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Good bye El Nino?


Mauna Kea Cloudforest

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Climate change denial has already been clearly exposed, it's backed by 1) the fossil fuel industry and 2) by free market think tanks. As described by Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial, it's clearly outlined to show how it does not adhere to the Scientific process, nor is it motivated by a desire to find the truth, instead it's guided by ideological and commercial motives.

So Axel,

Are you prepared to tell me that Global Warming Proponents have no ideological, commercial, or ulterior motives of their own???

  • Argumentum ad hominem – the evasion of the actual topic by directing the attack at your opponent.
  • (shifting the) Burden of proof (see – onus probandi) – I need not prove my claim, you must prove it is false.
  • Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency to favor information that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses and to ignore information that disagrees with one's point of view.
  • Red herring – a speaker attempts to distract an audience by deviating from the topic at hand by introducing a separate argument the speaker believes is easier to speak to.
  • Tu quoque ("you too", appeal to hypocrisy, I'm rubber and you're glue) – the argument states that a certain position is false or wrong and/or should be disregarded because its proponent fails to act consistently in accordance with that position.

"Ph'nglui mglw'napalma Funkthulhu R'Lincolnea wgah'palm fhtagn"
"In his house at Lincoln, dread Funkthulhu plants palm trees."

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First, what are your hard numbers for what the government is pumping into this 'hoax", and how does that compare to $ 900 million per year?

Second, back of envelope calculations: Let's say a weather satellite is rather large and weighs about 1000 kg, and the cost per kilogram to put into orbit is about $4500 (as per Falcon 9 at SpaceX). It would cost ~$4.5 million dollars to put a large and functional satellite into orbit.

Now, at $900 million per year, the "anti-global warming" organizations could afford to launch 200 satellites per year for the last 11 years for a total of 2200 new fancy awesome weather satellites. Actually, Space X hasn't been around that long, and it was more expensive before, so let's halve that. Still over 1000 satellites in orbit.

How many satellites have been launched by any such organization so they could show the "truth" and blow this hoax wide open?

Zero

Funk - I'll humor you with one last response - as I think it is obvious that absolutely nothing you will ever read or hear would have you ever seriously consider questioning of your point of view.

1) You conveniently forgot the cost of designing and building the satellite. And the cost of doing business as in insurance for liabilities and failures, or the failures themselves. And you also forgot the maintenance and monitoring - I would assume there is a vast ongoing infrastructure on the ground for each satellite.

Check the budget for the NWS and what one free lance weather free lance would end up costing. This from ABC news - "After 17 years, more than $6 billion in taxpayer money and three complete project overhauls, a program that was originally intended to launch six weather-tracking satellites before 2018 has yet to put the first test satellite into orbit. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will now create two satellites, one that’s set to launch Oct. 25 and another that won’t hit the skies until 2017. By that time the total price tag is expected to balloon to more than $17 billion."

Your numbers are only off by a factor of more than a thousand.

And tell me how much money the President of the United States stating the certainties of Global Warming on network TV in State of the Union Addresses" is worth? - and constantly pushing for his programs from the "bully pulpit" to counteract the pending disaster. Could any amount of money ever counteract such publicity - not proof mind you, just the publicity?

To try and argue that the skeptics are on equal financial footing is ridiculous.

2) But again, I stipulated that man is and has contributed to global warming. And I'm glad you seem to know exactly how much, and how the entire climatology of the planet will respond. I don't.

3) So I continue to ask "Now What?" What do you propose? I don't think the politicians can solve the problem. But apparently you do. They have other priorities - like the next election cycle. And just something to consider - this from the NASA climate division - the ones you claim are so accurate - "if all human greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, the Earth would still warm for at least a half-century." And that is something not even close to achievable.

So, last time I will ask. What do you propose the U.S. should do - because you have no say in what the rest of the world does? And will it make a difference? How will it affect us as a nation, and in our individual day to day individual lives?

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Kona, on The Big Island
Hawaii - Land of Volcanoes

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Climate change denial has already been clearly exposed, it's backed by 1) the fossil fuel industry and 2) by free market think tanks. As described by Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial, it's clearly outlined to show how it does not adhere to the Scientific process, nor is it motivated by a desire to find the truth, instead it's guided by ideological and commercial motives.

So Axel,

Are you prepared to tell me that Global Warming Proponents have no ideological, commercial, or ulterior motives of their own???

  • Argumentum ad hominem – the evasion of the actual topic by directing the attack at your opponent.
  • (shifting the) Burden of proof (see – onus probandi) – I need not prove my claim, you must prove it is false.
  • Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency to favor information that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses and to ignore information that disagrees with one's point of view.
  • Red herring – a speaker attempts to distract an audience by deviating from the topic at hand by introducing a separate argument the speaker believes is easier to speak to.
  • Tu quoque ("you too", appeal to hypocrisy, I'm rubber and you're glue) – the argument states that a certain position is false or wrong and/or should be disregarded because its proponent fails to act consistently in accordance with that position.

"refusing to answer a simple yes or no question" - the use of distracting tactics designed to avoid answering a simple yes or no question when a truthful answer doesn't fit neatly into the desired point of view.

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Kona, on The Big Island
Hawaii - Land of Volcanoes

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I dont think we need to do anything Dean. There hasnt been any global warming in almost 18 years. so lets keep doing what were doing, it seems to be working.

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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Climate change denial has already been clearly exposed, it's backed by 1) the fossil fuel industry and 2) by free market think tanks. As described by Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial, it's clearly outlined to show how it does not adhere to the Scientific process, nor is it motivated by a desire to find the truth, instead it's guided by ideological and commercial motives.

So Axel,

Are you prepared to tell me that Global Warming Proponents have no ideological, commercial, or ulterior motives of their own???

I am prepared to say that there is no conspiracy built into the review process. The scientific review process works, not perfectly, but it works well enough to expose a govt backed conspiracy if there was one.

Once the scientific work enters the political arena, then of course there are Global Warming Proponents with their own ideological, commercial, or ulterior motives.

