@georgeob1,
You just can't do it without straw man fallacies, can you O'George. Take whatever you want--i am content with the idea that people in the aggregate would make politicians accountable, and call for the legislation necessary to keep a tight rein on the greedy and unscrupulous. That's what we've had so far, and it seems to have worked, albeit not nearly often enough. People get lazy-they need to get vigilant again.
@edgarblythe,
Capitalism works both ways for our environment; it's up to the business and government to control pollution. We just installed solar panels on our home, not so much to save money - which will be minimal, but to save the environment. Without companies offering solar energy, we will continue to use coal and fossil fuels to create energy.
I'm sure our climate is changing just as it has changed in the past. The degree to which is changing is in question and, as Setanta has pointed out so is the cause. Both are crucial questions. If humanity is not a significant contributor to the change than changing our behaviors is not likely to have a significant effect on it's course.
I still return to the point that even if humanity is the cause and humanity is capable or mitigating the degree of change, it will require most of humanity to change its ways to do so, and at this time there is no reason to believe that 3 of the top 4 nations responsible for CO2 emissions have any intention of pitching in.
The answer to this dilemma for some folks seems to be for those nations who are willing, to beggar themselves not only by tackling the problem alone, but in compensating (bribing) the nations that are otherwise refusing to participate. If I thought we were on the verge of an unprecedented catastrophe which threatened mankind's existence I could see the reasoning behind paying people to do what they should be willing to do on their own so that we don't end up dead, because of their greed or stupidity, along with them. But I don't.
As it is now, if one truly believes we are in for very rough times ahead the best use for our money is to begin adaptation measures right now. However, as previously noted this area gets the tiniest piece of our governmental spending pie.
If we face a catastrophic future due to Climate Change we can only blame "greedy capitalists" so much. Whatever one thinks the capitalist swine would or would not have done with the information, it's not as if they have been aware of it for the last hundred years, and unless they know that all the skeptics are blatantly lying because they paid them to, it's not terribly unreasonable for them to choose to believe the skeptics because it serves their interests. Comic book cliches like "With great power comes great responsibility" not-with-standing, filthy rich people do not have any greater moral obligation than poor people. Clearly the impact of some of their decisions is greater in scope than it is for poor people, but to the extent that pollution is an immoral act (and I think it is) it is no less moral to dump chemicals from a factory into a river than it is for someone to dump their trash in the woods. The only difference is the scope of the immoral act, not the degree of immorality.
We haven't really seen great masses of people lining up to reduce their personal carbon footprints, and indeed we have seen some of the Climate Change Crusaders like Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio stomping around planet earth leaving very large carbon footprints. Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people showed up in NYC to march for what I don't know, but it had to do with Climate Change. Some came from as far west as California, and some came as far east as Europe. When asked about whether they thought the carbon emissions needed to travel to NYC was worth a day walking the streets holding a sign many derided the inquisitor for asking "stupid questions" for obviously not "getting the point", and, in the case of RFK Jr, for being a lip-spittal hack for the Koch brothers.
To deny that there is strong left-wing undercurrent to the Climate Change "movement" is to deny reality.The assumption that all these people who marched down NYC streets are simply concerned for all of humanity and Mother Earth is naive or disingenuous. For many, admittedly not all, Climate Change offers a crisis that can't be let to go to waste. It is an opportunity to redistribute wealth on a global scale. It is an opportunity to degrade if not destroy long existing economic power blocs, and it is an opportunity to develop close ties with the economic power blocs of a possible future.
I don't consider wealthy capitalists, as a class, in this country to be noble, humanitarian citizens, but neither do I buy that government leaders, the middle class or the working poor are either. People, for the most part, operate out of self-interest and every now and again will operate out of altruism. This applies to government leaders, the middle class, the working poor and wealthy capitalists.
If everyone in this country except the wealthy capitalists wanted to drastically reduce carbon emissions we would, although the effort might be canned the minute the average Joe and Jane was asked to do more than turn off lights they are not using and getting by with a crossover SUV rather than some hulking hog.
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
You just can't do it without straw man fallacies, can you O'George. Take whatever you want--i am content with the idea that people in the aggregate would make politicians accountable, and call for the legislation necessary to keep a tight rein on the greedy and unscrupulous. That's what we've had so far, and it seems to have worked, albeit not nearly often enough. People get lazy-they need to get vigilant again.
I have indulged in no such fallacies at all. You however are being strangely unrealistic.
So far the fastest emerging producers of atmospheric CO2, China and India, have indicated zero interest in curtailing their industrial development in the interest of limiting climate change or whatever is worrying you in this area. Moreover, I see nothing in any actions ongoing or even available to us that might persuade them to take the actions we desire of everyone. The simple fact here is that even if we cripple our economic activity by mandating the most ambitious clean energy proposals out there, it will have no significant effect on the metrics so far put forward by climate change zealots needed to avoid the catastrophes they forecast if China and India continue to opt out as they persistently do.
The motivations of these countries are fairly clear and understandable, and I see no indication they are likely to make the indicated changes and, as a result forego the accelerated development they are so assiduously pursuing. In these circumstances the choices for us are to either waste our current economic superiority, and all the national power that entails, in a fruitless effort to stop a fast moving train, or to continue and take our chances on finding acceptable and effective technological progress that can reduce the economic cost of GHG reduction to levels that might attract these emerging giants.
I hope Cicerone's new solar cells make him feel better. I doubt that many folks in China (outside of heavily polluted Beijing) or India will make similar choices.
@georgeob1,
China is already a basket case of pollution; one third of all their rivers are already polluted, and they're continuing with their growth policies.
