Obama's Climate Plans Face Long Fight 229
An anonymous reader writes "He hasn't even given his Tuesday speech yet but Obama's plans to tackle climate change are already raising objections in Washington. From the article: 'When President Barack Obama lays out plans to tackle climate change in a speech Tuesday, including the first effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, he will unleash a years-long battle that has little assurance of being resolved during his time in office. The president has called climate change a "legacy issue," and his speech may head off a backlash from environmentalists should his administration approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. But the address is unlikely to blunt criticism of Mr. Obama's approach from the left or the right.'"
"may head off backlash" (Score:4, Interesting)
lol, because what environmentalists want, after 4 years, is a speech... while his actions are the opposite of what he says he wants to do.
I'm voting 3rd party from now. Least of all evils isn't enough.
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"I'm voting 3rd party from now. Least of all evils isn't enough."
Not to nitpick, but I think you mean "lesser of 2 evils ("Big 2 parties").
Your third-party candidate would be the "least" evil.
But having said that, we have had some GOOD 3rd-party candidates. Far better than the BS the 2 big parties have thrown at us. And I include Obama as some of that "BS".
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But having said that, we have had some GOOD 3rd-party candidates.
Who, exactly? From what I've seen the 3rd party candidates manage to look good on paper by avoiding real issues that they'll have to deal with once they get into office. This is much like Obama, of course, who ran a campaign based on "hope" and "change," but hadn't really thought deeply about issues like, "how do you try a foreign terrorist held at Guantanamo in a civilian court?" Of course, he was elected anyway because the people who voted for him didn't really think through those issues either......
I'm
Re:"may head off backlash" (Score:4, Insightful)
"From what I've seen the 3rd party candidates manage to look good on paper by avoiding real issues that they'll have to deal with once they get into office."
Really?
When did Ron Paul, for example, "avoid" an issue? On the contrary, he was very outspoken about any issue anyone cared to raise with him. He wasn't allowed to speak in many settings, like some of the "debates"... but that's not even close to the same as "avoiding".
When has Ron Paul been shown to ever lie? He always voted exactly the way he told his constituents he would. He has a perfect voting record in that respect.
Paul was against Guantanamo. Etc.
And he wasn't the only one, just the most popular. You have had the answers to your complaints right in front of you, yet you refused to see they were there. That's not the politicians' fault, it's yours.
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An example is healthcare. He wants to get rid of government sponsored healthcare for the poor and destitute, but he doesn't have any reasonable replacement.
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"Your third-party candidate would be the "least" evil. "
based on what? hmm? So, it's a different party therefor not evil? People who think that sloppy should not be allowed to vote.
Re:"may head off backlash" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Obama's actions are often quite different than his rhetoric" [guardian.co.uk]... like any politician. That is why websites like the Political Memory [politicalmemory.eu] by La Quadrature du Net are so interesting and give real hope for change: Believe what they have done, not what they say they did (or will do).
Now, if only the population at large would flock to use such tools on election day... but as it is, the village keeps voting time and again for one of the two village liars who both just happen to be backed by the biggest landowner(s) in town - to everyone's long term detriment. Oh and the town message billboard happens to be controlled by the said landowners. We have not progressed very far politically, it would seem...
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who both just happen to be backed by the biggest landowner(s) in town - to everyone's long term detriment. Oh and the town message billboard happens to be controlled by the said landowners.
This doesn't matter when the populace is informed and understand who they are voting for. Of course, if the majority of the population votes based on what they read in billboards, they are so uninformed it doesn't really matter how you change the system, it will still be broken. "Democracy doesn't guarantee good government, it guarantees the people get the government they deserve."
Candidate Obama debates President Obama on Governm (Score:2)
Candidate Obama debates President Obama on Government Surveillance
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8&feature=youtu.be
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How about people just not just vote, but take the time to pay for the election fee and throw your hat in the ring? Why elect yet another clown when you can have your shot at a ringmaster, or at least a ringside seat?
Sounds stupid, but it would send a message at the minimum, and you might just win.
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I would like Obama to have done more on climate change, though I'm not sure what more he could have done.