Once thing to point out is that a large chunk of the $900 million going against global warming is primarily spent on trying to shed doubt on global warming by discrediting the scientific review process itself. That's because they've got nothing else to lean on, 90% of the scientists they pay to do research on global warming end up confirming what the other scientists say.

The majority of politicians can be bought out, only a small minority of scientists can be bought out. Why the difference? Because most scientists are neurotic do gooders that aren't even capable of a whole lot of fraud, that's the nature of the field. That's the kind of people it attracts.

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Axel - thanks for not avoiding the question. Let me throw out a few bullet points.

- a large majority of the data the scientists use are supplied by way of government agencies.

- when an issue like this lines up almost 100% along party lines, I ask why? I would say it has already "entered the political arena." I would be curious to see the breakdown along party lines of the scientists. I may be wrong, but the only people with scientific backgrounds that I have come across who question Global Warming have not been Democrats. This bothers me.

- I don't know how you can state science "works well enough to expose a govt backed conspiracy." That isn't what science does. What experiments can be performed, or what evidence has been collected to prove or disprove people within the government are conspiring? If only it was possible for science to find out such things, that would indeed be a true scientific breakthrough. In fact, the act of governing today is a definition of conspiracy (def. 'the act of plotting').

- I don't think you can take a group like scientists, doctors, or preachers, and proclaim that they are more or less honorable, or influenced more or less by all the biases and frailties that humans exhibit. Apparently you have placed scientists on a pedestal. Pedestals are for statues.

Even scientists influence the results of experiments and studies beyond accuracy by means not entirely understood. That is why double blind studies are so important. And that is why the pure example of "peer review" is being able to conduct an experiment and duplicate the results. As I explained before, climate science - IMO - falls somewhere between true science and quasi-sciences like psychology and economics - constantly fluid and open to all kinds of interpretation - and like climate science, follow political lines too closely for me to place huge bets, one way or the other, while accepting one position as the ultimate "truth."

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Kona, on The Big Island
Hawaii - Land of Volcanoes

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There hasnt been any global warming in almost 18 years. so lets keep doing what were doing, it seems to be working.

Stevetoad is repeating a myth many denialists hold:

It hasn't warmed since 1998. For the years 1998-2005, temperature did not increase. This period coincides with society's continued pumping of more CO2 into the atmosphere.
Reality:
"No, it hasn't been cooling since 1998. Even if we ignore long term trends and just look at the record-breakers, that wasn't the hottest year ever. Different reports show that, overall, 2005 was hotter than 1998. What's more, globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010.
Though humans love record-breakers, they don't, on their own, tell us a much about trends -- and it's trends that matter when monitoring Climate Change. Trends only appear by looking at all the data, globally, and taking into account other variables -- like the effects of the El Nino ocean current or sunspot activity -- not by cherry-picking single points.
There's also a tendency for some people just to concentrate on surface air temperatures when there are other, more useful, indicators that can give us a better idea how rapidly the world is warming. Oceans for instance -- due to their immense size and heat storing capability (called 'thermal mass') -- tend to give a much more 'steady' indication of the warming that is happening.
Records show that the Earth has been warming at a steady rate before and since 1998 and there is no sign of it slowing any time soon. More than 90% of global warming heat goes into warming the oceans, while less than 3% goes into increasing the surface air temperature." source

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I guess climate.gov a pro global warming site didn't get the memo.

" Since the turn of the century, however, the change in Earths global mean surface temperature has been close to zero."

Or these guys (only the ipcc) who say the pause could last another 10 years

"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global average temperatures have increased by around 0.05C per decade in the period between 1998 and 2012"

.05c! Sounds like a normal earthly trend.

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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Axel - thanks for not avoiding the question. Let me throw out a few bullet points.

- a large majority of the data the scientists use are supplied by way of government agencies.

- when an issue like this lines up almost 100% along party lines, I ask why? I would say it has already "entered the political arena." I would be curious to see the breakdown along party lines of the scientists. I may be wrong, but the only people with scientific backgrounds that I have come across who question Global Warming have not been Democrats. This bothers me.

- I don't know how you can state science "works well enough to expose a govt backed conspiracy." That isn't what science does. What experiments can be performed, or what evidence has been collected to prove or disprove people within the government are conspiring? If only it was possible for science to find out such things, that would indeed be a true scientific breakthrough. In fact, the act of governing today is a definition of conspiracy (def. 'the act of plotting').

- I don't think you can take a group like scientists, doctors, or preachers, and proclaim that they are more or less honorable, or influenced more or less by all the biases and frailties that humans exhibit. Apparently you have placed scientists on a pedestal. Pedestals are for statues.

Even scientists influence the results of experiments and studies beyond accuracy by means not entirely understood. That is why double blind studies are so important. And that is why the pure example of "peer review" is being able to conduct an experiment and duplicate the results. As I explained before, climate science - IMO - falls somewhere between true science and quasi-sciences like psychology and economics - constantly fluid and open to all kinds of interpretation - and like climate science, follow political lines too closely for me to place huge bets, one way or the other, while accepting one position as the ultimate "truth."

Dean, politicians have been crooked since the dawn of time, such is the nature of the beast. Politicians seek office because they want power, scientists choose science because it's about the search for truth. The two professions attract different kinds of people.

The reason global warming public opinion falls on party lines is because one party is pro industry and pro free market economics, the other party is perceived as focused on social issues. Note I say perceived. They're not any less crooked.

Most higher education circles are liberal, I've met very few conservative scientists because conservatism is about protecting the status quo and resisting change, science is all about challenging the status quo and bringing about change, even the theories produced by science always get challenged.

The theories driving global warming policies continually get challenged by scientists themselves. However, anti global warming proponents don't use science, they challenge the scientific process itself.

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I guess climate.gov a pro global warming site didn't get the memo.

And I guess you didn't read my post in its entirety.

" Since the turn of the century, however, the change in Earths global mean surface temperature has been close to zero."

Or these guys (only the ipcc) who say the pause could last another 10 years

"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global average temperatures have increased by around 0.05C per decade in the period between 1998 and 2012"

.05c! Sounds like a normal earthly trend.

