Enjoy seeing your energy bills double or triple over the next few years as cheaper sources of energy are replaced by inefficient, expensive, faulty replacements that are decades away from being perfected.

Thanks Obama...

Eh, profit losses from LED lights and various power-saving devices will do that anyway.

And you just expect oil, gas and coal to last forever?

No, but for at least the next 250 years from the reserves we have here in the US. If the faggots in Washington can ever pull their heads out of their asses and let us get at it, be energy independent for a couple decades, allow the money we save to be put to good use in infrastructure and development grants...

And THEN we'd have cheaper, easier to produce technology that would allow us to start transitioning toward cleaner energy, because we wouldn't HAVE to resort to the cheapest sources at the moment (i.e., coal, oil, natural gas).

Don't get me wrong, Climate Change is bogus science, proven again and again by liberals flip-flopping on the subject over the past 15 years ever since Al Gore (over)sensationalized it as a scare-tactic to impose taxes on companies that make "too much money".

Taxing the shit out of companies now is just shooting this country in the foot, and murdering interstate commerce that relies on roadway transportation. Gas prices will rise from this carbon tax, businesses will pass on the cost to consumers, consumers will buy less, or opt for cheaper alternatives from China, and US-side business will suffer. How liberals don't understand this domino-effect is frustrating, because it's simple 8th-grade economics.

That being said, I'd like to see some cool new technology derived from solar, etc. I think the coolest idea I've seen yet is the solar roadways project that the Department of Transportation has green-lighted as a test run. That alone would create tens of thousands of jobs, all the materials would come from recycled glass products, and it would generate clean, limitless, free energy that could power homes, cars, offices, trains, etc.

We have plenty of reserves in the US, this is true. Getting at it is a whole different issue. More and more, companies are relying on fracking to get at natural gas. The problem is that fracking poisons the environment, decreases property values, and destabilizes earth's crust to the point where it can cause local earthquakes. Another issue with fracking is that in some places they are looking to frack where there are known high concentrations of radon, and they have no real plans of removing the radon from the gas, so every household using it is going to have to deal with that as well.

"Don't get me wrong, Climate Change is bogus science, proven again and again by liberals flip-flopping on the subject over the past 15 years ever since Al Gore (over)sensationalized it as a scare-tactic to impose taxes on companies that make "too much money"."
Here's an idea, why don't you try proving your point using science and not what the MEDIA has sensationalized. The first research supporting man made climate change started in the 1890s. Our understanding of how the universe works has only gotten better since then. It took a while for there to be enough scientific verification for there to reach consensus, but the preponderance of conclusions about warming has been around since the middle of the 20th century. We began getting to the consensus point starting around the 1980s when we started to get access to ice cores. We now have over 97% of climate scientists in agreement that the earth is getting warmer and that the warming is man made. Even the KOCH BROTHERS (you know, the oil barons) personally funded a study which concluded that global warming is man made, even though they still fund the denial-propaganda-machine. Also, this http://drexel.edu/now/news-media/re.....limate-Change/

"Taxing the shit out of companies now is just shooting this country in the foot, and murdering interstate commerce that relies on roadway transportation."
Where did roadway transportation come into this? This point seems to just come in out of left field.

"Gas prices will rise from this carbon tax, businesses will pass on the cost to consumers, consumers will buy less, or opt for cheaper alternatives from China, and US-side business will suffer."
This reads like you are saying that gas prices rising will make people buy gas from China. I don't think that is what you meant to say, so you might want to clarify.

Also, if you use a simple model, you are going to get a simple answer. This also does not guarantee that this is going to be the right answer. The reason why people don't rely on a "simple 8th grade economics" model is because the world is more complicated than what they'll teach you in 8th grade.

'Faggots'?

Really?

Your ignorance on this subject is absolutely breath taking. Soon as somebody mention's "Al gore" or refers to a century and a half old scientific field of study as "liberal." you might as well hang a neon sign over your head that says "I don't know the first fucking thing about this."

1.) All al gore did was compile the current scientific consensus at the time and he did it fairly accurately. He did make one unfortunate choice to focus on one particularly alarmist sea rise projection from one outlying paper and brain dead denialists pounced on it when it didn't come to fruition. I can't think of anything else from his movie that has not stood up and was not accurate. Al Gore is not a scientist, he's not a researcher, all he did was make a power point presentation.

2.) Science isn't liberal lol. It is not the democratic party conducting research. Climate science is a world wide collaboration that crosses every language barrier and every continent and every developed country with a university with a science department in the world and they've all been lead to the same conclusion because that is what the evidence converges on. Only in america is climate change a partisan issue. Only in america is ignorance of it even a problem in the developed world. Hell my favorite climate scientist Dr. Richard Alley is a staunch conservative.

Well, in a way, yes. We can make jet fuel out of light, water and carbon monoxide.

In other words, it's a zero emission carbon-based fuel. We just have to make it cost effective.

As the supply dwindles it's going to become increasingly expensive, but in a predictable manner, which encourages innovation. It wasn't the government that got people to stop using whale oil to light their homes, after all.

THe stupidity of this argument...

This is like saying you don't want to put your house that's on fire out because your socks might get wet.

On top of that, we have no reason to believe this will happen anyways. Shit germany is moving to a solar infrastructure, now 52% of their power is generated via solar and they actually were generating so much power with it last week that for an hour or two they had TOO MUCH power.

Read above. You're missing the point, and not thinking of the long-term consequences. Liberals love seeing a pretty idea on paper, but always, ALWAYS fail to understand the logistics that you can't get from point A to B instantaneously without working with what you already have available at hand in order to attain the final goal.

You can't instantly going from where we are now, to a solar-powered nation by cutting off the entire blood supply. It's completely backwards. You have to evolve slowly over time from one thing to the next, until each better alternative is cost-effective to do so.

The house isn't on fire yet, but in the dead of winter, it might be nice to have a gas-powered heater when the solar panel on the roof is buried under 10 feet of snow, otherwise we might be forced to pull planks off the side to burn for warmth because I sure as shit can't afford 50kW of solar panels on my meager paycheck. d:

Lol, what the fuck are you talking about.

How is requiring a 15% cut to emissions from one single emission source over 6 years "cutting off the blood supply."?

And don't tell me what liberals do or don't. The conservative party doesn't even accept the 150 years of empirical research that has illustrated that a problem even exists.

Im surprised hes not screaming benghaziiiiii :D. I hate republicans.

We're really good at distracting people from benghazi. Hell seems like everything we do is to distract from benghazi lol.

I actually love the benghazi "scandal." The specific aspect of it they decided to get outraged about has been debunked and shifted to a different something so many times now that you can ask a republican why they're so angry about benghazi and it's like a political version of carbon dating. You can instantly know just how far behind they are on the news and.

"Oh you're angry it wasn't referred to specifically as a terrorist attack. That was day 2 in the rose garden and 6 official investigations ago."

"Oh you're angry we didn't send support. That's because he turned down support. That was week 4 and 5 official investigations ago."

Oh god speaking of I saw this right after i posted that. Too relevant. http://youtu.be/kp9NUXw1FBo?t=4m28s

*watches* lolol. Ughh why is arashiin so republican? Fuq...lol. Thats 3 now in mnfurs..out of hundreds xd.

Also i might add if you s ay the house is not on fire. You're absolutely wrong.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/20.....nergy-records/

http://homeenergypros.lbl.gov/profi.....ource=activity

Gotta love that good ol' German engineering.

This executive order couldn't really be much more of an over-hyped baby-step than it is. It opens doors and has potential to be built upon, but it actually accomplishes very little in itself. But that's okay, because working in steps is what needs to be done. The steps CAN stand to be a little bigger, though.

Half the problem - with both sides of the argument - is people arguing about what they view the other side as being/saying/doing instead of what is actually happening. Conservatives paint liberals as thinking you can jump from horse-and-carriage to high speed rail trains overnight, but the reality is that while liberals are waving around the end goals, the actual steps being pushed for with any real backing and chance of happening ARE only steps in that direction.

You're arguing with people hear over things nobody here is saying, but with what you THINK they're saying because you've identified them as liberals, thus they must all be saying what your party line has told you their party line is.

Liberals do the same thing back at conservatives, yes, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that conservatives tend to be more frequently in tune with their party's line as perceived by liberals than the other way around. The liberals don't have to exaggerate or falsify the conservative line >as much< in order to get people outraged and opposing it. Conservatives tend to have to go much farther into the realm of fictionalizing their portrayals of liberals to get their own constituents sufficiently outraged.

Both sides pull the same tactics, with the same detrimental and truth-obfuscating results, but there's nothing close to equivalence in how much that applies to each side.

You say the science isn't there on climate change being man-made; you are wrong. Plainly, simply, not being insulting to say this, it is simply a verifiable fact that you are misinformed. The only source of that brand of misinformation is from the intentional and fully aware misinformation machine owned and operated by the conservative Right.

Yeah pretty much. That was my whole point of the journal. The executive order is fine, it doesn't go far enough but it's amazing we got it and we can DO it. Focusing on the executive order and not focusing on the EPA getting a SCOTUS ruling that gives it power to regulate emissions is like ignoring the forest for the trees.

Probably the WORST thing somebody could do would be to do some enormous immediate cut that actually WOULD have a deleterious effect on jobs and the economy and could be used to turn public opinion against action.

It's like a cold pool, ya gotta ease into it.

So tired of right-wing defenders of proven-broken shit just obstructing any effort to even try to push in the direction of something POSSIBLY less broken than the established norm.

I want a party based on a platform of "okay, what does reality say?" Look at facts, history, what has been tried before, both here and abroad, what has worked and why, and what >hasn't< worked >>>and why.<<<

The most infuriating thing about ANY awareness of politics is watching people argue over shit that is been there, done that, got the t-shirt ESTABLISHED as fact or fiction already. "Gun Control can't work!" Then how the balls did Australia pull it off? "Universal Healthcare is a pipe dream!" Then why the spit are we practically the ONLY 'first world' developed nation that DOESN'T have it?

So many of the biggest arguments in the social/political landscape today are such complete no-brainers that most of the civilized world has already figured them out. The Right keeps blowing the same damn horn no matter how much history and fact shows them to be flat out, no contest, flat-earth-believers level of WRONG. The left has a lot of skewed ideas too, but when both sides are being stupid, at least the left is usually wanting to try a new kind of stupid that sometimes actually pays off because you can't always predict the new and untested, while the right wants to keep sticking to the tried and true firmly-established-as-stupid that we already know isn't going to work. Obviously it'd be better if we had a third not-stupid-at-all option, but when we're stuck with A or B, 'we know this won't work because we've tried it for years and it never works' is still the worse option than 'fuck it, haven't tried that yet, whatever, go for it.'

The two-party system sucks. Too often it's Dumb and Dumber. But even at its dumbest, Dumb is still less-dumb than Dumber. There's always the 'we shouldn't settle for the lesser of two evils' argument, but when that's literally all you get to pick from, you either make sure it's the lesser of two evils, or you sit there pouting and let the greater of two evils run wild.

I gotta say, i see it on both sides but yeah, far far more from the right.

Interesting you mention the gun control thing because i see probably the most ignoring of empirical reality from the left on that. IN fact much of the left's actions on gun control and the dialogue there is almost just as based on emotion and detached from reality as the right's stance on economics, science issues, abortion and damn near everything else.

The gun control issue is tricky, so much bullshit coming from both sides a research paper i wrote on the subject in college was quite possibly the most difficult paper i have ever written, so much manipulation of facts and statistics and so many bogus claims coming from both sides on that issue. All i know is it took me in some unexpected directions when i cut through the bullshit.

That's another journal though and even though i'm a gun guy myself (Oddly i actually my opinions on gun rights and gun control are supported BY my liberal world view. The left's position on the subject often baffles me), I can't fucking stand arguing with frothing at the mouth gun nuts on the subject. Theres very little rationality in that debate coming from either direction but as almost always, the right are the worst offenders.

You should repost this to arashiin above.

My first comment here was to them. They didn't respond, so I won't keep hounding them. I don't argue with people who aren't arguing back. X3 Arjuna did respond though, so this comment was to Arjuna.

oh oki :P

Now all we need to do is get around the massive oil lobby against alternative energy. Wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric.... Also, this http://ecowatch.com/2013/09/06/5-re.....-fossil-fuels/

You also have to worry about the wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric getting just as big and evil and greedy as the current fossil fuel guys are. If there is one constant on this world is that greed corrupts even the best of intentions.

Yup. People tend to suck.

OK.... so, we might not have cheap energy now. OK, we might have to pay more. But our grandkids get to live without gas masks.

Why does everything have to come down to what we have to pay RIGHT NOW, and not what is right?

Decades under the old schedule because nobody would spend the necessary $ to develop them, since it wouldn't be cost-effective EVER, what with fossil fuels being so cheap, since nobody held the industry accountable for their poisons.

This is a Good Thing for our planet. And if it encourages folks to be a bit more conscious about energy waste, well, that's to the good as well. Much as the higher gas prices brought about by the Oilocracy of the previous admin mean that folks tend to drive less wastefully and choose vehicles designed to be more efficient.

Now if we could just convince folks that they don't need to whelp 20 kids each, we could have a sustainable civilization on this here rock. Imagine that!

If the only real problem you can see is an increase in your utility bill you're really, really not seeing the issue for what it really is.

Wow this is actually quite informative (o.=.o) I don't know a whole lot about the situation but this puts things in better perspective for me, great work.

Well i probably know more about it than anybody not working in the field could be reasonably expected to lol. If you want to know something about it just ask. I spent 2 and a half years of my life renting literature and learning jargon and learning the minutia of, investigating denialist claims against the actual things we know.

I'm a scientific person myself and it's sad to say out of all the sciences, earth science and the research behind climate change is where I haven't spent much time reading upon, but I will gladly take that offer! I always saw myself on the fence post between both sides of the argument for a long while and I feel it's time for me to get on the right side. I fear for the future of our planet as much as any other person (aside from teabaggers lol). Maybe you can inform me what is the best alternative method of energy currently? I have high hopes for solar, and I'm sick of fossil fuels being whored off by greedy wealth mongers, hence one of my inspirations for my music project's name.

Well i honestly couldn't tell you what the best alternative energy is. I want to say solar which is still in it's infancy but it crossed the threshhold where it takes a good amount less energy to produce than a solar panel will produce in it's lifetime. The sun is 100% clean and it's there, and we got a ton of desert just sitting there unused plus germany's solar infrastructure push has been a huge success. I got nothing against nuclear either. frankly any alternative is an improvement over fucking coal lol. The idea that we still burn coal for electricity in the modern age is nuts.

But, you did say something I very much can touch on. "Both sides of the debate.". There is no both sides to the debate because there is no debate. In fact the people in the entirety of earth science fields across the world which now all in their own way contribute to climate science moved on from "Is it happening and are humans the cause." like.....30 years ago, i'm not kidding. The issue as to the cause is so long since settled the research being done now is in paleoclimate (climate conditions of the past and what caused climate change), and solutions to mitigate the damage and how much damage has already been done. There is ZERO debate as to the cause of the current unprecedented warming trend.

There is no debate. It's between every single working earth scientist and a handful of politicians in the Republican party and some lobbyists. And scientists dont' really care to debate politicians who are paid to deny their 150 years of empirical research.

You are correct, there is no debate, I see that now, after all the crap the mainstream media tries to sensationalize with yellow journalism about there being a debate, yet dividing us even more on the issue.

Even though nuclear fission power has its problems, it is still technically cleaner than oil and coal (and if this country would quit bitching and actually recycle its nuclear waste instead of just hiding it and hope for the best, we could reduce nuclear waste just like France is doing). I would like to see more solar panels in our nation as well, if only there wasn't so much MONEY to be made with dirty fossil fuels, which I agree is laughable we still predominantly use to this day when we could use that money to research on something like I don't know... FUSION. I heard nuclear fusion isn't doing so bad, it still takes more energy to produce any, but it can be perfected in the future with the right funding. I hope I live to see that day.

Wait, we have nuclear fusion? Like cold fusion? That's news to me, i thought that was still pretty much considered a pipe dream for the foreseeable future.

And honestly, nuclear is clean as hell. I got nothing against nuclear. I think solar is ideal but it's cumbersom and requires a lot of space and it's advancing so rapidly by the time we get anything built there will already be much more efficient cells available.

At the same time though, the sun, it's 100% clean.