Obama has gotten slaughtered politically for the environmental moves he has made. The green jobs that were part of the stimulus have cost him dearly, as have the much tightened auto emissions standards and the C02 limits for existing coal plants. All 3 of these are very substantial actions.
You may recall earlier in his first term a climate deal was near-ish happening. Subsequent to that the Tea Party
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This is what doesn't make sense to me logically, but makes sense to me emotionally. The President doesn't really have any power to affect the climate. The real legislative power lies with the House and Congress (you know the legislative branch). But he always gets blamed when shit hits the fan. Bush, Clinton, Obama. The only power they have over laws is veto. They can suggest actions that Congress can take, but let's face it, Congress usually tells the Pres to take a flying leap.
If you want to address
Re:"may head off backlash" (Score:5, Informative)
Congress may have legislative power, but Obama has some sway over the Department of Energy. If he tells them coal must use CCS (Carbon Capture and Sequestration), for instance, it is up to the DoE to develop a plan to implement it, because let's face it, coal plant owners will never do it voluntarily because it makes no sense from a business standpoint. 30% less efficient and therefore 30% less profitable to... save the environment? Why would you do that if you can spend 1% (or less) supporting global warming doubters that say it isn't an issue?
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They influences the DoE, and look at what they are calling for and their actual actions.
Look what Reagan did. That Jackass single handily destroyed the then alternate power industry, and pretty much handed are ass to the Mid-East.
Worst. President. Ever.
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All he can do is urge congress and other leaders to take action. He's president, not a king.
Sadly, congress is stuffed full of ignorant SOBs who wouldn't know what science is if it bit them in their ass.
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Yeah the more you vote third party the further away from your goal you get. So if your goal matters to you , then you'll think things through.
It is a material fact about the United States that baring dramatic, unforeseen events which cause an equally dramatic exodus from one or both parties, voting third party means taking your vote away from the candidate you otherwise would have voted for.
(In the case such defection does occur, no one will miss it and you'll be just one of hundreds of millions doing the s
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New York DID get flooded.
That's what happens when you live below sea level.
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Do you have any evidence to share that most (all? any?) of the flooded areas were actually below sea level? I've just done a little Googling and I am able to find none.
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Five minutes of reading about volcanic gas emisions and sun spots should convince you that your claims are false....
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No, because he'll end up reading about gas emissions on an editorializing website that supports his preconceived notions. Doing something like pulling up raw data, selecting a date range before looking at the data, and then examining that would be enough to shatter that notion.
Sunspots are trickier, because as far as popular culture is concerned, sunspots are magic.
Re:"may head off backlash" (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I don't have a lot in common with Greenpeace type environmentalism, but I've decided I'm unwilling to dismiss the environmentalist label, just because it's constantly tarred as meaning this kind of rare, bizarre, idealism. Concern with the long term, and net, impact of our productivity is really important from a pragmatic perspective.
If we make adding carbon mass to the atmosphere as expensive as it appears to be to the world as a whole(and cap and trade didn't even propose that much cost), we do ourselves a favor in terms of productivity. What a lack of regulation in this regard does is favors existing power structures. It doesn't represent a positive for our long term GDP growth.
Environmental pragmatism isn't a bad thing, and if you want to see people who favor that approach versus the straw-man of "taking us back to the 1700s", look to the plans proposed by, say, the union of concerned scientists.
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"Environmentalists" Will not be happy until we live like we did back in the 1700's.
That's called a strawman fallacy [yourlogicalfallacyis.com].
what we should be doing, is lowering our damage, and finding new technology that can keep or improve our quality of life and use less Carbon while doing this.
Which is actually what environmentalists want. Maybe you are a closeted environmentalist.
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""Environmentalists" Will not be happy until we live like we did back in the 1700's. "
False. Please stop lying. It's also a strawman. please learn to think.
" We shouldn't care about these people, "
The people who don't exist? The environmentalist you just made up?
", is lowering our damage, and finding new technology that can keep or improve our quality of life and use less Carbon while doing this."
That is what environmentalist want.
Re:"may head off backlash" (Score:4, Informative)
See 350.org, please follow your own advice, and learn to think about what is required to achieve a reduction of 30+ppm of CO2, hint it looks more like the Flintstones and less like the Jetsons.
here's a good start: (Score:5, Insightful)
Shutting down all PRISM related datacenters will seriously reduce the US carbon footprint.
