Technically, children are 18% carbon so having multiple children sequesters that carbon for their life…
I’m certain that was what Mr. Lee was intending to mean…
Where do you get all that?
Dont have kids if you are not willing to take care of them.
Dont let others shame you for having children if you want them just because THEY think bringing more children into the world is wrong.
Only have children you have the resources to support. For my wife and I it was 2. I know other families with many more and thats also ok.
Well, for a narrow definition of “support” that means “pay for typical out-of-pocket expenses of childhood, not counting most of the massive physical and economic infrastructure required to provide things that childen need”. I seriously doubt that you and your wife independently built entire schools and hospitals and road networks to provide for the needs of your two children, for example.
The OP asked if having kids would somehow mysteriously address the issue of climate change. I answered no and that, in fact, the science indicates that it might actually have the opposite effect. From that you got, “… [there are] way too many humans so I’m going to do my part and not have children”? I never said that.
Having said that, however, I would like to point out that there are some animal species that actually control reproduction based on whether or not environmental conditions are favorable to them. They are termed, “opportunistic breeders”.
A bit of history is needed here, there was once a time when Newt Gingrich listened to the science; but as soon he and other Republicans noticed that: pumping up the nonsense of the tea party, with money from fossil fuel interests and other conservatives, gave them victories; then Newt and the Republicans did turn into bigger denier babies.
If the premise is that some American baby will grow up and come up with the solution to climate change, maybe a more immediate way to make sure that this happens is to make certain that the yet-unidentified genius gets a good education, and is able to make the most of their gifts.
So, maybe, then, cutting the Department of Education’s budget by 10%, while pushing funding towards charter schools, isn’t a great idea. Or, is the base assumption also that the yet-unidentified genius must be coming from a wealthy conservative family?
Ah. So his argument is that if we ignore the problem and breed more, someone will magically appear out of the increased population to create a technological solution to make the problem go away.
Having provided his ideas in his own words, I am sure that you are now going to work assiduously to vote him out of office. (Having a genuine nutcase a a representative would certainly encourage me to seek his removal.)
Given that the IPCC has already provided a prospective date for a tipping point that is less than one generation in the future and given that such highly conservative bodies as the U.S. military and the World Bank accept this judgment and are trying to make plans to meet it, it is more than stupid to encourage greater procreation as the answer to the problem.
I am not a ZPG enthusiast ans I am really not a fan of “no breeding” solutions, but taking the tack that we want to encourage more children as an answer is a sign of a refusal to see reality.
Here is one thing (of many) I learned here on the Straight Dope:
There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity: Being ignorant about something is OK - it only means you have not learned facts about that something yet. If you have an opportunity to learn facts about that something before you form an opinion about it, but refuse, you are stupid. Stupid and willfully ignorant (Lee).
Worst pickup line ever.
Brace yourself for some disappointment. I like Senator Lee. I’d even say I’m delighted that he’s my Senator. I am very likely to continue to vote for him, contribute to his re-election campaigns, and volunteer my time.
His “argument” is essentially the hope that kicking the climate-change-crisis can down the road thirty or forty years will allow him to complete his own political career (and life) without having to confront the consequences of Republican climate-denial folly, as well as appealing to his religious-conservative constituency in the meantime with cozy family-values buzzwords.
I’m not at all surprised that this is the tack Lee is taking, but I am somewhat surprised that HurricaneDitka is falling for it as an “argument” in any meaningful sense. It’s just another bullshit dump to justify disregarding science in favor of the short-term bliss of irresponsible ignorance.
Fear over the Great Replacement is quite real.
Even setting aside the issue, the notion that we’re going to come up with some technomagical solution that will rapidly reverse climate change in the foreseeable future is inherently bogus. Even assuming someone creates a device that can process carbon dioxide out of air and sequester it with high efficiency (which given the 400 parts per million concentration is implausible to say the least) the amount of energy above and beyond projected increases in demand that would be required are enormous, on the order of all of the energy produced by burning the hydrocarbon fuels in the first place. This “argument”, such as it is, is purely a head-burying exercise, which is why it is presented in a deliberately absurdist fashion; the ridiculousness of the presentation distracts from the asininity of the essential premise.
Stranger
Well, voting for Jar Jar Binks did wonders for the Galactic Senate…
Reducing carbon footprints is one of the way to solve climate change. The other technology (with risks as of today) is global dimming or climate engineering.
Certainly we should invest and support reducing carbon footprint but the way things are going it looks increasingly important to invest in global dimming.
I am apolitical (at least in my own mind) and I think Climate engineering is not talked about enough.
To paraphrase AOC, if Mike Lee can become a senator, you can do anything.
I will assume your delightful feelings are based on the belief he shares with you on matters of conservation because no one capable of using a computer could possibly see his current silly garbage as anything other than the ravings of a lunatic.
Rationality forces me to assume that you don’t give a flying fuck about the environment then, or other humans who have to live in the environment, and that you presume that you’ll die naturally before the environment gets around to making your life miserable. Because it’s simply impossible that you can think “let’s wait at least twenty years before doing anything” is in any way whatsoever a solution. It’s also impossible to believe that Lee himself thinks it’s not the most moronic thing ever. It’s impossible not to think that he’s a morally bankrupt liar and performance artist - at least on the subject of climate change.
Which, again, is a perfectly cromulent thing for him to be, if you’re apathetic to the destruction of the planet and hurting the rest of humanity.
There are plenty of people “talking” about geoengineering the atmosphere (“climate engineering”), and there are numerous concepts for abating the effects of climate warming or carbon dioxide removal. The problem with them is that is all they are; concepts without any evidence or reason to believe that they can be deployed with sufficient speed on a scale to have any measurable impact, and notwithstanding the uncertainty of unintended consequences or positive feedback. “Global dimming”—the injection of light-blocking particulates into the upper atmosphere to increase albado and reduce direct irradiance at Earth’s surface—is a perfect example of this. The amount of energy to distribute and maintain a sufficient particulate density to have a measurable effect would dwarf current world power output and it would have to be maintained continuously as particles precipitate out. There are the unknown consequences of reducing solar incidence on photosynthetic organisms and those that depend upon them for energy and nutrients—which is all life on Earth—and whatever effect a mass contamination of the hydrologic cycle will have, including acidification of oceans and groundwater, interference with the natural sulfur and nitrogen cycles, and what the overall effect would be on the complex interactons of the biosphere. It isn’t as if we have a spare world to play around with, and as good at prediction as simulations of the global climate system are becoming, they are still fairly crude models that do not incorporate complex feedback of the biosphere into climate, so making radical changes to the only planet we have to live on may be like remodleing your house by setting it on fire and trying to demo it before it burns to the ground.
But if you are like Mike Lee, you probably shouldn’t.
Stranger
Don’t engage with him. He’s just looking for exactly the kind of outrage and attention you are feeding him.
Stranger