willing to fund it without the threat of AGW. And of course they wouldn’t be. You could only support that position as by arguing that tehy required no additonal funding. Now that you’ve admitted they require substantial funding your entire position collapses.
What do you mean “phased out”? Will people still have the right to buy them? Or is this yet another right that people are being deprived of based on the perceived threat of AGW?
Aren’t the short-term effects of pollution obvious enough already? Even if Global Warming as a concept was completely unknown, surely getting as far as possible from the Victorian-era norm of coal-dust and soot all over the place is worthwhile.
We aren’t here to debate whether this is money well spent for other reasons. We are here to debate whether people would be just as willing to fund it without the threat of AGW. And of course they wouldn’t be.
I said that people wouldn’t be deprived of luxuries.
Figure that Reagan and Bush I ran up a debt of what, trillions? And Clinton reduced that debt to nothing in 8 years by doing nothing more than raising taxes on the upper brackets by what, 5%? 10%?
So let’s say that the government decides to spend trillions of dollars on updating the technology of the US, over the next 50 years. Figuring that a Clinton-era tax burden can pay that off in 8 years, and we have 50, we actually only need something like 1/6th of the higher tax burden that Clinton imposed. So where it was 5-10%, in our case we would only need something like 1-2%.
And where Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were spending those trillions of stuff that ultimately just gets destroyed and serves no major economic purpose, updating American technology is likely to increase the American economy and pay itself off. That 1-2% greater tax burden will likely be unnecessary after 20 years.
Of course they will, because all of the US tech is going to get update either way. Like I said, nearly all of the things in my list are going to happen eventually, it’s just a question of whether we update the tech in 50 years or 70. But there’s no chance that we’re going to sit on what we have indefinitely. But given that there’s no particular argument against updating to the newest tech sooner, you might as well. Anything else is just laziness.
It’s like looking at schools. They might wait another year before replacing all of their computers for faster ones or they might wait two years. But there’s no chance they’re not going to do it at all.
Well, IIRC in the 19th century the soot and other air contamination where sometimes trapped during what we now call a smog inversion. 4000 people were killed during one of those events. I would think that if evidence mounts to point that even current levels are harmful that the liability treats alone will induce change.
Yes, and if the proposal deprives someone money then either it is depriving someone of luxuries or it is depriving them of essentials. I’m being charitable and assuming that none of your proposals will cause anyone to actually starve. Therefore if they cost one red cent then they are depriving people of luxuries.
Once again, I’m am astounded that you feel a level of knowledge nmeede to debate this knowledge when you seem to lack the economic fundamentals to understand this point.
I’ll put it to you simply: If your proposal costs a person $1.50/day, what do they have to do without in order to have that $1.05? Either it is a luxury or it is essential food, housing etc. you can’t take their $1.05 and have them spend it as well.
Right. So a typical person will lose $500 a year. Now where does thatmoney come from? have yu come up with some magic that allows aperosn to lose $500 and still spend it? Or will they have to forego the luxuries that $500 woudlhave bought them?
And what in the world makes you think that people will support a $500 a year environemntal tax increase when you have absolutely no evidence at all that it will have any positive environmental effect whatsoever?
There are a shitload of arguments against it. not least of which is that the cost of technology declines exponentially and efficiency increases exponentially with time. Every year that it is put of decreases the price significantly and you install a more efficient and tested system.
Seriously this is like saying there was no reason not to computerise the entire US phone system in 1956 because it was going to happen within 30 years anyway. It’s absurd.
And if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its arse on the ground when it hopped.
But a frog doesn’t have wings, and you don’t have any evidence that current levels are harmful enough that people are going to swallow a $500 a year tax increase to pay for it.
Let’s be honest here shall we? If any of these sorts of suggestions were as convincing to the public, don’t you think the lobbyists and PR people would be using them, instead of always using AGW as their big stick?
All these arguments seem to pivot around the concept that there is something widely known, well proven, that is better than what is currently in use, that comes at no additional cost and yet for some inexplicable reason isn’t being used.
If there is one thing that life has taught me it’s that any argument that hinges entirely on that supposition has overlooked some massively obvious point and is completely erroneus.
These idea about free CO2 reduction technology and alternative arguments that will sell AGW mitigation proposals as well as AGW but aren’t being used are of precisely that type, and are completely bogus. They are both “free energy” that is for some reason being hidden under a bushel. Simple question: if these free alternatives exist, why aren’t they being used right now?
My point was that liability does cause changes that many conservatives thought it would never happen.
(banning smoking in bars? It will never happen!)
Well, the point was to ignore AGW in this discussion, however it is impossible when the title of the OP was set that way.
The surprising thing is that I also agree that nothing much will happen in that front because I do take into account human nature, it does not make it right, but here is were I say that we still have to be ready to react when a disaster takes place, how many times do I see safety features applied to modern technology only after a disaster takes place?
Too many to count.
It has been my impression that it was the treat of liability what made the oil companies to start funding groups that were skeptical of AGW, when people complained about those connections even the oil companies began to accept the evidence and dropped the open support for those groups, IMO the oil companies are reacting to avoid an even bigger lawsuit if they had continued with the funding.
But far more often it doesn’t. And there is no evidence that this is one of the few cases where it does.
Once again, if threat of litigation based on provable health repercussions exist, then why does lobbyists and PR groups rely on the AGW threat as their sole tool?
It wasn’t to ignore it. It was to highlight how the world would be different if it were falsified.
To me that makes it very right. A minority like you don’t get to dictate to the majority based on your subjective religious or ethical standards. That’s as right as this world can possibly get.
I agree completely. We can’t be too cautious, we should take drastic and irreversible steps to combat any potential disaster before it takes place. Regardless of people’s personal views. Right?
And since all the diseases most likely to spawn new pandemics (SARS, Ebola, Lyssavirus, AIDS etc) are native to rainforests, we should institute a plan to reduce global rainforest cover to half of 1997 levels by 2050.
Can’t be too careful right? And we can’t apply safety features after the disaster takes place.
IMO the trouble with people of your mindset is that you never think about the precedent you are setting, or how it will work if someone diametrically opposed to you is in power. You are quite happy to see other people’s sacred cows slaughtered to avert a potential disaster. But I bet you weren’t too happy with my plan to pave the Earth. Food for thought I hope. Let me have my sacred cows until you can prove that they are going to gore you. And I’ll let you have yours. Because if we rush out to slaughter them because they might gore someone in the future, well nobody has any cows do they?
The bastards! Someone threatened litigation against them and they went out and hied experts to construct a defence against it? How dare. What, do they think they live in a democracy with a rule of law or something. :mad:
Of course we know you’d never do that. If someone threatened litigation against you you wouldn’t even hire a lawyer. Because paying someone to construct a defence case is wrong, right?
But hang on. You can’t wait until after the disaster to apply the brakes. that would be wrong. So maybe you should plan in advance. But that means the oil companies should have planned in advance as well!!?!??
This is all to complicated for me. Are the oil companies eeeeevil, or are you? Or am I. Someone must be eeevil for acting rationally.
Well, in the end they are doing the right thing, having to fight **also **conspiracy charges when the shit hits the fan somewhere would be a bitch. (I still think some will benefit, but I also think that some people in Florida will get their lawyers someday for this)
