Talk Elections

I have to say that the way both sides present the debate on Climate Change seems to be quite fallacious.  I mean, from my view there are two sides here that engage in a level of naivete that is reserved for people who think Professional Wrestling is real:

Side One: THERE IS NO CLIMATE CHANGE!  AND IT IS DEFINITELY NOT MAN MADE! (foams at mouth)
Variation: Yes there is Climate Change, but it is definitely not at all manmade.  It's soooo natural man!

And then there is the other side of the debate, mostly agreed on by "feelgooders" and socially conscious PC liberals:

Side 2: Climate change is real, it is caused by humans, BUT WE CAN PREVENT IT FROM GOING ANY FURTHER!

(facepalm)

I mean really, no wonder why a bunch of people find this debate to be so mindblowingly stupid.  What did people think happened to industrial gasses?  That said gasses were converted into Angel Farts?  Seriously!?  Industrialized areas are known to have higher rates of cancer and lung problems....yet people are shocked that industrialization could possibly lead to Climate Change?  The Earth is changing, yes it's our fault, AND NOW WE ARE NOW HOISTED BY OUR OWN PETARD!  THE PETARD OF INDUSTRIALIZATION!

So yes, the alarmists are indeed right.. . .  . .until they have the audacity, the nerve to say that we can be saved.  That we can actually stop this process.

We are beyond salvation right now.  We would need f***ing Star Trek technology to reverse the trend.  Sure, you could argue BUT BUT GREEN ENERGY!  BUHBUHBUT GREEN TAXES!  Yes, and wearing a WIN button will stop runaway inflation.  Such policies are at best "feel good" and don't do what needs to be done: reversal.  We don't need to stop the trend, WE NEED TO F***ING REVERSE IT.  And with the level of tech we are at I would love somebody to enlighten me as to HOW with technology where it's at how we ever hope to stop the Climate Change process.

If there is ever a case to be made for Futility, this is it.

But you know, maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe there is some data I'm overlooking that suggests that climate scales and graphs are wrong and that there was significantly more climate instability in 980 AD than now.  Or maybe there is some tech out there that, if given the funding, would somehow reverse the current trends and there will be a snowy winter in 2032 IF WE ACT NOW.
If so, then please, enlighten me.  Because so far I don't know why people waste the same amount of time on this issue as they would on more meaningful issues, like the amount of latent homosexuality in Top Gun.

In other words, we are all screwed.

Honestly, you are almost certainly right. It's hard to find data that would prove you wrong. However, I think I live better thinking there is a hope spot, which humanity needs to desperately search for. So I'll keep thinking that way.

Note : the reflection above actually applies to the view I have on many other issues, notably the European economy.

Really the main issue that I find with climate change is that it isn't an "imminent" crisis. Every year I hear one severe weather pattern or another blamed on climate change, as if there was a huge change over the course of the past year or even decade. From what I can tell, the best estimate of its effects is still 1.8-4.0°C over the next 100 years. Even if temperatures did rise by 4 degrees, it wouldn't be world ending; the problems it would cause (lower crop yields in Africa, less water availability, extinctions of plant/animal species) are problems we're already dealing with today. I have little doubt that by the time climate change could cause real, painful damage we'll have either found ways to greatly mitigate the problems or mitigate the rising temperatures themselves.

I feel enlightened. Jussayin.

This is why we need to do a complete world phase out of fossil fuels, and be 100% renewable by 2040. It can be done. It's affordable, there's more than enough energy to do it, and plus, we have a cleaner world. We can even do it without nuclear OR biomass. Wind, water, solar, and geothermal would be enough. Also, wind water solar and geothermal energy is spread out throughout the world, so there isn't the problem of it all being in one place. The problem is that the Republicans seem to be in denial about science because of the whole fact that it will hurt their precious oil and coal industries.

And destroy millions of livelihoods, and wreck the economy.

You mean like Thatcherism? ;)

     Millions? Probably billions. Supplying even a fraction of the world's energy needs through renewable resources would be ludicrously expensive.

