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Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
The DOW is an archaic, price-weighted index which does not accurately represent the economy. DOW 30K is not a great milestone and is of little significance. This just happens to be a nice, round number that certain writers unjustifiably emphasized. Also, the U.S. president generally doesn't deserve all the credit when the stock market performs well nor does he deserve all the blame when the market underperforms. There are too many other factors involved.
Virtually every index is at a record high. The economy is doing better than anyone had a right to expect. Keep on with this denial nonsense, it's great for the GOP... right up there with "mostly peaceful protests" and "defund the police." Mark my words, the dems are going to be splintered with the Squad crew on one side and white elitist wanabees on the other. Meanwhile the GOP will pick up more minority voters over time to join with the heartland of the country, people who want safe streets and cash in their pocket rather than worrying about greenhouse gases.... and the suburban moms (who won the election for Biden, this time) will be wondering "what was I thinking." Nothing about this administration is going to benefit them.
Just looking at the number of Covid deaths, the lines for food leading up to Thanksgiving, the unemployment rate and the number of closed small businesses with loss of health care to their employees nothing the current administration did anything to benefit them either. It remains to be seen if the next administration can correct that. Also you might want to ask around how the average citizen feels about climate change and greenhouse gases. To me it seems obvious that you haven't been paying attention.
My comments were generic and not directed towards any particular political party or president. You may be conflating the economy with the stock market. They are not one and the same. Values for some important economic indicators are listed below.
The U.S. unemployment rate was 6.9% for October which is nearly double the 3.5% rate in February.
Can you imagine what the unemployment rate would be if most of the on-line merchants were not hiring emergency staff to handle the pandemic business increase? Amazon alone has hired 427,300 new employees in the past ten months: that's 1400 people PER DAY, each and every day since January.
Just looking at the number of Covid deaths, the lines for food leading up to Thanksgiving, the unemployment rate and the number of closed small businesses with loss of health care to their employees nothing the current administration did anything to benefit them either. It remains to be seen if the next administration can correct that. Also you might want to ask around how the average citizen feels about climate change and greenhouse gases. To me it seems obvious that you haven't been paying attention.
Climate change is real. Causation debatable, but even if we could affect climate by altering human activity that guarantees nothing in terms of end result. As we know, at one time earth was in an ice age and at other times palm trees grew in the Arctic. People had nothing to do with that. Climate changes and old men sitting in Europe to discuss policy will surely cause economic distress for workers today with questionable benefit years from now.
Much like old men do now chasing little balls around a golf course in other words. Except in your case it enriches the old men and stiffs the taxpayers for the cost.
Follows the Fox News rationalization perfectly. For decades Fox and by proxy the fossil fuel industry, the views of which Fox follows to the letter, publicly denied climate change was happening even though internally the industry's own scientists knew otherwise. Now that the evidence the change is happening is irrefutable they try a different tactic of obfuscation. "We don't know the cause," except the evidence for that is irrefutable too to any climate scientist who isn't a paid industry shill or a nut. The cause is us, and curbing emissions matters.
@Old_Joe: Exxon Mobil's record on concealing what its scientists knew about the damage the oil industry was doing to the environment is more than lamentable, its criminal.
We know as a scientific fact that the temperature of the earth has changed drastically in both directions before humans had any impact at all. Since the 1800s the temperature of the earth has risen about 2 degrees. Even assuming that all of that increase was driven by humans, by no means an absolute fact, what is the supposed indisputable rationale for moving heaven and earth to make sure we don't have further fractional increases over decades when we can't control natural processes that we know have affected climate through the centuries, and will continue to do so? Easy to slam fossil fuel but your lives would be entirely different and more difficult without them. Hard to imagine no cars, planes or electricity, but to hear many today it would be worth it to improve the lives of sea otters, not that I have anything against sea otters.
@wxman123: can you point to any period in the history of our planet during which "...cars, planes, or electricity..." were present and when there was no rise in the temperature of the earth?
Burning Down the House Alan Weisman August 15, 2019 Issue The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells Tim Duggan, 310 pp., $27.00 by Bill McKibben Henry Holt, 291 pp., $28.00
Climate scientists’ worst-case scenarios back in 2007, the first year the Northwest Passage became navigable without an icebreaker (today, you can book a cruise through it), have all been overtaken by the unforeseen acceleration of events. No one imagined that twelve years later the United Nations would report that we have just twelve years left to avert global catastrophe, which would involve cutting fossil-fuel use nearly by half. Since 2007, the UN now says, we’ve done everything wrong. New coal plants built since the 2015 Paris climate agreement have already doubled the equivalent coal-energy output of Russia and Japan, and 260 more are underway.