Nuclear fusion is still being developed and researched as we speak and has not been implemented yet into the power grid due to the fact it still takes more energy to put into it than receiving it, but the last news I've read was scientists out in some laboratory in New Jersey managed to keep the reactor sustaining for over 20 minutes which is remarkable, considering how freakin' hot it gets inside the core with all the pretty plasma lol Cold fusion on the other hand is still a pipe-dream sadly, but who knows, maybe one day some genius will come around and show us the way, I hope. (^.=.^)

And just like the sun, fusion is 100% clean and the only by product is Helium, which is a good thing! Because the Earth is running out of Helium and rapidly! So enjoy all those party balloons while you can folks

I believe it is 2016 when the hard cap on helium costs comes off and the price of a balloon jumps to ~$100

But how will i make my voice go squeaky? D:

Maybe Argon? (o.=.o) but please no radon LOL

There is no 'best' alternative energy. We more or less put all eggs into one basket with nuclear power.
Solar power is good, so is water, wind and a few other sources.

I remember the owner of a castle here in Germany to have some financial troubles, as be law he had to conserve the castle in it's original state. He used a stream that went through his property to generate power. Just a stream mind you, far from being a river. He got enough power of it not just for his own needs, but he even could sell some surplus.

We have farms that make more money from biogas than they make from their other products.

That's just two example. I wonder how many possible sources we are still ignoring.

It's IMO the best thing we can do, diversify the power production, use different areas to their natural advantages. It would just make more sense

Read up on the solar roadway project. It's a cool idea. Combines the expense of solar power generation and road maintenance into one, combines the surface area needed for both uses, manages stormwater runoff, distributes the power grid so there are no centralized power plants that could explode, burn down, or break.

Hydroelectric dams are big in my part of the country. Early designs caused some issues with killing fish, but they're working those out over time.

Tidal power generation is gonna be huge, too. We have a looooot of open sea floor that is just sand.

Bio oils produced by growing algae in giant tanks would be carbon neutral, since the algae growth takes the carbon out of the air before it gets put back by being burned.


If someone could figure out a way to decontaminate nuclear waste, nuclear power would be a lot less of a bogeyman.

Hell, figure out a way to lift it to orbit cheaply and fire it into the sun if nothing else. Start snagging asteroids to replace what's used up from the earth, we could go a million years without stripping the entire solar system. By then, if we haven't figured out how to go Elsewhere, we don't deserve to survive :p

>If someone could figure out a way to decontaminate nuclear waste, nuclear power would be a lot less of a bogeyman.

That would be the easiest way out. especially when you think of the problems when you finally have to replace old nuclear reactors.

>Hell, figure out a way to lift it to orbit cheaply and fire it into the sun if nothing else.

And safely (given, todays rockets are good, but I'd like them to be a little more secure before we send up nuclear wast up. Sending it to the sun is easy, especially as it is hard to miss and it does not matter if it takes a hundres#d years to reach it.

>Start snagging asteroids to replace what's used up from the earth, we could go a million years without stripping the entire solar system. By then,
>if we haven't figured out how to go Elsewhere, we don't deserve to survive :p

*nod* I don't have a source, but I think I've read somewhere that there are asteroids up there, that have more iron in them than humanity has mined in it's history. If not, there are enough moons and planets in our system.

Sadly it's not a possibility within the constraints of todays corporations. Projects like that in spave take too long to run a profit. At least in the timeframes todays managers work. Besides, it's easier to have fewer resources as they can charge more with the same expense it costs to mine them now.

Not just iron. A single asteroid could out produce the world's output of pretty much any heavy, precious, rare-earth, or other metal, all of which is what was left in the earth's crust by asteroid impacts during the Earth's formative years (most of the metals sank into the core before the crust cooled from being a molten mess, a natural side effect of metal being denser than carbon/silicone/etc that make up the majority of the surface)



For example, there have been an estimated 165,000 tons of gold mined in all of human history.

There are asteroids with more than a quadrillion tons of nickel-iron in their makeup. Makes a lot of F150s...


If even 0.00000001% of that asteroid is gold, it's more than the entire production of gold in all of human history.




...still want to buy gold bars as post-civilization survivalist money savings bonds now?

Gold? What for? If I could, I'd take the first rocket to Mars or any other Earth-sized moon in our solar system, mark boundries and sell it to cfinance my mansion there

...and it's a common working consensus that significant sea level rise is now unavoidable because we've diddled our thumbs too long as it is and the plan for the future is damage mitigation, not prevention. :p


Also. Solar crop sharing. Farmers can put solar panels above their fields for growing veggies that like a little bit of shade, generate power and food with the same land. Iowa may be the bread basket of the nation, but whod'a'thunk it could be a major energy producer? :p

For the love of... @ Arashiin: That statement is so wrong and to blame Obama as well is wrong. if you bothered to read.

"Under President George W. Bush, the agency argued that Congress never intended to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, so it lacked authority to do so. In 2007, the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA that the law was “unambiguous” and that emissions came under its broad definition of “air pollutant.” It ordered the agency to determine whether greenhouse-gas emissions endanger public health or the environment. The EPA issued an “endangerment finding” in December 2009 that laid the groundwork for the power-plant rule it proposed Monday."

In short the EPA by that 2007 law upheld by the Supreme court is the one who really is doing all this. It would not matter who is in office if the EPA sends notice to the current administration that administration has to act by law

Well I give Obama a bit of credit because he appoints staffers at the EPA who share this same agenda.

It wouldn't be that difficult to place a petroleum lobbyist as head of the EPA and just have the EPA declare that it's none of their business.

Sadly, this is not great. This is what happens when politicians dabble in science. And given the state of science education in this country... it's bound do be a disaster. Does anyone really think you can just sign an executive order and suddenly change scientific laws? Obama seems to think so. Reducing CO2 emissions by 30% is pretty simple - just reduce power levels by 30%, and then replace that cheap power with something much more expensive. I know I'm not very excited about paying more for my power simply so some politicians in Washington can wave the "we did it - we saved the planet" flag.

You really think that CO2 created from man-made sources is a problem? The evidence doesn't support that but ok. Build more nuclear power plants. Problem solved. So until the politicians are willing to do that, I'd prefer if they just stop costing me money so they can have a big huggy-kissy press conference.

Yeah, also let me know when China and India sign on. Again, I don't really want to bankrupt my country with this crap while the biggest contributors do absolutely nothing and drown out any changes we have to pay for. Again, politicians... go take some remedial science classes please.

Yeah again. You're so utterly illiterate on this subject you're not even worth humoring.

The short wave infrared insulating properties of carbon dioxide were discovered in 1861.......EIGHTEEN SIXTY ONE. There is a nine year old on youtube who demonstrates it for a school science project. You're literally less scientifically literate on this subject than a nine year old and people from the mid 19th century.

Yeah, yawn. Sorry but I'm not the one illiterate on this one.

First, I'm not even going to debate you on the whole climate change issue. No, it's not a "fact" that human activities are having a significant effect beyond what would happen otherwise.

Second, if you don't understand how a coal power plant works well enough to know you can't just "legislate" CO2 reduction, then go take a science class. You burn a ton of coal, you get a certain amount of CO2. Nothing you can do about that. You want to pay through the nose to sequester it? Yeah, show me the science that it's going to make any measurable difference compared to other, natural environmental factors. Otherwise, go save mother Earth with your own money - not mine.

Yes, it's very much the scientific consensus that the current, unprecedentedly rapid warming is due to human activity, namely our carbon emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. There's essentially no credible dissent on this subject among the climatologists; the nay-sayers are to a man contrarians and/or in the pay of the fossil fuel industries.

The science is already there, but the deniers are loud and busy spreading bullshit to confuse people about it.

Yup. It's insane how prevelant climate change denialism is in the US and at the same time it's almost a uniquely american phenomena. I don't think theres a single other developed nation that has even a sizeable fraction of the population that is this ignorant of such old science.

I generally try and avoid the consensus argument because people accuse me of just listening to scientists instead of actually going over their data. THe consensus is utterly overwhelming of course...because that's where the evidence has converged.

I find one of the biggest reasons these denialists even exist is because they're so ignorant of science, they don't even know what science IS or how it works or what it works. THey think it's just like, some guys in a lab coat at a podium handing down the dogmatic proclamations of what science has declared the truth to be.

So they hear the experts agree on one thing, but the heritage foundation has it's "experts" and so they think i'ts a 50/50 debate.

"So they hear the experts agree on one thing, but the heritage foundation has it's "experts" and so they think i'ts a 50/50 debate. "

:D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg

Yeah haha. That was seriously the most accurate representation of the "debate." ever put on screen.

The problem is that in america, like 30% of the populace still denies this is going on. It's hard for the main stream news outlets to tell it like it truly is because they don't want to alienate 30% of their audience.

And a disturbing amount of that 30% not only just disagree with what we know to be scientific fact, but they view it as a megalithic global conspiracy to enslave them through carbon taxation.....somehow.

They're not just against climate action, they're TERRIFIED of it. So the main stream media treats them with padded bubble wrapped kid gloves.

This link is the best link. I am reposting it forever.

Part of it seems to be that the US media, as a whole, is frankly terrible.

As Paul Krugman said, if on one side you have the scientists saying that Earth is round, and on the other side you have a bunch of foaming at the mouth lunatics from the Flat Earth Society, it's going to be presented as "Opinions On Shape of Earth Differ".

You see this all the time, with climate change but also with evolution, economics and with general politics. It's like the US media has internalized the fallacy of argument to moderation, and no matter how overwhelming the evidence in support of one side, they pretend the truth must be somewhere in the middle.

Again, you're position on this is so laughably ignorant it's not worth humoring. That's why an executive order sidestepped you people and thank fricking god.

Also yes you can legislate a reduction if you knew the first thing about this you'de know that other countries have been doing it for a decade or more.

The end goal is to get off a coal power infrastructure. There are many ways in the short term to approach this and that's why tehre is no specific requirement for how the states go about it, they just must do it.

Either build a nuclear plant instead of that coal plant you had. Dismantle the coal plant and use a better source of energy or pay extra and reclaim the carbon. Theres any number of ways this can be done and they WILL be done because that's the fucking law now.

But by all means, help usher in a 6th mass extinction event because you want to save 35 bucks on your power bill. That's a great tradeoff.

And in 2016 the next president will simply rescind the EO and we'll be back to where we are now. So what did that prove?

You want to get off a coal infrastructure? Great. Go out and lobby as hard for the construction of alternative energy plants, like nuclear, as you seem to be advocating for a change that will do nothing except cost people living in the US money. For nothing. But no, environmentalists always have a reason not to change anything. Nuclear power? Oh, what about the spent fuel? Solar? Oh no, what about the environmental impact of the plant? Hydro power? Nope, think of the fish. Wind? Sorry, ugly and kills birds. The list goes on and on. I have no love for coal, but it's cheap and abundant and commercially viable - which the environmental movement has taken away from just about every other alternative.

Well as usual you have no point because you know utterly nothing about this issue or any of the issues surrounding it.

1. The next president is almost guaranteed to be a democrat.

2. The tide of public opinion about climate change is turning so fast political analysts aren't even sure whether denialism is a politically beneficial talking point anymore.

3. Rescinding one single executive order does not take away authority from the EPA to act on emissions. ONly a constitutional amendment can take that away at this point and that ain't happening. THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS JOURNAL was that the executive order isn't what is important.

4. The rest of what you said is just a straw man argument hardly even tenuously connected to reality and not even worth addressing. The ONLY thing you mentioned that had any basis in reality was the wind argument and that's easily solved by either NOT building wind turbines or placing them away from migratory paths. We never cared about migratory paths before because it didn't occur to us that so many birds would fly into them. Regardless, the environmental movement IS NOT ANTI WIND TURBINES lol. This is such a tired old canard.

I love how your method of debate seems to involve telling everyone that doesn't immediately agree with everything you say that they are so stupid and such an idiot that you can't even be bothered with talking to them. And then you go ahead and try and argue your point anyway. Here's a hint, when you start out by saying that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, all you've done is show that you are the idiot.

1. Who knows. I don't. You certainly don't. And even if they are a Democrat, don't bet on them wanting to kill American industry for a $35-a-month bill, as you put it.

2. Yeah, the tide of opinion is changing. Changing into - why should we ruin our economy if China and India aren't going to go along. It's changing into "the EPA was a good idea but has since overstepped the bounds of sanity".

3, Constitutional amendment? Go take some civics classes. Seriously, if you think the EPA can only be reigned in by an amendment to the Constitution, you really don't know what you're talking about. Scary.

4. Actually, what I said is the whole heart of the issue. Unless you just like arguing. You want to reduce carbon emissions? Great, we have a dozen proven, economically viable technologies that can do it today. Oh, but wait, each one has been systematically blocked by major environmental groups. Solar power in Arizona? Blocked. Wind turbines in Oregon? Blocked. Tidal power in California? Blocked. Nuclear power in Tennessee? The list is so long I tire of listing all the examples. So before you start blaming "idiots" for the current problems, it's time to take a look around and see what environmental activist groups have been up to recently.

Lol, reading comprehension....I was obviously referring to your position on climate change ITSELF, which i have not tried to argue with you because arguing facts established 160 years ago is fairly pointless. The only reason why you could possibly be ignorant of it at this point is because you WANT to be, and i can't change that, and i haven't tried to.

1. And by the republican's own admission they won't ever win another national election unless they drastically change their positions, which they haven't. Read it in their own "autopsy" for christ sake.

2. You really are laughably detached from reality. http://www.pewresearch.org/key-data.....-pew-research/ as always you don't know the first fucking thing about what you're talking about.

3. And HOLY SHIT ARE YOU DUMB. THe EPA has authority over carbon emissions because a SUPREME COURT CASE GRANTED THEM THAT AUTHORITY hahaha. You need to take some civics class yourselves or fuck...GOOGLE. Learn SOMETHING about these issues. Or by all mean, tell me what other means there is to overturn a supreme court precedent.

4. I hear about a lot of renewable energies getting blocked, but they get blocked by fucking politicians on the petroleum lobby's dole. You would have to give me specific incidents you're talkinga bout because searching for them finds absolutely nothing and you've shown yourself to be so completely uninformed i'm sure as fuck not taking your word for it. I know every now and then a hydroelectric damn gets blocked because of an endangered species and i got nothing against that.

Renewable installations are brought about via legislation which is vote don by state representatives. How exactly are environmentalism groups just getting them shut down left and right. You made specific claims, link me to your sources.

While I generally agree with your position, resorting to name calling and personal attacks is really unbecoming of you.

You really do have some kind of problem. The best argument you can make to sway someone to your side is "HOLY SHIT ARE YOU DUMB"?

0. You really think that by showing CO2 absorbs IR light... that somehow proves your climate change argument? Yeah, nope.

1. The Republican's problems are not related to climate change. They are related to the fact that they can only get nutbags through the primaries. That doesn't mean a Republican is not electable. And don't think that just because a politician is a Democrat, that means they have the same views as the current President.

2. Oh, wow, you found one survey that proves your point. You should be a politician.

3. Take a civics class and learn what an agency is, how it is created, where it derives it's authority and how it can be eliminated. What exactly do you think the SCOTUS decision means? All it means is that court decided that CO2 emissions are within the EPA's charter to be able to regulate. That's it. Exactly how does that protect the agency from simply being eliminated? Or de-funded? Or having congress change the authority they give the EPA? Oh, that's right - it doesn't.

4. You want some links to environmental groups halting "green" projects? Here are two to start with:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoo.....power-project/
http://www.energymanagertoday.com/t.....sition-099213/

Environmental groups are funded by members. Members only have interest when the group is doing something, like stopping projects because of some environmental "concern". So the groups exist to oppose just about anything, so they can retain their funding. That's why they try and get just about every project, doesn't matter what or where, shut down. Or at least tied up in court long enough for them to make bank with contributions.

"And in 2016 the next president will simply rescind the EO and we'll be back to where we are now."
Ahh, baseless conjecture at its finest.

The issue with nuclear is you had a bunch of hippies + the oil industry protesting against it and there is an absurd amount of overregulation on it. They always cite Chernobyl and use that for fear mongering, and more recently Fukushima. The reasons why those went wrong is because of epic fuck ups on both the Russian's and Japanese's implementations. Not to mention that the Russians fired their safety guy a week before the meltdown. The other issue is that paranoia regulations made it so that we can't recycle fuel from nuclear power plants, so we have to just let them sit in barrels under a mountain for thousands of years. Look at France in comparison. About 80% of the power they generate is nuclear, they recycle all their spent fuel, and they are succeeding spectacularly.