Since when did right-wingers care about the economy or about people's livelihoods?

The economy is of a considerably more ephemeral nature than the planet that sustains it. I doubt there's any option that wouldn't destroy millions of livelihoods and wreck the economy. It's just a question of what else gets wrecked.

^^^^^
Proving my point.

I think you'll find the right has done more to help ordinary people than the left. I will substantiate when asked.

Actually, in fairness to Rhodie, most of the people I know in local charitable organizations who are willing to discuss politics are conservative Republicans. People generally care about the economy and the livelihoods of others, and to what extent isn't a partisan divide, I reckon. They sometimes simply have different ways of going about expressing these sentiments.

Care to provide a cite for your utopian fantasy? 

An interesting side note, if it weren't for man-made global warming, the Earth would actually be on course for another glacial period.  I've read a number of places that cold periods during the collapse of the western roman empire and the Little Ice Age in the middle of the last century were "_ events" (forgot the name) and should have precipitated and even harsher cooling, akin to the Younger Dryas event 10,000 years ago.  If man-made climate change can be slowed to a certain point, perhaps the Earth's climate can be held in equilibrium (assuming, of course, that we are on the cusp of another dramatic cooling event)?

Things could be reversed, but the political will is not there. And such drastic changes in people's lifestyles would be needed. Big $$$ will do all it can to prevent any serious change, so yeah... we are all screwed. When the deluge happens, I will at least I will feel better going to conservative and telling them "I told you so".  sigh...

Of course, I am comforted by the fact that Canada will come out as one of the least scathed countries. Wont stop things from going to s**t though.

No need to ask, we know the hooey. 

Eh.  We might get a big volcanic eruption that causes enough global dimming that the heating trend stops/reverses.  Krakatoa, I hope you're warming up!  :)

I think the fatalism in this thread belies how much small (or not so small), unexpected things upset the myth of perpetual trends.

Yes, in fact.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/100-renewable-energy-by-2050-is-possible-heres-how-we-can-do-it.html

     Too bad they don't actually talk about the costs of installation in their estimate. I estimated that installing enough solar panels to supply the world's power usage in solar energy would cost about $200 trillion. Well, better hope the other sources are cheaper.

The only viable solution to this crisis is one that's market-driven... and that's not a very realistic solution. Still, any other solution just will not happen.

The government knows it can't realistically mandate the type of change that is necessary, because such a quick, mandated change would screw everyone over. So this type of solution just won't happen.

Sustainable energy and environmentally friendly products have to become popular and cheap. Interestingly, each of those characteristics will help with the other (if it becomes more popular, it will become more cheap; if it becomes cheaper, it will become more popular). The thing is, companies have to make this change voluntarily, which will only happen if making the change will pay off. It's not like companies are deliberately ignoring global warming. The market for environmentally-friendly products will improve when fossil fuels become more scarce.

A website known as treehugger is a non-biased, reliable website?

Scientific American isn't a website?

The massive handwaving of the economics involved that both those articles indulge in means I stand by my original assessment, utopian fantasy.To make the economics work, they assume that the future costs of clean technologies will come down to the level needed to make them economic.  They also posit a transfer of technology to the developing world that somehow doesn't run afoul of local corruption and that doesn't cause an increased demand for energy because of the accompanying increased standard of living.

Well, what do you propose?

The question is not how to stop climate change: that's impossible at this point. The actual debate is if we want an affordable climate change or a catastrophe. In the first scenary, with a global warming below or equal to 2ºC, adaptation is plausible. With a global warming above 2ºC you better rent a spaceship or something. On the other hand, do you know cheap solutions to great challenges? Aren't bailouts prohibitively expensive? Tecnologies will be cheaper in the future but it's needed a great investment at the beginning, that's unescapable. One of these days this issue will occupy the central place in the political agenda, but maybe too late. Then we will be really screwed.