Environmental writers today have a twofold problem. First, how to overcome readers’ resistance to ever-worsening truths, especially when climate-change denial has turned into a political credo and a highly profitable industry with its own television network (in this country, at least; state-controlled networks in autocracies elsewhere, such as Cuba, Singapore, Iran, or Russia, amount to the same thing). Second, in view of the breathless pace of new discoveries, publishing can barely keep up. Refined models continually revise earlier predictions of how quickly ice will melt, how fast and high CO2 levels and seas will rise, how much methane will be belched from thawing permafrost, how fiercely storms will blow and fires will burn, how long imperiled species can hang on, and how soon fresh water will run out (even as they try to forecast flooding from excessive rainfall). There’s a real chance that an environmental book will be obsolete by its publication date.
I’m not the only writer to wonder whether books are still an appropriate medium to convey the frightening speed of environmental upheaval. But the environment is infinitely intricate, and mere articles—much less daily newsfeeds or Twitter—can barely scratch the surface of environmental issues, let alone explore the extent of their consequences. Ecology, after all, is about how everything connects to everything else. Something so complex and crucial still requires books to attempt to explain it.
David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth expands on his 2017 article of the same name in New York, where he’s deputy editor. It quickly became that magazine’s most viewed article ever. Some accused Wallace-Wells of sensationalism for focusing on the most extreme possibilities of what may come if we keep spewing carbon compounds skyward (as suggested by his title and his ominous opening line, the answer “is, I promise, worse than you think”). Whatever the article’s lurid appeal, I felt at the time of its publication that its detractors were mainly evading the message by maligning the messenger.
Two years later, those critics have largely been subdued by infernos that have laid waste to huge swaths of California; successive, monstrous hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, and Maria—that devastated Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico in 2017; serial cyclone bombs exploding in America’s heartland; so-called thousand-year floods that recur every two years; polar ice shelves fracturing; and refugees pouring from desiccated East and North Africa and the Middle East, where temperatures have approached 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and from Central America, where alternating periods of drought and floods have now largely replaced normal rainfall.
The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. This book is meant to scare the hell out of us, because the alarm sounded by NASA’s Jim Hansen in his electrifying 1988 congressional testimony on how we’ve trashed the atmosphere still hasn’t sufficiently registered. “More than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades,” writes Wallace-Wells, “since Al Gore published his first book on climate.”
Although Wallace-Wells protests that he’s not an environmentalist, or even drawn to nature (“I’ve never gone camping, not willingly anyway”), the environment definitely has his attention now. With mournful hindsight, he explains how we were convinced that we could survive with a 2 degrees Celsius increase in average global temperatures over preindustrial levels, a figure first introduced in 1975 by William Nordhaus, a Nobel prize–winning economist at Yale, as a safe upper limit. As 2 degrees was a conveniently easy number to grasp, it became repeated so often that policy negotiators affirmed it as a target at the UN’s 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. We now know that 2 degrees would be calamitous: “Major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable.” In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 1.5 degrees was deemed a safer limit. At 2 degrees of warming, one study estimates, 150 million more people would die from air pollution alone than they would after 1.5 degrees. (If we include other climate-driven causes, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that extra half-degree would lead to hundreds of millions more deaths.) But after watching Houston drown, California burn, and chunks of Antarctica and Louisiana dissolve, it appears that “safe” is a relative statement—currently we are only at 1 degree above preindustrial temperatures.
The preindustrial level of atmospheric carbon dioxide was 280 parts per million. We are now at 410 ppm. The last time that was the case, three million years ago, seas were about 80 feet higher. A rise of 2 degrees Celsius would be around 450 ppm, but, says Wallace-Wells, we’re currently headed beyond 500 ppm. The last time that happened on Earth, seas were 130 feet higher, he writes, envisioning an eastern seaboard moved miles inland, to Interstate 95. Forget Long Island, New York City, and nearly half of New Jersey. It’s unclear how long it takes for oceans to rise in accordance with CO2 concentrations, but you wouldn’t want to find out the hard way.