Yeah. Every time i see "greenies" raging against nuclear i want to fucking smack them. It's not perfect but it's a VERY VERY clean and efficient power source and it would take less work to build up totally nuclear infrastructure than it would any renewable infrastructure.

I'd prefer totally renewable but shit, i'll settle for nuclear.

Yeah thanks, no. I'm living in a country where one incident like Fukushima could potentially ruin a whole state. If even the Japanese, probably the most technically advanced society in the world, were unable to prevent a distaster then nuclear energy is NOT an alternatve or even an option.

The placement of their nuclear facility was a piss poor placement. As the old adage goes, "location, location, location."

Yup, the only power plant near me is basically out in the middle of fucking nowhere where it belongs. Japan is famous for it's tsunamis, the idea they built a coastal power plant is just fucking bizarre.

Either way, fukushima wasn't even a big deal. I mean it sucks and it's a problem but in the grand scheme of things it's small potatoes.

Plus earthquakes... Which doesn't help, as far "not a big deal" I do feel horrible for the ppl who basically sacrificed their health to try to work in that hot mess.

Yeah, thanks for making my point for me. We have had safe, reliable plant designs since the 1970's and have had the technical ability (but not the political will) to recycle fuel since the 1950's. And don't even try blaming nuclear power's problems on "big oil". Hippies? Yeah. And more lack of science education in this country.

And hardly baseless conjecture on rescinding the EO. It's politics - the person in office can do whatever the hell they find politically expedient at the time. I don't know where Arjuna got the "constitutional amendment" when the president can rescind an EO just as easily as write one. The fact is when people in the central Midwest states hear that their power bills are going to double, we'll see how politically correct it is to keep the EO around. Besides, do you really want utilities to shut down their coal plants and simply switch to nat. gas plants, like most are doing now?

A lot of the anti-nuclear legislation and regulation happened in the 1970s, which also happened to be when fear mongering and propaganda was among its highest for nuclear power. I wholeheartedly agree that we need more scientific education in this country, but its also really hard to do so with the anti-science movement and the cuts to education spending going on all over the place. For example, here in NJ, Gov. Christie gave a huge tax cut to millionaires and took a massive chunk of that lost tax revenue straight out of the education budget. The media doesn't do much for it either. Whenever there is something that can be considered an "issue," they always give a 50/50 representation regardless of the evidence supporting either side.

"And hardly baseless conjecture on rescinding the EO. It's politics - the person in office can do whatever the hell they find politically expedient at the time. " What you wrote: "And in 2016 the next president will simply rescind the EO and we'll be back to where we are now." was written as though you were proclaiming to be an absolute fact about the actions of a president years in the future who has yet to even run, let alone get elected. The fact that something is possible does not automatically facilitate it happening and making such a claim and presenting it as an absolute fact is poor reasoning.

Natural gas is cleaner than coal, but it still has plenty of its own issues. Fracking is a whole different argument.

Oh, I agree about the science education. And yes, Carter pretty much destroyed the US nuclear industry when he prohibited reprocessing of commercial spent fuel.

Education is an easy target because in most places, it's so closely tied to the unions. And in most places, the quality of public education is appalling, yet the teachers' unions have been able to secure good pay, good benefits and have been able to block pay-for-performance. Not to mention the tenure problem. So, yeah, sadly the public has little sympathy for education, which is bad because the less educated the public becomes, the less interested they are in good education. It's a vicious circle.

My point is that an EO is not set in stone. Just look at what Obama did when he took office, how many Bush EOs he cancelled. My point is that there is NOTHING to stop the next president from doing the same. And in fact there may be (will be) significant political pressure to do exactly that. You know the coal lobby is going to complain about how this will raise prices, and people aren't going to like that. And that political pressure will filter it's way to the top - no matter who gets in office.

Natural gas has a higher CO2 footprint than coal, for the same MWh power. Yes, it's cleaner, but it's also a much scarcer resource than coal. My point is, why pressure moving off coal to an, arguably, worse fuel like NG? That makes no sense, but is exactly what the administration's decision will do. I won't care because cheap NG is unlikely to run out in my lifetime, but that doesn't mean it's a good decision.

Oh, so there IS a process for decontaminating radioactive waste? I hadn't researched it. I assumed they hadn't figured a way out since we obviously don't do it, since everything from chemotherapy syringes to old x-ray machines to actual nuclear fuel rods get dumped in the waste dump sites.


We, as a nation, are officially stupid on this subject. :)

I don't remember the exact figure, but its on the order of 90%

It's very slow and pretty expensive so nobody does it outside of research. Basically you use a particle accelerator to bombard the waste and "speed up" the decay by breaking apart the larger, nastier atoms. You generally end up with stuff with fairly short half-lives. But, think about the process and how much time/energy would be involved in eliminating tons of high level waste from even a single power reactor. But yes, the technology does exist.

"It's very slow and pretty expensive so nobody does it outside of research."
That statement is incorrect. France does it all the time http://www.heritage.org/research/co.....t-why-cant-oui

Uh, no. Re-read the article. France reprocesses spent fuel. They chemically separate the fuel into unburned fuel and fission products. They store those fission products - I think they use vitrification (encasement in glass) like we do at our old weapon facilities (SRS & Hanford). That's not what the original poster was talking about (I think).

What the poster was talking about is accelerated transmutation. It's been researched and talked about, but it is not currently economically feasible to do on a large scale. Yet. There is obviously a lot of interest in the field, so a breakthrough or new process/technology may make this viable. For everyone but us, because the Carter administration outlawed the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in the US.

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/ab......nucl.48.1.505

I'd rather they try to plant more trees and make sure people breed less, that would do much more for the environment than a measly 30% cut or just throwing money at problems like they are apt to do.

Planting trees won't work because one of the few unexplained things in climate science right now is that despite massive global loss of forests that absorb carbon dioxide and massive increases in carbon emissions, the carbon budget, which forests are a big part of absorbs the exact same percentage of our carbon dioxide as it did 60 years ago and nobody knows why. As for forced sterilization...yeah, not happening.

We need to get emissions below the threshold of our carbon budget. It's the ONLY solution.

And again, the whole point of this was that the victory here isn't one executive order. That's why i wrote the thing. Since the EPA is in charge of this now this is likely the first in any number of emissions goals because congress can no longer cockblock emissions reductions. Don't focus on the 30% number, focus on the fact that the United States, the one roadblock in serious global climate action is now TAKING action. This is HUGE.

That'd be great and all if they could get all the 3rd world countries on board that pollute 10X more than the USA. Clean air is good air.

People still need to breed less.

Not sure where you heard this. THe USA per capita is by FAR the worst offender. China beats us but not by much, and china is destroying us on long term emissions goals believe it or not.

In fact there isn't any other country that even registers on the scale besides the US and china in any meaningful way. India is surprisingly small.

The US and china are it, and china is waaaayyyyy ahead of us in dealing with the problem..

Any reason you don't seem to even notice the people breeding thing? It always seems to be the elephant in the room because "morals" usually dictate it so.

There is much more to this than the emissions from smokestacks and exhaust pipes.

I still stand by planting trees and not breeding... Less people, less use of resources for said people. That is with my years of Geological college experience and numerous classes in meteorology and climatology (I fugging love analyzing core samples). Climate change is very real and has been going on naturally for the 4.54billion years, or more, that earth has been around, including times of higher and lower CO2 emissions, higher and lower organic mass, higher and lower oceans, melted and reformed glacial masses, all before humans. Hell, climate science, and even geology in some of its more modern aspects (continental drift, plate tectonics not being widely accepted till the late 1960s), is still in its infancy having been around as an actual science since about the 1960s. There are fluctuations and cycles that happen hundreds of years apart that we have not even documented or recorded with modern instruments yet while most politicians go apeshit crazy because one year is colder or warmer than another year. A lot of people are not looking at this from a geological timescale, where things happen in thousand year cycles or more or less. So while the climate changes naturally, and humans are having an influence on it, the jury is still deciding just how much is natural vs. human caused. There is no way to "stop" climate change as to stop climate change would destroy the world quicker than letting earth do its own thing, so to speak.

China recently relaxed its "One Child Policy" in one of the most populous areas of their country, if not more areas I am unaware of. What do you think that is going to do when billions of people start popping out twice as many babies and those babies grow up to pop out more babies, all being consumers of more "stuff"? I may not be the very best at mathematics, but I'm seeing troubling exponential growth, more people, more pollution, more problems... Even with "cleaner" energy.

Clean air is good air, I agree, and if pollution from big polluters can be cut, that is great, but it still avoids that issue of human population again. If pollution is cut from individual "big polluter" sources even to unrealistic amounts, because politicians are mostly all dumbasses, we still have people breeding and consuming more, and a need for more power plants and non-renewable resources for those future people down the line, and so on and so forth. As long as people keep breeding at the rates they are, the Earth will never have a chance to "heal." That is unless you want to talk about building giant air scrubbers and shipping people off to other planets.

Oh fucking please. Don't even give me the "climate change has always been happening." we have a very profound understanding of what drove it in the past and how fast it occurred and the key mechanism in EVERY period of warming other than the milankovich cycles were carbon dioxide and even that has carbon dioxide acting as a secondary positive forcer to bring us out of the snowball states it caused.

Our profound understanding of what caused it in the past and the fairly vast time scales it occurred on are precisely why we know WE'RE the cause of it now and why the unbelievably minute timescale is such an enormous problem.

We don't know what hte carrying capacity of the earth is but from what we do know, we haven't hit it yet, and regardless i already explained why planting trees is not a solution. If trees were the solution then the enormous amounts of deforestation that have occurred would have slowed the carbon budget's recycling rate like we expect and it hasn't at all and we don't really know why.

It's very simple. We have had an understanding of how carbon dioxide absorbs infrared and in what spectrum for almost two centuries. We can accurately calculate how much heat will be generated by X amount of atmospheric carbon. We can look at how much atmospheric carbon there is and what isotopes it is to distinguish natural from artificial emissions. We monitor the infrared entering and leaving out atmosphere and what spectrums it is and the amount leaving is less than what enters it, and the spectrum staying is the same spectrum absorbed by carbon dioxide. If we crunch those numbers and cross check them it fits.

Seriously, this is old science. Don't give me the "climate change has always happened." canard, it's tired and it's a red herring. Just because you haven't investigated what we know and why we know it is not a good reason to hold us all back.

Wow I was laughing so hard I nearly cried from your response. I did not disagree with you, I just mentioned there is more to do than just cut emissions.

Not to be rude, but the climate has been changing since the beginning of time, naturally on it's own without humans. This is pure fact, the climate changes, ex: The ice age didn't have the same climate as when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And humans are influencing the climate, but to what extent is still not fully known... Slightly cutting emissions is just a band-aid for an infected, festering, wound... More needs to be done and it(human influence on earth natural cycles) is not a single solution issue.

What is even more hilarious is you still fail to even acknowledge the overpopulation problem I have mentioned multiple times... You just go off on the same brainwashed captain planet bullshit I have heard time and time again from people that have "read stuff" and not taken any actual classes or made up their own minds on the issue from a non political standpoint.

If humans lower population, which in turn lowers consumption, which lowers emissions, you get a better chance of finally hitting a neutral point or even reversing the damage... But until that point, as long as people keep breeding at an exponential rate things will keep getting worse no matter what regulations on emissions are thrown at things.

Again, along with cutting emissions, which I already agreed with you on, people need to stop popping out babies so much, and deforestation needs to stop. Along with a myriad of other things ranging from microscopic to massive in scale.

Seriously, take the stick out of your ass and try to step back and see things from a bigger perspective than what the alarmist mouthpieces have been feeding you... My gawd you are attacking people that are agreeing with you. Settle the fuck down. *laughs*

Population isn't the problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/o.....blem.html?_r=0

So says one guy in an opinion piece.

"Planting trees won't work because one of the few unexplained things in climate science right now is that despite massive global loss of forests that absorb carbon dioxide and massive increases in carbon emissions, the carbon budget, which forests are a big part of absorbs the exact same percentage of our carbon dioxide as it did 60 years ago and nobody knows why."

Wait, what? This hasn't been figured out yet?

Not unless there's been any big findings. I attended the climate science summit event which had the harvard and stanford climate teams giving a huge series of lectures on various related subjects. It was only recent study of the machinations of the carbon budget that we discovered this and at least as of about a year ago, we weren't sure what was accounting for absorbing all that extra carbon.

They think either the drastically warming ocean is soaking it up faster or the rainforests in general are just working overtime and absorbing more of the stuff and converting it into oxygen, or the massive explosion in sea algae might be causing it. Theres problems with all of these hypotheses.

The ocean one doesn't stand up as of now to historical scrutiny because there doesn't seem to be an increased formation of sub oceanic carbonite rock or explosions of carbon shelled crustaceans during past periods of high atmospheric co2, which also sometimes coincided with warmer oceans, though not AS warm as ours. But that's where carbon goes when the ocean absorbs it.

As for the trees, they can tell past co2 levels many different ways, one is the size of the orifices of the plants that inhale carbon dioxide which they can see in fossils, we're seeing that with plants now but they don't seem to be consuming it any more efficiently.

I forget about the algae one, i seem to recall they think that might be the most promising answer.

But i no longer have a web of science subscription so i haven't been able to keep up on that research but i do google it and look for new developments. But, it's very good news regardless. it shows us that if we CAN drastically reduce emissions, the current bloat of atmospheric co2 will be recycled back into the budget even faster than we thought 20 years ago, thus reversing the damage faster.

Hrm.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure cutting back on carbon emissions is going to be a viable solution right now. There's a very real need and demand for energy which needs addressing, and without addressing this core problem, this will probably have the effect of causing damage to the economy.

Because of that and how fleeting Executive Orders are, this seems like a "Feel Good" measure as a political action so the President can say he's doing something, even though it will ultimately be ineffectual.

I would see efforts of working with Congress to establish more sources of clean energy would speak more towards finding an actual solution that meets our energy needs that also shows a care towards our environment. And I don't mean by throwing away half a billion dollars at a Solar Panel company that then turns around and files for bankruptcy.

Yeah I'm sorry but this is nonsense. We have many many means of energy, and the only reason we're using coal is because we have an old infrastructure set up around it. Other industrialized nations have already made huge strides in turning over the MAJORITY of their energy to renewable clean energy such as germany.

The idea that if we don't use fossil fuels we won't have enough energy is absolute nonsense.

And I don't know why i have to keep saying this. The WHOLE POINT of this journal was to not focus on this one executive order. The important thing is that the EPA now commands emission limits which side steps congress. That is what important. The executive order is just the beginning.

The idea of doing nothing is INSANITY.

Um... No, that's not what I said. I said we need to start building up our infrastructure of sources of cleaner energy so we can phase out of using dirtier methods of generating energy.

Without building the plants that allow us to shore up the drop of energy that the requirements to lessen carbon emissions, then energy will become more expensive.

So I don't feel that you're actually listening to what people are saying, here.

"So I don't feel that you're actually listening to what people are saying, here. "

+1 to that.

*laughs* I cannot remember the last time I was attacked for agreeing with someone.

Another example would be Norway's power grid, powered 90% by hydroelectric.

A lot of the things politicians do are just bandages for larger issues so they can boost their ratings, or ego, or get awards or whatnot.

The problem with a lot of these "Global warming, Climate Change, Climate Disruption, Climate whatever thing they are calling it this week" alarmist people, is that they get so rabid and foaming at the mouth any time someone injects any sort of realistic scenarios into their ideal solution that they would sooner bite your head off than stop for a second and think about how the real world, as it is now, would work with such scenarios, let alone even finding a middle ground. One of my favorites being nuclear waste storage issues with the people that think massive scaled nuke energy is the answer... Though I am a big supporter of self contained thorium/molten salt reactors as they are much safer and scalable but still have a ways to go. Everything still has its benefits and drawbacks, they just want to pretend it is all benefits and no drawbacks because it makes them feel "superior" or like they are "doing something" and have all the answers. It is like people that buy a Toyota Prius and think they are saving the world when all they are doing is just furthering waste and continuing rabid consumerism.

