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Climate record

EatTheRich

President
Of course not. What's in it for me? I don't much care for any of those. See, the way deals work is you have to give me something I want (an end to job killing corporate taxes) and I give you something you want (a stiff tax on the use of carbon based fuel that instantly evens up the field for alternative energy sources). It's a win win. But, naturally, the left will have none of it. Corporate taxes bring in about $350 billion. A carbon tax is estimated to pull in about $120 billion (but that's an inefficient cap and trade system that leaves corporate tax rates intact - a straight up carbon tax could easily bring in twice that). The rest you would easily make up in additional income taxes because of the explosion of jobs that policy would almost certainly produce. And, as a bonus, the additional wage taxes would shore up the bankrupt old age entitlements. What's not to like? Well I guess you'd have to answer that, because I can't think of anything...
In other words, you look at the crisis as an opportunity to extort more wealth from the producers by threatening to continue spewing carbon emissions otherwise.
 

EatTheRich

President
I already told you. I believe its too late. So a carbon tax is like trying to close the barn door after the horse run off. There is a built job creation scheme that comes with taxes, making hiring people with the money a better deal than trying to keep the money.
Too late to prevent some negative outcomes. But emission cuts need to be part of an effort to event worse. As does adaptation to the coming climate changes.
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
In other words, you look at the crisis as an opportunity to extort more wealth from the producers by threatening to continue spewing carbon emissions otherwise.
That's an interesting way to look at it. I prefer to focus on the fact that production leads to jobs which lead to widespread wealth and prosperity. The alternative is, well, Venezuela.
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
That of course means more power in the hands of the very people driving us to destruction. Why not nationalize the properties of the biggest carbon emitters thereby giving us the resources to establish a sane energy plan.
Because that simply leads to economic failure, and widespread hunger and poverty. Look at what is happening today in Venezuela.
 

Raoul_Luke

I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
Unless something means complete extermination of the human race, no caution should be advised? We shouldn't be concerned, for example, about the nuclear arms race because nuclear war probably won't kill everybody?
No, actually, I'm all for reducing carbon based (and other pollutants). The problem I have is with the left's policies to do so, which seem more designed to bring capitalism to its knees, rather than to address climate change.
 

Arkady

President
They are, in fact, a function of the weather over time (as is, in fact, climate).
They're a factor of solar irradiation over time (and, to a much lesser extent, geothermal heating(. They interact with weather but they're different from it.

But even if we were to treat climate as nothing but the sum of weather, that obviously wouldn't excuse the dim-witted way that right-wingers will focus on very narrow bits of weather to try to deny overall climate trends.

Think of it in economic terms. Say you claimed the S&P 500 has been rising under Trump. And say my response was to point out that the stock of United Airlines' parent is down over the last ten days. That would be correct. And it would be correct that the S&P 500 is just a combination of its component stocks, including that one. Yet, if I imagined my silly non-sequitur somehow undermined your factually correct statement, that would be pretty goofy, wouldn't it? In the same way, when people respond to claims about many decades of global warming by pointing to some short-term counter-trend in an area comprising a tiny share of the globe, they look goofy as hell.
 

Arkady

President
No, actually, I'm all for reducing carbon based (and other pollutants). The problem I have is with the left's policies to do so, which seem more designed to bring capitalism to its knees, rather than to address climate change.
There is surely some small share of climate activists who just see it as a way of going after capitalism. But the vast majority support means that are fully compatible with capitalism -- means similar to what we have used in the past to address other environmental issues (acid rain, the ozone hole, DDTs decimation of wildlife, widespread lead pollution), while capitalism continued to thrive. In fact, one leading idea --cap and trade-- is specifically built to leverage the "genius of the market" to find efficient solutions.
 
D

Deleted member 21794

Guest
We're doomed to a future of mass extinction, habitat loss, climate - related health disasters, refugee crises, and wars, flooding of major coastal cities. and super-storms. But if carbon emissions are drastically cut very quickly, we may be able to preserve habitable zones in much of the world, prevent deadly acid - rain showers, maintain and increase production of nutritious food, and preserve human civilization.
Carbon emissions won't be cut drastically and quickly, so we are doomed.
 
D

Deleted member 21794

Guest
That of course means more power in the hands of the very people driving us to destruction. Why not nationalize the properties of the biggest carbon emitters thereby giving us the resources to establish a sane energy plan.
HAHAHAHAHAH!!! Yeah, the people who routinely steal from old people, can't balance a checkbook, pay half a billion for an airplane can solve this problem if we just trust them with yet even more power and control.

Hilarious!

As I always say, when I see the hacks concerned enough that they're not flying around in large private jets, then perhaps they'll have some credibility.
 
HAHAHAHAHAH!!! Yeah, the people who routinely steal from old people, can't balance a checkbook, pay half a billion for an airplane can solve this problem if we just trust them with yet even more power and control.

Hilarious!

As I always say, when I see the hacks concerned enough that they're not flying around in large private jets, then perhaps they'll have some credibility.
BOOM!

Post of the day right there!
 

MrMike

Bless you all
Not "evolutionary change." More like the sudden shift to a new equilibrium associated with major extinction events.
If a tree falls in the forrest and there's no one there. Who will a liberal blame for causing a sudden shift to a new equilibrium and who can be taxed?

Climate change is evolution. Libs need to quit trying to claim its a man-made revolution.
 

Arkady

President
If a tree falls in the forrest and there's no one there. Who will a liberal blame for causing a sudden shift to a new equilibrium and who can be taxed?

Climate change is evolution. Libs need to quit trying to claim its a man-made revolution.
Climate change has always been happening and always will. However, the current pattern of extremely rapid warming is something that doesn't show up at any other time in at least a hundred thousand years of paleoclimate reconstruction, and the only plausible mechanism proposed for that is the gigantic uptick in anthropogenic greenhouse gases. The speed at which that warming happens will almost certainly mean serious negative repercussions for people, since it will mean the change will often outpace the ability of human societies and ecosystems to adapt effectively.

Picture it in a microcosmic way. Picture a single farm coping with a warming, drying climate. If the warming and drying is very slow (e.g., half a degree Celsius per century with commensurately slow decreases in average rainfall -- something on the pace of natural climate change patterns we saw in pre-industrial eras), adaptation won't be that difficult. Maybe it starts as a rice farm and gradually they develop more drought-resistant strains of rice, and then they start planting other crops that do better in drier climates, and building out irrigation systems, and learning new skills and habits for getting good crop yields in a warming, drying landscape, and eventually maybe even migrating.

With those changes only having to occur over the course of many generations, there's time for trial and error, and new infrastructure investments at more or less the natural attrition/obsolescence rate, so there's not much hardship associated with the trend. But what if it's five degrees Celsius per century, with commensurately rapid decreases in natural rainfall? Now we're talking repeated famines associated with crop failures, refugee crises, etc. Now the infrastructure investments have to be made at far above the natural rate of attrition/obsolescence, meaning hugely increased costs.

To put it in really simplistic terms, picture you're spending a day at the beach, and you're set up near the water line. You can cope easily with even a fifteen foot change in the height of the water, if it occurs at the pace of a normal tide. Just move your beach chair a few feet up the beach every now and then. No big deal. But if that same 15-foot rise in the water happened in just a few seconds, some people are going to drown, and even the decent swimmers are going to have their picnic baskets soaked. The speed of change can overwhelm the ability to adapt. The same happens in a much bigger picture with climate change.

That's why it's no comfort to say that climate change is always happening. Slow climate change is always happening, and for all of human history we've coped with that reasonably well. Extremely rapid climate change is a new thing, and it's going to be much harder to deal with.
 
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