Having said that, it’s really light on actual cites.
But I’m not trying to insult you.
I’m trying to ask a question: Is there a solution, and if so, what is it?
I want to assume all the necessary persuasion has been done. Science has won the day. AGW is upon us and it is universally accepted.
Is there a solution, and if so, what is it? Is it cap-n-trade or carbon taxes or something else? Is it, for instance, any and all measures to get total world carbon output down to x (and what is x)? That’s pretty much all I’m trying to get at.
It occurs to me that at least part of the psychology behind denying there is a problem is an unwillingness to sign on to a need for an unspecified change in the status quo. If the putative remedy requires a trivial adjustment, no one would deny a problem; if the remedy requires a draconian adjustment, few would sign on to agreeing there is a problem. So if we want to address deniers, we gotta tell 'em what the remedy is.
The closer to draconian any proposed remedy is, the more reticence there will be to adopt a pro-AGW position, wouldn’t you agree?
Back to the insults, but as I said Meh.
You are demanding answers from me that still need to be answered by the leaders of the nations first, what I have seen is that the recommendations are there, what to do with those recommendations still needs to be seen and only then scientists can report back if the solutions politicians come from will be effective or not.
It is only when solutions or efforts are on the table than then science enters to tell the politicians to go back to the drawing board if their solutions are not doing enough:
http://climateinteractive.org/scoreboard
Press Release: C-ROADS analysis of Copenhagen Accord Submissions
Of course, but you are ignoring that that draconian solutions will happen only after millions are affected. When I mentioned “draconian” I was referring to what will take place if we assume that nothing will be done. The draconian part will come several decades from now when irresponsible nations will have to resort to harsh solutions just to keep peace in the regions affected.
Hence my point that you are really not offering any solutions except the one of doing nothing, unfortunately the best estimates are clear in the sense that millions will be affected in that future, a future that does not need to take place.
I did.
You didn’t answer the question uh?
Are you equating (even remotely) the economic and social importance of CFCs to CO2?
Only by the fact that the same deniers back then told us that it would be impossible.
And the video shows ways to avoid using energy sources that emmit CO2. And that answered what you are asking, pay attention.
(sorry for the double post)
Your video is from a graphic designer’s youtube site.
Lemme say it again: a graphic designer NOT a climatologist.
His red-dot/blue-dot map is very suspect. It suposes a temperature measurement coverage that does not exist. His map in Peru, my country, is laughable (even if the info ended up being true). There is no such resolution for temp in Peru.
Denier-by-proxy is not a good argument.
You’re still avoiding the answer. Solving a problem doesn’t mean you can solve an almost completely unrelated problem one million times bigger.
And you left out the rest of the post where I said the world isn’t going to end tomorrow and that reducing Co2 is not the end-all solution to reducing global warming. Because of people like Gore there is a political will to spend money with absolutely no recognizable return on investment. It’s not an academic argument made on the internet, we’re talking real money. My state passed some jackass law that requires X amount of energy be produced by alternative energy sources. To that end my local power company is building a huge solar monument to landfill at a tremendous cost to the consumer. They are spending $5 million dollars on a 1.1 mw facility that will support 150 houses. That’s $33,000 per house. What a complete waste of money that will be fully depreciated in 25 years. We already have major power plants that need replacing and that money could have been used productively to build a nuclear power plant or a clean burning coal plant.
Thank you Al Gore and your army of environmental leprechauns. Sam Stone hit it right on the nose:
- Cap and Trade
- ???
- paradise
You also seem to miss the links to the solutions proposed under the video, the fact is there is evidence that we do not have to sacrifice progress when avoiding the use of fossil fuels.
Couple of points:
- Your outrage for 33K/house being too expansive would make citizens of island nations (like Nauru) go “Big f&##ing deal my nation is going underwater!”
- CLEAN burning coal plant??!? wtf?? that’s like saying Intelligent, open to different points of view, costume-wearing Tea partier. Whatever you’ve been told about clean coal > 2 possibilities: 1) Its a lie or 2) NOT clean enough
And we also talked about that before, I’m also on the record saying that many solutions proposed are bananas and I approve of nuclear power. Do you have more straw men to share with us?
As usual, that does not change the science.
Good for you but there is a planet full of Gore groupies calling for financial Armageddon and some of them are politicians.
Of course, as this reporter said: Most do not know shit from shinola.
And still after trowing potshots at Gore and Misguided environmentalists, the science reporter still has to say the obvious: ignore the hype (Of Gore and others) and still the scientists say that human made CO2 is becoming a trigger of the current (possibly) vicious warming cycle.
That’s nice except the misguided environmentalists are the politicians in office. The current end result is is still:
- Cap and Trade
- ???
- paradise
And still more straw.
I guess it does grow a lot in them there hills!
It’s not straw it’s happening right now all over the world. Federal, state and local governments are wasting money on expensive energy alternatives.
Then why you quote me?
As mentioned, solutions are proposed and many are silly, that does not mean then that one should come just trowing volleys disparaging science, or assuming that most of the solutions proposed are dumb, you are barking up the wrong tree.