I had some person threaten physical violence upon me for mentioning some of the hurdles that the popular kick starter "Solar Roadways" face. Even though I love the idea, I see it as not being realistic in the US at the moment outside of private funding and private property considering big government is the puppet of big corporations and said corporations will do all they can to destroy or discredit anything that may hurt their bottom line... And that apparently makes someone want to hurt me. *laughs*

Never rely on congress or politicians to get ANYTHING done... "The People" have to be the ones that enact change. If more people started buying and using private wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal where applicable, and whatever else is out there on their own houses and living off grid we would, obviously, see less reliance on "dirty" energy... But that takes self reliance and independence from constantly sucking on big corporate and big government nipples or constantly taking whatever the easiest path is... Though in reality if that started happening, the big energy-oil-whatever companies would most likely try to make it as hard or as expensive as possible to even try to disconnect like in certain rainy states where the water and power companies have made it illegal or freakishly over regulated to use rain-catchment systems for your own home on your own property because you would not need "their" water.

Some people are living in a little utopia in their minds and unable to critically think outside of what they have been "fed."

I agree that forced sterilization is about the worst way to go about population control, short of taking folks out back and shooting them.

We do need to stop the population growth, though. But it's a global problem, not a US-alone one. Several nations of the EU have managed it, probably by accident. Yay family planning, birth control, and folks not feeling the need to have 20 kids just to hope two or three survive to adulthood anymore!


One thing we could do at home, though, is stop subsidizing whelping in the tax code. Then maybe folks will think about what they're doing first. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. >__>

This is why I just don't talk about this stuff. You get veritable geniuses in here telling you that established science is just wrong because they disagree with the overwhelming consensus of experts; people who pretend a political debate is somehow on the same footing a scientific one; and of course, my favorite, the "this little bit isn't enough to fix the problem so let's do nothing at all" crowd.

My hat is off to your level of patience. o,,o

Well i'm a skeptic. I'm part of the skeptic community. One of the ways i learned what i know about the subject was listening to the denialists, reading their blogs, and fact checking their claims to see that of course, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

The proverbial poison that has been dumped in the well (that well being public literacy of climate change science) has effectively poisoned it here in america, but it's still a small amount of poison. Theres such a small amount of denialist propaganda compared to the entirety of the world's scientific research on the subject i've long since gotten to the point where i just don't hear new denailist claims anymore and can rebut most of them from memory.

Climate change denialism is basically a virus, it spreads fast but it's just a handful of individual viruses doing the damage.

I'm a skeptic as well, and was quite active in the community myself until a few years ago; so believe me, I totally understand. More than that I wholeheartedly support your effort. It's just not for me any more, is all. There's just no arguing a person out of a position they were never properly argued into in the first place. I can only talk to a brick wall for so long before it gets so frustrating I can't help but partake in a bit of shit-slinging. So now I just vote and donate where I feel I need to while handing out the occasional "good for you" to those with the energy to do what I can't. I wish I still had it in me.

Well i get challenged to debates, especially on this subject. Usually they want to debate me over PM's or something. I will only do it in a public forum other people will see and never like a live debate cuz those are terrible for anything empirical.

I have little interest in changing somebody's mind that's SO set on it that they will debate me. I'm more interested in the hundreds of others who read these posts who were on the fence and not so far gone or dogmatic in their thinking. Or people who believed the denialist nonsense simply because they had never been exposed to anything else.

I get pm's all the time on youtube and emails from yahoo from people who saw my arguments, fact chekced them and wanted to thank me for putting it into perspective and giving them a reasoned position on the subject.

In a debate of faith vs. facts, the power of God will overcome puny mortal evidence, every time.

Its comparable to the anti-vaccination crowd. People will delude themselves with nonsense and hold onto those beliefs like it is an absolute truth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunnin.....3Kruger_effect

I despise the anti vaxxers but as dangerous as they are, the climate denialists are even MORE dangerous.

Seriously. If it weren't for the fact that more infections means more opportunity for these things to mutate enough that current vaccines are no longer effective, I would be all for letting these folks kill themselves off. It's an unnecessary risk to the rest of us, though.

Pray away your brain? Okay, but Darwin says: Buh-bye!



Maybe we can confine all the antivax types to an island somewhere. Make it a nice one, tropical. The ones that want medicine for the malaria and dengue fever are welcome to rejoin the rest of humanity at any time, at the low cost of a few free shots courtesy of Obamacare (really shouldn't be a dirty word!).

Now if only we could get Obama to change his mind about appointing a cable company lobbyist to the FCC.

Yeah. That's why my head almost spun backwards when he did something ACTUALLY progressive.

Like the first 2 years he was in office i figured he had some sort of end game strategy for basically bending over for the republicans non stop.

The next 2 i figured he was waiting for his second term to pull out the stops and push a democratic agenda.

The next year i figured he was just a colossal fucking pussy with just no spine whatsoever.

The year after that I decided he does conservative things and furthers conservative policy because he IS a conservative.

Then he does this, and now i don't know what to think lol. But i won't knock it. THANKS OBAMA.

For the first two years Democrats had almost complete control.

And as for him being conservative, I certainly don't see how. I think you're getting conservative and authoritarian mixed up.

Ah but they are so easy to get mixed up when you listen to all the "conservative" figureheads like Malkin, Coulter, Bachmann, Palin, Rubio and so on and so forth.

Actually, the Democrats had a congressional super-majority for just a few weeks back in 2009 from the time Al Franken was swarn in (7/7/2009) to the time Ted Kennedy died (8/25/2009); and even then, they had been short a vote since Spectre switched parties (4/29/2009) and Senator Byrd was hospitalized (5/18/2009).

So no, not once, ever, did Democrats ever actually have a 60-vote super majority or "complete control". He had, at most, 59, as Byrd was still in the hospital after Franken was sworn in. So, from early July to late August, yes, there were 60 Democratic senators; but only 59 of them could cast votes, and the number has not breached the magic 60 number since.


...Also you don't seem to know what authoritarianism is.

AND (in theory) he was, in a well-meaning-but-misguided-way, still trying to be a bi-partisan uniter in those days. Doing things too extremely leftist would have ended that.


Silly thought. With a black man in the White House, he should have known the neo-cons would go screaming back down the bat-shite halls of insanity.


What's sad is that the majority of America is too disinterested in voting at all to keep the crazy under control (and that is not to say there is not crazy on the left, too, just not nearly as much)

I didn't say supermajority. I said almost, as they'd be able to pass anything as long as they could get one Republican that was tired of a filibuster, assuming there was a filibuster. But they certainly had a majority regardless.

Maybe expanding surveillance on citizens, killing civilians without a trial, holding citizens without a trial, increasing taxes, attacking civil rights... maybe you don't think that's authoritarian, but I'm not sure what would better describe it than that.

"I didn't say supermajority. I said almost, as they'd be able to pass anything as long as they could get one Republican that was tired of a filibuster, assuming there was a filibuster."

First, that is either what you meant, or you don't know what you're talking about when you say "complete control". Second, "assuming there was a filibuster"? The filibuster has been used more times in the past 6 years than any and all comparable periods in history. Republicans have hindered the passages of laws in congress more than any other time in history--you NEED a super majority to get by that obstruction. So when you say, "almost", what you really mean to say is, "not even close to almost". Either way, you're being extremely disingenuous.


"Maybe expanding surveillance on citizens, killing civilians without a trial, holding citizens without a trial, increasing taxes, attacking civil rights... maybe you don't think that's authoritarian, but I'm not sure what would better describe it than that. "

Attacking civil rights? This simply hasn't happened, except insofar as people are less likely now to be allowed to push their own religious biases onto their employees.
Increasing taxes? I'll say it again, you do not know what authoritarianism is, unless you think Regan was an authoritarian 11 times over.
As for holding people without trial and the expanded surveillance, I wholeheartedly agree that these are egregious; but who's programs are they again? Why the previous conservative administration's, of course. Was Bush an authoritarian?

Ok ,was george bush a conservative?

Obama has done literally almost nothing but continue, and expand on the exact same policies that he did for 8 years. And authoritarian generally goes hand in hand with conservatism and a strong national security state.

But policy wise, they're almost clones of each other.

Both left and right are perfectly able to be authoritarian, but it takes a neocon or moderate to pull that off, a constitutional conservative will stand against almost anything authoritarian. Though that's from an American perspective; European conservatism is a bit different, given history.

There's a lot of things they didn't agree with each other on, really. But for the most part, Obama's managed to take a great many things he campaigned against and make them worse.

ohhhhhhh. ohh burnnn. Don't get me started on that boneheaded move.


*plays taps for the internet*

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpGpidIIgAAFJi1.jpg

Christ. See my short novel below. Not accusing heavensteed of bullshitting. but frankly the bullshit floating around is far far more easy to digest and accessible than actually learning about this stuff.

One side is actual science. One side is pretending to be science. It's almost easy for me not to blame people for not knowing which to believe. Human nature of course compels us to believe that which is most comforting and requires the least amount of effort to understand.

All right, Arjuna, I'm not particularly passionate about this issue but there are some things I don't understand. Maybe you can explain them.

Let me point out first that conservatives are angry about Obama's regulation on coal plants because they harm coal business and, consequently, the workers who are employed by them. Additionally, they also leads to dramatic increases in energy costs which negatively impact the average American. Whether they believe in anthropogenic climate change, conservatives care more about the immediate economic impact that these kinds of regulatory polices have on people than questionable claims about the necessity of curtailing long term climate change through policies that harm the economy and businesses.

Now when it comes to climate change...I don't really understand the hysteria behind it. Firstly, there is not universal consensus among scientists that climate change is caused primarily by human activity and/or that it is a dire threat to the future of the planet. There just isn't. So I don't understand why many people are so dogmatic on this issue and state that even debating the subject is off-limits. Same thing with evolution. Dissent and debate on any aspect of it is not allowed which seems contrary to any philosophy that calls itself rational, critical, and free thinking. It's smacks of the worst kind of fundamentalism. I'm not talking about dismissing a well established scientific theory in its entirety. I'm talking about questioning any particular aspect of it. Science should never be closed to debate since it's constantly changing. What was scientific fact 100 or 200 years ago isn't today in many cases.

Secondly, my skepticism (not denial) about the climate change is rooted in what science tells us about geologic history. This planet has undergone 5 or 6 mass extinctions over the last several hundred million years and over 99 percent of all the species that have ever lived on the planet have gone extinct long before humans were ever around. There are natural forces that make for very efficient killers and climate wreckers: supermassive volcanoes, asteroids, the giant thermonuclear reactor called our sun (which is continually expanding and getting hotter)... all these things can have a more immediate and life crushing impact on the climate than human beings could ever effect. We've had several dramatic swings in Earth's climate called ice ages. There is no reason to suspect that such changes will not occur in the future. Extinction and devastating climate change are, sadly, a natural occurrence and inevitable. If anything, history tells us that global cooling is much more dangerous to human civilization than warming periods. We had a significant cooling period in the middle ages which produced record plague outbreaks and famine. Warmer temperatures are far better for crop crowing and plants generally which means greater food production. Of course, if mean global temperatures continue to rise unabated long enough, then yes, it's going to become a real problem. But how can you make such a prediction empirically? Don't you have to presuppose that temperatures will continue to rise based on current data? You might say, well, if we continue to pump more CO2 in the atmosphere, there is no other possibility. But then that assumes that no other factors will change that offset the effects of CO2 and everything else that impacts the climate remains constant.

So, I suppose it all comes down to this: Given what we know about Earth's history which is replete with severe climate change and mass extinctions, on what basis should we assume that human beings are necessarily causing climate change and on what basis do we assume that such climate change is a severe enough threat to warrant sweeping government regulations that have an immediate negative economic impact?

I'm trying to pose a question for civil discussion and would like to avoid the ad hominems and name calling that I'm seeing in the comments above so I hope you will take what I say in the spirit it is intended.

K, gonna address these in order. This is going to be long.

1. The solar industry actually employs more people than the coal industry in america by a very large margin. Times change. We don't have very many people employed as black smiths anymore and that wasn't a good reason to delay the industrial revolution. If coal miners have to lose their jobs to avoid a 6th mass extinction, then so be it. There are a myriad of ways the government could mitigate this through subsidization. IN european countries they trained workers who worked in fossil fuels to work in green energy jobs.

2. There is no reasons to believe that this will lead to dramatic increases in energy costs. It might for the shirt term but this has not played out in other countries that have focused on shifting their whole infrastructure towards alternative energies. If we all have to dig a little deeper, so be it. This MUST be done. Again, we're looking at a 6th mass extinction event on the horizon.

3. There is a universal consensus on it. You're simply wrong. http://www.skepticalscience.com/glo.....s-advanced.htm Read that, follow the citations, read the cited literature, follow it's citations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scient.....climate_change and http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus. There have now been dozens of meta analysis of the ENTIRETY of the peer reviewed body of research and you seriously are just wrong. In fact among ALL earth science disciplines the consensus is at 97.5% roughly, among actual climate scientists it's almost 100%. The ratio of endorse to do not endorse the consensus among the literature itself is 5500 to 1.

4. The reason for the "hysteria" (I reject this term. But this is VERY troubling due to the effects we know it will have and moreso because it will push things so far BEYOND what we saw in the past we can't even predict how bad it will get.) are almost too numerous to mention but i can mention a few but this doesn't even touch on it.

A.) Previous rises in temperature caused several of the mass extinction events in the ancient pass and they only needed about a 5 degree rise in temperature. These rises took tens of thousands of years usually. We've managed almost a third of that in less than a century. We do not want to go through a 6th mass extinction event.

B.) We've managed to melt half the ice volume from the northern ice cap in less than a century and the melt is getting more rapid, this is ice that is tens of thousands of years old, it is not supposed to melt. The northern ice cap is so important to climate regulation because it basically acts like a giant mirror harmlessly reflecting much of the suns infrared heat harmlessly back into space because it doesn't scatter into the shortwave spectrum that CO2 absorbs so it passes right through our co2 atmosphere. If we lose our north pole we literally do not know what will happen, we will suddenly be getting up to 40% MORE heat every year, year over year absorbed into our ecosystem to make it even WORSE the darkest parts of hte planet are the deep oceans. What was once reflecting almost half the suns radiation will now be a black ocean and the blacker the area, the more heat it absorbs. The north pole is so important for keeping the climate liveable that the barely discernible wobble of the earths axis, known as a milankovich cycle just by barely altering the angle that north pole faced the sun a little bit more infrared would be bounced out into space. This was enough to literally freeze the entire earth and revert us into a snowball earth state. Once the north pole melts it's very possible without that giant mirror to reflect millions of joules of heat, we might experience a runaway greenhouse effect, the magnitude we can never predict.
C.) Within the permafrost and both poles are billions of years of stored ancient carbon and methane (an even more potent greenhouse gas than co2) trapped by ice. Either carbon bubbles in ice and snow or rotting ancient animals and vegetation in permafrost soil. This ice and permafrost has been around for milleniums and i'ts melting at a terrifyingly rapid pace. When it melts it will be like dumping 5 20th centuries worth of carbon into the atmosphere all at once. This is what's known as a positive feedback loop. The source of energy is the sun, the primary forcer is our carbon dioxide atmosphere, that forcer pushes a second forcer which would be the stored up carbon deposits. It's a dangerous source of warming kicking off YET ANOTHER dangerous source of warming. Between that, the lack of a north pole, the carbon we've put into the atmosphere, and carbon the heat from that will release from the permafrost, that's 3 positive feedback loops where warming leads to faster warming from something else which leads to faster warming from something else. We only exist at all because our planet has a fairly mild temperature and it's very well regulated because it took eons for us to fall into this delicate equilibrium, we don't want to step outside that equilibrium.
D.) In past mass extinction events, warming made the ocean more suitable for massive colonies of algae, those algae increased the oceans acidity to levels where it could barely sustain any life at all and 90% of the creatures in the ocean went extinct. Most of the warming occurs in the ocean. Every ocean on the planet is rapidly warming and we're now seeing these toxic algae blooms in bigger and bigger numbers. The food web is entirely interconnected. I don't think i even need to mention how devestating it would be if our oceans had 90% or even 50% of their life go extinct. Probably entire coastal nations would starve to death.
E.) Sea level rise. Sea levels are and will continue to rise, and they're rising more rapidly. People act like this isn't a big deal that there will just be more beachfront properties. It's a big deal because not only will entire coastal nations suddenly have millions of people displaced, but the encroaching sea water soaks into the ground and contaminates massive aquifers and water sheds with salt water. The Sumerians were virtually wiped out due to soil contaminated with just tiny amounts of salt. This will not only leave millions without drinking water but make agriculture impossible resulting likely in devestating famines.
F.) I could go on but this is getting long. One last thing, in experiments at iirc Stanford they tried to see what happened to crops in high co2 environments like what we can expect in 60 or so years if we do nothing. Carbon dioxide makes plants grow faster and larger in high concentrations. Great right? They also found that the food it produces is significantly less nutritionally dense requiring MORE space to grow to feed the same amount of people who will need to eat more food which requires more water, and more land and more money. But it drastically reduced the plants natural ability to fight off pests that usually aren't a problem. THe crops were devoured by insects, resulting in much smaller yields. They experimented on soybeans. Not even going to begin to get in what will happen when in the "farm belt" it's too warm to grow any of our food crops there.