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Re:here's a good start: (Score:5, Funny)
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"It's a zero sum game. Obama gives the cold-shoulder to civil rights by blowing hot air."
Though "hot air" is what he says he's trying to fight. :o)
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And start building nuclear PRISM reactors to replace other forms of power generation. :-)
Politics on a Tech Board (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Politics on a Tech Board (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's what all of this is about... politics.
Any time two or more people with differing ideas (let alone ideals) get involved with something, there will be politics. Thus, everything interesting has political ramifications.
Climate is related to technology, and also, we all live here. I for one welcome our politics-discussing overlords. As always, you have the option to simply spin on rather than crying about it.
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I have no love of overlords.
Or of popular culture, it appears. Otherwise you'd have known I was referring to the editors, even under the influence of DICE. The slashvertisements have become a bit more transparent of late, otherwise it's business as usual. And really, that's a feature, isn't it? We've been saying we'd like to see them clearly marked for some time now. Well, they are; clearly marked by being lame.
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And that's what all of this is about... politics.
Yep, energy sources and national stability have absolutely nothing at all to do with tech.
Please stop reading Slashdot. Please. Go pick up a copy of ACM or PLOS if you want to remove yourself entirely from humanity.
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Politics is a good thing, when compared to the alternative of shooting each other.
Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Insightful)
Without comprehensive, cooperative, enforceable international standards and practices, it's all just political showmanship. Given the interwoven economic, i.e. selfish capitalist, constituencies of all the nations, unilateral grand-standing and token half-measures are futile.
When global issues are at stake, global cooperation is required. It might start with a less-corrupt, more efficient United Nations with unselfish participation by the member states to give it a sense of legitimacy. That would be the ideal.
My gut feeling is that nothing, if anything, substantial will be done until the international capital oligarchs sense a real financial threat. Good intentions create politics; money creates policy.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Insightful)
Without comprehensive, cooperative, enforceable international standards and practices, it's all just political showmanship.
No, it's not. Changing the world often starts with yourself.
If you don't get this - fair enough. But don't ridicule people who do.
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Read recently that the USA had reduced its carbon footprint by ~200 megatons over the last year or so
Alas, same article mentioned China had increased their carbon footprint by 300 megatons in the same timeframe.
With China and India trying to move into the 21st (or at least late 20th) century, there's not anything that can be done about AGW until you get BOTH of them on the bandwagon....
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I agree wholeheartedly. Business will drive the planet down until it is profitable to change and then charge us for that as well. While future generations get the raw end of the deal. We won't feel it in our lifetimes.
We will be remembered badly I think.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Informative)
Not just futile, most "useful" measures would require legislative action, which is practically impossible these days.
That said, if I could choose one single bill to have signed into law, it would be the "Open Fuel Standards Act" which was brought up a few years ago, but didn't get a vote. This would require all new cars sold in the USA to be fully flex-fuel capable. (There are already a lot of "flex-fuel" cars on the market, but many are only able to use ethanol. The OFSA would mandate compatibility with methanol and butanol as well.) This would add about $100 to the price of each car, which is much less than an after-market retrofit would cost.
The point of all this is to break the effective monopoly on transportation fuel held by petroleum and bring true competition to the market. Methanol may be only 80% as energy dense as gasoline, but last I checked it was only about $1.50/gal. And unlike ethanol, methanol can easily be made from any kind of biomass, so this would also decouple the alternative fuel supply from food crops like corn. Best of all, it would stem the tide of cash that currently flows out from the USA's collective pocket, which is around $400 billion annually. That kind of economic "stimulus" would be a nice bonus too.
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Wouldn't solve the problem completely, and there would be loopholes of course, but no problem as big as climate change has one simple trick to solve it.
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While I agree that putting a "price" on carbon would help, it's currently a political non-starter. The OFSA at least has a chance of bipartisan support, and it stands to put a serious dent in our overall net carbon emissions. In the meantime, solar and wind installations will continue to chip away at the coal-fired electricity emissions. Some judicious "incentives" like a feed-in tariff might speed the process up a bit, but we're already past the tipping point where "going green" makes better business sense
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We need to pass a bill which sets a new government mandate on automobile manufacturers? And this needs to be done so that market forces can address the problem?
