Exactly. Also the environmental "chicken little crowd" is extremely short sighted. They blasted the US for not signing the Kyoto protocol, and yet (thanks to amazing innovation in the oil & gas industry through the shale revolution) the US was the FIRST country among the group to actually meet the requirements set out by Kyoto.
Kyoto is not going to do anything to impact climate change. Nothing will. The genie is out of the bottle. It's still to argue about reducing CO2 emissions when the train has already left the station. We need to focus on solutions that can reverse global warming. A big step would be to start heavily investing in fusion power. That is where our only hope lies.
The ocean is swallowing up Virginia so rapidly that its leaders are forgetting to bicker about climate change http://qz.com/228284/the-ocean-is-s...re-forgetting-to-bicker-about-climate-change/ But these nightmare scenarios aren’t confined to Virginia alone; they’re very much a national-level threat. Coastal counties generate just under half of US GDP and support tens of millions of jobs. In the 18 states that abut the Atlantic, the insured value of residential and commercial property totals $10.6 trillion; New York and Florida account for $2.9 trillion apiece
Oh no, 3 millimeters of sea level rise in a year, tell me, when should people evacuate? How long should we go without electricity to help rectify this crisis?
That's all you got from the article? The question would be , how much would you pay for electricity to avoid this, not live without. It's a Freakonomics question about what choice is actually cheaper and which is more expensive over the long term when you expand to all the the real factors in the equation. But I think your kids will have to deal with it anyway, it's going to happen.
No, he got that it's a horrible article. It mentions some isolated data and then extrapolates "as you can see in the chart below huge storm surges have been increasing". We're supposed to believe that the chart shows all the significant storm surges since 1933? The biggest threat they face is subsidence...but as anybody who knows Galveston knows, if you build by the sea and you live within 10 feet of sea level, you are going to get flooded. There isn't a price we could pay that could stop CO2 levels from rising - unless you want to go to war with India and China and freeze all development in the third world. Even if the worst predictions are right, mitigation would be cheaper. I appreciate Sweet Lou's remarks though. If CO2 is your fear, then nuclear -preferably non-weaponizable thorium plants in my book - is the only route forward.
Why is nuclear the only route forward? Energy needs isn't a one-size-fits-all question. Much like this discussion doesn't have a binary problem or conclusion. Reducing CO2 emissions will have to be a dynamic game of finding new innovation as the world scales industrially. Our switch from coal fired plants to gas and renewable sources is a nice boost, but we certainly need more improvements. The planet is becoming filthier from our own doing. We're in ambiguous territory where no one truly knows the consequences of the pollutants in our land, air and seas. That ambiguity should stir action rather than the inescapable consequences.
It's not a horrible article, it's not falsely extrapolated data, from what I understand it's a pretty easy prediction by CO2 concentrations. I have a house on the front row in Galveston. I know it's going to be in the surf in my lifetime. When we had to rebuild after Ike I did the cost/benefit analysis on getting 15 years out of it. After that I expect it to be worthless. Now apply that to the trillions of dollars of coastal development around the globe. I don't think there is anything the US can actually do to stop it, but that does not mean we should just give up and bring it on faster. We need to lead in action and innovation and let the rest of the world follow; if only to slow down the inevitable so that we can adapt better over a longer period B-bob laughs at me but I still hold out hope for some unforeseen effects, warmer air holding more of the Earths water in the atmosphere so sea levels don't rise as fast as predicted, more productive farming from higher CO2 concentrations, supporting huge population migrations now able to live in Siberia and Canada, great fishery revivals in all the artificial reefs of submerged structures in warm seas. It won't be the end of the world, but it will be a radical shift with lots of political upheaval. But the slower it happens the less tragedy we will endure. Your grand kids will live in a world we can't imagine. China could go to war with Russia over Siberia and it could go nuclear, Canada may have to build a fence to keep American immigrants out.
I've come to feel that we are probably past the point of no return regarding climate change but even with that it still doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing what we can to stop it. I've said this many times before but even without greenhouse gases the means to combat climate change have many other benefits, reducing other pollutants, increasing energy efficiency, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and developing different energy sources. I've researched fusion and while it is promising practical fusion is still a long ways away. We already though have many energy technologies along with ways of using energy more efficiently that can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Wait, nobody found this disco funny? So you'd agree then that meeting the requirements set out by Kyoto did not destroy the world?
Ha! You missed the point completely. The point was that innovation can help solve it, without jacking up our taxes and imposing new, restrictive legislation that will hurt our economy.
That innovation didn't come from a vacuum. Regulation around coal has been tightening with the Obama admin, plus the higher gas prices that made fracking viable all contributed to shutting down more coal plants. In terms of "hurting our economy", I'd say the Iraq invasion which caused prices to reach its then-previous highs for gas caused these market conditions to happen...the fracking boon, interest in renewables and biofuels, and more funding and research for deep sea drilling. All this doomsaying about increasing the price of energy then, which originally came as a response from increased regulation and caps in pollutants and greenhouse gases, didn't happen even when energy prices skyrocketed. I'm not saying there wouldn't be costs against it, but rather the market found a way. That and the government has been pouring billions in subsidies, grants, and stimulus towards cleaner energy generation. I think it was called innovation.
Stretch, stretch, stretch. Bottom line is that the US was roasted for not signing up for Kyoto. ....and yet we were the first to meet its standards.
