The lessons of the pandemic and global warming

[_MeDotOrg]

In the 1961 Sci-Fi/Disaster flick Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a submarine surfaces in New York harbor after the Van Allen belt literally catches fire.



The 10 year old that watched that movie 59 years ago saw San Francisco harbor earlier this month:



This time, no Hollywood ending.

[_ajax18]

Yes, definitely.

I'd tend to agree with you on that. But I find your answer surprising given the scripture you shared with me. Would you agree that human overpopulation is a big component of anthropogenic global warming. If so why is this rarely discussed by political leaders on both sides?

You know MeDotOrg it's kind of a sad way to think of it, but perhaps the pandemic could be part of the solution to global warming.

[_Some Schmo]

Trump knows that he will be safely dead and buried before the most disastrous consequences of climate change are upon us...

That was my favorite part of your post. Trump dying and solving climate change are two things the world really needs right now.

[_Themis]

Yes, definitely.

I'd tend to agree with you on that.

Interesting because I never see you make any suggestions on how to address the problem.

Would you agree that human overpopulation is a big component of anthropogenic global warming. If so why is this rarely discussed by political leaders on both sides?

If you had less bias and spent some time reading more then far right sources you would see they do address it sometimes. Now population is very related to anthropocentric warming, but it is a little more complicated. You could reduce the population by 80% and you will still get anthropogenic global warming. Especially if the remaining population lives as people in the US. Not everyone contributes the same to global warming, and our very existence does not necessarily mean we have to be causing global warming. This is why so many are calling for change in how we gather and use resources. How we do it now is warming the planet and that inconvenient truth is not going to be wished away or ignored. At some point in the next centuries or thousands of years we are going to start looking a little more like Venus.

[_Brackite]

I know you don't like the wall and I understand your concerns with the environment. But I think there's other things you need to consider about this election. While you and I may not agree on illegal immigration, I think we'd both agree that we want a booming economy. That's in the interest of both native born Americans and would be immigrants. I think US citizens should have the authority to decide who can come to the US. You might disagree with me on that. But that disagreement doesn't even matter if the economy is shut down and there is no job to fight over. I think you understand that the radical socialism supported by Bernie Sanders and the current Democratic party would be a disaster, just as it was a disaster in Russia, in China, in Venezuela, Cuba, Vietnam and everywhere else it has been put into practice. Politics aside, Biden will not be making the decisions if he is elected. He takes his marching orders from people like Bernie Sanders and he just doesn't really have the strength to resist that even if he wanted to at this point. This is what you'll be voting for in the Biden/Harris ticket and I hope you've considered that.

Since I am in Arizona, which is a battleground state, I believe that I must vote for Biden/Harris. (A third-party vote in this state is basically a half vote for Trump.) Arizona is also the state that McCain was a Senator of, and since Trump has called McCain a loser and ended up unnecessary bashing him on Twitter after six months McCain passed away, I strongly believe that Trump doesn't deserve to win this state during this election.

Back in 1993, I believe that I remember Rush stating that there was going to be another recession due to a large tax increase that President Clinton just signed into law. That tax increase that Clinton signed into law didn't lead into another recession during the 1990s. Instead, the 1990s after 1993 enjoyed a booming economy.

In January of 2013, the Bush tax cuts ended up expiring for individuals with taxable income over $400,000. The Unemployment rate in January of 2013 was 8%. The Unemployment rate during Obama's 2nd term ended up dropping from 8% down to 4.7% in January of 2017. I am not worried about any tax increases on the rich that may happen during a Biden/Harris Administration. However, I be voting no on a proposition in Arizona here that if it passes will increase taxes on the rich.

[_ajax18]

However, I be voting no on a proposition in Arizona here that if it passes will increase taxes on the rich.

So you understand that increasing taxes on the rich doesn't increase government revenue but rather just drives this money offshore as the rich flee to a tax haven.

Do you understand how many good paying jobs would be created for both American and Latin Americans if Trump were to continue construction of the keystone pipeline? If you couple the socialism with the job killing environmentalism in the green new deal, we probably won't have an issue with illegal immigration to argue about anymore because our economy would be so bad that only the most impoverished and disabled rather than the best and brightest would even consider immigrating to the US.