The reason we got to this point is government intervention in the economy. More government intervention is not the answer.
The government should just STOP. Stop anything and everything that they are doing to subsidize here, penalize there, micro-manage this, incentivize that, etc. All of their policies together have produced nothing but a colossal
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Our problem is neither "government" nor "business" per se, it is rather the capture of government by business. None of these absurd "interventions" in the market originated from government, they came from highly paid lobbyists, often with the relevant legislative language being written by them.
Like any other tool, "government" is a double-edged sword. If wielded properly, it can be used for good. In this case, I deem the cost/benefit to weigh in our favor.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree in spirit but not in practice. (Prohibition laws tend to do more harm than good.) But forcing ethanol to compete with methanol would have the same effect, since ethanol could never compete without government subsidies. Just remove the subsidies and mandate fully flex-fuel cars, and let the market take care of the ethanol problem.
In fact, I would go further and eliminate all subsidies from all industries. Let petroleum compete against the alternatives on a level playing field. I'm confident the market would take care of our oil problem too. (This is also advocated by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. His talks are well worth a look.) [youtube.com]
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If there is one thing in this whole world that has already been proven, it's that the market is highly irrational, panicky, capricious, and fickle. The market already sets government policy. This is why we are in this situation.
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LOL!! We haven't had a "free market" in the USA in decades, ESPECIALLY in the energy sector. Between corporate capture of government, underfunded regulatory agencies, and the revolving door between public and private sectors... we're a long way off from what you're talking about.
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Yes. Outlaw is too strong a term. Though I do feel its required use borders on the criminal.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Informative)
Without comprehensive, cooperative, enforceable international standards and practices, it's all just political showmanship.
The average American pollutes more (partly by proxy, through their economic decisions) than almost any other kind of human on the planet. We cannot ask others to do what we are not willing to do: that's a special kind of bullshit. Leading from the rear is how we got into this mess. Put civilian lawmakers who decide we're going to war on the front lines (have them carry a radio or something) and see what happens, some things will shift very quickly.
When global issues are at stake, global cooperation is required. It might start with a less-corrupt, more efficient United Nations with unselfish participation by the member states to give it a sense of legitimacy. That would be the ideal.
The UN will never have legitimacy as long as it retains its structure, ruled by the UNSC. Guess who the most puissant nation on the UNSC is?
My gut feeling is that nothing, if anything, substantial will be done until the international capital oligarchs sense a real financial threat.
As long as they stay on top of the order, they don't seem to care much what it looks like...
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:4, Insightful)
The Average American (of which I am not one), tends to have higher productivity on the planet than most other people. It's hard for a peasant in a rice field to produce much waste or pollution or CO2. Yet. What you have to watch is emerging economies where pollution and waste controls are absent.
With that said, there could be much done in America to improve on waste and some on pollution (though I am not a fan of harsh or even most regulations). America as a whole has been on a pretty reasonable post industrialization trajectory and it would be a tragedy to damage its economy in an attempt to force things which will likely occur in time anyway.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Interesting)
The Average American (of which I am one) might be more productive, but all that productive work is putting money into the pockets of corporate masters. So not only are polluting, we're not even seeing the economic benefit of the pollution. So we aren't only killing ourselves, we've not even seeing the economic benefits we constant whine that we'll lose if simply do common sense measures.
It's high time the US population wake up and realizing everything being done is going to feed the corporate pig and that 99.999999% of us aren't millionaires in waiting. Our thinking is so screwed up that it's hard to pay attention to ANY political news and not get a headache from the cogitative dissonance we're forced to put up with day in and day out.
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The economic divide is widening in America, not narrowing, even as the amount of work necessary for survival decreases. Something is rotten much nearer to home than Denmark.
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Growing up I never once expected people who make something of themselves to be made into villains in america.
That is NOT what is happening. Virtually nobody at the top of society got there through hard work and diligence. Who your parents are is the single best predictor of success in life, period the end. Whose vagina you came from and whose balls put you in there are more important to our society than how much benefit you provide to it.