"Although the global climate has continued to build up heat at an incredibly rapid rate, there has been a keen focus among climate contrarians and in the media on the slowdown of the warming at the Earth’s surface. The slowdown is in fact a double cherry pick – it focuses only on the 2% of global warming that heats the atmosphere (over 90% heats the oceans), and it only considers the past 10–15 years." source

And then look at the 3 charts in my last post. There's more to the Earth's climate than surface temperature - oceans cover 70% of the globe and they are warming.

"To claim global warming stopped in 1998 overlooks one simple physical reality - the land and atmosphere are just a small fraction of the Earth's climate (albeit the part we inhabit). The entire planet is accumulating heat due to an energy imbalance. The atmosphere is warming. Oceans are accumulating energy. Land absorbs energy and ice absorbs heat to melt. To get the full picture on global warming, you need to view the Earth's entire heat content." source

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This thread is more fun than Pro wrestling.

In my post I sometimes express "my" opinion. Warning, it may differ from "your" opinion. If so, please do not feel insulted, just state your own if you wish. Any data in this post is provided 'as is' and in no event shall I be liable for any damages, including, without limitation, damages resulting from accuracy or lack thereof, insult, or any other damages

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Your right 2% is a small number. You know what an even smaller number is? Co2 makes up 20% of green house gasses of that burning fossil fuels make up only 3-4%. I'd be more likely to believe that the city's we build and the roads that conect them that cause heat islands contribute more to a global warming effect rather than our co2 emissions. Why do co2 levels lag behind temp rises?

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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Your right 2% is a small number. You know what an even smaller number is? Co2 makes up 20% of green house gasses of that burning fossil fuels make up only 3-4%. I'd be more likely to believe that the city's we build and the roads that conect them that cause heat islands contribute more to a global warming effect rather than our co2 emissions. Why do co2 levels lag behind temp rises?

From what I understand, the fossil fuel emissions represent about 57% of the total global warming footprint as of 2007 and is actually shrinking compared to the other sources. The remainder is just the presence of human activity, and now the permafrost melting that is causing methane to escape by the droves, see the enormous craters forming in Siberia. So even if we curtailed fossil fuel use, unless we decided to take drastic action to reduce the world population, global warming is inevitable. In 2014, if you count the added deforestation and the added methane from the arctic regions, you're looking at less than 50% coming from fossil fuels.

If you want to do something about global warming, counter deforestation and plant some palms!

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Your right 2% is a small number. You know what an even smaller number is? Co2 makes up 20% of green house gasses of that burning fossil fuels make up only 3-4%. I'd be more likely to believe that the city's we build and the roads that conect them that cause heat islands contribute more to a global warming effect rather than our co2 emissions. Why do co2 levels lag behind temp rises?

From what I understand, the fossil fuel emissions represent about 57% of the total global warming footprint as of 2007 and is actually shrinking compared to the other sources. The remainder is just the presence of human activity, and now the permafrost melting that is causing methane to escape by the droves, see the enormous craters forming in Siberia. So even if we curtailed fossil fuel use, unless we decided to take drastic action to reduce the world population, global warming is inevitable. In 2014, if you count the added deforestation and the added methane from the arctic regions, you're looking at less than 50% coming from fossil fuels.

If you want to do something about global warming, counter deforestation and plant some palms!

This is one comment that actually makes more sense to me. Not the same "down with fossil fuel" chant. Still. I don't see any need for panic but this is my favorite GW post from the other side so far.

Axel. What about all the plant life that is now thriving in the deserts now? Green belts, personal yards and agriculture. Wouldn't that help against deforestation?

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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Your right 2% is a small number. You know what an even smaller number is? Co2 makes up 20% of green house gasses of that burning fossil fuels make up only 3-4%. I'd be more likely to believe that the city's we build and the roads that conect them that cause heat islands contribute more to a global warming effect rather than our co2 emissions. Why do co2 levels lag behind temp rises?

From what I understand, the fossil fuel emissions represent about 57% of the total global warming footprint as of 2007 and is actually shrinking compared to the other sources. The remainder is just the presence of human activity, and now the permafrost melting that is causing methane to escape by the droves, see the enormous craters forming in Siberia. So even if we curtailed fossil fuel use, unless we decided to take drastic action to reduce the world population, global warming is inevitable. In 2014, if you count the added deforestation and the added methane from the arctic regions, you're looking at less than 50% coming from fossil fuels.

If you want to do something about global warming, counter deforestation and plant some palms!

This is one comment that actually makes more sense to me. Not the same "down with fossil fuel" chant. Still. I don't see any need for panic but this is my favorite GW post from the other side so far.

Axel. What about all the plant life that is now thriving in the deserts now? Green belts, personal yards and agriculture. Wouldn't that help against deforestation?

Yes, all that helps. Rare palm gardens are 365 days a year carbon sequesters, air purifiers, and gene repositories. The more palms we plant, the better. Leafed trees are actually better, but if you layer your palm garden, you can get one heck of a canopy going. Greening up the desert really does help. Eating a diet that includes meat with a lesser carbon footprint helps too. A turkey burger is not only tasty but it's so much better for you. Turkeys fart a lot less than cows and don't need more deforestation to graze.

I wish people spent less time debating if there is global warming and more time debating how to deal with it. I actually side with Dean on how it should be dealt with, but that solution is the least likely. We just have a bunch of extremists on both sides, and no one is willing to be pragmatic about it. We need to put free market forces in place that will drive innovation in alternative energy sources. One side want to use carbon taxes to do that, the other side wants to do nothing, and finally the libertarians hate taxes and want us to stop protecting oil flow out of the middle east so that oil prices rise naturally and cause a mass demand for alternative energy. I actually like the last solution the best. But no matter what we do, global warming is inevitable, and it's also not necessarily bad if we can slow it down enough so that both animals and humans can adapt. Catastrophic change leads to mass extinction, which could of course include us as well.

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So what's the latest.....am I gonna have a warm winter or a dreadful repeat of the Vortex?

David Simms zone 9a on Highway 30a

200 steps from the Gulf in NW Florida

30 ft. elevation and sandy soil

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Dean, I am not avoiding the question, I just go home at night. . .

As for Anthropogenic Global Climate Change, the solution is not simple because the problem is not simple.