The US is very close to being energy independent under Trump. Do you think Biden is for or against fracking because it seems to me his answer depends on which constituency he is addressing. The Trump economy was far superior to the Obama economy. That's a fact. I just don't think you understand what the pricetag on this environmentalism, single payer healthcare, defunding the police, etc. is actually is going to be.

[_Res Ipsa]

To avoid catastrophic effects of global warming, we have to get to net zero carbon emissions very quickly. We can't do that by slowing down birth rates.
We can't do that by freezing the world's population at its current level. We can't do it through mass genocide. In terms of reducing carbon emissions, population is a red herring. We could slow the increase in world population through education and giving women control over whether or not they have children. Ajax isn't willing to do that, so I don't know why he brings it up.

[_Themis]

However, I be voting no on a proposition in Arizona here that if it passes will increase taxes on the rich.

So you understand that increasing taxes on the rich doesn't increase government revenue but rather just drives this money offshore as the rich flee to a tax haven.

Do you understand how many good paying jobs would be created for both American and Latin Americans if Trump were to continue construction of the keystone pipeline? If you couple the socialism with the job killing environmentalism in the green new deal, we probably won't have an issue with illegal immigration to argue about anymore because our economy would be so bad that only the most impoverished and disabled rather than the best and brightest would even consider immigrating to the US.

The US is very close to being energy independent under Trump. Do you think Biden is for or against fracking because it seems to me his answer depends on which constituency he is addressing. The Trump economy was far superior to the Obama economy. That's a fact. I just don't think you understand what the pricetag on this environmentalism, single payer healthcare, defunding the police, etc. is actually is going to be.

LOL You didn't say one correct thing above. You couldn't even get the keystone pipeline information correct on where it is being built and by whom.

[_Gunnar]

The US is very close to being energy independent under Trump. Do you think Biden is for or against fracking because it seems to me his answer depends on which constituency he is addressing. The Trump economy was far superior to the Obama economy. That's a fact. I just don't think you understand what the pricetag on this environmentalism, single payer healthcare, defunding the police, etc. is actually is going to be.

And you don't understand that failure to transition green energy sources like solar and wind power and geothermal power, etc. and weaning ourselves off of our dependence on fossil fuels is ultimately going be incomparably more costly, not only in money, but in human lives, than doing so. I don't know how you can manage remain so ignorant of the demonstrable benefits, entrepreneurial, and job creation potentials of green energy transition and innovation. Do you own a lot of stock in fossil fuels companies or something like that?

Amory Lovins (Author of the book, Reinventing Fire) and the Rocky Mountain Institute have already demonstrated that the potential economic benefits of transitioning to green energy and greater energy efficiency are vastly greater and more beneficial than continuing reliance on fossil fuels, and you refuse to even look into it! Why not? What are you afraid of? You just can't stand the idea of being proven wrong about anything? You're too heavily invested in fossil fuel corporations? Will it hurt you to honestly consider what they are trying to tell us?

In Reinventing Fire, Amory Lovins and Rocky Mountain Institute offer a new vision to revitalize business models, end-run Washington gridlock, and win the clean-energy race―not forced by public policy but led by business for enduring profit. This groundbreaking roadmap reveals market-based solutions across the transportation, building, industry, and electricity sectors. It highlights pathways and competitive strategies for a 158%-bigger 2050 U.S. economy that needs no oil, no coal, no nuclear energy, one-third less natural gas, and no new inventions.

This transition would cost $5 trillion less than business-as-usual―without counting fossil fuels’ huge hidden costs. It requires no new federal taxes, subsidies, mandates, or laws. The policy innovations needed to unlock and speed it need no Act of Congress.

Whether you care most about profits and jobs, national security, health, or environmental stewardship, Reinventing Fire charts a pragmatic course that makes sense and makes money. With clarity and mastery, Lovins and RMI point out the astounding opportunities for enterprise to create the new energy era.

Digging up and burning the deposits of ancient sunlight stored eons ago in primeval swamps has transformed human existence and made industrial and urban civilization possible. But fossil fuels are no longer the only, best, or even cheapest way to sustain and expand the global economy—whether or not we count fossil fuels’ hidden costs.

Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars each year subsidize America’s fossil fuels, and even more flow to the systems that burn those fuels, distorting market choices by making the fuels look far cheaper than they really are. But the biggest hidden costs are economic and military.

America’s seemingly two-billion-dollar-a-day oil habit actually costs upwards of three times that much—six billion dollars a day, or a sixth of GDP. That’s due to three kinds of hidden costs, each about a half-trillion dollars per year: the macroeconomic costs of oil dependence, the microeconomic costs of oil-price volatility, and the military costs of forces whose primary mission is intervention in the Persian Gulf. Those military costs are about ten times what we pay to buy oil from the Persian Gulf, and rival total defense spending at the height of the Cold War.

Any costs to health, safety, environment, security of energy supply, world stability and peace, or national independence or reputation are extra. Coal, too, has hidden costs, chiefly to health, of about $180–530 billion per year, and natural gas had lesser but nontrivial externalities even before shale-gas “fracking” emerged.

All fossil fuels, to varying degrees, also incur climate risks that society’s leading professional risk managers—reinsurers and the military—warn will cost us dearly. And even if fossil fuels had no hidden costs, they are all finite, with extraction peaking typically in this generation. Yet “peak oil” is now emerging in demand before supply. Thus industrialized countries’ total oil use peaked in 2005, U.S. gasoline use in 2007. Even U.S. coal use peaked in 2005, and in 2005–10, coal lost 12% of its share of U.S. electrical services (95% of its market) to natural gas, efficiency, and renewables. This is not because these fuels’ hidden costs have been properly internalized yet into their market prices, but rather because those market prices today are too high and volatile to sustain sales against rising competition.

Making a dollar of U.S. GDP in 2009 took 60% less oil, 50% less energy, 63% less directly burned natural gas, and 20% less electricity than it did in 1975, because more efficient use and alternative supplies have become cheaper and better than the fossil fuels they’ve displaced. Yet wringing far more work from our energy is only getting started, and is becoming an ever bigger and cheaper resource, because its technologies, designs, and delivery methods are improving faster than they’re so far being adopted.

And look at the following.

Many other countries have lately pulled ahead of the United States in capturing the burgeoning potential for greater energy productivity and more durable and benign supplies. During 1980–2009, for example, the Danish economy grew by two-thirds, while energy use returned to its 1980 level and carbon emissions fell 21%. Now the conservative Danish government has adopted a virtually self-financing strategy to get completely off fossil fuels by 2050 by further boosting efficiency and switching to renewables (already 36% of electric generation, which is the most reliable and among the cheapest pretax in Europe). Why? To strengthen Denmark’s economy and national security. Europe as a whole is going in the same direction, led by Germany, and now Japan and China are moving that way. What could the U.S. do?

Even the conservatives in Denmark are recognizing the advantages of green energy, and the insanity of refusing to transition to it! Why do GOP conservatives in our country remain so stupidly and stubbornly opposed to accepting that reality?

It couldn't hurt for the government to endorse and serve as a clearing house for ideas for how to achieve the transition to a green economy. At the very least, government subsidies to prop up and further enrich fossil fuel corporations should stop. And conservative efforts to derail or even outlaw that transition, or even forbid discussing it in official government publications and reports must definitely stop! So what if the fossil fuel industry suffers a well earned demise? The jobs opening up in green energy technologies and environmental protection and remediation will more than make up for jobs lost in fossil fuels! And the whole world, including you and your children will be the better for it!

Please visit the Rocky Mountain Institute site I linked above. It gives you tons of compelling insights of how much better off we could be if we just freed ourselves from our insanely slavish dependence on fossil fuels!

[_ajax18]

We could slow the increase in world population through education and giving women control over whether or not they have children. Ajax isn't willing to do that, so I don't know why he brings it up.

Women have total control over whether or not the have children!
They choose to have children! It's the human drive to reproduce!

Do you really think it's because of me that teenagers choose to get pregnant? Being against late term abortions doesn't mean I am against birth control. Nearly every woman has the choice to use birth control. The more we tank the economy and the crummier job prospects are for women the more kids they're going to have. It's about oppurtunity cost.