Unfortunately, we’re set to sail through 1.5 and 2 degree increases in the next few decades and keep going. We’re presently on course for a rise of somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius, possibly more—our current trajectory, the UN warns, could even reach an 8 degree increase by this century’s end. At that level, anyone still in the tropics “would not be able to move around outside without dying,” Wallace-Wells writes.
The Uninhabitable Earth might be best taken a chapter at a time; it’s almost too painful to absorb otherwise. But pain is Wallace-Wells’s strategy, as is his agonizing repetition of how unprecedented these changes are, and how deadly. “The facts are hysterical,” he says, as he piles on more examples.
Just before the 2016 elections, a respected biologist at an environmental NGO told me she actually considered voting for Trump. “The way I see it,” she said, “it’s either four more years on life support with Hillary, or letting this maniac tear the house down. Maybe then we can pick up the pieces and finally start rebuilding.” Like many other scientists Wallace-Wells cites, she has known for decades how bad things are, and seen how little the Clinton-Gore and Obama-Biden administrations did about it—even in consultation with Obama’s prescient science adviser, physicist John Holdren, who first wrote about rising atmospheric CO2 in 1969. For the politicians, it was always, foremost, about the economy.
Unfortunately, as Wallace-Wells notes:
The entire history of swift economic growth, which began somewhat suddenly in the eighteenth century, is not the result of innovation or trade or the dynamics of free trade, but simply our discovery of fossil fuels and all their raw power.
This is our daily denial, which now flies in our faces on hurricane winds, or drops as hot ashes from our immolated forests and homes: growth is how we measure economic health, and growth must be literally fueled. Other than nuclear energy, which has its own problems, no form of energy is so concentrated, and none so cheap or portable, as carbon. By exhuming hundreds of millions of years’ worth of buried organic matter and burning it in a couple of centuries, we built our dazzling modern civilization, not noticing that its wastes were amassing overhead. Now we’re finally paying attention, because hell is starting to rain down.
I encourage people to read this book. Wallace-Wells has maniacally absorbed masses of detail and scoured all the articles most readers couldn’t finish or tried to forget, or skipped because they just couldn’t take yet another bummer. Wallace-Wells has been faulted for not offering solutions—but really, what could he say? We now burn 80 percent more coal than we did in 2000, even though solar energy costs have fallen 80 percent in that period. His dismaying conclusion is that “solar isn’t eating away at fossil fuel use…it’s just buttressing it. To the market, this is growth; to human civilization, it is almost suicide.”
I am expecting, before I die, hopefully 10-20y from now, that the forests and woods and such plains as there are of NE, where some of us live, many of us in fact, from Maine down to WDC and Virginia, will start to burn annually.
Even if the conflagrations are not initially as apocalyptic as as the coming destruction of the west slope of the western US mountain ranges.
And then the McConnells of that world, Mitch's successors and others (forget wxman123 and his ilk) will say, too late, 'Well, whaddaya know, looka dah.'
And the dense regions of southern NH and eastern Mass. and all of Connecticut and RI and the Hudson Valley down through Jersey and well below --- quite aside from the woods of Maine elsewhere, non-south NH, all of Vt, western Mass., Connecticut River valley, NY Upstate, ... --- will blaze in their dead dryness, the inhabitants trying to flee through incipiently burning Pennsylvania out to the fields of Ohio and beyond.
The 2030s and 2040s will be like the migrations of the 1810s and 1820s, only alarmed, armed heavily, and faster. And people and even some politicians and corporations will say, Gosh, we should consider getting serious policywise about fossil burning and temperature rise.
Lewis, you are an elitist employing the common strategy of belittling other points of view. You think because you found an eloquent summary of your alarmist case there is no other point of view? Yes, I know that is what you think yet there is not a shred of proof that any of these dooms day predictions are going to come to pass or that anything we can (reasonably) do will prevent them. California has been through horrific droughts over the years...yet this year's forest fires are "proof" that the worst is upon us? There have been devastating hurricanes for as long as history itself, yet because this year was notably bad, yes, must be global warming? As I said, climate change is real and, although still debatable, I believe humans are likely responsible for the small change in temperature over the past few hundred years. The best science seems to support that much. Beyond that, live your life but don't ruin others by fear mongering over ifs and maybes. The environmental damage caused by windmill farms right now is far worse and real compared with the imagined terror they were built to prevent. The same is true with respect to solar panels, electric cars (did you think lithium batteries jumped out of the ground and into your Tesla?), etc. This all is very much about making sure the Sea Otter lives the good life, and even that's OK by me, to a point.