Continued in the next post.

Just a quick fact check:

- Workers employed by the solar industry: 142,698 (http://thesolarfoundation.org/resea.....bs-census-2013)

- Workers employed by the coal industry: 143,055 (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.ph....._United_States)

So "solar employs actually employs more people that the coal industry in America by a very large margin"? Yeah, no. I didn't even include in the coal jobs all the transportation (railroad) jobs that are supported by coal transport, so the real numbers are even more slanted toward coal.

That's just a fact check of your first point. For someone who is quick to call anyone who disagrees with you an idiot, I'd suggest you check your own facts first.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at.....-a-war-on-coal

Yeah except your fact check is blatantly dishonest. You're including truck drivers and power plant employees as "coal employees? Those are jobs that are not in any way tethered strictly to the coal industry.

The EIA's job census census puts it at only 89,000 in 2012. Nice try but as always, you're wrong again. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs.....y-the-numbers/

No actually, you're blatantly dishonest. Truck drivers, plant operators, administrative support, etc. are all coal employees. So you're saying that an operator at a coal-fired power plant is not related to the coal industry? A truck driver who works the ash pile is not a coal employee? You just don't like it because it doesn't fit your pre-decided idea. If the coal industry were out of business overnight, all those people would be out of a job. Even though they just drive a truck. Or type reports. Or do night security. You think for a moment that your solar numbers don't also include the same people: delivery drivers, plant operators, maintenance mechanics?

And I notice how you nicely sidestepped the original point, which was you said "solar actually employs more people that the coal industry in America by a very large margin". Even using your numbers (which are crap, but still), it's 142,698 solar vs. 89,000. That's a "very large margin"? And you accuse other people of using bad numbers? Time to check your own math. And that was just the first "fact" you listed, so anyone listening to your arguments has to wonder about the validity of the rest of your points.

Wtf planet do yo live on? 142,698 vs 89,00 is a VERY LARGE MARGIN by any metric.

And again. There were accountants employed in the phrenology caliper manufacturing business. They did not wind up on the streets when phrenology was debunked as quackery, they went to work as accountants for some other business.

We need power plants, coal or otherwise. We need truck drivers, whether they're hauling funiture or solar panels or ore that goes into making solar panels, we need truck drivers. The european countries that got off a coal infrastructure did not have a net job loss you dolt, the emerging industries filled in that void because those industries create their own jobs.

You seriously don't know anything about anything lol.

I live on planet Earth. Where we have something called math. Looks like you need to add remedial math to your list of classes to take so you'll know something about what's going on in the world. Again you're trying to change the argument because you were wrong. Fact is, coal employs more people than solar. You don't want to believe it because, like most environmentalists, you just like to cherry pick your numbers and then claim that any other numbers that don't support your view can't possibly be correct. You don't like my numbers? Fine, go argue with the people who created them. Or go tell my source they are obviously wrong, and you know better. I'm sure Sourcewatch would love to hear all about how you know better than they do how to count coal-related jobs.

What is really sad is that while you might have some valid points worth debating, nobody is going to listen to you because you come across as a nut job. If all you can do is name call in your responses instead of debating like a rational person, nobody is going to take you seriously.

Haha, the guy that is ignorant of science from the mid 1800's that even a nine year old has a grasp on and demonstrates on youtube who doesn't grasp the difference between jobs in an industry and jobs that require an industry is lecturing me on math.

That's cute kid.

Hey by all means, please use your amazing math skills to figure out that our almost 2 century long understanding of the properties of the carbon dioxide molecule are completely wrong and also figure out why all the technology we have based on that understanding function exactly as we expect them to, despite our understanding being wrong.

Since you're clearly so insulated in some fact free conservative bubble you simply can't appreciate how truly stupid what you're arguing is.

This is like if you said that gravity is a hoax and not true. You would not only have to explain what accounts for the well understood phenomena of gravity but you would also have to figure out why by sheer coincidence, everything we do that functions based on our understanding of gravity from satellites being shot into orbit to airplanes works based on our fundamentally wrong understanding of gravity. This is the implications of your argument.

So by all means, write a journal article correcting every single person in the world on how they're completely wrong about the infrared insulation properties of carbon dioxide and explain why the technology we have that functions as we expect it to to based on that understanding functions exactly how we expect. Publish your article, get it past peer review and link me to it so i can rent it and read it and read the peer response to it and you can then claim your Nobel Prize.

Till then I'm done with you and your laughable ignorance.

As much as I enjoy debating the point with you, you're like a broken record on a few things and it just shows how really ignorant you are about science. And math. And probably a number of other subjects as well. Your having to ask another poster about the current state of fusion research tells me that you don't even bother to keep up with current events. Probably because reality would conflict with your beliefs. Obviously facts do.

Now it looks like you're trying out your trump card by calling me a conservative. Name calling didn't work, so you'll paint me with the conservative brush. I'm surprised you didn't already accuse me of working for Big Oil. Or Big Coal. That's how pathetic your arguments are. So now you want to call me a conservative so you can think you "won" the argument. Fine, you want to convince yourself that you know all the science (you don't) and all the history (you don't know that either) - then go right ahead. If it makes you able to sleep at night thinking that Obama "saved" the planet with one EO and the rest of the world will now fall in line because of American leadership - you go right ahead. Enjoy living in your liberal, eco-mentalist bubble.

On the journals, I'm not the one who's questioning everything anyone says that doesn't fit neatly into your own skewed world model - so I'll leave the journal writing to you. Someone who obviously knows better than anyone else what the "truths" are. Have fun with that, I'm sure your name calling will get you far with most web sites you want to "correct".

5.) Science is NOT closed to debate. Science is settled via the scientific method. Science is not settled by argument or a battle of wits. All science is is data, that's it. Empirical verifiable data vetted by the peers of the field. The debate in science occurs within the scientific journals. There is no debate within them because every single person on the entire planet doing meaningful research and contributing to the field has been drawn to the same conclusion because that is the conclusion the data has converged on. Science is the OPPOSITE of dogmatic. It is evidence based. People like me get upset with people who know little to nothing on what's probably the most important subject facing our species in it's history, yet decide every single person who has devoted their lives to increasing our understanding of it going back to 1861 is wrong because they read a blog written by a guy who works for a "Think Tank" that's funded by the petroleum industry. If you want to debate in the arena of climate scienc,e you have to do what all scientists do, publish and pass peer review.

6.) It's funny you mention the drivers of climate in our past. Virtually all of them either going into or out of a huge climate shift were caused by carbon dioxide. In fact supermassive volcanoes brought us into a snowball earth state but the very long atmospheric retention of carbon dioxide, and they released massive amounts of it is the only thing that brought us out. The frozen oceans could not recycle the atmospheric carbon that was mixed into the NEGATIVE GREENHOUSE volcanic emissions (carbon monoxide and magnesim and rock particulate are negative forcers released by volcanic emissions. Volcanoes also spew out a lot of co2 which is a positive forcer, aka it raises temperature.). In fact every single time we entered a snowball earth ice age that wasn't from a milankovich cycle, the lingering buildup of carbon dioxide slowly brought us out of it. That is how powerful a warming force carbon dioxide is. We have a VERY profound understanding of all past climate change events. Most of then took tens and hundreds of thousands of years to occur on the magnitude we're experiencing. We've done it in less than a century. Do you WANT a 6th mass extinction? Because we're almost a third of the way to similar conditions of a past one in less than a century.

7.) The sun is NOT warming. It is actually cooling. I hear this a lot and i don't know why people keep thinking it's true when it's so easy to verify it's not. In order to rule out the sun as the cause of the warming NASA launched two satellites. IRIS and AIRS. One monitors the infrared output of the sun and the other monitors the infrared entering and leaving the earths atmosphere. This is the very heart of why we know we're the cause and nothing else. First of all here is the warming trend juxtoposed with the total radiance of the sun. http://www.skepticalscience.com/ima.....s_TSI_2009.gif There is no correlation. The sun is on a mild cooling trend for decades, the same decades the warming has increased enormously, as we predicted it would based on the faster rate we're dumping carbon into our atmosphere. The most important thing is that when infrared enters the earth atmosphere it is long wave infrared. Carbon dioxide only absorbs short wave infrared as a green house gas. When it hits the earth the infrared scatters and becomes short wave, as it bounces off the earth it gets trapped in our atmosphere. That is why we MUST have some greenhouse carbon dioxide gas in order for us to all not freeze to death. Venus is a good example of a runaway greenhouse effect. Significantly less sun hits it's surface than the earth, yet due to carbon dioxide atmosphere, lots of it, the surface is hot enough to melt lead. We see the infrared entering and exiting our atmosphere, it enters in all spectrums and leaves minus the carbon dioxide spectrum. That is more heat entering than leaving. Heat doesn't go away. The heat staying is specifically the spectrum absorbed by carbon dioxide. It's that simple.

8.) This is about the ice ages. Ice ages happen for many reasons. Volcanoes, and meteors can do them and have done them. Milankovich cycles have done them. We know the precise mechanism on how all of them occurred. There are no volcanic eruptions even a fraction of the enormous volcano chain in siberia that caused one in the instrumental record, there are no meteor strikes, and the next milankovich cycle isn't for thousands of years. Yet again though, what brought us out of EVERY SINGLE ICE AGE? Carbon dioxide buildup becaue once again, the frozen oceans and massive die off of plant life could not recycle the carbon from the atmosphere and so it just builds up, till it heats up to a point that the world thaws. WE are not going into an ice age. We just aren't.

9.) How can you predict empirically how much temperatures will rise? It's a simple matter of the long term trend of our carbon output, the very well understood science of how many joules of heat a gigaton of carbon produces based on the predictable radiance of the sun. The only thing that could avert this is a possible continent sized volcano string or meteor. Do you REALLY want to hope that will stop it? The odds are zero. As for predictions, i can tell you just how amazingly accurate our models are basedon how well we understand this. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted, we of course kept track of it's emissions. How much sulfur, magnesium, particulate and carbon dioxide it spewed out. We plugged that data into our far more primitive model that we had at the time and it accurately predicted to within a 100th of a degree a global slight drop in temperature that lasted almost 4 years. There are many variables that effect climate, very few are unpredictable. We factor in the el nino southern oscilation which is a short cycle that drives climate. Currently the ONLY and i mean ONLY unpredictable variable is human beings and to a lesser extent the aformentioned ENSO. We cannot factor in whether emissions will go down, but we factor in a range of possibilities every time,a nd yet we never ever do shit about emissions. We release more carbon and we release it at a higher rate, year after year after year. When we talk about the need for climate action, we're talking centuries, if even that. Short of a meteor strike, theres no real unknown variable that will "save us from ourselves." that we can count on.

10.) The big one. How certain can we be we'er the cause. As certain as anything. THe core of the science is very simple, i'll itemize it.
A.) John Tyndall discovered the short wave insulating properties of carbon dioxide way back in 1861. He postulated that if we could figure out a way to dump our atmosphere full of carbon we would experience a "global warming." (first published use of the term btw.). We figured out how to pump out carbon on a scale never seen in the history of our planet by an enormous magnitude.

B.) Carbon from natural emissions and from human emissions are actually different isotopes. We can use a spectroscope and know precisely how much carbon is dumped into the atmosphere that's from us and from nature. Almost all of it is from us. It's also as simple as we know how much carbon one barrel of oil will produce when burned. We know exactly how much oil is pumped out and sold and refines. Cross check those numbers and they confirm, the massive buildup in carbon dioxide is unequivocally from human beings. Keep in mind we understand the science of how infrared interacts with atmospheric carbon dioxide that we have technology that functions based on our understandings of those principles that functions exactly how we expect them to. Solar cells are calibrated based on their elevation because they need to focus on the spectrums leased blocked by greenhouse gasses at that altitude. Also heat seeking missles. Much of what we know about atmospheric carbon dioxide is actually from the government research to develop heat seeking missiles. We know EXACTLY how atmospheric carbon dioxide reacts with infrared.

C.) Again, we can predict how much warming we'll see simply by doing the math. X gigatons of carbon dioxide traps Y joules of heat from Z amount of observed solar radiance. If X + Y +Z = observed temperature then the numbers add up. It's not QUITE this simple but at it's core, it's this simple.

I strongly encourage you if you have heard any what we call "denialist canards.", aka things global warming denialists say that are contrary to EVERY SINGLE person studying the field. go to the website skeptical science and they probably have a page devoted specifically to that canard. This isn't info written on a website, these are landmark studies, raw instrumental data straight from the most prestigious journals where ALL of our scientific knowledge has come from that addresses these claims. It's an excellent resource and i'ts just that, data. No real middleman, and it's as advanced or simple as you want it to be and it's VERY meticulously cited and easily fact checkable.

Holy Fuck, reading all that is troubling indeed. I never knew how much problems hinge on the climate issue. I personally find the predictions about the ice caps and the oceans acridity the most troubling, especially when it comes to the potential of self-perpetuating effects. The worst outcome might not only be a mass extinction event, it could pretty much lead to the very loss of the planet's life sustaining capabilities alltogether.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I wish more people were this well informed. You are far more thoroughly informed than I thought I was.

And you have a gift for breaking it down into simple statements that even an idiot could understand, if that idiot wanted to.


Alas, you are not superhuman and cannot inspire said idiots to want to understand why they are wrong. :p








BTW, my big takeaway from this is that maybe it would be a good idea if we pumped some NASA funding into someday hitting the Earth with an asteroid as a last-ditch climate reset button? :D

I don't want to scuba dive in algae-choked acid seas while the palm trees grow giganti-enormous in Anchorage... :(

It doesn't make the industry collapse, it's just that the wretches who run these companies can't stand for their profits to decrease by any amount.
(like the Koch brothers who actively spread disinformation)

or like the RIAA/MPAA who refuse to adapt to the new economic realities created by the inevitable march of technology? :)

Good boy! ^^

"...Same thing with evolution. Dissent and debate on any aspect of it is not allowed which seems contrary to any philosophy that calls itself rational, critical, and free thinking..."

There is no debate. Evolution is a fact. It happens, it is observable and it is testable. People who state the opposite are either cooks in the same boat as the "flat earth society" or religious nut jobs who deny the viability of the scientific method all together because it "endangers" their precious delusions. One does not talk to such people because it give them the air of legitimacy. They should be ignored or ridiculed but never engaged with seriously.

Yeah. I tried to avoid all this. I've argued with him on this subject before. When you think your faith demands that you deny THE most successful theory in all of science, suddenly all science has to be suspect and it's very easy to just chalk any that you disagree with up to some sort of conspiracy.

Didn't you know, gravity is all a hoax. What really holds us down is the weight of God's disapproval pouring down on us from above, because we are such dirty, sinful leeches.

true true, after all gravity is just a theory, right?

First off, I do believe that we are at least in part responsible for the climate change, just as I believe many are missing the point. At least I haven'`t heard anyone talking about the one I am on about. My question, which I haven't heard discussed any is this:

The climate is changing. If humanity is responsible matters only in the point that we can change our ways. The question is, when is the change in climate going to threaten our food supply?
For example, when is the climate change going to threaten the crops in the US corn belt? What is one crop failure there going to do to our food prices worldwide?

There are several reasons I am asking.
1. We can increase our food production easily and have it secure from climate changes. Once we start this, it can also be done in regions that can't produce enough food.
2. The climate change is a ongoing process, even if we reduce our influence on the climate to zero now, it will take years to come into effect.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

One more thing. Here in Europe we had pollution so bad, our forests were dying from it. That was in the '80s. With the law enforcing more and more emission restrictions, this is no longer a concern. On the contrary, our forests are healthy again. The same with our rivers. In theory you could bathe in the Rhine river, if it wasn't so dangerous from the speed of the river and the traffic that is.

