(emphasis added)
Nitpick: I don’t think the underlined sentence is true yet. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are “only” up 43% on pre-industrial levels.
Sorry, misspoke - that most of the increase is due to humans.
The gore derangement syndrome argument is the same as the “well if you think we should raise taxes, why don’t you donate all your money to the government? yuk yuk yuk.” argument. You can simultaneously be a high consumer while wanting legislation designed to encourage everyone, including yourself, to cut back on their emissions.
Furthering the analogy, no mainstream politician thinks there should be an absolute maximum income beyond which the money should be confiscated. Similarly, no serious policy advocate believes in an absolute legal limit of power consumption by any one individual.
If you implement a carbon tax, it becomes literally the same “donate your wealth or no taxes at all!” argument. In reality, high energy consumers would be able to continue to consume if they can afford the taxes, just like high income earners are not robbed of their entire possessions or jailed, simply taxed.
I’m a extreme conservative, though not American, and I am all for green energy, I don’t see why topics like human rights, military, economy, religion,etc. should affect whether someone is for or against green energy and things like that.
Another thing (did it come up already?), is that conservatives in the US right now are strangely inclined to believe conspiracy theories.
In the abstract, CC is something terrible, but difficult to perceive directly (if you made up a threat like this for a movie, it would have to be a green mist or something).
For many people, their first inclination for something like that is reject it as being a conspiracy. It’s not specific to CC; anything with the properties of being unpleasant* and difficult to see directly would be treated that way.
On the question of why conspiracy theories are popular, that’s maybe another topic.
- By “unpleasant” I mean something that causes discomfort and doesn’t chime with things they already believe. Democrats organizing a child sex ring is not an unpleasant fact because it’s just reinforcing something they already want to believe.
Look, the “celebrity pass” is just a symptom; I don’t do GD the way I used to, so “getting it all out” on the first pass is no longer quite my forte.
From where I’m standing (and have been for ~20 years), it’s entirely possible, quite probable, actually, that GW/AGW is real, and billions of individual consumers are prime contributors (that includes me). The issue is not Belief.
It’s the narrative, which I feel has been hijacked by Green Socialists, not to provide a solution to GW/AGW, but to enact a Green Socialist agenda.
“Let’s build wind farms, solar farms, more hydro, even go nuclear,” ordinary people like me suggest (and yes, I DO know that nuclear has LOTS of problems, and it’s really just “punting” a different [set of] problem[s] down the road a ways), but we can’t, because someone files a federal suit stopping construction of such things on environmental grounds.
Can’t build wind farms because birds (migratory?) fly into the blades. Plus, there’s the NIMBY aspect wrt to wind farms, too.
Can’t go solar because some god forsaken chunk of nowhere houses some unique bird, reptile, insect that will be endangered.
Can’t go hydro because it interferes with fish spawning and river ecologies.
I would love to completely shut coal-burning plants down. But what do we replace them with, to make up the energy otherwise produced by coal? Nuclear is the only option I’m aware of that’s even remotely capable of doing so. But I’m not holding my breath wrt that happening in my lifetime.
If it were feasible, it would be great to go All-Electric for our private automobiles, not just for the environment, but also to remove a strategic liability (foreign dependence on oil). But until we can make up the increased electricity demand, in a reasonably Green manner (Greener than coal, at any rate) such a switch would entail, it ain’t happening.
Taken all-in-all, the Green Socialist resistance to any/all of the above solutions (wind/solar/hydro/nuclear) might lead some to believe that the GW/AGW problem isn’t nearly quite as bad as some others might want J. Average Person to believe.
I live in California, probably as green as anywhere, and we have lots of wind farms, like on the Altamont pass. Somehow they got through. I see some solar installations, and our city has a solar program. In fact new houses will be required to go solar soon. So I’m sure there are some idiots who file suit, but progress is being made.
And if Trump hates windmills we’ll all support them.
Coal is being replace both by solar and wind and by natural gas. Not as good as these, but much cleaner than coal.
I wish I knew what the socialist agenda was. The solutions I’ve heard involve a carbon tax and/or credits which can be traded, both of which encourage the private sector to innovate to find ways of reducing carbon, and is the opposite of the government mandating a solution. That seems very capitalist to me. We have lots of hybrids and electric cars here relative to other places thanks to our high gas prices and from car pool stickers given to those who bought them early. (Too early for my Prius, alas.) That’s not socialism either.
The business leaders get money out of it.
The political leaders are simply pandering and get votes and money out of it.
The followers break into two overlapping groups:
Secular conservatives think environmental issues = fag, and they’re not fags, they like front-end loaders and pickup trucks that go “RAAAAAAAAAR”
The jesus freaks simultaneously believe:
[ul]
[li]Nature was made by God and is so big that man cannot possibly be influencing it[/li][li]God gave man dominion over the earth, he can do whatever he wants[/li][li]This is the same thing as “I didn’t do it, but if I DID do it, I’m allowed to.”[/li][/ul]
Okay, great. See, this is actually really interesting to me, because this post is a perspective I legitimately am not aware of. I think it’s a bit silly, but I wasn’t aware of it.
See, this is where you lose me. I have never seen complaints like this about solar. I haven’t heard the complaints about hydro and fish spawning since the Bush administration - is that actually a thing? I have seen complaints like this about wind, but mostly from the people trying to give a reason not to use wind power - republicans (Trump specifically has been riding this hobby-horse for a while).
Complaints about Nuclear exist, and FWIW I think most of those complaints are badly overstated and that Nuclear absolutely should be a part of our grid in the coming future. People terrified of “another Fukushima” overestimate the dangers of nuclear badly.