@wxman123 You are confusing scientific facts with opinions. The planet's rapidly warming climate doesn't care whether you're a Democrat or Republican or whether I'm a "elitist" in your opinion or not. But then again, it is well known that facts have a liberal bias. Climate change isn't a small threat. It is an existential one.
I also find it instructive that your clever (but paranoid) author compares sea levels now to how they were millions of years ago, and notes the danger lurking therein. That's the real point. No one knows what the future holds. If we have a few volcanic eruptions or some other unforeseen disturbance that cools the atmosphere, a few extra degrees of heat may come in handy. In the meantime, I can heat my home and take my gas-powered SUV for a spin with the family dogs, but I'll keep the windows rolled up lest they add more co2 (there's a study on that too, you know).
But you take for granted that the science behind the car you drive or the plane you fly or the cell phone you're using is accurate today and will most likely be accurate tomorrow. And if you were a smoker and went to see 100 doctors and 99 of them said you should quit smoking or it will shorten your life and the 1 doctor who didn't was a paid employee of the tobacco industry, you probably would at least consider that smoking might have a detrimental effect on your future and maybe you should change your habits. Suddenly, though when every legitimate non-industry shill climate scientist says the earth has been smoking for too long and needs to change its habits, you instead listen to some guy on Fox who says don't listen to these elitist scientists. What do they know?
\\\ yet there is not a shred of proof that any of these dooms day predictions are going to come to pass or that anything we can (reasonably) do will prevent them. California has been through horrific droughts over the years...yet this year's forest fires are "proof" that the worst is upon us? There have been devastating hurricanes for as long as history itself, yet because this year was notably bad, yes, must be global warming? As I said, climate change is real and, although still debatable, I believe humans are likely responsible for the small change in temperature over the past few hundred years. The best science seems to support that much. Beyond that, live your life but don't ruin others by fear mongering over ifs and maybes. The environmental damage caused by windmill farms right now is far worse and real compared with the imagined terror they were built to prevent. The same is true with respect to solar panels, electric cars (did you think lithium batteries jumped out of the ground and into your Tesla?), etc.
You really don't keep up, do you? Not deeply, not honestly. Shoot. And someone who writes so well and thinks so clearly, too. Shoot!
You may have guessed from my user name that I might possibly know a bit about climate. And, I'm a nature lover to boot. I have not denied the science, but follow it closely. My point is that the measures suggested by Politician's, like John Kerry, to make things better are highly unlikely to have their intended effect without serious adverse consequence. Everything we do has consequences. I'm certain most of us remember gas lines, rationing...even kids siphoning gas out of cars at strip malls. Back then the dream of all was American energy independence. Now we have it, but many (maybe most?) would give that up and for what? The climate of the earth is going to change and we humans do have an impact on that, but for better or worse? We may not know for another million years. No one can promise that if we do everything possible (you know, even all living in igloos) what the impact will be even if we can stop the human contribution to global warming in its tracks (and, of course, we can't). Most climate "specialists" promote their agenda, that is, reduce greenhouse gases, but at what cost and end result? I sincerely doubt that a single one is planning on selling their beachfront properties based on the premise that it will in the foreseeable future be part of the Atlantic Ocean, yet that is the pitch. (Indeed, John Kerry is particularly fond of the islands off New England, he doesn't seem too concerned.) Over time one thing I've learned is that when academics put all of their resources into fixing a supposed problem the cure is often worse than the disease. Covid response is just the most recent example of this phenomenon (but I'm sure most here will disagree).
@wxman123 You are confusing scientific facts with opinions. The planet's rapidly warming climate doesn't care whether you're a Democrat or Republican or whether I'm a "elitist" in your opinion or not. But then again, it is well known that facts have a liberal bias. Climate change isn't a small threat. It is an existential one.
Says you based on what you believe. And, you are an elitist not because of your politics but because you belittle other points of view. The idea that there is not another side to the climate debate is a real issue, maybe even an "existential" one.