And by the way, if there hasn't been damage to the enviroment from the pollution, be wary. Europe had the bright idea of:
"The solution to pollution is diffusion."
Which resulted in the crap going down further away and it took longer to affect the enviromen, but when it did, if affected a larger area.

This is not is not empircical data, this is not science, this has happened and it will happen again if you don't reduce pollution.
Any one who wishes to discuss this, could just as well discuss this with a bullet flying towards him.

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So, to sum it up? Pollution is bad, even is it does not change the climate. As it does, it's even worse.

The IPCC's IR's and AR's deal with the food supply issue very well.

Well The ipcc just compiles the research they don't actually do the research. Look at teh stanford soybean field experiment. This will impact our food supplies very soon, the US is not the country that should be the most worried.

Sadly the ones that will be gripped by water shortages and famines the first will be 3rd world countries with zero infrastructure who aren't even part of the problem

The third world will be the ones suffering the most from it, but that's true.
But thanks to the worldwide stock markets, rising prices will affect all.

I'm not up to date, but last I heard was that the oil refineries destroyed by hurricane Katrina have not been rebuild and other refineries are quite old as well and not very effective by todays standards. So, some of the gas the USA need is bought from Europe, which led to an increase in price here as well as in the USA. Like I said, I'm not up to date, but it is an example how a shortage affects us all.

With food I can only ask if we can afford to be wrong? Or is it better to be on the safe side no matter what other measures we take?

I'll keep this short, I've given up on this planet, ignorance and greed is too prevalent. And our govt is to busy fighting each other, because heaven forbid they agree with the other side. Regardless of if they're right or not.

We can't really change the amount of CO2 emissions with current tech, only contain. We need to put a lot more funding into "artificial plants", machines that actually do what plants do to CO2. We have very basic ones, but they are still very early in development, but have the potential to be more efficient than real plants at converting CO2 to O2, and may even be able to create fuel in the process, something like methanol. Hook them up to the exhaust of coal plants. Maybe even car exhaust, in addition to passive ones to pull it out of the air.

But I personally think we are past the point of no return... We've fucked up too much, and by the time we REALLY get our shit together, it will be far far far to late.

It's already been accepted that the changes would be inevitable, and they're very much survivable if you take market incentivization out of the picture.

It's never worth giving up on the planet, even greed and ignorance is curable under the right measures.

Take market incentives out of the picture? Even in the farthest left countries there's still market incentives.

Like which ones?

In nearly every attempt to remove the profit motive there has been success, you get people to work for the merit and the goal not self-interest.

Like the Soviet Union, older China, Venezuela? You're probably thinking about market incentives as a want of money, and that's half-true, but money itself holds no worth, it's the goods and services that can be bought with it. People will inherently want things. The only way to remove market forces is to remove the people.

Just looking at the USSR and it's history ought to be enough evidence that people don't work solely for merit, but self interest can accomplish quite a bit. And the government in charge of allocating resources can never do it as well as the individuals who have or want those resources.

People initially only want to survive, but other wants are foisted upon them. I mean what do you think advertising is?

The Soviet Union had MANY problems but they were mostly caused by an over-concentration of economic and political power. During its early days the profit motive was removed and only isolated examples of it appeared in the more corrupt parts of administration.

A good analysis of the Soviet economic system can be found here; http://youtu.be/h3gwyHNo7MI .

Foisted? Not so much.
And even then, people still did want to survive, but with government managing things like food even millions weren't able to even manage that.
And advertising is often not so much a way to influence people into wanting something, it's to influence them into wanting a very specific something. Also, it's tax deductible. Or, at least, to a point I suppose. People that work outside in mud and snow are probably going to want boots, but that does assume that they're aware of the concept of boots, or care about frost bite, trench foot, or foot rot. It's the advertising that makes them want Brand-X Gore-Tex 2000 Denier breathable side panel Full-Grain leather Vibram-soled side-zip ultra-gel insole work boots rather than galoshes.

Yes, 'just wanting to survive' is a bit of a hyperbole but think about what you currently own, and then think about why you have it. Tax deductibility is done by the government to encourage economic stimulation, which when you think about it is irrational. I mean you're encouraging people to use up tangible resources for abstract gains (like in money, credit, etc.).

My whole point was that the irrationality of our current economic system is antagonistic to environmental recovery, and that incentives that currently exist exacerbate the problem and cannot fix it.

Not really, and it's not just the want to survive, that's just the foundation for other wants, as per Maslow's above. Advertising is a deduction because it's a business expense, not because the government is incentivizing advertising.

That may seem to be the case on the surface, but it's never worked before, and it's not going to work now. There aren't really much in the way of incentives for creating pollution, either.

The government isn't promoting advertisements, it's promoting consumer spending.

There are incentives to pollute, namely to save money on waste disposal. Overall energy companies see no incentives in making greener alternatives, and though there are some companies that specialize in that field the majority of them find it much more profitable to stick to older fuels.

Because they have an economic incentive to do so; the more that people spend, the more the government tax revenues increase.

Waste is oftentimes a still-usable resource. And it's been innovators, pursuing personal gain, that have come up with alternative energies like solar and wind. GE is one of the biggest energy companies, has the greatest market share in both solar and wind power, but isn't making generating capabilities for people who don't want or can't afford it. They also advertise.

Uh no, these events are the exception not the rule.

And I'm betting that this has to do with government subsidies...

Which events, which ruling? The government has, at least recently, always wanted people to spend more.

The first functional power generating windmill was built in 1887 by some guy to power his own home, not because there was a subsidy. Or do you mean GE sells things because of a subsidy? There is a subsidy for GE, yes, and that has actually contributed to them selling their products for a little less, thus the large grab of market share. Though they've been avoiding taxes for years, just like every big company that can afford to, and many other companies received money in the bailout, as well.

The events you just mentioned, and the rule of business's apathy to environmental concern.

The man's inventing is irrelevant, and yes these companies engage in the green sector but only because it's no skin off their nose to experiment. But the better way to handle this is through direct management with resources available, the private sector is an unnecessary middleman.

Posting nonspecific things out of order gets confusing.

It's not irrelevant, you said you bet that there were government subsidies. He didn't do it for subsidies, merit, or anything else; he did it to give himself free power at a point in history where getting power was very expensive.

I didn't say he had subsidies, it's just that he's only one person in an isolated incident.

Many other people do similar things for reasons other than subsidies. Heck, our backyard neighbor has a hot-water solar setup, and there's no subsidy for that at all. The fact of the matter is that monetary gain is a particularly good propellant for innovation and economization, and it's only rarely that it requires government to step in; people inherently want to save money.

But now you're bringing up individuals, I was referring to the world-wide economy and corporations.

Same thing applies. If a company can save thousands of dollars a year, it's probably going to do so. If they can do something that nets them more money, be it shipping crates they transport parts back to the factory to reuse, installing a couple turbines and solar panels, or using a geothermal pump, they're probably going to do it.

And if this is true why aren't fossil fuels being phased-out? Why are American energy companies spending millions to spread disinformation?
Why are the Koch brothers trying to sabotage science education?

Look, it sounds like YOU could operate a business for the right reasons but as it stands they show no signs of wanting to change. And until a glorious green capitalist wave sweeps over the world, I will remain rightly skeptical.

Energy companies spend millions to earn millions. Just putting a tax on them is going to cost them millions.

I don't know of many companies, Koch Industries included, who're spreading disinformation like that.

That does beg the question of what the right reasons actually are. Working solely for the betterment of others doesn't often lead to a particularly successful business. Neither does shitting on your customers, figuratively or literally (excluding, of course, monopolies, which can really only exist in a government-mandated vacuum, such as cable companies). Working to improve your bottom line will generally have a positive impact on both you and your business as well as your customers. After all, if it didn't, they wouldn't be your customers (with exception to the above government enforced monopolies and government itself).

Monopolies are inevitable in any market economy and the only way to prevent them is through rigorous regulation. Cable companies just sponsor reelection campaigns for congress persons. But private interests lobbying corruption is another issue.

And that benevolence doesn't lead to successful business is the reason why I'm against 'market based solutions'.
Lastly profits and performance are NOT parallel to positive social gains or better products and services, it's... naive to believe so.

Monopolies cannot exist where there's competition. The regulations are what have created virtually every monopoly in the last century.

Benevolence towards your customers certainly helps! If, for example, you went to a car wash that regularly damaged your car and wouldn't take liability for it, would you go back, even if they were cheaper than the place that didn't cause damage? The same effects that small businesses face are still felt by bigger ones; alienating your customers to save a buck is going to lose you both your customers and money.

No, regulations DO NOT cause monopolies. Monopolies are inevitable products of unfettered capitalism, and any government policy that seems to cause monopolies is actually due to campaign finance laws NOT regulation itself.

Yes, running a clean business will get you love. But most corporations run in cartels where they agree to have similar qualities to prevent competition. Because contrary to popular belief, businesses avoid competition all the time. That's why phone companies are upset with Verizon because they are now being undercut by them.

Once again, another exception but not the rule.

Unfettered capitalism allows constant competition, when a monopoly abuses it's power, it's replaced by more efficient companies that people would more likely support. That is, of course, assuming that there's a better way to do business; bad business won't rise to power at all. As an exception, there have been companies, Standard Oil for example, that had actually become a monopoly by using waste products, saving money, and cutting costs to consumers. But people generally view monopolies as being inherently negative and ignore that.

Verizon and traditional phone service providers aren't really comparable; technology has simply advanced to the point where traditional phone lines are turning into a thing of the past as they're being replaced by mobile phones and VoIP, which provide for the needs of most customers better than a dedicated land line.

And as far as businesses avoiding competition, of course they do! When a business has no competition it's a monopoly!

How are they replaced then? Do people politely ask them to leave?
And as for positive monopolies, why not have a state monoply then?
That's how Norway's health service is run, and they do well.
Also wouldn't competition be squashed by the use of the monopoly's power?
This just doesn't stand up to scrutiny...

Gotta speak up on this one.

"Benevolence towards your customers certainly helps!"
The appearance of benevolence works just as well, and it's cheaper. Case in point: for half a century the US put tetra-ethyl-lead into its gasoline as an anti-knocking agent. The petroleum industry funded a dearth of disinformation and bogus scientific studies to show that the strange preponderance of lead in the atmosphere at the time was natural, and that the levels of lead in people was safe. It was a significant expense for them, but a drop in the bucket compared to their prophets.

Small business are simply incapable of this. They generally don't have a large multimillion dollar advertizing budget, a Public Relations department, R&D, etc. That is why the petrol industry was able keeping their dirty little lead secret for so long even though the poisonous effects of lead have been well known for thousands of years.

They're replaced by smaller companies that can sell the same product for less of a financial and social cost to the customer.
Positive monopolies still have to stand up to competition. A state run monopoly can forbid competition, and can use force to stay in power. It might be positive, but if it's not, there's not really anyone that can stop it.

The only power a large monopoly can muster to actually "squash" competition is that that it gets through the state; tightening regulations hurts small businesses more than larger businesses.

Many older vehicles can't be safely run on unleaded, lower octane gasoline. It prevents both predetonation as well as valve damage. Companies weren't actually making money off adding lead, either, it was an added expense in addition to the gasoline! Since then, other similar anti-knock agents have been conceived and put into use that don't contain lead.

What?... Private businesses can control competition too.

Is it that 'government=bad' by default?

"Many older vehicles..."

Uh, it's not like they were spending money on bogus scientific studies and ad campaigns for shits and giggles; it was to protect their prophets. Indeed, they were making money by adding lead, as well as saving money by not having to spend the time, energy and resources to find a substitute--until of course they were forced to by stricter regulations regulations.

Private businesses can control their own competitiveness, but can't really have an impact on other businesses. If a business is undercutting prices on a competing business, but haven't found a way to be more efficient, they're not going to be in business very long.

Then they would secure the market through 'other means'. It would be naive to think that businesses just keep to themselves and don't try to control their competition.

Not only naive, but historically false. o,,o

Amen.

There are no "other means" short of, say, firebombing your competitors

How about financial coercion? Or maybe lobbying through the authorities?
Regardless all industries are connected and can influence eachother through many different ways.

Putting more money into a product doesn't earn a company more money if their competitors can make an equivalent product without the additive at a then lower price. There was, of course, no equivalent product, as unleaded fuel was destructive to older engines, and even now there is no operationally safe alternative is currently available.

"Putting more money into a product doesn't earn a company more money if their competitors can make an equivalent product without the additive at a then lower price. There was, of course, no equivalent product, as unleaded fuel was destructive to older engines, and even now there is no operationally safe alternative is currently available."

Perhaps, in the beginning, but not for the next 50 years by a long shot. There was no marketed alternative because there was no incentive to do so. Why not? Lack of regulation. Lead was cheap, and it kept people happy with their product.

I don't even know why I'm arguing, here; this is settled history--it happened. It's in the congressional record, ffs. There are simply no sensible grounds on which to doubt them.

You also linked to an FAA page, dealing with airplanes now, not automobiles back then, in case you were confused. o,,0

Financial coercion? Paying a company to run a bad business? And lobbying through the authorities is just what I'm getting at, when legislators can pick winners and losers, there's going to be plenty of corrupt politicians and business people who're going to take advantage of that.

Yeah, and now there are no workable alternatives. It stands to reason that there was never any such a thing, since they're still using leaded fuels. And this is coming from the FAA, which is a government office, and doesn't often spend money on bogus science and misleading commercials.

I think you're missing my point on that: if there was a station selling unleaded fuel, they'd be saving money by not buying the additive, but customers wouldn't be coming back as their engines would be destroyed.

Yes, but this corruption in lobbying is only a recent thing. It started when Nixon appointed several supreme court justices that would rule in favor in deregulation, and in 1976 campaign finance by private individuals was allowed. And supreme court decision after supreme court decision we now have what we have today, unfettered use of money in politics.

And financial coercion is not paying for a business to fail, it's to deregulate certain sectors of the economy then allowing companies to push out competition (this was the whole thing behind net neutrality).

The one contradiction in capitalism is that profits always need to be expanded but interfere with quality of services/ product. At least take that to heart.

You don't have to firebomb your competition to eliminate it. This is why we have a Federal Trade Commission that tries to bust up nascent monopolies to begin with.



...or that used to try to bust up nascent monopolies, anyway. Hypergigamediagiantcorps taking over the airwaves and the landlines kinda prove that idea done died.

Net neutrality is a prime example of the problem with government mandated monopolies. The government doesn't allow competition between cable companies, they can do whatever they want to... at least until Google fiber gets to your neighborhood. That's not a particularly free market by any means at all!

"I think you're missing my point on that: if there was a station selling unleaded fuel, they'd be saving money by not buying the additive, but customers wouldn't be coming back as their engines would be destroyed."

Oh, right! That is of course why they spent so much money fooling the public into thinking lead was harmless to public health even they knew otherwise--they were just worried about their engines. Are you serious?

No it is not, net-neutrality was meant to be a regulation that protected the general public from coercion by cable companies (who work together in a cartel). They aren't government they're private companies that SHOULD be nationalized for the purpose of having the internet as a free public utility, like water.

Eventually markets produce monopolies, and the question is how can the state break it up.

I meant our current issue with net neutrality, amongst other shady cable company practices, is really only possible because the government has created geographical monopolies; if you live in a certain area, there's but a single cable provider available. The state put them there.

How can they break that up? Deregulating it! People will use the cheapest, fastest service available. Some might want faster Netflix and YouTube, and they'll be able to get that. If you're going to rely on what the state can do for you, you're going to be stuck with what it thinks it's going to do, even when it's wrong.

Yes. That would also be why it's still in use. Small high compression aviation engines still rely on leaded fuel, otherwise they'll knock themselves to bits. And it's not like everyone had the same knowledge as whats available now back in the 1920's, people used to drink out of lead cups, use lead pipe for drinking water, and in fact, many of the old bearings in cars were made of lead alloy themselves.

"Yes. [the petroleum industry lied about the toxicity of their product to protect engines] "

You're lying, the historical record shows otherwise. They denied that leaded gasoline was toxic right up until the 1970's when it's phase-out was mandated. Their defense was not that it was their intent to prevent knocking (which is not a legitimate defense anyway), but that the lead levels in the atmosphere were normal and not dangerous, the levels found in people were normal and not dangerous, that their product was not dangerous.