There is no "magic bullet" that will solve the crisis but there are several steps that, when combined, will have a more synergistic effect than any one thing by itself.

1. Education: As Axel and Mats and myself have stated several times over many threads, there is an underlying fallacy in modern society that any one person's uneducated opinion holds just as much sway as the whole of scientific consensus. This is an ego problem as well as an education problem. As soon as people are confident enough with their sense of self that they do not feel threatened when what they believe is proven false, they will be much more open minded in general. Combine with this a rudimentary, but ingrained, understanding the scientific process and how to evaluate both data and theory and you will be very far ahead of where we are now. Once the overwhelming majority of the people have this skill they will be able to see the problem, and possibly understand it, rather than just being told about it. They will also see that we as a species will need to work together to solve the problem.

2. Hydrocarbon use: While the run-away feed-back loops of global warming are starting to release nearly as much CO2 and Methane as the burning of fossil fuels, our use of fossil fuels is the "easiest" thing we can curtail. This is not as simple as just quitting oil, gas, and coal cold turkey, there needs to be a replacement energy source in place to take up the slack. Which leads to...

3. Alternative energy: We are slowly but surely improving our technology for solar and wind power (hydropower and nuclear have their own environmental image problems). The problem is not the generation of the energy, but the storage of that energy and the transfer of that energy. We need better technology in the form of long-term high-capacity batteries and capacitors. We also, at least in the US, need to improve our infrastructure (currently rated a D). Improvements to our power grid will make our solar and wind energy more efficient to transfer (as well as making jobs), and improvements to our roads and bridges will increase fuel efficiency (and make jobs). Rail lines are remarkably less expensive per mile than new highways and trains are amazingly efficient at transporting large cargo long distances. Anything that improves efficiency lowers our hydrocarbon useage, and many of these transport mechanisms are ripe for transfer to being completely electric reducing CO2 output even more. (I would also put something in here about developing fusion as an energy source, but I'm trying to keep this to current or near-future tech and I really don't think that's going to happen for decades.)

4. Carbon sequestration: This is tricky. We can inject CO2 into very deep wells, but we're running into difficulty with possible leaks, as well as the current (justified) trend in people not wanting fracking in their area. The potential fallout from a poorly designed and implemented CO2 sequestration well would set the whole concept back very quickly. However, we have an all natural way to sequester carbon that we're already talking about - Trees. This is also difficult because the areas of the world with the most deforestation that needs to be reversed are the places with the most people who don't want to live in a forest, but need ground to plant crops, raise livestock, etc. A lot of trees need to be planted and left to mature. (even this is a geologically very short term way to take Carbon out the atmosphere, as the trees die in several hundred years but it does give us some time to find more solutions)

5. Population Control: There are too many people already, we're probably going to hit a max sustainable number of humans on the planet somewhere near 10 or 12 billion. As has been said, not just Hydrocarbons, but human activity is leading to the release of a lot of greenhouse gasses (deforestation, livestock, etc.). By reducing the population we reduce our output. This is an education issue as well. With better education and better science we get better medicine (especially quickly in 3rd world developing nations). As soon as 3 out of 5 of your kids don't die from treatable diseases, you don't need to have 5 kids. Population growth has always been fastest in the developing nations with the poorest average levels of education. Giving everybody some education leads to more educated choices as to family size (which is also intrinsically linked to the availability of women's reproductive rights and contraception).

Doing all of these things would make real progress to getting the problem under control, but may still not be enough unless we all (planet-wide) work together. The process of working to slow down and eventually reverse global warming is not a single benefit. The process of making all our tech more efficient helps everybody; educating everybody also helps everybody (fewer wars, fewer human rights violations, less overpopulation, etc.)

So, yeah, tl;dr - There is no easy answer and I don't have "the answer" but we have to start somewhere and that first step is to stop letting our ego/religion/politics blind us that a problem exists.

"Ph'nglui mglw'napalma Funkthulhu R'Lincolnea wgah'palm fhtagn"
"In his house at Lincoln, dread Funkthulhu plants palm trees."

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5. Population Control: There are too many people already, we're probably going to hit a max sustainable number of humans on the planet somewhere near 10 or 12 billion. As has been said, not just Hydrocarbons, but human activity is leading to the release of a lot of greenhouse gasses (deforestation, livestock, etc.). By reducing the population we reduce our output. This is an education issue as well. With better education and better science we get better medicine (especially quickly in 3rd world developing nations). As soon as 3 out of 5 of your kids don't die from treatable diseases, you don't need to have 5 kids. Population growth has always been fastest in the developing nations with the poorest average levels of education. Giving everybody some education leads to more educated choices as to family size (which is also intrinsically linked to the availability of women's reproductive rights and contraception).

Doing all of these things would make real progress to getting the problem under control, but may still not be enough unless we all (planet-wide) work together. The process of working to slow down and eventually reverse global warming is not a single benefit. The process of making all our tech more efficient helps everybody; educating everybody also helps everybody (fewer wars, fewer human rights violations, less overpopulation, etc.)

So, yeah, tl;dr - There is no easy answer and I don't have "the answer" but we have to start somewhere and that first step is to stop letting our ego/religion/politics blind us that a problem exists.

I am not quite sure what "religion" has to do with the subject but cannot believe you would this it would blind us, I would like to know how as actually I believe it opens your eyes? Just talking about population control really scares me. I mean really, lets commit "genocide" because science thinks we have too many people, wow. I really hope you don't mean that, and I am not saying you said that, but it is implied in your post.

As Dean said earlier and I agree, you guys put science on a pedestal, I will go further than that, you made it your god. I get slammed sometimes here because I mention God but you made man and science your own god, so think about it, whats the difference? You are playing god by saying how many kids you can have, what gives you the right to decide that? Who is going to decide who lives and who dies, you or some other "educated" person?????

Science does not have all the answers and to equate education as the answer, meaning if you are not educated at a liberal college you must be pretty stupid. We cannot fall into the political trap either as it is all about the mighty dollar.

I think we can all admit the government has been playing this as a scare tactic and it is working. Governments have always been doing that since the dawn of history. The climate is changing, always has since the earth was formed, can we change it, I do not know, but what I do know is we should be good stewards in what God gave us and at this moment we are not good stewards.

