climate change times are a changin'

[Patman]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

The green movement and its Lysenko bandwagon will not gain any credence with me until they adopt modern nuclear power as a solution and the primary solution.

Why wait for the miracle tomorrow when you have the reality of today?

The reason, it's not really about the climate.

[manurespreader]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

The green movement and its Lysenko bandwagon will not gain any credence with me until they adopt modern nuclear power as a solution and the primary solution.

Why wait for the miracle tomorrow when you have the reality of today?

The reason, it's not really about the climate.

Kind of the cart before the horse don't you think. We can't even agree there is a problem, let alone what to do about it.

[5mn_Major]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

I agree with Charles Krauthammer -- the US and Canada can do whatever they want to reduce emissions, but it won't mean diddly.

"Just because we invent and use a superior technology doesn't mean the rest of the world will...except they frankly almost always do." Krauthammer is typically wrong...and is again so.

Then as time went on and the movement switched to a technology- and growth-based response. I'm not entirely sure when the switch started but it was fairly recently. The push towards a feasible solar supplement. More efficient and cheaper wind power equipment. Research into fusion. Things that would advance technology, science, produce jobs. Things that would help produce jobs instead of only maintaining the existing jobs in the current industries.

...and the US could outright own that technology. But alas, we are handicapped by our conservatives who believe alternative sources can't work...so I guess we'll just end up buying Chinese in ten years.

[burd]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

From what I've read and heard, the single most effective thing any of us can do in a concrete, effective way is to plant trees. The CO₂ is removed from the air and stored in the wood.

From the data I've seen, deforestation is a far bigger contributor to increases in atmospheric CO₂ than burning fossil fuels.

Source? Michelle Bachmann?

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Kind of the cart before the horse don't you think. We can't even agree there is a problem, let alone what to do about it.

Well, the people who don't see the problem don't need to be anyone's concern. They're just getting in the way.

[The Rube]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

My thoughts:

http://jimfairthorne.files.wordpress...-foot-pole.jpg

[Foxton]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Kind of the cart before the horse don't you think. We can't even agree there is a problem, let alone what to do about it.

And everyone's quibbles are equal.

http://youtu.be/cjuGCJJUGsg

[jerphisch]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

TMQ with a pretty good piece on climate change this week.

Breaking hot air news: Last week, Barack Obama said on the "Today" show that global warming "is a problem affecting Americans right now." His appearance was timed to the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, a quadrennial document whose new edition states, "Climate change, once considered an issue for the distant future, has moved firmly into the present." Sunday, possible Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio lashed back on ABC's "This Week," saying "I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate."

The National Climate Assessment began in 2006, under George W. Bush, and concluded that year that climate change was real and at least in some part the result of human action. So this is not a wild-eyed left-wing notion. The idea was first stated by the government under a GOP presidency. Here is what I wrote in The New York Times in 2006 summarizing the reasons the Republican White House became convinced climate change was real.

The latest National Climate Assessment is a political document, intended to support Obama's preferred approach to greenhouse gases. There's nothing wrong with a document being political, so long as everyone knows this. The latest IPCC report from the United Nations is political, too, in its case stridently anti-American.

So ignore the political reports and check the neutral scientific positions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science or the many studies under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. Senator Rubio, this body of red-blooded American research supports the notion that human-caused greenhouse gases are a factor in climate change.

It's strange that so many conservatives have begun to take anti-science stances on climate change, natural selection and other issues. Once, conservatism prided itself on standing for education, rationality and the scientific approach to problem-solving. But as politics has become more polarized and fundamentalism has grown (in Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity), Republican candidates discovered there is fundraising gold in shaking one's fist against science. Plus, as college has become increasingly important to income, those who couldn't or didn't attend top colleges seem to feel more resentful of those who did. Once, conservatives controlled top academia. Now that liberals control the academy, suddenly science is bad.

If you believe, as I do, that the link between human-caused greenhouse gases and climate change is proven, what should you advocate?

The president, most editorialists, Secretary of State John Kerry and the Hollywood elite call for international action. Considering the 1997 test vote on the Kyoto Protocols failed in the Senate 97-0 -- international greenhouse gas rules did not draw even one Democratic vote -- there seems no chance the United States Senate ever will ratify any treaty granting international organizations control over U.S. domestic policy-making. Obama and others who call for international treaties on greenhouse gases are wasting everyone's time. The reason the international community wants such deals is its hope that any treaty will involve billions of dollars in guilt payments from the United States, money that foreign officialdom can steal from.

Rather than continue to participate in annual international climate summits that waste public money and cause greenhouse gases as private jets from the world over converge -- for the next one the United Nations promises "bold new announcements," probably about future meaningless meetings -- the United States should pass a domestic law pricing greenhouse gas emissions. The ideal would be to tax carbon, while reducing taxes on income and capital. That would create a profit incentive for engineers and business people to make money by finding innovations. A profit incentive, not bold announcements, is what will bring the greenhouse gas issue to heel.

Smog and acid rain are declining nearly everywhere in the world, even in some parts of China, though no international treaty covers either. In both cases the leadership position was taken by the United States, which enacted domestic legislation creating a profit incentive for smog and acid rain control. The results included engineering breakthroughs (the three-stage catalytic converter) and business models (sulfur dioxide trading) that reduced these pollutants much faster, and much more cheaply, than expected.

If the United States enacted U.S.-only greenhouse gas legislation, there's a good chance breakthroughs would follow, then the rest of the world could adopt them voluntarily. Talk of treaties is a waste of everyone's time. Congress needs to act.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

TMQ with a pretty good piece on climate change this week.

I really, really hate it when sports mixes with gossip or politics. Even when I agree with it. It's not the place. If you feel that strongly, write it up and put it in the NY Times.

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

I really, really hate it when sports mixes with gossip or politics. Even when I agree with it. It's not the place. If you feel that strongly, write it up and put it in the NY Times.

As deadspin likes to point out: Greggggg Easterbrook is a haughty dip****.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

As deadspin likes to point out: Greggggg Easterbrook is a haughty dip****.

Oh God. I didn't even realize that was the guy who wrote the article. This makes this so much better and so much worse.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Just going back and reading some of the deadspin articles... Man that guy is a colossal c*nt.

[XYZ]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

TMQ with a pretty good piece on climate change this week.

Is this a serious post?

[LynahFan]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

But alas, we are handicapped by our conservatives people who can do math who believe can show that alternative sources can't work...so I guess we'll just end up buying Chinese in ten years. well meaning people who claim to care about the environment will continue to ignore reality-based solutions like nuclear.

Ah, much better.

[bigblue_dl]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

"Just because we invent and use a superior technology doesn't mean the rest of the world will...except they frankly almost always do." Krauthammer is typically wrong...and is again so.



...and the US could outright own that technology. But alas, we are handicapped by our conservatives who believe alternative sources can't work...so I guess we'll just end up buying Chinese in ten years.

And there it is, a productive, civil conversation is torpedo'd in one asinine post.