little pressed for time today, but a few comments in response I'll gently disagree. I think it is clearly both. Scientists have been making stupid predictions all along, policy-makers pick up on that and carry the ball. going to disagree with this as well. This is the point of folks going back 30 years and looking at EVERY single IPCC report since the beginning. Very little "has been scary accurate." Improving? yes. But not "scary accurate." also, "certain" is an extremely poor word choice in this context (not faulting you per se). But if the science were "certain," federal climate funding would have shrunk to zero by now. Clearly that is not the case.
Largest European solar manufacturer decides to invest billions in Oklahoma brining thousands of jobs. The sad part is there's hundreds of billions of dollars flooding red America because of biden yet braindead MAGA supporters @Salvy call it the "green new deal" lol.
I can't speak to what individual scientists have said in the media or how the media reports scientific research which is often sensationalized to get clicks and impressions. But the actual studies have been sound. Looking at the push back or the so called data scandals, they didn't change the conclusions. I don't know if every model has stood the test of time, but the major ones indeed have. Certain applies in certain context. Has the temperature changes been forecasted correctly? Yes - that's what I mean by certain. But there are other areas - such as the amount of snowfall or rainfall - or the impact on individual areas that are certainly less certain, and that is where a lot of the research is going into as well as finding sustainable solutions. But there really is no more debate on the issue that mankind is dumping loads of CO2 which is having an impact on global climate and raising the global mean temperature. That's a fundamental truth in the scientific community at this point. How much will the oceans acidfy? How will marine life be impacted? How will it shape regional climates? These are the research areas.
tl;dr - everything at scale sucks or is poorly planned... How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’ Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is ‘solving one problem by creating others’
This entire article is nothing but folks crying about aesthetics and looks. When they had rolling blackouts was their life any better before. I was reading it earlier. It has no real criticism other than some local folks crying about looks.
Nah, instead of putting panels on people's rooftops for free, they let utilities raze plants and indigenous burial grounds that inevitably destroyed the microbiomes of that area and also impacted the residents living there. All the construction of panels that lasts 25 years will probably make those deserts more lifeless than it really is thought to be with underground life that captures carbon for thousands of years. I don't think theguardian is a fossil fuel promoting rag, but I don't keep track of that stuff all the time. Might be good to read articles before responding.
Yes ive read the article and its main premise is that the current system is stupid because its destroying wildlife and making the dessert uninhabitable and there's much better places to install solar. We all agree with that but the entire story is based upon rules that were in place before the inflation reduction act went into place? Now, commercial developers can put solar panels on top of individual projects and get up to 60% of the expense repaid? What sort of scale are you against and what trade offs are you okay with when it comes to risk/benefit?
this issue of solving one problem and creating multiple new problems is addressed by Joel Feinberg in several places. Here (in a different context) the example he uses involves the attempt to combat harmful pollution: One could say simply that air and water pollution, since they threaten a vital public interest, are harmful, and therefore should be prohibited. Henceforth, a hasty legislature might declare, anyone who pollutes the air or water is guilty of a felony and subject to not less than a year in prison and a $10,000 fine. Would this criminal statute be supported by the harm principle? It does satisfy the letter of the harm principle's minimal requirement: it cites the need to prevent harm as a reason for prohibitive legislation. But from the point of view of an actual legislature seriously grappling with a pressing public problem, it is utterly trivial and nearly vacuous to say so little. Since obviously it would also cause serious public dislocations to force the immediate closing of all industrial facilities that emit gases into the atmosphere or chemicals into the groundwater, or to ban all gasoline‐powered motor vehicles, it is not in the spirit of the harm principle to fight one set of harms by blunt and sweeping measures that produce many harms of other kinds as side effects. Straightforward first‐resort use of criminal sanctions would be much too crude, not to say socially harmful, an approach to a problem of this complexity. Rather, the question a legislature must ask, in the spirit of the harm principle, is this: In the effort to minimize public harms generally, within the limits of efficiency, equity, and fair play, what sort of regulative scheme should be devised? {emph added} I don't think one can dismiss the negative impacts of monstrously large southwestern solar farms as "nothing but folks crying about aesthetics and looks." I think folks who live near such facilities can genuinely experience living near those facilities as a harm, just as people who live near landfills or toxic waste disposal sites can experience what are publicly-beneficial facilities as individually-affecting harms. Not to mention the ecological tradeoffs of altering desert ecosystems by constructing these solar farms. The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law Volume 1: Harm to Others, Chap. 6 "Fairly Imputing Harms." https://doi.org/10.1093/0195046641.003.0007
Of course hazards should always be weighed but if the argument is that we should preserve status quo because of hazards in transitioning would mean we never would’ve stopped using lead or asbestos. Advancement or really any major change will always have a costs. In this case the cost of dealing with the effects of Climate change are already costing billions and the price tag will Only get higher.
I'm against the "stupid" part. Our understanding of the desert is either limiting or willfully ignorant. As a Californian, I want my power cheap and plentiful like a Texan, though I do realize our grid is too ****ed up to stand without these investments into solar. What I am against are the sacrifices we make in the name of energy sustainability without respecting and understanding the complex systems that come with nature. Everytime an industry scales up, it deals with the problem of excess waste and demand with the tech. Horses became necessary as cities grew and piles of horseshit started piling up around metro centers. This is another subtle lesson of that and I don't think we needed to uproot those lands to get there. I also understand the other side where landed interests become overnight environmentalists to deny large capital projects in their backyard. It's a subtle balance, especially when California is notorious for delaying projects with red tape. We're just not there yet with legal and environmental understanding. A blind rush towards "green" does not advance either.