" That would also be why it's still in use. Small high compression aviation engines..."
Once again, we're talking about leaded gasoline used in automobiles and how the petroleum industry actively HID it's dangers from the public, LIED to the public about it. Their lies and deception is what is at issue, as you contended that such things just wouldn't happen as it's not in a company's interest. Suffice it to say, you're wrong; it happened, and that is a brute fact of reality and a matter of public record. Do deny it is simply to prove yourself a liar or unfathomably ignorant.



"And it's not like everyone had the same knowledge as whats available now back in the 1920's, people used to drink out of lead cups, use lead pipe for drinking water, and in fact, many of the old bearings in cars were made of lead alloy themselves."

More out-right bullshit. First, people have been aware of the dangers of lead for over two thousand years. Second, nobody was drinking out of lead cups in the 1920's. Third, bearings are not vaporized and dispersed into the atmosphere. Forth, why are there no lead pipes nowadays? That's right, regulations that had to be bitterly fought for for over half a century.

---

Long story short, your contention that companies wouldn't deceive people is beyond naive, beyond asinine, it's flat-out lunacy--willful, abject denial of reality. Or you're just a brazenly dishonest person. So--liar or lunatic--pick one. I'm done here.

You're placing way too much faith into customer choice. Reality has proven that competition doesn't come back and small startups can never compete with more established companies.

You're taking what I'm saying out of context.

Yes, people were worried about their engines.

The link to the FAA page was simply to point out that there are no alternatives for leaded fuel, and that is why people still use it.

People also used to sweeten wine with lead oxides, too. Not as recently as the 20s, but it's something that they did. The Romans were able to discern a link between lead and disease, yes, but people still used it regularly in many other things. And yes, babbot bearings were wore down, immersed in oil, and some of that oil was burned in the engine. And as they were fairly soft, they were also particularly susceptible to damage from knocking.

And nowhere did I say that companies won't lie, quite the opposite, I was saying that, with a freer market and competition, companies have to stay honest, lest they lose customers. Ethyl corporation added dye to their fuels do people would handle them safely. But they had a monopoly on the production of TEL, and without competition nobody was going to be putting them out of business... until technology changed and better metallurgy, stronger engines, and fuel injection not only made leaded fuels unnecessary, but they were outright harmful to sensitive electronics in fuel injection systems.

As far as being a liar, I don't seem to have led about anything I've said, the only lies were in what you've dictated me to mean.

Call me crazy, but I seem to get the idea that people ought to be able to make their own decisions, and bearing the full wright of those decisions, they're inclined to make better decisions.

Not when small companies have as many hurdles to jump as they do, they're going to have a hard time competing with the companies that're already well established. Get the hurdles out of the way and allow entrepreneurship and we're sure to see more small companies vying for a piece of the big boys' market share.

I asked you flat-out if the petroleum industry fabricated studies and lied to the American people about their product just to protect their engines. You said yes. The historical record shows otherwise. You are a liar.

We were talking about fuel for automobiles in the early 20th century and you bring up a red herring of current plane engines. There may not be an alternative for some planes, there is an alternative for automobiles. You're being deceitful.

"I was saying that, with a freer market and competition, companies have to stay honest, lest they lose customers."
And we are saying the history simply proves that categorically false. It was the lack of regulation. A monopoly on a hazardous product that shouldn't be on the market in the first place was not the problem--the problem is THAT IT WAS ON THE MARKET IN THE FIRST PLACE. And then they spent millions of dollars to lie about it's hazards.

You are a liar. You're lying to us, or you're lying to yourself. Either way, your contentions are wrong, and have been proven wrong for decades. If you don't like being called a liar, stop being so freaking dishonest!

I'm not the one being dishonest. You asked: "they were just worried about their engines. Are you serious?" and I responded with "Yes" because people, believe it or not, generally prefer it when their cars, which often represent the second largest investment someone is going to make in their lifetime, to actually work for more than a little while.

I posted the link to the FAA website because the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration, a government-run organization, states in fairly clear text that there is no operationally safe alternative is currently available, a direct quote from their website. Either they don't know anything about aircraft fuel, or everyone's forgotten about it.

Again, don't pretend I mean something I don't, because that's not what I meant at all. If saying I meant something I didn't mean, that's not me you're making a liar out of.

Uh, there was a little more to that sentence now, wasn't there? An honest person needn't quote-mine like that. What I wrote was, "That is of course why they spent so much money fooling the public into thinking lead was harmless to public health even they knew otherwise--they were just worried about their engines. Are you serious?"
You said yes, I informed you that you were indeed incorrect as this was not their defense when they testified before congress. In fact, they simply continued to assert that their product was safe, not an issue to public health at all. Funny how you leave that whole bit out of there so you can help it to fit your response.

Once more, we are talking about automobiles in the early 20th century--not airplanes dealing with this issue currently--which were using unleaded fuel, and for which there is and was a substitute and has been for a long time even after the controversy started heating up. Other countries had since banned the product; THEY had alternatives.

You could have gone with the TEL-product-monopoly angel a long time ago, and you should have. I can tell that since yesterday you've actually done a bit of research. Unfortunately you seem to have completely forgotten what you actually said yesterday, "monopolies, which can really only exist in a government-mandated vacuum" and "when a monopoly abuses it's power, it's replaced by more efficient companies that people would more likely support."

That is of course where I felt like chiming in with an example that proves those contentions categorically false--the one we've been talking about all this time--because, guess what, a monopoly existed outside a govern mandated vacuum. And, who'd have thunk it, they abused their monopoly, and people did not switch to nor other companies. That was my point in response to your "Benevolence towards your customers certainly helps!" naivete, and why my first sentence in response was, "The appearance of benevolence works just as well, and it's cheaper."

But you had to go and spin some bullshit about oh those honset oil tycoons just wanted to protect people's engines!. Fucking laughable.




Again, you're a liar.

I was agreeing with the part about engine protection, and only that part. I actually can't find figures on how much they spent, or any such advertisement you're claiming they produced.

The FAA would disagree with that. TEL was used to prevent knocking, allowing for higher compression engines to be used, making more power. It's quite the same situation in light aircraft, without something to prevent predetonation it's pretty difficult to make 250 hp out the better half of a VW aircooled motor. There is no substitute for its use in aircraft because there was no substitute for its use in cars, phasing it out meant that it wasn't used at all, or that something less effective was used. If you know of any compound which is both as effective and as safe, I'd like to know, and I'm sure the FAA would love to know.

Ethyl didn't really abuse their power in that same sense. And thanks to GM Standard Oil and DuPont trademarking TEL, that did, in fact, keep other companies from producing it. There was no switching to an alternative because no such company existed... though all 3 of them did get out of the business of TEL some years later, Ethyl split off into it's own company. Business for them isn't doing so well, either.

You mean the part where I said just, as in only, to protect engines? Yeah, and you were wrong about that. Again, this was not their defense. They contended their product was safe and that the amount of lead in the atmosphere and people were perfectly natural. Their being no substitute at the time is not the point, that wasn't why they did it--you claiming otherwise is completely without base. They actively mislead the American people by throwing gobs of money into PR. What the fuck is that if not abuse of power?! Then factory workers at TEL plants started going insane and dying, Ethyl claimed it was just a manufacturing issue--no harm to the general public from their product. And again, this is a matter of public record. It is true whether or not you accept it.

I'll say it just one more time; you're a liar. Your BS has been well-eviscerated--I'm done with you.

But that's irrelevant, being responsible has nothing to do with competition between private monopolies and start ups.
The monopolies secure their status through mergers of essential resources and services and keep out all startups.

I repeat, I was saying "Yes" to the fact that it was about their engines, if any other answer is impossible than I must've misspoke or misunderstood the question.

And yes, I'm aware of 17 workers dying due to exposure, but like I said Ethyl took measures to increase safe handling.

But what about that magical alternative you're talking about?

It does! That's just the point I'm getting at!

If you were going to buy a product, same exact thing, same price, two manufacturers, but one dumped a great big pile of industrial waste in your yard, which one would you buy? You'd buy the other one, you'd tell your friends to buy the other one, you'd tell your family to buy the other one, hell, you might even write and picket stores where the dirty one is being sold.

Look, you're oversimplifying the nature of the transactions here. What if you lived in a third-world country where they actually do dump waste at your home?
And protesting it resulted in a visit by paid thugs?

It may be hard to see why the system is screwed up from your perspective, mostly because you, I, and every other first-worlder benefits from being on the profiting end of the economic structure.

Try looking at the lives of people in the 'developing' world, that should provide you a more accurate portrayal of capitalism.

I don't, and I'm not talking about that situation, so that's kind of sidetracking. As it is, it's illegal, and would be one of the few responsibilities that a constitutionally limited government would have.

It's pretty difficult to see free-market capitalism at work in third-world countries, as they're generally the farthest away from it.

The flaw here is that you fail to see how the influence of business corrupts the legal authorities. And free-market capitalism as you've seem to rehearse does not work in reality. The principle "Don't hurt people, don't take their stuff" could only develop in a firstworld country with labour laws, which would shelter them from the actual nature of capitalism.

And the legal authorities in thirdworld countries actually side with foreign businesses to 'promote economic growth'. The whole system sounds good in theory but cannot function in reality.

That's just the thing! If politicians have such an influence over picking winners and losers, there's going to be a strong incentive to sway their decisions. As laid out by the constitution, government has but a few responsibilities, and preventing people from hurting other people and taking their stuff is one of them. But as government has grown larger and inevitably more corrupt, is now actually hurting people and taking their stuff for them!

Legal authorities in tired world countries tend to insure that they're going to benefit from any deals they make, usually without regard to the well-being of their subjects. Free trade is virtually impossible.

It's not the expansion of government it's the retreat of it, since the late 70's governments have adopted more and more 'free-trade' policies.
It has lead to mass inequality and pollution all across the world.

And these third world countries have little to no regulations or labour laws.

We've hardly been getting freer since the 70's, or over any longer period of time. Since the '70s there have been more and more departments created which restrict what people can do.

I can certainly not think of any third-world country where people are free to do what they want and able to engage in free trade legally.

Uh no, the following years saw tons of deregulation in finance and industry.
And labour rights were virtually terminated through "Right-to-Work" acts.

The '70's saw the rise to power of the EPA, which has been one of the biggest burdens to businesses in the history of the US. As far as finance goes, it we've recently seen the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act. But that wasn't the cause of the housing bubble, of course, since it had been building up much longer than that.

And you say "labour rights" were terminated by right-to-work laws, which sounds worrying, but it leaves me wondering what your ideas of "labour rights" are, then? Having to pay a union for the privilege to have a job is hardly fair, that's hardly different from the mafia charging "protection money".

Right to work laws force the workforce to conform to those who are willing to spend more than the necessary amount of time at work. Unions protect the workforce from exploitation and are integral to society. And your connecting them to the mafia is completely incorrect.

Being in a union is more like being in a country, and paying dues is no different from paying taxes. People don't act out as individuals, we exist interconnectedly and each of our decisions in the workforce affect one another. Nothing we do happens in a vacuum.

To claim that the EPA is burdensome is silly, they're practically absent these days thus leading to the US being one of the most biggest polluters. In fact the only reason why Obama is probably passing these E. orders is because China is probably going to give us their No. 1 spot in pollution.

So what you're saying is that RTW laws don't allow an organization, which takes money from it's members, not for protection, but just to get the job in the first place, to pay valued employees more money to get more work done? By the sounds of it, you'd rather have everyone who's in a job, regardless of their skill, be putting out the same amount of labor for the same amount of money, and any incentive to do better or go further wouldn't be allowed at all. Is that right? Because that's a pretty horrible situation in my eyes.

The EPA is by no means absent; just because you don't notice it doesn't mean something isn't happening. In fact, Obama and the EPA are gearing up just in the last few days to take further steps to cut coal power. If you'll check your Federal Register for today, you'll notice they're also busy with the Harbor Oil Superfund Site, Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Nuclear Power Operations, and Managing Emissions From Oil and Natural Gas Production in Indian Country. And that's just what's on the FR for today, not even accounting for changing payroll over. A few years ago, Darrel Issa asked if any businesses were being harmed by onerous regulation, if they could just write him a letter explaining the situation. Needless to say, the response was overwhelming, with the EPA being the biggest culprit out of any Federal agency.

Actually, as I've pointed out before, neither China nor the US hold particularly high positions in in per capita pollution. In fact, we are, for the time being, a little dirtier than they are, but they're catching up fast as technology spreads and as we cut our pollution.

RTW laws were created for the sole purpose of ruining the labour movement. You also seem to have motivations skewed, people don't want to become 'rich' they just want stability and dignity. Unions also keep restrictions on performance to prevent exploitation on the rationale that 'they could do better'.

And things won't just solve themselves, the economy is not a self-regulating system. It requires direct action on it to achieve an objective.

People do want to be rich, more often than not, for both the stability and dignity it provides, but also because it's nice to have things. And maybe someone has a large family and working a little overtime is what's paying the bills. Then, being required to join a union, they're not only not able to work harder and earn more, but they're going to have to pay union dues on top of that. And restrictions on performance? That's ridiculous! If someone's going to do a good job, let them! If they're not going to do a very good job, both they and the company would be well suited with them finding another job and letting someone more well suited fill that position. And if a company knows they won't be able to fire people because of a union, they'll be less likely to hire as many people that they don't know will do a good job. The NYS is a prime example of how bad a union can be; the state cannot fire teachers, so when they're caught abusing kids then they still keep their job and pay, they just have to instead attend a room with no work for them to do.

The economy is self-regulating, that's just it! And it doesn't have to be unified towards a common objective; every individual can have their own objectives and pursue them without trampling on the rights of others. The government, however, cannot move towards any objective without doing so in some manner or another. And unlike every other business, there's no avoiding the government.

You seem to have a lot of presuppositions on what people should achieve in life, it's entirely possible that you were affected by your immediate environment which impressed these expectations onto you. People don't want to be rich and they can't all be it. And if the idea of inequality of wealth doesn't at least put you off ease, I don't know what else to say.

Government programs are extremely efficient and reliable, social security, medicaid, and R&D are prime examples of this. Despite the recent Koch funded propaganda telling us otherwise. (mostly so it can be privatised so the Kochs and their partners can get wealthier off of it)

Also the economy is not self-regulating, we've already seen this in '08. And if it were not for the stimulus the whole global banking system would've collapsed due to lack of confidence.

You seem to have a sophomoric understanding of economics, you'd probably believe the monetarist theory (Milton Friedman's idea of deficits causing inflation) which is total bunk. I recommend staying away from fox news and studying up a bit more. There are many special interest groups trying to perpetuate lies about the economy and global warming for their own personal benefit, and if we followed through on these regulations "oops we made the world a better place!" would be the only we'd say.

I suppose having an idea of what people probably want out of life and being wrong about it is considerably safer than the government being put into the position of giving everyone what it thinks they should want.

Government programs are those that wouldn't exist without people being forcefully deprived of thru money. Social Security has a horrible rate of return and onerous rules for anyone who doesn't want to be yanked out of the workforce at 65, not to mention that, as the life expectancy has gone up beyond that since it's inception, money's been running out. And R&D? The government really hasn't researched much, though through DARPA programs has given wire a bit of taxpayer money away to some programs which aren't actually ridiculous. And Medicaid, if it was so efficient, then why does it have such a high rate of fraud? Well over 10% of money from state and federal contributions was found to be spent fraudulently.

And assuming that, just because someone disagrees worth you means that they only watch FOX news and are paid off by the Koch brothers.. well, it's almost a step above cooties. Maybe not, as it'd also imply that anyone who doesn't agree worth you had no idea about anything and watches the TV for information.

And the crash of 08 was for mainly in part to Freddie Mac, a GSO, requiring lenders to have a certain percentage of home loans be sub-prime, or which are statistically going to lose money. They promised they'd insure the bad loans, but when it came time to do so, they weren't entirely truthful, so investors dumped certificates that would become worthless. And the media did a wonderful job of spinning it to sound like the entire economy was completely destroyed.

Now as far as insulting someone because they don't believe what you believe, and what you believe is without fault, so anyone who believes in anything different is totally wrong, there's two sides to that, and you seem to think that, for every mistake that's ever made in a freer market, that the government should step in and take over, as they're totally efficient and without fault, freedom to choose be damned. As far as Friedman, you'd be right, I am a fan, but that's not quite his theory. If the government increases the money supply faster than the rate of economic growth, then out of that we get inflation. See Zimbabwe, it happened, just like he said it would.

