Global Warming Hoax Confirmed

[Tero]

If global warming is man accelerated, there is little we can do in a short term. However, rather than carbon tax, there will be lots to invest in to deal with the change. Crops, cities, housing.

[macdoc]

IF...get over it....it IS.
Yes there is lots we can do in the short term and is being done in the short term.
A carbon tax is a fine method getting people and industries to move to low carbon solutions some of which are now getting below the cost of the likes of coal even without subsidies....and coal industries ARE subsidized.

Solar for India and Italy is now underneath coal for cost for power. The cost of the panels have plummeted and are still heading down.
Germany is getting 22% of it's power from renewables.
Sweden is well on it's way to it's goal of carbon neutral by 2050 and has led the world on that for the last few years.

People, corporations, cities and sub-national regions are simply ignoring waffling national leadership and getting on with what is needed to move towards a more sustainable energy structure.

Indeed there are huge opportunities moving away from the $7 trillion fossil industry to a variety of sustainable sources. That's a big chunk of change - the shift is already funded.

China is going to capitalize on green tech and sell solutions to the rest of the world....the Danes already do.

Bur some seem to think catering to the fossil fool companies is a smart move.....
It's not. Coal plants are being targetted and good riddance.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The AGW denialists are dug into the "nothing much we can do, so why bother doing anything" position. That's unsurprisingly stupid.

[pErvinalia]

but the evidence is shit.

snort

winter average temps in Canada are up 3.2 C in 65 years....
...
the evidence is clearly in .....AGW deniers are full of shit. Period. Any more dumb claims you'd like demolished M&M??
or you continue to swallow Faux news koolaid

This clearly falls under the "adapt or die" rubric.

Doesn't really matter why temps are going up, it's long past time to quit trying to change something that's going to be with us for AT LEAST the next 150 years and spend out energy capital on adapting to the inevitable change FIRST, then worry about how long it's going to go on or how hot it's going to get.

If you really believe in AGW (or just "GW" of whatever cause) then the only rational thing to do is to advocate for massive social change to ADAPT TO HIGHER TEMPERATURES rather than asinine Luddite anti-CO2/carbon environmental whackoism. We NEED all that energy, every single bit of it that we can possibly extract and use in the next 100 years to undertake the massive project of moving cities and populations out of the drowning zones of the world and adapting agriculture to the new, inevitable conditions.

All that we do by banning "fracking" and cutting off production of oil, gas and coal is to guarantee that we won't have the technology or industrial capacity to do what must be done to move infrastructure and vulnerable populations.

Idiots.

Actually, you are the idiot. As has been explained a million times before to you it's about more than just humans and infrastructure.

You really aren't a liberatarian (not that that needs to be said, given anarcho-capitalism is about as far from true libertarianism as you could get). You are an acolyte of the powerful and work to maintain the power status quo.

[Tero]

I've read all the newspaper articles and websites. Alternative energies and carbon taxes will do very little by 2050. We need to get on with treating the symptoms of warming.

[pErvinalia]

Of course a carbon tax would do something, but we need to implement a proper one. The one we have in Australia is weak as piss. The point of a tax to change behaviour is that it has to be strong enough to change behaviour. It is to a degree here, but clearly not enough.

[Tero]

.There have been six cooling periods in the last 30 years of warming. See it? happy now, deniers?


I call those blue bars weather.

gif for gif collectors
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphic ... 12_500.gif

[macdoc]

Well there was a very good case study of a large C02 emmitter changing his tune dramatically here in Australia once he understood how moving to a lower carbon footprint would benefit him and the carbon tax proceeds were the vehicle for that change.

Carbon taxes correctly target those that emit.
They act as a disincentive for carbon based fuel use.
They provide a funding source to move to help companies low carbon and help the transition.
They provide a funding for the externality damage use of carbon fuels engender

In the latter case, Ontario and New York sued Ohio due to increased health care costs.
To the tune of $4 billion increased costs in Ontario alone which is now coal free but downwind of Ohio's 52 coal producing dirty power plants.

So those that use the product pay for the damages proportionally.

For some limited industries cap and trade can ease the transition but it's way open to abuse as we've seen in Europe and elsewhere.

A carbon tax can be made revenue neutral to lower income families as is done in Australia by providing a degree or rebates.
But if they want to run their 200 HP sport fishing boats....they get dinged....so the sailboats do better as it should be.

That Australia and others still subsidize fossil fuel to the tune of billions of dollars just shows how corrupt the political system remains.

Norway and Sweden have had $50 per barrel carbon taxes since the 90s and are not exactly hurting.
Yes it costs big time to run a car.
Copehagen it's not only the carbon tax on fuel but on fossil fuel vehicles.
180% of the purchase price if you buy fossil fuel car.

So Copenhagen is dominated by bicycles.

This transition will happen regardless....doing it in a rational manner to transition by way of carbon taxes as a transfer mechanism and recoup of unaccounted externalities in the cost of fossil use is one way that works. It's not the only mechanism.