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Lived in Cape Coral, Miami, Orlando and St. Petersburg Florida.

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Hm, came here for info on a short-term phenomenon forecast and find a debate over long-term question.

El niño, yes or no? Hoping for a trend toward yes...

About the longer term question in debate, as a non-scientist observer on the sidelines, it looks to me like "proof of anthropogenic global warming" will take so long to be indisputably documented that by then, any remedy will be impossible to implement. That may already be true. Whenever I have this conversation with myself, I tend to be pessimistic. I kind of expect certain countries with huge populations and bad actors to completely dwarf the small efforts made by concerned parts of civilization. Sometimes I wonder if it is a trajectory the planet was on even before humans developed any destructive habits and we are pushing the planet faster toward this change.

Kim Cyr

Between the beach and the bays, Point Loma, San Diego, California USA
and on a 300 year-old lava flow, Pahoa, Hawaii, 1/4 mile from the 2018 flow
All characters  in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Nobody said "genocide". Are you linking voluntary birth control to genocide? I must have missed something earlier in the debate.

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Kim Cyr

Between the beach and the bays, Point Loma, San Diego, California USA
and on a 300 year-old lava flow, Pahoa, Hawaii, 1/4 mile from the 2018 flow
All characters  in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Nobody said "genocide". Are you linking voluntary birth control to genocide? I must have missed something earlier in the debate.

The word was not written but implied and yes it is a strong word, but birth control also includes abortion. Just the statement of population control can imply genocide as again who decides who lives and who does not get a chance to live because we think we have too many people on earth which in turn may be warming the planet Also where will it stop, just birth control or does it move to true genocide, we have seen this in the past?

Lived in Cape Coral, Miami, Orlando and St. Petersburg Florida.

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Nobody said "genocide". Are you linking voluntary birth control to genocide? I must have missed something earlier in the debate.

The word was not written but implied. Birth control also means abortion. Just the statement of population control implies genocide as again who decides who lives and who does not get a chance to live because we think we have too many people on earth which in turn is warming the planet Also where will it stop, just birth control or does it move to true genocide?

Wow, I sure didn't read it that way. There is a tendency in more developed nations where populations have access to good nutrition and good health care to choose the number of children a couple will have, most often using basic birth control. Abortion isn't considered by anyone to be "basic birth control", not even those who advocate for its availability. Healthier, stable populations living in peace tend to have smaller families, for whatever reason, but certainly not because of genocide. In fact, respect and value for individual lives tends to be greater in those circumstances because death at a young age becomes so unusual.

Kim Cyr

Between the beach and the bays, Point Loma, San Diego, California USA
and on a 300 year-old lava flow, Pahoa, Hawaii, 1/4 mile from the 2018 flow
All characters  in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Nobody said "genocide". Are you linking voluntary birth control to genocide? I must have missed something earlier in the debate.

The word was not written but implied. Birth control also means abortion. Just the statement of population control implies genocide as again who decides who lives and who does not get a chance to live because we think we have too many people on earth which in turn is warming the planet Also where will it stop, just birth control or does it move to true genocide?

Wow, I sure didn't read it that way. There is a tendency in more developed nations where populations have access to good nutrition and good health care to choose the number of children a couple will have, most often using basic birth control. Abortion isn't considered by anyone to be "basic birth control", not even those who advocate for its availability. Healthier, stable populations living in peace tend to have smaller families, for whatever reason, but certainly not because of genocide. In fact, respect and value for individual lives tends to be greater in those circumstances because death at a young age becomes so unusual.

Kim, I have to disagree on one point, some do believe a form of birth control is abortion. That is a very sad fact.

You mentioned developed nations where populations have access to good nutrition and good health care care to choose the number of children a couple should have, well what about China? They have a one child policy and they are probably the heaviest polluters in the world. I have been to China twice and you will see most of the population wearing a mask because of all the pollutants in the air, it is terrible. You cannot even see the blue sky, it is always very hazy.

They don't have that policy because of global warming, they have that policy for control of their population. Hence the whole reason I mentioned that word, genocide, I would not want to have the government or anyone else to tell me you can only have one child like China does. That is where I am coming from. If a family wants only one child that's great, but I certainly do not want to be told what is best for me as you might as well kiss your freedom goodbye.

I will say I am selfish on one point, I want frost free winters for us palm growers!

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Lived in Cape Coral, Miami, Orlando and St. Petersburg Florida.

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Your right 2% is a small number. You know what an even smaller number is? Co2 makes up 20% of green house gasses of that burning fossil fuels make up only 3-4%. I'd be more likely to believe that the city's we build and the roads that conect them that cause heat islands contribute more to a global warming effect rather than our co2 emissions. Why do co2 levels lag behind temp rises?

You make these terse assertions that, at first glance, sound authoritative. But without giving us your source, you could be pulling them from thin air.
I'm wondering where you got "Co2 makes up 20% of green house gasses of that burning fossil fuels make up only 3-4%".
When I looked up 'greenhouse gas composition' this is the second image Google returned --
The burning of fossil fuels accounts for more than 80-percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions.
And then, looking up 'main sources of carbon dioxide emissions', this is the second image Google returns --
87 percent of all human-produced carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil.
So how about providing us with sources for your assertions?
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No one needs genocide or abortions for population control, so can you guys please stop bringing it up? Developed countries have negative birth rates, developing nations account for the bulk of the birth rate. So obviously there's a way to do it without resorting to nasty solutions. Personally I don't like abortions, and thankfully developed nations don't depend on abortions to have negative birth rates, so we can leave that topic off the table.

Maybe we can get back to El Nino predictions. All the models did predict that El Nino conditions would fade during the Summer but re-surface in the Fall. The massive kelvin waves in April made a lot of people think there would be a massive El Nino, but only outlier models predicted a strong El Nino. This is why NOAA only had a 50% probability for an El Nino to develop by Summer but bumps up that prediction to 80% in the Winter. They've since backed off from those numbers as well, the current probability is for 65% for Fall and Winter, which isn't very high. That's based on the level by which El Nino has backed off this Summer.