From the NYT.
Quote:BEIJING — Southern Chinese on average have lived at least five years longer than their northern counterparts in recent decades because of the destructive health effects of pollution from the widespread use of coal in the north, according to a study released Monday by a prominent American science journal.
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Pollution from widespread coal use in northern China has led to an average decrease in life span, research shows.
The study, which appears in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by an American, an Israeli and two Chinese scholars and was based on analyses of health and pollution data collected by official Chinese sources from 1981 to 2001.
The results provide a new assessment of the enormous cost of China’s environmental degradation, which in the north is partly a result of the emissions of deadly pollutants from coal-driven energy generation. The researchers project that the 500 million Chinese who live north of the Huai River will lose 2.5 billion years of life expectancy because of outdoor air pollution.
“It highlights that in developing countries there’s a trade-off in increasing incomes today and protecting public health and environmental quality,” said the American member of the research team, Michael Greenstone, a professor of environmental economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “And it highlights the fact that the public health costs are larger than we had thought.”
Mr. Greenstone said in a telephone interview that another surprising result of the study was that the higher mortality rates were found across all age groups.
Dollars vs years of life; what a trade off.
@cicerone imposter,
I agree, and, at least in China's case some corrective actions are being taken in major urban areas of the North. However, I se no indication that they are willing to make a mandated transition to alternate energy sources that will materially slow down their development. They are racing against time to assimilate the remaining 400 million or so rural Chinese into the modern economy and lifestyle to stave off the attendant economic and political pressures that might otherwise destabilize the regime.
The details in India are different, but the results are the same. Neither country is willing to make the transition to still inefficient and expensive alternate energy sources that would inexorably and seriously impede their economic progress.
Until they make this choice, or more likely until attractive low cost alternate technologies become available, neither country will change course, and until that happens, what we do or don't do won't make much difference.
@georgeob1,
Except for doing what we can to mitigate any possible disaster. We can't make China, India and Russia do anything, but if we really believe the US will be significantly affected by climate change we can begin to implement adaptation measures.
It's ironic that so many folks who believe we shouldn't be sticking our nose in the business of other countries around the world insist on our government pursuing this very expensive, quixotic attempt to get them to change something which is fundamental to their development and the short and long term welfare of their people.
@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:I take it you would like to see someone "in charge" of all this so that we wouldn't "pollute the air"; "Pollute the water" or "sell toxic, useless or dangerous products".
This is your straw man fallacy, O'George. You never provide any evidence for your claims, and in this case you cannot, because i have not called for any particular person to be in charge and to take action. That's why i wrote you can take what you like. You love to cast me as some sort of authoritarian socialist, which is wonderful for your polemical, right-wing bromides, but which does not in fact have any basis in anything i've written.
As for China,
et al, there is nothing i can do about them, nor is there anything the pwople of the United States can do about that situation. That is not sufficient reason to do nothing here.
@Setanta,
I really don't love or want to cast you as an authoritarian - I think much better of you than that. However when you fault capitalism because no one in it is "in charge" of this or that, I find myself with no alternatives. I agree that in a free market no single agent is 'in charge " of most things, and that is, in my view, one of its chief virtues. However when you fault it for precisely that, I am left with no choice but than to suppose you would like to see some actor "in charge" of it.
@georgeob1,
Are you being willfully obtuse? I've already stated that i consider control of capital and it's corporate activities by the people through their elected representatives iw what i consider the best answer. That's why we have and SEC, an FTC, an FDA. I find it rather amusing that capitalist piss and moan about how regulation prevents them from making profits, byet they have tens of millions of dollars at least to spend on lobbyists and print and broadcast propaganda.
No O"George, you could hae easily made a different assumption,
based on what i had already posted.
I do not deny evolution but I simply consider it as a fallacy.
It failed since its own beginning, it was called "evolution" because the inventors of this theory thought that today's species come from inferior, worst and simpler species.
After it was found that the thoughts of the inventors of this theory were dead wrong, the new evolutionists have been inventing new ways to propagate the fallacy... and as it's suppose to be, what it starts bad will continue being bad regardless of what...
To me, this theory is even racist, when implies that the origin of humans is in Africa, because the idea is to portrait people of Africa as former apes that developed slower than others that migrated to other lands.
When evolutionists show the amount of human bones collected to back up their theory, it is laughable that they themselves believe on their stories based in a quantity of bones that fit all together in the trunk of my car, right besides the cooler full of beer.. lol
I will challenge to any evolutionist with the following:
I stated in 1999, before the releasing of the human genome-map, that macro-organisms are the association of micro-organisms, and that the process was never ever evolution but a method of association similar to planetesimals associating themselves (could be by any cause) to form planets.
Having that the theory of evolution implies changes in species, not so their association, I must ask to any evolutionist to stick with the doctrines of his theory and explain how in the world a micro-organism became a macro-organism.
Remember that the idea of association of micro-organisms is mine, and I do not approve its use for to be include in the theory of evolution.
So, answer and explain.
(Your negative to answer my question based solely in the doctrines of changes in species will automatically make you a denier of evolution).
@carloslebaron,
of course evolution is a big joke and hoax.
It was CREATED on purpose by the "Lunar Society"
So, yes it is flawed from the beginning and everything that is build on something that is flawd, must be flawed too!
@Quehoniaomath,
Don't forget the shape shifting lizards.
People deny evolution like they deny intellectual people.
/Thread
@izzythepush,
Quote:Don't forget the shape shifting lizards
What a strange and extremely stupid reply this is.
Having some problems?