These people were not "made into" villains. They chose to behave like them. Nobody forced them to fuck over the workers so that they could go on longer vacations. This is what eve
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The Average American (of which I am one) might be more productive, but all that productive work is putting money into the pockets of corporate masters.
That might be true of some, but I can tell you for me, and a lot of people I know, it's definitely putting a lot of money in my own pocket.
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Get a 401k or a mutual fund or buy some stock and then you too can be one of the corporate masters getting money and economic benefit from all the average Americans.
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The Average American (of which I am not one), tends to have higher productivity on the planet than most other people.
Uh, what? By what measurement? Most Americans don't produce anything.
It's hard for a peasant in a rice field to produce much waste or pollution or CO2. Yet. What you have to watch is emerging economies where pollution and waste controls are absent.
In theory, that's true. In practice, people in those countries can't afford anything anyway. They're having to turn to efficiency just to exist. They're using rocket stoves which reduce emissions because they can only get a few sticks to cook their food with, or they're shoveling their pigshit into a pile and running a gas hose in from there, and so on.
America as a whole has been on a pretty reasonable post industrialization trajectory
Reasonable according to who? Those who live a life of privilege due to the pollution inv
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According to this http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009104319/g20-manufacturing-output-capita [ourfuture.org] he would be mostly right. There is only a few other per-capita output countries higher than the US.
And none with an even close to the amount of manufacturing produced in the US overall.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, what? By what measurement? Most Americans don't produce anything.
You have to admit: this is an utter nonsense statement.
No, no I don't. [yahoo.com] Most Americans are engaged purely in the rearrangement of deck chairs into temporarily pleasing patterns.
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Granted that too many are engaged in "rearranging the deckchairs" but if pre-arranged deckschairs that means people who can better spend their time don't have to arrange their own deckchairs, that can still be a net positive to productivity.
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Please ignore the surplus "that" after "deckschairs" (and the surplus s in that word) in the above.
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No, it's about making industrial production so expensive in the West that we ship it all to China, where they just laugh at speeches about 'Climate Change'.
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What does he plan to do... (Score:2, Insightful)
... about the Global Cooling that has been going on for the past 15 or so years?
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Why did someone mod this as a "Troll" post?
It's a valid damn question, especially in light with all the revelations that Anthropocentric Global Warming isn't as advertised (Which is to say that many are now saying we're cooling...much like the big to-do was about Global Cooling some 30 or so years ago and the reports of at least the models and the samples being dead wrong...)
Well it seems like a troll to the warmists, especially seeing as the claim of "cooling" is bogus - the warming trends have been well below what the models predicted, but there hasn't really been global cooling, just a leveling off of the warming. Plus, I think the party line is that the trends indicate that some explanation is needed for what is happening (ocean sinks, larger seasonal trends than average, using decadal averaging instead of annual, etc.), but that climate change is still indisputable scient
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The parent here isn't a troll either -- please people just because you don't agree with an opinion doesn't mean you should mod it as troll!
That said it is a leveling off of the warming accompanied with a steadily increasing CO2 that is causing the heartache. This doesn't "prove" that AGW is a farce as many are saying, but it does raise a lot of questions. None of this levelling was predicted by the current models, even the head of the IPCC agrees that the models need to be re-worked. So if heating is c
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None of this levelling was predicted by the current models, even the head of the IPCC agrees that the models need to be re-worked.
Actually, both history and the models have many periods of a decade or longer where the temperature doesn't appear to be increasing. It's always a problem when you have multiple cyclical events and random noise overlapping the underlying trend.
So if heating is caused by the increase in CO2, where is the heat going?
Mostly the ocean, the atmosphere warms the ocean during La Nina periods and the ocean warms the atmosphere during El Nino periods.
What other mitigating factors are there that aren't being factored into the models?
It's possible that there are small mitigating and
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The CO2/H20 positive feedback numbers have simply been pulled from dark places, this is the single most important number in the climate model.
Some of the higher numbers suggested by warmists are simply preposterous. If the earth's climate was that unstable the earth would already be Venus. Runaway positive feedback, poles in right half plane etc.
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Apparently some AGW skeptics also have mod points today. The current score stands at "+1 Insightful."
As for the substance of the issue, I've found this YouTube playlist [youtube.com] to be one of the more balanced and informative. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's worth a look.