It's also becoming good optics....

Environment

We know that we can positively influence the retail supply chain to become more sustainable and reduce our carbon footprint. In 2007 we set ourselves targets and goals that we as a company wanted to achieve by 2015. We are well on our way to achieving these goals.
Woolworths’ Sustainability Strategy 2007-2015 has set a range of targets and commitments for the business to improve its sustainability and reduce its impact on the environment. The strategy covers the following key areas:

Carbon emissions and climate change
Water
Packaging
Waste and recycling

http://www.woolworthslimited.com.au/pag ... vironment/

[Tero]

I think consumers are a problem. They did not stop buying iPods or running shoes no matter how cruel the work conditions. Consumers are reluctant to stop spending. Japanese travel, ad there is nothing else to spend money on. Thus economical, defective, Boeing planes were bought.

[macdoc]

Why should they. There is no reason to stop those sorts of activity and still move towards a carbon neutral framework. You think Swedes stop travelling?
Boeings Dreamliner is and will be a standard for the next gen planes just like the 747 before it....it gets slightly better gas mileage per person than a Prius with four passengers and carbon offsets are readily available. It has some teething pains like every other airliner before it.

You are buying into this shiver in the dark crap the right wingdings dish out.

An industrial society can move to carbon neutral over time - mostly with existing technology - fully sustainable will take longer as the full life cycle of products needs to be taken into account.

Think about the millions of tons of waste avoided as entertainment has moved on to the web and into homes.
If you saw Copenhagen you'd understand what a properly planned city can be like that is NOT car dominated.
Midtown Dublin the same way and many others are moving that direction.
A Pedcab in Dublin is a streamlined efficient pedal powered vehicle getting paying customers around the city quickly and keeping university students fit and paid.

There are thousands of these initiatives at every level of society

[Seth]

And thus it is in a Sethocentric world.

So don't adapt, and go ahead and die, nobody will notice.

"And devil take the hindmost", as usual.

Welcome to evolution, gene sack.

[Seth]

but the evidence is shit.

snort

winter average temps in Canada are up 3.2 C in 65 years....
...
the evidence is clearly in .....AGW deniers are full of shit. Period. Any more dumb claims you'd like demolished M&M??
or you continue to swallow Faux news koolaid

This clearly falls under the "adapt or die" rubric.

Doesn't really matter why temps are going up, it's long past time to quit trying to change something that's going to be with us for AT LEAST the next 150 years and spend out energy capital on adapting to the inevitable change FIRST, then worry about how long it's going to go on or how hot it's going to get.

If you really believe in AGW (or just "GW" of whatever cause) then the only rational thing to do is to advocate for massive social change to ADAPT TO HIGHER TEMPERATURES rather than asinine Luddite anti-CO2/carbon environmental whackoism. We NEED all that energy, every single bit of it that we can possibly extract and use in the next 100 years to undertake the massive project of moving cities and populations out of the drowning zones of the world and adapting agriculture to the new, inevitable conditions.

All that we do by banning "fracking" and cutting off production of oil, gas and coal is to guarantee that we won't have the technology or industrial capacity to do what must be done to move infrastructure and vulnerable populations.

Idiots.

Actually, you are the idiot.

Naughty boy, mama spank.

As has been explained a million times before to you it's about more than just humans and infrastructure.

Is it? I don't think so. Every other living organism on the planet just adapts or dies, why should we be any different? I'm fine if the ski industry goes bankrupt. I'm fine if Bangladesh becomes uninhabitable, there's plenty of other places for people to live. I'm fine if Miami is 20 feet underwater. If people want to play there, they can build polders and sea-walls like the Netherlands. I'm fine if creatures and plants go extinct, others will emerge or flourish to replace them.

You really aren't a liberatarian (not that that needs to be said, given anarcho-capitalism is about as far from true libertarianism as you could get). You are an acolyte of the powerful and work to maintain the power status quo.

Actually I'm something of a governmental Luddite. I'd like to see us devolve government in the US (not to mention the world) back to its size and functions circa 1900.

[Seth]

Of course a carbon tax would do something, but we need to implement a proper one. The one we have in Australia is weak as piss. The point of a tax to change behaviour is that it has to be strong enough to change behaviour. It is to a degree here, but clearly not enough.

Changing behavior in the short term does nothing to deal with the oncoming and inevitable long-term issues, it just wastes time, money and effort on useless social engineering attempts.

Tax stuff too much and people will just unelect you and elect someone who will tax less. And only a vibrant and growing economy can possibly fund the infrastructure revisions that are required to deal with things like sea-level rises and desertification of some areas (and the inevitable un-desertification of others). It's a century or more long plan that's needed and work has to begin right away if humans are going to adapt. Piddling around with carbon-busting behavioral modification is only going to make things worse by devolving the economy and drying up both the money and the interest in actually doing something that will make life possible/easier when the inevitable happens.

