'Will the unwashed lefty 'occupiers' go after eco-frauds and green crony capitalists?'
Nice - not.
You have a talent for confusing two different topics. The 'Occupy Wall Street' campaign is to do with the gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and income in the American economy.
AGW has to do with the danger of causing catastrophic damage to the Earth's climate for humans. AGW is no danger either for the Earth or for life on it. No matter what humans do to themselves, the Earth will survive and life somewhere will also persist.
I accept AGW because; greenhouse gases work by retaining heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing warming, increasing the level of greenhouse gases will cause increased retention of heat in the atmosphere and cause increased warming, CO2 is a greenhouse gas which humans are causing to increase by burning fossil fuels, and therefore AGW is true.
I'm also concerned about where we are going to get our energy in the future. I keep on noting to you that our standard of living depends on having cheap abundant energy. Americans currently use 10 kilowatt.hour of energy per person per day, even with the inequality in American society. Extending that level of affluence to the global population that you want, 10 billion, means we'd need 100 terrawatt.hour energy per day (we currently use 16 terrawatt.hour/day).
So where is the energy to come from? Fossil fuels will eventually run out. Increasing use of fossil fuels by a factor of x6 will just cause them to run out more quickly. The 2 trillion barrels of bitumen in the Athabasca oil sands (even if we could work out how to recover all of it without having to use too much energy and water processing it) would last 70 years at current rate of oil consumption, although currently only 10% is economically recoverable.
The Sun supplies 6,000 times the energy we currently use. If we could work out how to tap just 0.1% of that, we'd have no problems.
So let me get this straight, if the linked article is any indicator, you think OWS is hypocritical for not protesting a Cap & Trade system(*) that doesn't exist yet, that won't exist for as long as there's a D in the White House (and the GOP stands in the way of everything except for maintaining the Bush-era "temporary" tax cuts and reaffirming the national motto) or the GOP controls the House (and stands in the way) or the Democrats [nominally] control the Senate but that majority includes Blue Dogs (who stand in the way), and that even if it will exist will be run by people who don't think it should exist and/or will be defunded once the GOP gets a chance...for taking the money that is not invested in its non-existence and burning it off on non-existent, minimally-regulated, AAA-rated, fraudulent securities or unregulated, opaque derivatives of same?
* Formerly known as the Republican plan to avoid tighter environmental regulations by "releasing the power of the Free Market" or somesuch, but post-2009 called "Socialism!!!"
Michael,
ReplyDelete'Will the unwashed lefty 'occupiers' go after eco-frauds and green crony capitalists?'
Nice - not.
You have a talent for confusing two different topics. The 'Occupy Wall Street' campaign is to do with the gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and income in the American economy.
AGW has to do with the danger of causing catastrophic damage to the Earth's climate for humans. AGW is no danger either for the Earth or for life on it. No matter what humans do to themselves, the Earth will survive and life somewhere will also persist.
I accept AGW because; greenhouse gases work by retaining heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing warming, increasing the level of greenhouse gases will cause increased retention of heat in the atmosphere and cause increased warming, CO2 is a greenhouse gas which humans are causing to increase by burning fossil fuels, and therefore AGW is true.
I'm also concerned about where we are going to get our energy in the future. I keep on noting to you that our standard of living depends on having cheap abundant energy. Americans currently use 10 kilowatt.hour of energy per person per day, even with the inequality in American society. Extending that level of affluence to the global population that you want, 10 billion, means we'd need 100 terrawatt.hour energy per day (we currently use 16 terrawatt.hour/day).
So where is the energy to come from? Fossil fuels will eventually run out. Increasing use of fossil fuels by a factor of x6 will just cause them to run out more quickly. The 2 trillion barrels of bitumen in the Athabasca oil sands (even if we could work out how to recover all of it without having to use too much energy and water processing it) would last 70 years at current rate of oil consumption, although currently only 10% is economically recoverable.
The Sun supplies 6,000 times the energy we currently use. If we could work out how to tap just 0.1% of that, we'd have no problems.
So let me get this straight, if the linked article is any indicator, you think OWS is hypocritical for not protesting a Cap & Trade system(*) that doesn't exist yet, that won't exist for as long as there's a D in the White House (and the GOP stands in the way of everything except for maintaining the Bush-era "temporary" tax cuts and reaffirming the national motto) or the GOP controls the House (and stands in the way) or the Democrats [nominally] control the Senate but that majority includes Blue Dogs (who stand in the way), and that even if it will exist will be run by people who don't think it should exist and/or will be defunded once the GOP gets a chance...for taking the money that is not invested in its non-existence and burning it off on non-existent, minimally-regulated, AAA-rated, fraudulent securities or unregulated, opaque derivatives of same?
ReplyDelete* Formerly known as the Republican plan to avoid tighter environmental regulations by "releasing the power of the Free Market" or somesuch, but post-2009 called "Socialism!!!"