Climate Change Predictions

[honorentheos]

Earlier this year I presented to a local county government on an issue that required differentiating private vs public goods in order to show the government had a responsibility to pursue a course of action. They were my client, too, and the presentation sincere that the interest was one affecting the county as a whole in a case where some members of the body questioned why it should be paid for by county government if the result saved a specific HOA money.

Many issues involved in both GHG emissions mitigation and infrastructure adaptation to climate change have been held up over the argument regarding who benefits and who should pay. Much of the most recent progress on this front has come from wider recognition there is a public interest that makes the investment not only in government's interest as well, but failure of government to recognize this will mean failure to protect the public.

For instance:
https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/ec ... blic-goods

[canpakes]

Thanks, Ceebs. I believe what you said about your beliefs regarding global warming. I thought you’d posted something skeptical before, but I might be thinking of someone else.

I get the skepticism about government solutions, but aren’t any practical alternatives. I’m in favor of market-based solutions where they are possible, but global warming is a textbook example of market failure caused by externalities. Markets can work well only where the cost of a product is reflected in its price. But the price of gasoline, oil, coal, natural gas, etc. does not include the costs that global warming imposes on others. If it did, fossil fuels would be much more expensive.
…

Related to the discussion … what a lot of folks complaining about alternative energy fail to acknowledge is the massive hidden cost of oil. This country has spent many billions by now in blood and treasure to help ensure, amongst other needs, that we have the means to guarantee access to enough foreign oil to satisfy our appetite. This isn’t reflected in the price at the pump. We’ve been financing this relationship through income tax and defense budgeting, as example, and our thinking doesn’t connect the two because of the lack of a direct/visible link.

(And before a Trump fanatic starts up about how we were ‘energy independent’ under his leadership … just stop. You were lied to. We may be able to achieve ‘net exporter’ status for some months now but we’ve always needed to import at least 7 - 9 million barrels of petroleum per day from foreign sources, for economic or technical reasons. This continues even as we now produce more domestic oil per day than we ever did during the Trump Administration, or at any other time in our history.)

With our oil supply also being a national security concern, including dependence upon foreign sources that are sometimes quite hostile otherwise to the US, I would have figured that this liability only makes the ‘debate’ over reducing fossil fuel consumption in a bid to combat climate change a bit of a no-brainer. But maybe too many folks have been conditioned to believe conspiratorial propaganda about so-called leftist communist freedom-killing ‘agendas’ rather than think the issue through logically. We could easily be doing better things for our people, our wallets and our economic & national security by responding to climate change issues with practical approaches and reducing dependence on oil generally. There absolutely are challenges presented by that path, but the payoffs are substantial.

I asked earlier for the thread author to consider how the subject or science of climate change became ‘politicized’. I don’t think that folks on the right-hand side of the aisle are ready to be truthful about what happened there.

[canpakes]

.
Time to settle this ‘climate’ question once and for all:



Is anyone skeptical ..?

[Gadianton]

That makes for a pretty good fork.

For those who think MAGA is so great, can you deny that Marjorie Taylor-Greene is one of the most prominent voices within MAGA?

Do you believe that Democrats are controlling the weather?

If you don't, then you're immediately branded a liar by the very brand you think is wonderful. And if you do, then you really are a liar. And a pathetic one.