Except that the solutions in place will be making a lot of money for someone, and that someone will have a strong incentive to keep them in place. For example, if it starts to look like carbon dioxide wasn’t really driving global warming after all, the ones making a nice profit from technologies for reducing carbon dioxide and from bureaucracies enforcing regulations to reduce carbon dioxide will have a powerful interest in pressuring scientists on government payrolls not to rock the boat. People making huge amounts of cash from cap and trade won’t care whether or not it actually slows global warming or that people around the globe are starving because of the burden such regulations will place on the global economy. That’s when the word will quietly circulate that any scientists who find that current regulations aren’t controlling global warming and are doing more harm than good will have a big problem getting their papers published and getting funding for their work. Most of them will yield to the pressure.
Scientists on the government payroll will more likely than not say whatever the government wants them to say.
Your childlike faith in the incorruptibility of scientists is touching, but it’s time for you to grow up and live in the real world.
History and the investigations so far of the latest “scandals” still shows that there is very little evidence for this.
Piffle.
The fact remains that as soon something like that takes place outfits controlled by the oil and coal industries will come with the evidence and broadcast it to the four winds, the problem is that right now:
Nope, all the “scandals” pushed by the denialists in this message board accusing scientists of corruption have been shown to be silly or malicious in nature (and told so by Nature 
)
As the evidence shows, it is not me who is living in a fantasy.
There’s already a good example of this: Ethanol subsidies. The green movement championed ethanol for years as a ‘green fuel’, despite reams of scientific evidence suggesting that it would do very little, and in fact could have negative consequences for the environment.
But then the big agribusinesses realized they had a gold mine, and started heavily lobbying for it. The greens forgot their antipathy to big business, welcoming the ally. And so, hundreds of millions of dollars per year were allocated to to ethanol subsidies, making Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto and others very, very happy.
Well, now we have solid evidence that the result has been very bad. Redirection of food crops into ethanol crops drove up food prices for poor people. The deficit is growing faster. Ethanol looks like it is actually a net energy sink. And yet, the subsidies remain.
And what’s worse, once subsidies are in place they are very hard to eliminate, because the market adapts. The markets in the old foodstuffs shifted elsewhere. The mix of equipment and land use today is quite different than it was before. So now if you cut the subsidies, these companies may not be able to recover that easily. It becomes yet another perpetual entitlement.
Let me tell you a story about the National Wool and Mohair Subsidy:
The Wool and Mohair subsidy was put in place to help make military uniforms. Because they were made of wool, wool was declared a strategic good, and in 1955 the National Wool Act created the wool and mohair subsidy.
Five years later, synthetics replaced wool in uniforms, and the military removed wool from its list of strategic goods. But did the subsidy end? Not on your life. It continued until 1993, consuming about 60 million dollars a year in taxpayer money, until a series of critical articles about it created enough heat for politicians that it was eliminated. But not really - the subsidies were snuck back in the door in subsequent farm bills, no doubt under pressure from the goat industry that didn’t know what to do with all its goats once the gravy train ended.
If you can’t get rid of a Wool and Mohair subsidy when no one needs wool and mohair, you can’t get rid of much.
As another example environmental foolishness, my own province of Alberta is spending 2 billion dollars to build a carbon capture coal plant - a gesture meant to fend off the environmentalists attacking us for our tar sand development. We’re spending this money despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence that carbon capture is unworkable and highly energy inefficient, and so expensive that it probably won’t even be able to compete with wind and solar.
And now the Democrats want cap and trade, despite plenty of evidence that such a program will damage the economy and will do almost nothing for global CO2 consumption. And what’s worse, if it results in energy-intensive manufacturing relocating to China or India, where their factories are much less energy efficient, it could actually result in an increase in global CO2 output. No one’s really sure, because you can’t predict how the market will react when you push it around by fiat. But these concerns aren’t stopping the democrats. They’re charging ahead with the plan.
I’ve been repeating this like a broken record on this board - opponents of cap and trade and other big-government intrusions need to stop debating the basic science of climate change, because that is actually where the greens have their strongest arguments. They WANT to keep the fight there. Because once you get past the basic science and start looking at the economics and practical limitation and long-term predictions and all the rest of the creaky scaffolding of the climate change movement’s plans, it all comes apart.
Basically, they’re saying “The science is settled. CO2 causes climate change. We’re putting CO2 in the air, and therefore we’re changing the climate. That means ANYTHING we prescribe to stop this is right and good, and anyone who opposes our plans is a ‘denier’”
There is a HUGE excluded middle there, and that’s where the devil lives. Don’t let anyone skip past that. The burden of proof is on the planners to prove how their plan will work, exactly what it will cost, exactly how much it will save in climate change-related damage, and why it’s superior to the various alternatives.
Forget the basic science. Next time you run into a supporter of cap and trade, just ask them this:
- How much will it cost over the next 100 years?
- How much warming will it prevent?
- How much damage will be averted by that reduction in warming?
- How long will it take?
- Why wouldn’t raising the cost of energy in America just shift high-energy manufacturing elsewhere, instead of reducing it?
Don’t accept answers like, “You have to start somewhere”, or “yes, it’s flawed, but once it’s in place we can fix it”, or “We need to set an example for the world.” Those arguments are all common.
The last one in particular is completely nuts - the only example you set for other countries by increasing your own cost of production is that they can benefit greatly by NOT doing the same thing. You’ve increased their comparative advantage in energy, given them increased incentive to NOT go along.
Since the left has moved past the science and is now focused on implementation, the opposition has to move its arguments there.