Why do people always focus on how many people it will put out of work and how expensive it will be when we can just as easily focus on how many more technicians, laborers, designers and researchers we will need to hire. Maybe the economy needs some sort of massive Keynesian jolt that it used to get through the mass mobilization caused by war. I mean, even if there was no Global Warming and even if we could believe every word of what those rich smelly guys in cowboy hats and Carnharts say about what they do to the world, it is still a great idea to think infrastructure.

I honestly haven't informed myself about this issue nearly as much as I should have by now.  If anyone can recommend good primers, I'm certainly interested.

In any case, in a debate that seems to feature poles of catastrophic alarmism and myopic resistance, intuitively it's the myopic attitude that concerns me more.  We seem to get bogged down in "metaphysical" debates about climate change, what proportions of it are man-made vs. environmentally cyclical, what parameter of degrees by which the temperature is likely to rise in the next century, identifying, based on current research and technology, exactly what needs to or even can be done, and so on.  Absent unanimous certainty about all these questions, we don't want to act and cause economic disruption.

If we adopted this kind of attitude about our individual physical health, it seems to me, we'd surely put ourselves at greater risk.  We don't necessarily know if smoking, eating cheeseburgers and drinking too much will ruin any given individual's health and greatly shorten their lifespan.  But we do know enough about the heightened risks to make recommendations about how that person can avoid possible major illnesses.  And we would probably think that a person who paid no heed to any of this was probably being fairly imprudent and perhaps irresponsible to their own dependent family members.  By analogy, we may not know with any certainty, especially given current data and research, whether increased greenhouse gas emissions will cause widespread and species-threatening damage to the planet in the next century or two or whether the effects from actions already done can be significantly reversed.  But we do seem to know enough about the greenhouse effect, the duration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and the consequences to which they may progressively lead to realize that we may well be running some risks to proximate future generations.  If we pay no heed to these increased risks, by not backing increased research into alternative energies, taking at least some measures to reduce emissions and encourage such measures on an international scale, that strikes me as just imprudent and perhaps quite irresponsible to future generations.  There are also possible economic benefits, including employment benefits, to such research and measures, not merely downsides.

But those are just my intuitions.  As noted, I'm not very well-informed yet about the science and so can claim little authority for those intuitions.

     If the costs make the project in question impossible, then I think they need to be addressed. Ponying up three times the GDP of the entire world would probably take more than a few bake sales, after all.

Then again, why do we focus on just the costs as if no benefits would come before the entire cost is paid. Perhaps an actuarial assesment needs to be made based on the risks, costs and benefits instead of just throwing out numbers and saying "its impossible" or "its too hard". Maybe it is and there is a reasonable estimation that we can make to make it reasonably certain that there is nothing we can do about greenhouse gases but it would appear that simply dismissing any analysis based on what we can already tell would just be bad policy. ...and of course, if we get to make the decision you are talking about, we are then at the question of what can we still do if suffering significant to radical climate change is unavoidable. Is there a role for the state or is dealing with this situation a personal matter?

     Well, I saw the costs issue as an allusion to my post. Certainly, this issue could be tackled by continuing to phase in renewable resources as sources of energy. Then there is a question of how quickly we can make transitions while maintaining a feasible budget and how much effect our efforts will have. The important thing is not getting derailed by overambition and wishful thinking.

...and how much, right now, is Global Warming being caused by political corruption and an economy based on millions of workers and several states being the clientelle of such corruption. Of course, what I am talking about is subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. How can we fight Global Warming by cancelling these subsidies and either replacing these subsidies with renewable subsidies or giving these subsidies back to the people in the form of progressive tax cuts?

     Well, developing countries are adding lots of new coal plants, which are adding greatly to the rate of global warming. While political corruption plays a role, there is also the issue that their energy needs are growing rapidly and coal is a cheap way to meet them. I imagine that addressing corruption that leads to subsidizing fossil fuels would probably help, but you also need to help countries like China and India produce energy in a less polluting fashion in order to curb warming in the long run.

Perhaps they could buy our technology or training....they are already buying our military secrets and my roommates at UW are Indian.