Here is the weekly NOAA summary:

  • ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Watch
  • ENSO-neutral conditions continue.*
  • Positive equatorial sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies continue in the eastern Pacific Ocean and just west of the Date Line.
  • Chance of El Niño has decreased to about 65% during the Northern Hemisphere fall and early winter.*
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No one needs genocide or abortions for population control, so can you guys please stop bringing it up? Developed countries have negative birth rates, developing nations account for the bulk of the birth rate. So obviously there's a way to do it without resorting to nasty solutions. Personally I don't like abortions, and thankfully developed nations don't depend on abortions to have negative birth rates, so we can leave that topic off the table.

Axel,

I brought it up because it was brought up in the thread.

But thanks for your statement.

Question, is there a simple, easy to understand table on what El Nino and El Nina actually does to affect our weather, esp winter weather as there is so much info out there.

Lived in Cape Coral, Miami, Orlando and St. Petersburg Florida.

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... I've met very few conservative scientists because conservatism is about protecting the status quo and resisting change, science is all about challenging the status quo and bringing about change, even the theories produced by science always get challenged.

Shockingly few scientists are Republicans.

A Pew poll conducted in 2009 showed only 6% of scientists identified themselves as Republicans.

Conversely, 55% identified themselves as Democrats and 32% as Independents. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.

Remember when environmental protection was a bipartisan effort?

"Survey data taken from 1974 through 2010 and analyzed by Gordon Gauchat in the American Sociological Review confirm that most American scientists are not conservatives. A 2009 study by the Pew Research Center found that only 9 percent of scientists self-identified as conservative, while 52 percent called themselves liberals. Only 6 percent of American scientists self-identified as Republicans. This state of affairs is bad for the nation, and bad for science.

It was not always this way. In the 1968 election, Richard Nixon won the votes of 31 percent of physicists, 42 percent of biologists, 52 percent of geologists, and 62 percent of agricultural scientists (compared with 43.4 percent of the popular vote). While these data do not include party affiliation, they suggest that the scientific community of the late 1960s was much more evenly divided between the two major parties than it is now, and, with the exception of physicists, slightly more conservative than the American voting public at large.

Why have scientists fled the Republican Party?" article continues here...

Edited by Mats
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No one needs genocide or abortions for population control, so can you guys please stop bringing it up? Developed countries have negative birth rates, developing nations account for the bulk of the birth rate. So obviously there's a way to do it without resorting to nasty solutions. Personally I don't like abortions, and thankfully developed nations don't depend on abortions to have negative birth rates, so we can leave that topic off the table.

Axel,

I brought it up because it was brought up in the thread.

But thanks for this statement.

Is there a simple easy to understand table on what El Nino and El Nina actually does to affect our weather, esp winter weather as there is so much info out there.

Uh, no. . .

The words Genocide and Abortion were brought up by you. Do not put words in my mouth so you can feel superior by shooting down my statements. That's a most egregious use of a logical fallacy.

But you have given a living example of what I was saying of how rigid dogmatic ideals limit your ability to accept new facts and deal with new data without prejudice.

Now, let's not talk about your religion anymore as that'll get a thread deleted faster than an argument about global warming. . . :D

El Nino!

Edited by Funkthulhu

"Ph'nglui mglw'napalma Funkthulhu R'Lincolnea wgah'palm fhtagn"
"In his house at Lincoln, dread Funkthulhu plants palm trees."

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Mats, every source say what I said. I think your not reading your own pie chart right. The one you showing is a chart of only man made gasses. Not co2 as a whole. Look up co2 percentage that is man made and you'll see. Not even the global warming alarmist think we product 90% of co2. Man made co2 is 3-4% of all co2 in the atmosphere. And again EVERYONE on both sides knows water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas of any.

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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Mats, every source say what I said. I think your not reading your own pie chart right. The one you showing is a chart of only man made gasses. Not co2 as a whole. Look up co2 percentage that is man made and you'll see. Not even the global warming alarmist think we product 90% of co2. Man made co2 is 3-4% of all co2 in the atmosphere. And again EVERYONE on both sides knows water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas of any.

I think you're trying to underemphasize the anthropogenic additions to the global carbon cycle by saying "look how small it is compared to the whole!"

This does not take into account that the carbon cycle before we started burning was "balanced".

Get yourself a scale and put 100g on one side and 100g on the other, then add 3 to 4 grams to one side for each year we've been burning and see how long it takes to flip the scale...

"Ph'nglui mglw'napalma Funkthulhu R'Lincolnea wgah'palm fhtagn"
"In his house at Lincoln, dread Funkthulhu plants palm trees."

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How can it ever be "balanced"? A few volcanos blow and then what?

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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No one needs genocide or abortions for population control, so can you guys please stop bringing it up? Developed countries have negative birth rates, developing nations account for the bulk of the birth rate. So obviously there's a way to do it without resorting to nasty solutions. Personally I don't like abortions, and thankfully developed nations don't depend on abortions to have negative birth rates, so we can leave that topic off the table.

Axel,

I brought it up because it was brought up in the thread.

But thanks for this statement.

Is there a simple easy to understand table on what El Nino and El Nina actually does to affect our weather, esp winter weather as there is so much info out there.

Uh, no. . .

The words Genocide and Abortion were brought up by you. Do not put words in my mouth so you can feel superior by shooting down my statements. That's a most egregious use of a logical fallacy.

But you have given a living example of what I was saying of how rigid dogmatic ideals limit your ability to accept new facts and deal with new data without prejudice.

Now, let's not talk about your religion anymore as that'll get a thread deleted faster than an argument about global warming. . . :D

El Nino!

Yes I brought up those words, you brought up population control and that brings up that subject as it could lead to that. I also said "I really hope you don't mean that, and I am not saying you said that, but it is implied in your post." So I did not put words in your mouth.

Dogmatic, you can also say you and others are very dogmatic on global warming?

But I agree lets stay on the subject of El Nino and pray for a good winter for all, even for Omaha, as I was in Iowa the last several years and it was brutal especially last winter.

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Lived in Cape Coral, Miami, Orlando and St. Petersburg Florida.