Social security isn't about returns, it's about providing a safety net for society. And Medicare fraud is widely overreported to scandalise the system. And I can tell you firsthand that medicare is a highly efficient system, and libertarians hate it because it represents the success of the public sector.

And calling taxes force is silly.

And not all ideas are equal, some are right while others are wrong. No sense in picking and choosing reality.

Yes government fiscal policy also helped the bubble form, but these policies were passed because of stagnant wages. And they thought that people buying things through credit could replace actual wages. And there was no sensationalism, it was a genuine economic crisis that would've led to worldwide collapse.

Friedman was also dead wrong about the money supply, and Zimbabwe's inflation is due to instability and bad credit from irrational agricultural practices.
If you want a scenario that renders Friedman bunk, look at Britain during the stagflation. The inflation kept increasing until they abandoned monetarism.

Odd, then, that Bloomberg would report that there's $60bn of reported fraud when the Federal government pays a lion share of $270bn into it.

Taxation is force. At least, in the sense that not paying taxes will be met by force, thus the old "taxes and death" quotes. Don't think so, stop paying them and see how well that goes.

Yes, there's no sense in picking and choosing what's real based on your own ideology. Some things are right, others are wrong.

So you're saying that seizing land is what caused inflation? That's pretty silly. Sounds like you might have a little projection going on, assuming that someone else holds a belief that doesn't make sense when there's one that has no relevance itself. Money has value based on scarcity; if everyone became a billionaire, I'm pretty sure it'd be safe to say that nobody would even expect to get a Snickers for a buck anymore. Likewise, if the government prints out enough money to cause monthly inflation to rise into the sextillions, well, it's inflation, the money becomes worthless. And after discontinuing the Zimbabwe dollar and relying on reliable external currencies, there has been little inflation. Don't believe me, same thing happened in the Weimar-controlled postwar German economy when the government started printing money to fund itself and pay its debts. And that also seems to ignore the fact that Ethiopia, who wasn't printing money to fund wars, has much worse farming practices, and has a much lower inflation rate.

Taxes SHOULD be forced, if you don't like it live in the woods. And if you want to remain true to such anti-social concepts, live bare-naked without heat or electricity. Taxes are essential for living in a society, like I said before you don't exist in a vacuum and your taxes go to building a societal infrastructure.

Currency does not function that way, currency has never been based on scarcity since the days of the gold standard. And Zimbabwe does not have inflation JUST because of land seizures, it's because the way the farms were handled after the seizure. You see the head of Zimbabwe was a authoritarian pseudo-marxist, and he took the land holdings from white colonialists and redistributed them to the natives who worked on them previously. The problem was that these people were not experienced in farming and harvests became very poor, this was especially bad because the country's economy was based primarily on agriculture. And as a result the economy tanked and investor confidence dropped. The following years were marked with high levels of corruption and insecure finance which caused the currency to drop in value tremendously. And in the Weimar republic, there were tremendous fines levied against them as reparations for ww1 and these fines created uncertainty in the their economy. The money printed was deemed useless mostly because of the seizure of German industries by France in the 1920's, which led to economic uncertainty thus leading to devaluation. And keep in mind how important it was to drop the gold standard for the economy.

Income taxes are a fairly recent occurrence in the US, with only a few instances of a small tax being passed for a small number of people. The first working income tax was that after congress passed the 16th amendment and gave itself the power to tax both income and property, both of which are disproportionately hard on the poor. Just look at the price to rent, the last place I rented at was $900 a month for rent, but taxes were $3,000, and the $650 was taxed again!

The prices in hyperinflation countries go up as the money supply goes up. There's never been an example to the contrary. The reason that those situations led to hyperinflation was because, in order to get out of them, the government tried to print money, creating a massive supply of money. Same reason gold, and not lead, was used to back currency. Lead is far too common. By printing as much money as they did and using it to pay for things they couldn't otherwise afford, they created the problem of everyone having quite a bit more money, but that didn't increase the amount of wealth the inflated currency had to be used to trade against, which resulted in the cost of goods rising dramatically as people had more money to spend, but still contended to acquire the same amount of goods. The French seized German industry because the Germans were printing money and using it to pay debts, which greatly devalued the money, so France saw to get their reparations in the form of goods, since the Mark had become so common as to be near worthless.

And, to someone that thinks there's no consequence to printing massive amounts of money, dropping the gold standard would seem like a good idea. Instead, we've seen a spike in inflation, which has encouraged debt as the dollar loses it's value and both people and the government would "Gladly pay tomorrow for a cheeseburger today" when the value of the goods today is going to be charged at the inflated monetary value of tomorrow.

I'm not doubting that taxes are harder on the poor these days, but that's because of a change in economic policy beginning in the 70's. Taxes are still essential for a society, if you looked at how Scandinavian countries ran you'd understand how that's so.

No, correlation does not equal causation. The money supply and inflation were not proportional in all of the countries examined. The problem with monetarism is that it was a feverish attempt to explain the phenomenon of Stagflation when no other theories could. But in the years following its adoption it's been found that it was completely false. Even the ultra-rightwing Margaret Thatcher realized this when she was in office. That why she began to distance herself from Friedman.

Where's the proof of this? It seems like equating public debt with personal debt, which are entirely different things...

Money works completely different today than it did in the days of Hayek. The ways we analyzed the economy with the gold standard no longer work today, that's why the Austrian School is totally irrelevant today.

Taxes are essential to fund a government. I'm not saying we should abolish them. Just that they're too high, and as a result of that, or cause, or both, we have too much government that has to find something for itself to do in order to spend enough.

Correlation doesn't equal causation, that's what I was saying. Yes, hyperinflationary countries often have other issues, but that's generally what causes them to try and print money to get out of it. It's the act of printing money that makes it worthless and common; both of those are marked by people bringing in stacks of billions of their currency to buy a loaf of bread or other such simple goods. And particularly in Zimbabwe, with the high rate of inflation, the money people would earn to buy themselves the necessities soon after would hardly be worth a fraction of what it was when they earned it.

And Thatcher did believe in a lot of good things, but her shortcoming was that it was still necessary to have a large government to keep an overwatch on everything. That won't really work.

The US has some of the lowest taxes in the industrialised world. I can't see how it's too high.

But the US won't experience this inflation unless something very drastic comes about, like a civil war or huge natural disaster. It may seem like printing money is the problem, but it's not.

Thatcher was hardly... effective. In her early years of administration she attempted to push austerity and monetarist policies, this lead to the wholesale collapse of British industry. Not to mention the attacks on labour rights.

The US Federal Tax isn't too far behind, but then there's State taxes and local taxes, as well. Just because other countries have higher taxes (to pay for healthcare programs, actually, that many in the US still have to pay for themselves... and then pay tax on) doesn't mean that we have to match them.

Printing money is the problem, but it's always been in response to "something drastic". There's been an increase in printing after 2008, and we've seen inflation because of it, but it's not printing on the same scale. And it's not all, or always, actual printing. Much of the money created has never actually existed.

And as far as the downturn in the 70's, Britain was having quite a bit of trouble powering businesses and industry as a result of their "three-day week", which was caused by a lack of coal mining, thanks to the miners unions and your beloved labour movement. Labour party took more seats, strikes were rampant, and that certainly didn't help getting back into GDP growth at all. Then when Thatcher took office, despite hitting record highs as inefficient factories were closed, unemployment dropped dramatically soon after. The "attack on labour rights" was to prevent public sector employees providing crucial services from striking.

'Labour' stuck a knife in the back of the workers by stagnating wages and refusing to devalue the pound. That's actually what caused the stagflation to begin with. And these industries could've been turned around, and the three-day week was short-sighted.

Printing Fiat currency does not cause inflation, case-closed.

I'm not saying the simple act of a currency being printed is what causes inflation, but rather that it's an increase in the money supply that doesn't coincide with the growth of GDP. That does cause inflation, ask any economist.

Yeah, but then it's another thing for monetarists to claim that the EU or US could go into hyperinflation with the current policies.

Hyperinflation, probably not yet, but we are seeing inflation in the supply of money. Hyperinflation would require quite an increase in the rate that money is printed, or a decrease in velocity.

Really? What's the evidence then?
Until then I seriously doubt it.

I took about eight seconds: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntha.....use-inflation/

When there's more money created than there are goods and services available, there's inflation. When there's less, there's deflation. When the rate of increase in the supply of money matches the rate of growth of the supply of wealth, money will retain it's value.

This article began with a false proposition and ran with it. The deficit isn't causing the enormous ramifications like claimed and this seemed alarmist in nature.

I don't even take austerity proposals seriously anymore. They're just a dishonest way of disarming the political power of the working classes.

Either you or I read the wrong article because not only does he not mention debt, he says that that other things aren't directly a factor.

And austerity proposals? You mean like a slight reduction in the rate of increase, or an actual cut to government spending that sticks?

Deficeits then.


By austerity I mean any senseless cut into social spending that harms the public good.

Yeah. Right before he says it's not true. Third sentence in, it's not hidden.

Also relevant is that increasing the flow of money, through social programs, and not having an increase in the production of goods, all that's going to do is raise the price of goods. Paying people who aren't working makes it that much more expensive to pay people who aren't working.

The problem is that for every dollar spent on social programs, a dollar of wealth is taken out of the economy. And the money spent on social programs isn't done so in a particularly efficient manner at all, either. Not to mention that there's an incentive to staying poor enough to receive benefits; as soon as you earn enough, your benefits are cut off, and you'll actually be earning less by doing more work.

Look, it doesn't seem like I'm breaking any ground here. All I can tell you is stay away from libertarian influences.
They have a very faulty understanding of what freedom is, they only want rights that allow people 'to do' but never consider that people need agency and ability for rights to work. Neither of these things can be found in capitalism.

I'd like that everyone is given what they need as much as the next guy, but government can't do that without first taking it away from someone else, and since they are able to make it compulsory there's never much of a choice in the matter. Private charities cans do that.

As far as a right to work, libertarian philosophy provides more opportunity for people to do the work they'd want to do, bit doesn't make any particular vocation compulsory, as socialist and communist regimes have in the past.

What's wrong with that? Some people make far more than they need anyways.
And to think that private charities can fill the role of public welfare is... naively cute.

What's wrong with it? If I thought you made more than you needed and decided to take part of it, you'd probably have a problem with that. Even I'd you didn't, taking the top off of what people "need" really reduces the incentive to do the work necessary to earn all the extras in life. And at that point when people don't want to do more work than what's needed to get themselves what they need, there's going to be pretty major shortages in everything.

And do you really need that computer you're on?

Private charities had been doing a pretty good job, many are still picking up government's slack. And they do so at a much lower cost, and on donations rather than compulsory collections.

Oh great the incentives argument... do you really see it in your life to become a millionaire? Ever wondered what it would be like to be one of the super-rich? Well don't, you might think about what it's like to be them, but they would never give a damn to consider what it's like to be you.
This class of people shouldn't be given special privileges to 'earn' more money than they could possibly spend in their lifetime, and then corrupt the political process with it.

Genetic fallacies... that is all.

No, a private charity cannot gather the resources or manpower necessary to match the success of government programs. And most of them come with strings attached, like religious indoctrination. It's just wishful thinking for someone to expect the super-rich to pay their fair share willingly, instead you need to force them and force is not bad despite what you may believe.

Genetic fallacy? Are you suggesting that the only reason I don't like your ideas is because I didn't have them?

While I don't think there's a great likelihood I'll become a millionaire, it'd be nice to have that option. Freer markets have greater economic mobility than do controlled markets. And it's rather silly to think that, just because someone is rich, that they're going to put all their money in a silo so the peons can't get to it; many are very charitable, while others still have their own non-profit foundations for charity.

And without extortion, private charities don't bring in as much money, but they tend to make a better use of it. Rather than offering handouts, they tend to offer a path to being successful. Or they dump a bunch of money into schools, colleges, hospitals, and PBS.

No, it means attacking a person/thing rather than the concepts they provide.

Why? What's the point of having so much money for an unsustainable lifestyle? And the rich don't really care about us plebs, they blame us for our own condition rather than the system they get fat on. Sure they might have a foundation, big woop. It won't have the same effect as a government program and it only treats the symptoms of social ills not the problems. 'Being successful' is a myth, it's the carrot tied at the end of the stick. If people gave up on trying to the next Bill Gates and accept life as it really is, then people wouldn't try to be so greedy.

TAXES ARE NOT EXTORTION.

That's not what that is, and not what I was doing in the first place. You said that the government should be responsible to for giving people what they need, but that begs the quotation of who gets to decide what constitutes a need.

And what's the point? They earned it. They built a business, pot their blood, sweat, tears into it. Lived on ramen. Pulled all-nighters. Answered phones. All that work, the best years of their life, they built a productive business, created thousands of productive jobs, spurred innovation, solved problems, donated hundreds of millions to charity each year, all so the government can take it? I doubt it. If they knew that, successful or not, they'd lose everything either way, I'm sure we'd have little to no entrepreneurship at all.

And how are taxes not extortion? You pay them, or else. There's no getting away from it.

Yeah they earned it, as in they inherited it.

The reality is that you don't know what capitalism is.

Like aforementioned Bill Gates? He built it. True, some people inherit things, but whats wrong with that?

And I don't know what capitalism is? Here just a moment ago you were the one accusing me of an ad hominem attack. But please do explain.

Yeah, and being from a well-off family that could fund his education and endeavors didn't hurt him much either.

You seem to have this romantic view of how it 'should' work. I can assure you that capitalism working just as it should, unfortunately.

Is true that he wasn't too bad of growing up, but it's not like he was just handed his success. There's plenty of billionaires that started out with little or nothing, though.

Yes, while we're in a mixed-market economy, it is largely capital-based. While it might be primarily capitalist, it's certainly far from the free, or even freer-market capitalism I've advocated in favor of. That's like assuming that, just because you're a socialist, that your ultimate goal is Nazism.

Nazism? Now how is that even related?

The Nazis were the "National Socialism" party. It's not that it's closely related, but rather that it's barely related at all. It makes as much sense for you to say that I'm wrong because the crooked, crony capitalism we have now isn't working as it does for me to call you a Nazi.

I wouldn't even take out all market incentive. Wtf do these people think is driving renewable energy? They're enormous markets.

What i WOULD do is take money out of politics, the money incentive in re election funding is really the big problem here.

Lol, that's just about what I was getting at! Not so much taking money out of it, but limiting politicians enough that there's no profit to be made in paying them off.

That, we can all get behind.


But we won't. Because most of us are too busy stuffing our faces at KFC with our AC going full blast before going home to our Electric Palaces full of vice and distraction to care enough to do it.




(Disclaimer: While I have not yet fired up my AC much this year, I do like KFC and have enough electronic entertainment en mi casa to qualify...but I do vote, if these things ever came up on the damn ballot. Too lazy to go into politics to do it myself; besides, a furry could never hold elected office...lol)

I hate A/C and fried chicken. And politicians aren't likely going to give up the power they've been giving themselves.

You're right, it is inevitable, the climate changes on its own, it's just been doing so at a much much more extreme rate and degree with our "help".

Yes and if we mitigate enough we can coast through this. We have the technological means to do so much, it's just the way we work that holds us back.

Well there actually isn't any mechanism right now that would account for any of this warming other than us. The sun has been cooling for awhile after a short warming trend and i don't know of any continent sized volcanic eruptions or meteors that hit but then again i haven't really been paying attention lol.

The Earth has always had a sort of pulse with its climate, that's been proven by data retrieved from ice cores, this time is different not because of the fact that the climate is changing, it's the severity and speed at which it's doing it. normally to get where it is from where it was before the industrial revolution would have taken thousands, if not tens-of-thousands of years, whereas with our influnce, it's happened in a matter of decades...

the greenhouse effect has been around since the birth of the planet, we've just VERY severely increased the rate and severity at which it's happening.

Yeah but i'm saying that we have a very profound understanding of what drove climatic shifts in the past and we have used that understanding to count out natural sources.

I'm not saying the greenhouse effect didn't exist, of course it did. I'm saying that if the natural equilibrium was what was driving climate now we'de have been experiencing a very mild cooling for the last 30 years in the overall trend.

not to mention, thousands of years where coral reefs could slowly shift their depths to adjust for changing temperatures in the ocean and adjust. Sudden change kills reefs. Dead reefs mean less fish. Cascade that up the food chain, and all I can say is, "Owie..."