But I’m worried you’ve grasped on to a narrative that… doesn’t exactly exist. There’s not some green socialist plot against green energy. The vast, vast majority of us* are pragmatically interested in solving the problem - wind, tidal, solar, geothermal, even limited use of natural gas if it helps us phase out coal sooner.
If it’s just as simple as “I dislike this narrative”, then that’s an easy fix - focus on the science, and push for a narrative that’s better. “Global warming is a socialist conspiracy theory” is not a better narrative. “We need to use all the tools at our disposal to reduce GHG emissions while maintaining our standard of living” is a better narrative - and, coincidentally, it’s sort of the mainstream position on climate change on the left and among the scientific community. 
*There might be a handful of legitimate “watermelons” who are using this as a way to tear down capitalism. I have yet to see any reason to believe they are anything more than a tiny minority with no actual political power. They’re also phenomenally dumb, along the lines of the idiots who supported Trump over Clinton because “accelerationism”.
Where do you get that last part.
I’m a Jesus Freak thank you and I dont believe that and I have NEVER heard that preached. Just what bodily orifice do you pull this out of?
I, and every other “Jesus Freaks” I know believe we should take care of God’s world and I’m totally on with wind, solar and such.
My issues with those though are I just dont see them being enough. The wind stops blowing and it gets dark. So you still need backup energy plants. The emphasis should be on reducing demand but thats not going to happen with the push for electric cars and everyone needing a place to plug in their devices.
Also on wind, I know enough about it that I know how many windmills it takes to replace even a single coal generating power plant. I also know the best places you can build those windmills are already taken up by houses and such.
Actually, no: you need improved transmission and storage.
Look what happened to Carter when he suggested such an unamerican idea.
How many? Does that number reflect improvements in technology? In storage and transmission? In location? (Your point about location is important, but I’m not convinced all the best locations are inhabited, NIMBYism notwithstanding.)
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You can’t put a meter on the sun. Free and limitless energy for all of human kind? Are you insane?
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A major cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels, the fossil fuels that RICH PEOPLE own and get RICHER from.
In other words, their “richness” is way more important than the ultimate fate of the earth in terms of it being a livable environment for human kind.
What method do you suggest for collecting solar energy that is free, and limitless? One limit I can think of is that it is difficult to collect solar energy at night, or on cloudy days.
Actually, I think it mostly gets burned by middle-class people, who buy it in the form of gasoline. And I wouldn’t classify China as all that rich, and they are the major consumers of coal (a fossil fuel).
What are your thoughts on nuclear energy? It’s not free, of course, but nothing is, and if we employ breeder reactors we are not likely to run out for the foreseeable future. And it doesn’t cause global warming.
Regards,
Shodan
Speaking of nuclear energy I’m on the record of being for it. Now, I have heard in this thread that the left is not serious on the Climate issue for not supporting Nuclear power. Now the reality is that there are liberals that do support nuclear energy but the sad reality is that no matter who is in power in the USA there is not much movement on this.
I have pointed many times before that regardless of how brave many conservatives come for nuclear power in discussions like this, in the end I see polls or votes for new nuclear power plants or nuclear waste dumps that show how much alike are people on that, no matter if they are liberal or conservative.
Point being that with the number of Republicans in power we should had seen lots of new nuclear plants or dumps in many places of the USA, and yet the numbers are few (and the few nuclear plants being constructed now were supported and got funds from the previous Obama administration) because when local permission is needed most of the time in the USA NIMBY rules. You then see polls with people opposing new installations with about 60% or more against them.
The comment I made many times before is that one should remember that liberals are usually about 25% of Americans, so unfortunately, unless the majority of the people magically become liberal at poll or vote times; then the issue is that there is a very good number of conservatives that are also not serious about nuclear power.
Actually, it can and does happen. In California, gasoline usage went from 14.4 billion gallons in 2000 to 15.5 billion gallons in 2017 despite a large population increase.
Cite. We are also very good at energy efficiency but I haven’t found data on total energy usage over time yet. In any case that could be due to our climate.
You do know your site shows an increase?
In any case say with electric cars your just switching from one fuel (gasoline) to another (electricity).
Now your right we are becoming more energy efficient. Cars are more efficient. HVAC systems and lighting also. But then we also demand more indoor temperature controlled space.
Modern wind turbines spin at a much slower speed than they did decades ago and are now a vanishingly small proportion of bird deaths (cite). Anyone complaining about wind turbines (and these are a vast minority of people, to be clear) on this basis should be far more upset about skyscraper construction, or domestic cats, allowed to run free outdoors.
Yes, but there is a huge economy of scale involved there between a large power plant and lots of smaller ones in a vehicle. I have seen estimates that even burning the same oil in a power plant to make electricity that would be converted into gasoline for cars would immediately double the efficiency of energy used. To say nothing of the possibility of using renewable or carbon free/reduced sources. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.
Also, to add on the point of gasoline demand, that’s a 7.6% increase in gasoline usage at the same time as a 14.1 % increase in California’s population, which is a fairly significant decrease in the demand for gasoline, per capita.
Which goes back to what I said in my first post to the thread - Democrats need to push back as hard against the anti-science elements in their party - the greens - as the GOP does against the anti-science elements in their’s. So when Harry Reid blocks Yucca Mountain and Obama goes along with it, or Bernie Sanders opposes nuclear energy, or Ocasio-Cortez declines to include nuclear energy in her ambitious plans, Democrats are the ones who need to correct them. They aren’t listening to anyone else.
And this goes back to something else I said - we aren’t going to do anything about AGW. Republicans (to some extent) say we don’t need something that works. Democrats (to at least as great an extent) say “there’s nothing we can do about a practical solution, so let’s push an impractical one”.
Regards,
Shodan