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How can it ever be "balanced"? A few volcanos blow and then what?

I took biogeochem cycles for a year, I can't condense it into a happy sound-bite for you, but I can try.

Just like water moves through a water cycle that it dynamic but constant and balanced, the exchange of carbon (often through CO2) goes through a natural cycle. Volcanoes happen naturally, they're episodic, but they follow a trend or average over geologic time. During that same amount of time of thousands to millions of years a balanced carbon cycle is able to naturally sequester that extra carbon through plant growth, reef growth (there's carbon in Limestone) and absorption into the deep oceans, but these are temporary solutions. As dead plant and animal matter gets buried in land and sea-sediments it is taken out of the immediate loop of the carbon cycle. This is how a glut of carbon (say excessive volcanism for a few millenia) is removed from the carbon cycle and rebalanced. . . that is until a species evolves enough to dig it up, burn it and release it back into the atmosphere. What we release from hydrocarbon burning completely and totally dwarfs volcanic emissions.

I've seen some slightly different numbers, but volcanoes on average release 0.25 to 0.30 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Humans release somewhere upward of 35.0 gigatonnes per year. . .

"Ph'nglui mglw'napalma Funkthulhu R'Lincolnea wgah'palm fhtagn"
"In his house at Lincoln, dread Funkthulhu plants palm trees."

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No one needs genocide or abortions for population control, so can you guys please stop bringing it up? Developed countries have negative birth rates, developing nations account for the bulk of the birth rate. So obviously there's a way to do it without resorting to nasty solutions. Personally I don't like abortions, and thankfully developed nations don't depend on abortions to have negative birth rates, so we can leave that topic off the table.

Axel,

I brought it up because it was brought up in the thread.

But thanks for this statement.

Is there a simple easy to understand table on what El Nino and El Nina actually does to affect our weather, esp winter weather as there is so much info out there.

Uh, no. . .

The words Genocide and Abortion were brought up by you. Do not put words in my mouth so you can feel superior by shooting down my statements. That's a most egregious use of a logical fallacy.

But you have given a living example of what I was saying of how rigid dogmatic ideals limit your ability to accept new facts and deal with new data without prejudice.

Now, let's not talk about your religion anymore as that'll get a thread deleted faster than an argument about global warming. . . :D

El Nino!

I am biting my tongue, I am biting my tongue, I am biting my tongue...

I have so many pent up snarks, if only... er... argghhhh...

mudwrestling_2007-02-28.jpg

Dang it! Oh well, at least I tried.

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So has anyone in this conversation changed their minds about anything? I am guess not, but I could be wrong. Climate change, global warming conversations always remind me of,,,,

A quote from Robert Heinlein: Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.

In my post I sometimes express "my" opinion. Warning, it may differ from "your" opinion. If so, please do not feel insulted, just state your own if you wish. Any data in this post is provided 'as is' and in no event shall I be liable for any damages, including, without limitation, damages resulting from accuracy or lack thereof, insult, or any other damages

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Keith! You just changed my mind on talking about it if that counts. I love that quote. On that note I'm out.

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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Dean, I am not avoiding the question, I just go home at night. . .

As for Anthropogenic Global Climate Change, the solution is not simple because the problem is not simple.

There is no "magic bullet" that will solve the crisis but there are several steps that, when combined, will have a more synergistic effect than any one thing by itself.

1. Education: As Axel and Mats and myself have stated several times over many threads, there is an underlying fallacy in modern society that any one person's uneducated opinion holds just as much sway as the whole of scientific consensus. This is an ego problem as well as an education problem. As soon as people are confident enough with their sense of self that they do not feel threatened when what they believe is proven false, they will be much more open minded in general. Combine with this a rudimentary, but ingrained, understanding the scientific process and how to evaluate both data and theory and you will be very far ahead of where we are now. Once the overwhelming majority of the people have this skill they will be able to see the problem, and possibly understand it, rather than just being told about it. They will also see that we as a species will need to work together to solve the problem.

2. Hydrocarbon use: While the run-away feed-back loops of global warming are starting to release nearly as much CO2 and Methane as the burning of fossil fuels, our use of fossil fuels is the "easiest" thing we can curtail. This is not as simple as just quitting oil, gas, and coal cold turkey, there needs to be a replacement energy source in place to take up the slack. Which leads to...

3. Alternative energy: We are slowly but surely improving our technology for solar and wind power (hydropower and nuclear have their own environmental image problems). The problem is not the generation of the energy, but the storage of that energy and the transfer of that energy. We need better technology in the form of long-term high-capacity batteries and capacitors. We also, at least in the US, need to improve our infrastructure (currently rated a D). Improvements to our power grid will make our solar and wind energy more efficient to transfer (as well as making jobs), and improvements to our roads and bridges will increase fuel efficiency (and make jobs). Rail lines are remarkably less expensive per mile than new highways and trains are amazingly efficient at transporting large cargo long distances. Anything that improves efficiency lowers our hydrocarbon useage, and many of these transport mechanisms are ripe for transfer to being completely electric reducing CO2 output even more. (I would also put something in here about developing fusion as an energy source, but I'm trying to keep this to current or near-future tech and I really don't think that's going to happen for decades.)

4. Carbon sequestration: This is tricky. We can inject CO2 into very deep wells, but we're running into difficulty with possible leaks, as well as the current (justified) trend in people not wanting fracking in their area. The potential fallout from a poorly designed and implemented CO2 sequestration well would set the whole concept back very quickly. However, we have an all natural way to sequester carbon that we're already talking about - Trees. This is also difficult because the areas of the world with the most deforestation that needs to be reversed are the places with the most people who don't want to live in a forest, but need ground to plant crops, raise livestock, etc. A lot of trees need to be planted and left to mature. (even this is a geologically very short term way to take Carbon out the atmosphere, as the trees die in several hundred years but it does give us some time to find more solutions)

5. Population Control: There are too many people already, we're probably going to hit a max sustainable number of humans on the planet somewhere near 10 or 12 billion. As has been said, not just Hydrocarbons, but human activity is leading to the release of a lot of greenhouse gasses (deforestation, livestock, etc.). By reducing the population we reduce our output. This is an education issue as well. With better education and better science we get better medicine (especially quickly in 3rd world developing nations). As soon as 3 out of 5 of your kids don't die from treatable diseases, you don't need to have 5 kids. Population growth has always been fastest in the developing nations with the poorest average levels of education. Giving everybody some education leads to more educated choices as to family size (which is also intrinsically linked to the availability of women's reproductive rights and contraception).