The idea that there is not another side to the climate debate is a real issue,
Sure, there is another side of everything, just not a side that exists in the realm of rational scientific study in the case of climate change. One can still believe the earth is flat if one likes or that Jesus walked with the dinosaurs. I suspect though that climate science denying posters like you who in my experience always claim they’re nature lovers and real experts on science and it’s just that the libtard lame stream media and a global cabal of thousands of climate scientists have everything wrong—I suspect deep down you don’t really believe the climate science denial you’re espousing. Deep down you know the science is true but just don’t care and figure I just want to make more money any way I can living exactly the way I always have and no one no matter how much scientific evidence they provide is going to tell me I’m wrong. Climate science denial is merely an expedience, a means to an end of business as usual, of preserving the status quo and all of the profits that supports, regardless of the environmental consequences.
I do not and cannot infer anything about or from your name, but I can see from your laughable frets and snark about teen gas siphoning and Kerry's properties --- not to mention the single most boggling thing I've read on this site, 'Over time one thing I've learned is that when academics put all of their resources into fixing a supposed problem the cure is often worse than the disease. Covid response is just the most recent example of this phenomenon' --- that I simply must seek out your science show, or is it weather?, on Newsmax.
The idea that there is not another side to the climate debate is a real issue,
Sure, there is another side of everything, just not a side that exists in the realm of rational scientific study in the case of climate change. One can still believe the earth is flat if one likes or that Jesus walked with the dinosaurs. I suspect though that climate science denying posters like you who in my experience always claim they’re nature lovers and real experts on science and it’s just that the libtard lame stream media and a global cabal of thousands of climate scientists have everything wrong—I suspect deep down you don’t really believe the climate science denial you’re espousing. Deep down you know the science is true but just don’t care and figure I just want to make more money any way I can living exactly the way I always have and no one no matter how much scientific evidence they provide is going to tell me I’m wrong. Climate science denial is merely an expedience, a means to an end of business as usual, of preserving the status quo and all of the profits that supports, regardless of the environmental consequences.
You have setup a classic strawman argument. I never denied climate change nor the science surrounding it. In fact, I've conceded two of your main points, i.e., that the earth is warming and that human activity is probably a significant contributor. Now, will you concede my main points, i.e., (1) the earth's climate is constantly changing independent of human activity and always has been? (2) No one knows what direction the earth's climate will take in the future independent of human activity? (3) despite dire predictions the earth's climate has over the past century warmed less than 2 degrees (probably closer to one degree)? (4) John Kerry lives on an island despite alleged concerns that it will fall into the sea in his lifetime (J/K)? We can disagree about my other main point, i.e., that there is probably little we can realistically do to change human activity enough to prevent additional modest increases in climate over the next century without causing substantial damage to the environment and people in other respects? This is the real and fair debate among knowledgeable people, and to deny it makes you the ignorant one. Some honest and good people do care about an entire industry and its workers being told to shut down. If your brother, son, daughter or best friend made their living as a coal minor or working an oil rig I think you would see this point. I doubt you know any of those types.
@wxman123 The "strawmen" are John Kerry and Al Gore whose individual hypocrisies have nothing to do with the factual accuracy of climate science or the threat level climate change poses. In fact, any hypocrisies they reveal make a stronger case for government regulation to reduce emissions, not a weaker one. Human beings are flawed hypocritical animals that break unwritten rules all the time unless there are laws governing them that are enforced. 80% of evangelicals voted for a president that has broken almost every biblical commandment. And how many rightwing preachers and GOP politicians flout their own religious and government rules all the time, getting divorced, having affairs, cheating on taxes, claiming to hate socialism while accepting government bailouts, etc.? In other words, the planet's rapidly warming climate doesn't care whether John Kerry is a hypocrite or not. Laws must be put in place to make sure that emissions are reduced, including Kerry's.
Regarding "despite dire predictions the earth's climate has over the past century warmed less than 2 degrees (probably closer to one degree)" You act like these are small numbers, but in the realm of climate science they are huge. From the previous article "We now know that 2 degrees would be calamitous: Major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable.” In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 1.5 degrees was deemed a safer limit. At 2 degrees of warming, one study estimates, 150 million more people would die from air pollution alone than they would after 1.5 degrees." And while that is prediction of the future, the current change has already had a major impact, already creating thousands of climate refugees from places with flooding or droughts and famine and in the U.S wildfires: https://npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/20/621782275/the-refugees-that-the-world-barely-pays-attention-to
But the fact is, I believe you know already the science is true and that the future impact will be major, and not just on "sea otters." You just don't care. This is not new untested science. There are now many decades of proof behind it.