The first priority is habitation policy changes by governments in areas which will be affected by sea-level rise and flooding. This means enacting a regulatory framework that FORBIDS the building of new permanent structures in ANY flood plain area, combined with policies that lay ALL risk for damage from flooding on the individual who chooses to reside in a flood plain. No insurance will be allowed, and no reconstruction of damaged or destroyed buildings (commercial or private) will be permitted. Current "grandfathered" uses may remain as constructed, but no expansion, rebuilding or replacement will be allowed if the structure is damaged or destroyed for any reason.

Everybody knows where these floodplain risks are, at least in the US. FEMA in fact carefully maps such threats and REQUIRES homeowners using federally-insured mortgages (99 percent of all mortgages) to buy flood insurance. This stupid plan compensates stupid people for building houses in stupid places and then pays them to replace them, two, three or four times, when floods come along and damage them. It's incredibly stupid.

Bangladesh? Well, sorry, but anyone living or working in the immersion zone for maximum possible sea-level is on their own. They have a hundred or more years to move somewhere else and use the floodplain for agriculture till it's submerged.

Coastal cities and communities like New Orleans (I'd blow up the levees and inundate the city permanently, after evacuating it), or the Jersey Shore and Outer Banks destroyed by the recent "superstorm" Sandy? Sorry, move somewhere else, your property zoning has just been changed to "in a floodplain, no permanent structures" zone.

New York City? Better get busy building polders and sea-walls, you've only got a hundred years to complete the project...or move the city up 20 meters. Think Venice.

Adapt or die.

[Seth]

Why should they. There is no reason to stop those sorts of activity and still move towards a carbon neutral framework. You think Swedes stop travelling?
Boeings Dreamliner is and will be a standard for the next gen planes just like the 747 before it....it gets slightly better gas mileage per person than a Prius with four passengers and carbon offsets are readily available. It has some teething pains like every other airliner before it.

Yup. Technology is a wonderful thing. Technology doesn't advance in a Luddite energy-starved economy.

You are buying into this shiver in the dark crap the right wingdings dish out.

Actually it's the left-wing Luddites who are driving it. Take the "fracking" hysteria as an example. The US has successfully, and quite unintentionally, reduced our carbon emissions more than any other nation on earth, some 20 percent, simply by exploiting plentiful and cheap natural gas. But extracting this abundant energy source requires fracturing of the gas-bearing substrates THOUSANDS of feet below the surface. Yet despite one one single verifiable instance of frack-fluid contamination of a water table (in Wyoming) there is mass hysteria being generated by idiot Luddites who don't know what the fuck they are talking about, so fracking is under attack all over the US, and is even banned in New York state, even though not a single instance of contamination has ever been found there.

As far as I'm concerned, New York state should be cut off from US natural gas supplies entirely, as should ANY community, city or state that objects to or bans gas drilling and fracking. You want to bitch about how the gas you depend on gets out of the ground, you don't get to use any of the gas. Freeze in the dark motherfuckers.

An industrial society can move to carbon neutral over time - mostly with existing technology - fully sustainable will take longer as the full life cycle of products needs to be taken into account.

Yup. It's a century or more long process. Which means that there is absolutely no need to rush into anything. We can take 20 years to come up with realistic affordable plans rather than reacting with hysteria and enacting regulations in a hurry that will only have the effect of making energy more expensive and the economy more fragile.

Think about the millions of tons of waste avoided as entertainment has moved on to the web and into homes.

What waste are you referring to? Going to the movies?

If you saw Copenhagen you'd understand what a properly planned city can be like that is NOT car dominated.

I'm fine with proper urban planning, but that too is a multi-generational project that needs to be accomplished as the economy allows.

Midtown Dublin the same way and many others are moving that direction.
A Pedcab in Dublin is a streamlined efficient pedal powered vehicle getting paying customers around the city quickly and keeping university students fit and paid.

There are thousands of these initiatives at every level of society

And pretty much none of them are mandated by the UN. Like Boulder, Colorado, which is bike-friendly, it's done at the local level by local people investing in their economic and environmental futures as they can afford to do so, not because some bureaucrat at the UN says they have to.

And that's the way it should be. This is particularly applicable were cities and urban populations must be moved out of flood plain areas to deal with sea-level rise. The new cities should indeed be very carefully planned to minimize the need for workers to travel long distances from where they live to where they work (LA is one of the worst examples) and population should be migrated VERTICALLY in major urban areas being rebuilt.

Most of Copenhagen will be inundated by sea-level rise since it's lowest point is 1m and its highest is 91m above sea level. So, rather than wasting money and time on "protecting" Copenhagen, Copenhagen should be planning its move uphill starting today.

Adapt or die.

[Tyrannical]

By far the biggest cause of future CO2 increases was helping undeveloped nations to industrialize. China already is the biggest producer, and it will only increase. India in another decade or so will be up to their level also. Brazil and South/Central America are increasing.Perhaps a billion or so people in Africa will be next.

Should have followed Star Trek's advice:

the Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of alien civilizations.