Doing all of these things would make real progress to getting the problem under control, but may still not be enough unless we all (planet-wide) work together. The process of working to slow down and eventually reverse global warming is not a single benefit. The process of making all our tech more efficient helps everybody; educating everybody also helps everybody (fewer wars, fewer human rights violations, less overpopulation, etc.)

So, yeah, tl;dr - There is no easy answer and I don't have "the answer" but we have to start somewhere and that first step is to stop letting our ego/religion/politics blind us that a problem exists.

Funk - the simple yes or no question I was referring to earlier (and that still remains unanswered as a yes or no), and that you dismissed with a flurry of goobly-gook diversionary language was as follows:

Are you prepared to tell me that Global Warming Proponents have no ideological, commercial, or ulterior motives of their own???

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animated-volcano-image-0010.gif.71ccc48bfc1ec622a0adca187eabaaa4.gif

Kona, on The Big Island
Hawaii - Land of Volcanoes

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I wish people spent less time debating if there is global warming and more time debating how to deal with it. I actually side with Dean on how it should be dealt with, but that solution is the least likely. We just have a bunch of extremists on both sides, and no one is willing to be pragmatic about it. We need to put free market forces in place that will drive innovation in alternative energy sources. One side want to use carbon taxes to do that, the other side wants to do nothing, and finally the libertarians hate taxes and want us to stop protecting oil flow out of the middle east so that oil prices rise naturally and cause a mass demand for alternative energy.

Axel,

This is why I have repeatedly asked "What Now?" And no one has offered up a practical solution, other than give more regulatory power and more money to Washington and things will get better - just have faith.

I have a solution - but it wouldn't be entertained by those in power because it would by-pass them. It would unleash the creative, innovative, and most importantly the forces of free market capitalism - the same forces that made the U.S. the world's most powerful economy. Why not offer tax incentives instead of tax penalties? Not those expensive tax subsidies as gov presently does, but tax incentives.

What has a super Liberal New York State done recently to bring more business to its State? Tax incentives. Start-up businesses in New York can operate 100% tax-free for 10 years. No income tax, business, corporate, state or local taxes, sales and property taxes, or franchise fees.

What do you think would happen if you offered corporations a similar deal for innovating and supplying "green" energy, but throw in relief from Federal Taxes as well. If it was technologically and economically feasible, it would just happen, and happen quickly. No central planning from Washington would be needed.

The financial and intellectual resources that would flood toward such a business opportunity would be incredible. Scientists and corporations would be on the same page, share the same goal, and share in the profits. And the social benefits would be the by-product. Foreign corporations and inventors would be dying to do their research and manufacturing here. And it would all be done by free choice, with no power and money hungry politicians involved. But that is exactly why it hasn't been proposed by any of them.

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animated-volcano-image-0010.gif.71ccc48bfc1ec622a0adca187eabaaa4.gif

Kona, on The Big Island
Hawaii - Land of Volcanoes

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I wish people spent less time debating if there is global warming and more time debating how to deal with it. I actually side with Dean on how it should be dealt with, but that solution is the least likely. We just have a bunch of extremists on both sides, and no one is willing to be pragmatic about it. We need to put free market forces in place that will drive innovation in alternative energy sources. One side want to use carbon taxes to do that, the other side wants to do nothing, and finally the libertarians hate taxes and want us to stop protecting oil flow out of the middle east so that oil prices rise naturally and cause a mass demand for alternative energy.

Axel,

This is why I have repeatedly asked "What Now?" And no one has offered up a practical solution, other than give more regulatory power and more money to Washington and things will get better - just have faith.

I have a solution - but it wouldn't be entertained by those in power because it would by-pass them. It would unleash the creative, innovative, and most importantly the forces of free market capitalism - the same forces that made the U.S. the world's most powerful economy. Why not offer tax incentives instead of tax penalties? Not those expensive tax subsidies as gov presently does, but tax incentives.

What has a super Liberal New York State done recently to bring more business to its State? Tax incentives. Start-up businesses in New York can operate 100% tax-free for 10 years. No income tax, business, corporate, state or local taxes, sales and property taxes, or franchise fees.

What do you think would happen if you offered corporations a similar deal for innovating and supplying "green" energy, but throw in relief from Federal Taxes as well. If it was technologically and economically feasible, it would just happen, and happen quickly. No central planning from Washington would be needed.

The financial and intellectual resources that would flood toward such a business opportunity would be incredible. Scientists and corporations would be on the same page, share the same goal, and share in the profits. And the social benefits would be the by-product. Foreign corporations and inventors would be dying to do their research and manufacturing here. And it would all be done by free choice, with no power and money hungry politicians involved. But that is exactly why it hasn't been proposed by any of them.

I agree! I keep telling you, my issues isn't with global warming, that train left years ago. It's what we do about it that matters. And as long as people keep arguing, no one is noticing that govts have already moved on, it's assumed global warming is there, and they're quietly putting the measures in place. Instead of carbon taxes, we should have massive tax incentives for alternative energy, both on the consumer side for the adoption of it and for businesses for innovating and investing in alternative energy, more efficient cars, etc...

I have a major issue with carbon taxes, they are bogus, they're just going to line the pockets of the fat cats in Washington. I have to be honest, though, from a financial perspective, given that I've bet on them showing up, I have personal financial gains to be had from those taxes. If there is a sign they will go away, then I will adjust my investment strategy accordingly. I don't agree with the carbon taxes, but I can't do anything about it. For example, my investment in solar city is based on a 12% annual increase in the cost of energy because of carbon taxes.

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In case no one noticed, the EPA is planning to make CO2 a pollutant. Guess what? That means everyone who breathes is a polluter, because we breathe out CO2. And trees at night also breathe out CO2. Can it get more absurd than that?

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