Not to get in between a good cat fight, but neither of you have mentioned the use of "credits" or economic incentives. My apologies if you have.
The EPA mentions this:
Policy-makers have two broad types of instruments available for changing consumption and production habits in society. They can use traditional regulatory approaches (sometimes referred to as command-and-control approaches) that set specific standards across polluters, or they can use economic incentive or market-based policies that rely on market forces to correct for producer and consumer behavior. Incentives are extensively discussed in several EPA reports:
Tesla has a page dedicated to economic Electric and Solar incentives (none of which addresses the negative impact lithium mining has on the environment): https://tesla.com/support/incentives
Much of Tesla financial success has been based on credits. Here's a quote from @msf in a different thread,
"Tesla made more than $1 billion from ... regulatory credits over the past four quarters. ... That is more than double its profits over the past four quarters." So Tesla's profitability at this point is due to its cars being "clean" rather than their selling at a profit.
I believe technology eventually helps solve natural and man made problems. Tesla may be on the right track.
The Union of Concerned Scientists did the best and most rigorous assessment of the carbon footprint of Tesla's and other electric vehicles vs internal combustion vehicles including hybrids. They found that the manufacturing of a full-sized Tesla Model S rear-wheel drive car with an 85 KWH battery was equivalent to a full-sized internal combustion car except for the battery, which added 15% or one metric ton of CO2 emissions to the total manufacturing.
However, they found that this was trivial compared to the emissions avoided due to not burning fossil fuels to move the car. Before anyone says "But electricity is generated from coal!", they took that into account too, and it's included in the 53% overall reduction.
Here's a Opinion piece with regard to global carbon incentives:
“This is an example of hope,” he said, as we stood behind his office at the Federal University of Acre, a tropical campus carved into the Amazon rain forest. Brown placed his hand on a spindly trunk, ordering me to follow his lead. “There is a flow of water going up that stem, and there is a flow of sap coming down, and when it comes down it has carbon compounds,” he said. “Do you feel that?”
I couldn’t feel a thing. But that invisible process holds the key to a massive flow of cash into Brazil and an equally pivotal opportunity for countries trying to head off climate change without throwing their economies into turmoil. If the carbon in these trees could be quantified, then Acre could sell credits to polluters emitting clouds of CO₂. Whatever they release theoretically would be offset, or canceled out, by the rain forest.
Five thousand miles away in California, politicians, scientists, oil tycoons and tree huggers are bursting with excitement over the idea. The state is the second-largest carbon polluter in America, and its oil and gas industry emits about 50 million metric tons of CO₂ a year. What if Chevron or Shell or Phillips 66 could offset some of their damage by paying Brazil not to cut down trees?
@wxman123 The "strawmen" are John Kerry and Al Gore whose individual hypocrisies have nothing to do with the factual accuracy of climate science or the threat level climate change poses. In fact, any hypocrisies they reveal make a stronger case for government regulation to reduce emissions, not a weaker one. Human beings are flawed hypocritical animals that break unwritten rules all the time unless there are laws governing them that are enforced. 80% of evangelicals voted for a president that has broken almost every biblical commandment. And how many rightwing preachers and GOP politicians flout their own religious and government rules all the time, getting divorced, having affairs, cheating on taxes, claiming to hate socialism while accepting government bailouts, etc.? In other words, the planet's rapidly warming climate doesn't care whether John Kerry is a hypocrite or not. Laws must be put in place to make sure that emissions are reduced, including Kerry's.
Regarding "despite dire predictions the earth's climate has over the past century warmed less than 2 degrees (probably closer to one degree)" You act like these are small numbers, but in the realm of climate science they are huge. From the previous article "We now know that 2 degrees would be calamitous: Major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable.” In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 1.5 degrees was deemed a safer limit. At 2 degrees of warming, one study estimates, 150 million more people would die from air pollution alone than they would after 1.5 degrees." And while that is prediction of the future, the current change has already had a major impact, already creating thousands of climate refugees from places with flooding or droughts and famine and in the U.S wildfires: https://npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/20/621782275/the-refugees-that-the-world-barely-pays-attention-to
But the fact is, I believe you know already the science is true and that the future impact will be major, and not just on "sea otters." You just don't care. This is not new untested science. There are now many decades of proof behind it.
>> What sacrifices do we need to make to save that half a degree?