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YouTube playlist... balanced and informative.
If that's not a sign of an impending and unstoppable apocalypse, I don't know what is.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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How is any reconstruction not "cherry picked"?
Where would you have it start? At the end of the ice age? Why not at the end of Ediacaran period? No? How about Permian? What period would you start with and why?
It's ALL cherry picked to support the conclusion they want to reach.
Spy on them (Score:2, Funny)
Is he just going use the NSA to spy on the weather until it behaves?
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Dearest Public (Score:5, Insightful)
Since everything else seems to have gone in the shitter, I come back to you with a message that seemed to sell well in both campaigns: the environment.
I look forward to again gaining your broad support with a campaign of platitudes, anthemic one-word slogans, and statements that make me appear sympathetic to your issues, while actually resulting in policies that either ossify the current corporation-based lobbyist-driven structure, or expand the pervasive control of the Federal government ostensibly for good reasons but which will in fact be used to incrementally decrease your rights vis a vis that "Constitution" thingy, which I will continue to re-interpret as really not relevant to today's realities anyway.
Signed,
Your President.
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Since everything else seems to have gone in the shitter, I come back to you with a message that seemed to sell well in both campaigns: the environment.
I look forward to again gaining your broad support with a campaign of platitudes, anthemic one-word slogans, and statements that make me appear sympathetic to your issues, while actually resulting in policies that either ossify the current corporation-based lobbyist-driven structure, or expand the pervasive control of the Federal government ostensibly for good reasons but which will in fact be used to incrementally decrease your rights vis a vis that "Constitution" thingy, which I will continue to re-interpret as really not relevant to today's realities anyway.
Signed,
Your President.
QFT
Paywall (Score:2)
Do all of you guys commenting have a subscription to get past the WSJ paywall, or are you reading the article from some other method?
Oh... wait. "Reading the article". LOL.
Re:Paywall (Score:5, Interesting)
To get around the WSJ paywall, search for the article title in Google. Open the link that comes up in Incognito and you should be fine.
Haven't you Obama opponents learned yet? (Score:2)
Just shut up and roll over.
Really it doesn't matter in the USA (Score:4, Informative)
Really it doesn't matter what we do in the USA if Asia and the middle east are 1000x worse with a larger population.
Unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)
There are 3 major obstacles to getting anything done with the climate change issues.
1 - USA: large portion of population, especially in the red states espousing a world view that is anti-science to the bone. This is being shamelessly exploitetd and nurtured by a powerful energy lobby and "conservative" (conservativism used to include environemental conservation in Teddy Roosevelt's era) politicians. In addition, US economy is facing competitive pressure from other countries and is worried that cleaning up environment means increased cost and loss of jobs. My view on this is that nothing will happen on the US end until after the final collapse of the republican party as we know it today. That is a few years out, but it will surely happen. US voters are by nature centrists, and the red state/blue state division won't last forever. Gerrymandering and politicized supreme court will extend the suffering though.
2-China. When China sets their mind to do something, it will get done,but their environmental policies are at the same level of their human rights policies, pretty low. They are smart enough, and tend to take the longer view, though, so I am sure they realizes that they can not fuel their economy USA-style for very long without ending up in a Mad Max-scenario. By the time the US republican party collapses, China might have turned around and become a climate change believer.
3-The developing countries. Energy is essential to increase the living standard, and it would be hypocritical by western nations to continue our high energy consumption, while these countries have a desperate need too increase their energy use. A country like Norway, who is a major oil producer, while being a poster boy for environment and climate change policies, spending a large portion of their GDP on rain forest projects, foreign aid and other environmental projects, needs to realize that until their privileged population does something about their massive energy usage, they will remain hypocrites. We need to budget for a dramatic increase in energy use by developing countries, which means we need to dramatically reduce our energy consumption in the west. I see soem good signs in that there are more and more small cars on US roads, but the SUVS,compact SUVS, and trucks, as well as assholes riding heavy BMWs, Audis, etc. are still dominating the landscape.
I think all rational persons have a pretty good idea what needs to be done. Obama needs to try, to make sure it gets put out there in the public, so that we know what direction to turn when the rest of the world is ready to advance from the middle ages. And by those, I include the republicans that espouse a pre-Copernicus world view.