As stated before every major change does being about dislocations and creates other problems. That is the nature of complex systems. The question is though is continuing with the status quo better? Living in California you’ve probably seen the remnants of the CA oil industry that also was a blight on the landscape while also experiencing the problems with all of those internal combustion engines in CA air quality. Also while solar farms in the CA desert have caused problems new technology is making it much more feasible to develop new solar technology in other locations and far less impactful on the environment.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yo...ics-bill-de-blasio-ae9ba435?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 A Lawsuit to Protect Pensions From Climate Politics Workers say New York pension funds can’t use their savings to serve Bill de Blasio’s policy goals. By The Editorial Board May 23, 2023 at 6:39 pm ET New York City leaders have boasted about using worker retirement savings to advance their climate agenda. They may come to regret it after several city workers this month sued their pension funds for putting climate over financial returns. This could be a significant test of politicized investment by public pensions. New York law and regulation impose strict fiduciary duties on trustees of such funds. Plans are required to invest “for the exclusive benefit of the participants and beneficiaries” and with “care, skill, prudence and diligence.” State courts have ruled that trustees owe a “duty of undivided and undiluted loyalty” to retirees and workers. Yet three big public pensions—the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York, and Board of Education Retirement System of the City of New York—have instead made investment decisions based on climate goals. The three plans manage about $150 billion. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio led this climate socialism in 2018 when he declared that city pension plans would have to divest fossil-fuel-related assets within five years to show the city is “leading the fight against climate change.” The mayor, city officials and union representatives control the boards of the three pension funds, which complied with his orders. “Our first-in-the-nation divestment is literally putting money where our mouth is when it comes to climate change,” Mr. de Blasio crowed. But it’s not his money. New York City’s police and firefighter pension funds notably refused to divest from fossil fuels because it would violate their fiduciary duty. “The money in the pension fund does not belong to us, nor to the comptroller, nor to the mayor,” a police pension fund trustee explained. “It belongs to the active and retired police officers who have worked and sacrificed to earn their pensions. Our views on any social or political issue cannot enter into the equation. The same is true for the elected officials who sit on the board.” But social and political issues dominate the investment calculation of the city’s progressive leaders. In 2021 pension trustees voted to double their plan investments in “climate change solutions” and committed to eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions from their portfolios by 2040 to ensure “we have a livable planet for future generations,” to quote Mr. de Blasio. In February the city employees’ pension fund adopted a plan to “decarbonize the market, not just our portfolio, and keep fossil fuels in the ground.” The plan lets trustees blacklist investment managers who “fail to comply with the parameters to align with science-based pathways to maintain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” This action “shows just how completely the Trustees have allowed non-pecuniary, climate-related objectives to become the lodestar in their management of Plan assets,” says the lawsuit filed in state court. The pension funds didn’t even take into account the potential costs of their policies, which could be large. The lawsuit notes that the S&P 500 energy sector rose 58% in value last year. When pension funds don’t meet their target rate of return, taxpayers have to chip in more. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander’s budget forecast this year estimates that city taxpayers will spend nearly $10 billion over the next four years to make up for pension fund investment shortfalls last year. As State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in 2019, “You can’t lose sight of the fact that while we certainly want companies to do the right thing on climate change, at the end of the day we have to produce returns that support retirement benefits of 1.1 million New Yorkers.” Government pension funds in other states have also made climate and social policy an investment focus, if not as brazenly as those in New York. The lawsuit puts the funds on notice that they can’t hijack worker savings to serve their own political purposes. Appeared in the May 24, 2023, print edition as 'A Lawsuit to Protect Pensions'.
This is troublesome. Companies that prioritize climate outperform the S&P 500 over time - it's a good investment strategy. So now they are suing to stop that because they feel it's political? They are the ones politicizing this further. S&P 500 energy stock may be up last year, but it's not a good long term investment - you don't want to put your retirement money in energy. Not just because of climate change but because the oil supply is increasing not decreasing while demand will ultimately ebb. This seems like a lawsuit that will get dismissed and is more for headlines than anything useful.
It's not either-or. Recognizing the need for shifting away from the fossil fuel industry should be applauded, but subsidizing utilities and the destructive nature they are fast-tracking the transition should not be held under the sugary banner of Green to make the Medicine Go Down. Shrugging it off as the nature of complex systems when the approach and means mirrors oil industry thinking when they were rapidly expanding is what I'm against. It's how we got suckered into an unprofitable and mostly unsustainable recycling industry where ignorance and defiance of end-users prevails over its original good intentions.
Remember sugar is not bad for you - it's the food your body runs on. So eat much more sugar yippeeeee!
Seems like a bunch of woke ESG jobs to me - no way GOVERNOR KEVIN STITT lets this happen on his watch
You do realize they disagreed on the scope of the ruling right ? Why don't you actually do some reading instead of posting whatever comes into your QNON feed?