You write as though you keep up, but it is clear you do not, not really. There is a lot of work out there, hardcore practical effective proposals, a lot of them by your mocked academics, covering what is entailed to effect such a huge course alteration as a half a degree.
You must have read, while worrying about working coalminers (of whom there are very very few), and about John Kerry's lifestyle indicating what, hypocrisy? seriously? Kerry?, about the temperature point (which is close, meaning not that far off) at which human life becomes nearly impossible.
>> How about moving north?
Oh, go for it.
Eventually, and not so far off either, those forests will burn every summer too.
I am fascinated that someone literate and thoughtful-sounding falls back on the tiredest of Fox editorials:
\\\ ... causing substantial damage to the environment and people in other respects? This is the real and fair debate among knowledgeable people,
Yes, there absolutely is real discussion of trades. Moneys for retraining. Serious moneys. Disaster relief. Can you cite the debates you think are most informed or fairminded or interesting or promising?
\\\ and to deny it makes you the ignorant one.
You probably had best not go there, honestly, and not just with LB.
\\\ Some honest and good people do care about an entire industry and its workers being told to shut down. If your brother, son, daughter or best friend made their living as a coal minor or working an oil rig I think you would see this point.
Again, best not to personalize or go to anecdote.
There is no helping coalminers or rig workers no matter what anyone does or what policies are adopted. Everybody but you and the most extreme of rightwingers know that --- National Review, the industries themselves, any of the candidates except for the departing pantsloaded infant. 'See this point'? What point would that be? Have you followed (e.g.) coal trends and the data over the last decades ?
These are old and tired arguments, from the 1970s, as though you are 95yo and just waking up and never read the number-crunching.
\\\ I doubt you know any of those types.
oh, here we go. You probably also do not want to turn this into some blue-collar cred thing either, not if you want to present as thoughtful. It's not like a Clifford Odets play from 1934.
How many people did the U.S. coal mining industry employ in 2019? 53,000. https://statista.com/statistics/215790/coal-mining-employment-in-the-us/ How many people are employed in the retail service sector: 9.8 million. https://census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/profile-of-the-retail-workforce.html Yet guys like wxman123 and our soon to be ex-president wax poetic about the poor coal miners while millions in retail are struggling to stay afloat because of Amazon and covid. You know what the difference is? This is who the retail sector employs--not the Fox News demographic--according to the Census bureau:
Retail workers are younger. Over half of all retail workers were ages 16 to 34. Women were more likely to work in retail jobs. About 56.5% of retail workers were women, compared with 43.5% who were men. Blacks and Hispanics were overrepresented in retail work. Blacks comprised 12.5% of the retail workforce compared to 11.4% of the total workforce; Hispanics were 18.7% and 17.5%, respectively.
Comments
My comments were generic and not directed towards any particular political party or president.
You may be conflating the economy with the stock market.
They are not one and the same.
Values for some important economic indicators are listed below.
The U.S. unemployment rate was 6.9% for October which is nearly double the 3.5% rate in February.
Wage growth for 2020:
Jan: +4.27%
Feb: +4.67%
Mar: +0.75%
Apr: -6.64%
May: -3.66%
Jun: -1.54%
Jul: +0.07%
Aug: +1.08%
Sep: +1.89%
Oct: +2.11%
Quarterly GDP estimates for 2020:
Q1: -5.0%
Q2: -31.4%
Q3: +33.1%
Source: NY Times
I am expecting, before I die, hopefully 10-20y from now, that the forests and woods and such plains as there are of NE, where some of us live, many of us in fact, from Maine down to WDC and Virginia, will start to burn annually.
Even if the conflagrations are not initially as apocalyptic as as the coming destruction of the west slope of the western US mountain ranges.
And then the McConnells of that world, Mitch's successors and others (forget wxman123 and his ilk) will say, too late, 'Well, whaddaya know, looka dah.'
And the dense regions of southern NH and eastern Mass. and all of Connecticut and RI and the Hudson Valley down through Jersey and well below --- quite aside from the woods of Maine elsewhere, non-south NH, all of Vt, western Mass., Connecticut River valley, NY Upstate, ... --- will blaze in their dead dryness, the inhabitants trying to flee through incipiently burning Pennsylvania out to the fields of Ohio and beyond.