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No, actually, the rational people do not agree on what needs to be done or even whether anything needs to be done. It is only the irrational people that agree that extreme and possibly quite useless things need to be done.
Rational people look at the facts that the earth is still cooler than before the medieval cold spell and that the temperature increase halted for the last 15 years, while irrational people do not want to be confused by these facts.
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While we dither with meaningless goals (Score:2)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-city-of-miami-is-doomed-to-drown-20130620#ixzz2X0NGzxLY [rollingstone.com]
The President will be talking about 17% CO2 emissions reductions from 2003 levels (if memory serves, but it should be 1990 levels) by 2020 which is a joke - and totally inconsequentia
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Continue to dither. Until climate change actually becomes important.
We'll know when this happens. It will be when one ton of carbon sequestered by a Monsanto genetically engineered super tree is worth the same in carbon credits as one ton sequestered by a tree in some third world country, owned by Al Gore. Until then, its a wealth transfer scam.
The government will fix it (Score:3)
The government has the fix for everything. Just let them confiscate more of our wealth and give them more power to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. That's the solution to this problem and apparently every other problem.
US 20% CO2 drop a matter of luck (Score:2)
Of course there's a blacklash (Score:2)
Here is what I've learned about politics in America:
1. The right hates the left.
2. The left hates the right.
3. Everybody hates the center.
Compromise is evil. If you didn't get everything that you want, then you've lost. When people say that they're hoping for a "moderate", they mean somebody who agrees with them on everything meaningful and gives up only trivial things that you don't care about at all.
This sarcasm isn't really about trying to defend the plan, or pick out the parts I think are good from the
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A long flight ... but that's so environmentally unfriendly. We should insist that his plans are subject to a long train ride, or even better a long trek instead.
No, no, a long fight. That's also ecologically unfriendly, when you can just send in a couple drones and be done.
Re:This is not Slashdot material... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is a bigger corporatist than Clinton was, and Clinton was more than Bush Sr.
Only Bush Jr. was a bigger corporatist.
We need to leave the left/right bullshit behind for a while while we make our country safe for democracy (democracy within a republic that is) again. The word of corporate entities mean a million times that of a constituent and that indicates a broken system.
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The system is fraudulent and corrupt by design. It is not 'broken' by any means. It proves the old adage of nature itself: Might makes right.
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second, OWS is a joke, nothing more nothing less.
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Because there are so few of those. Most people on assistance collect it only for a very short time. The rich using tax loopholes cost us far more each year.
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Agreed. However we need to address the rich AND the poor who are abusing the system in order to do that. That is what OWS was truly about for those of us who do have a clue. Those with money who abuse their power are a far larger force for damage then the 4% who "rather sit in their trailer and collect money from the governme
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1. That is not the same 4.2% each year. Most folks are on it for a short time.
2. Most of those folks are employed. Wage stagnation does that.
3. the Fair tax is just a method to shift the tax burdon onto the middle class even more. It is a give away to the rich.
I don't want to punish anyone. I want to see people pay their taxes though. Investment income should not be taxed at a lower rate than the money I make.
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So was the salary I am paid. Income should be taxed as income no matter the source.
Fair share is Fair. Pay X% of income, above some minimal limit.
Just because you are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire does not mean the rest of us are as dumb.
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Google "embarrassed millionaire", that will cure this ignorance of yours. It does not indiciate your net worth.
You also need an econ 101 lesson. They cannot raise costs due to competition, they cannot lower wages for the same reason. Tax shelters would be abolished with the correct tax code.
It has nothing to do with Bill Gates having more money. You are showing your ignorane again.
Also fun fact, somethings are zero sum. Land for instance and oil. Both of these resources are at this point zero sum. Every bit
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What do you think wealth is for?
You need an econ 101 class. If prices could be raised they already would be. Price has not a whole lot to do with cost.
Fair tax is not fair. Most people above some income simply do not spend any real percentage of their income on purchases. Not only do they just not need to but often what they do need is provided by someone else. Like company jets and the like.
Taxing sales is regressive. You have been had.
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Me naive?
Prices are determined by what the market will bear. That is it.
You are a useful idiot for the 1%.