The 2030s and 2040s will be like the migrations of the 1810s and 1820s, only alarmed, armed heavily, and faster. And people and even some politicians and corporations will say, Gosh, we should consider getting serious policywise about fossil burning and temperature rise.
\\\ yet there is not a shred of proof that any of these dooms day predictions are going to come to pass or that anything we can (reasonably) do will prevent them. California has been through horrific droughts over the years...yet this year's forest fires are "proof" that the worst is upon us? There have been devastating hurricanes for as long as history itself, yet because this year was notably bad, yes, must be global warming? As I said, climate change is real and, although still debatable, I believe humans are likely responsible for the small change in temperature over the past few hundred years. The best science seems to support that much. Beyond that, live your life but don't ruin others by fear mongering over ifs and maybes. The environmental damage caused by windmill farms right now is far worse and real compared with the imagined terror they were built to prevent. The same is true with respect to solar panels, electric cars (did you think lithium batteries jumped out of the ground and into your Tesla?), etc.
You really don't keep up, do you? Not deeply, not honestly. Shoot. And someone who writes so well and thinks so clearly, too. Shoot!
I do not and cannot infer anything about or from your name, but I can see from your laughable frets and snark about teen gas siphoning and Kerry's properties --- not to mention the single most boggling thing I've read on this site, 'Over time one thing I've learned is that when academics put all of their resources into fixing a supposed problem the cure is often worse than the disease. Covid response is just the most recent example of this phenomenon' --- that I simply must seek out your science show, or is it weather?, on Newsmax.
Regarding "despite dire predictions the earth's climate has over the past century warmed less than 2 degrees (probably closer to one degree)" You act like these are small numbers, but in the realm of climate science they are huge. From the previous article "We now know that 2 degrees would be calamitous: Major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable.” In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 1.5 degrees was deemed a safer limit. At 2 degrees of warming, one study estimates, 150 million more people would die from air pollution alone than they would after 1.5 degrees." And while that is prediction of the future, the current change has already had a major impact, already creating thousands of climate refugees from places with flooding or droughts and famine and in the U.S wildfires: https://npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/20/621782275/the-refugees-that-the-world-barely-pays-attention-to
But the fact is, I believe you know already the science is true and that the future impact will be major, and not just on "sea otters." You just don't care. This is not new untested science. There are now many decades of proof behind it.
The EPA mentions this: Tesla has a page dedicated to economic Electric and Solar incentives (none of which addresses the negative impact lithium mining has on the environment):
https://tesla.com/support/incentives
Much of Tesla financial success has been based on credits. Here's a quote from @msf in a different thread, I believe technology eventually helps solve natural and man made problems. Tesla may be on the right track. the-carbon-footprint-of-tesla-manufacturing
Here's a Opinion piece with regard to global carbon incentives: inconvenient-truth-carbon-credits-dont-work-deforestation-redd-acre-cambodia
Lastly, we all need to come to common ground to find solutions. Something many of our politicians and media outlets choose not to promote.
I'll be 91 years young in 2050 or I may have already released my personal carbon footprint back into the atmosphere. Things move slowly in this arena: /nestle-efforts-combat-climate-change
See, maybe not so bad!
You write as though you keep up, but it is clear you do not, not really. There is a lot of work out there, hardcore practical effective proposals, a lot of them by your mocked academics, covering what is entailed to effect such a huge course alteration as a half a degree.
You must have read, while worrying about working coalminers (of whom there are very very few), and about John Kerry's lifestyle indicating what, hypocrisy? seriously? Kerry?, about the temperature point (which is close, meaning not that far off) at which human life becomes nearly impossible.
>> How about moving north?
Oh, go for it.
Eventually, and not so far off either, those forests will burn every summer too.
Or ... get hep to renewables and feasible policy:
https://blogs.imf.org/2020/10/07/finding-the-right-policy-mix-to-safeguard-our-climate/
I am fascinated that someone literate and thoughtful-sounding falls back on the tiredest of Fox editorials:
\\\ ... causing substantial damage to the environment and people in other respects? This is the real and fair debate among knowledgeable people,
Yes, there absolutely is real discussion of trades. Moneys for retraining. Serious moneys. Disaster relief. Can you cite the debates you think are most informed or fairminded or interesting or promising?
\\\ and to deny it makes you the ignorant one.
You probably had best not go there, honestly, and not just with LB.
\\\ Some honest and good people do care about an entire industry and its workers being told to shut down. If your brother, son, daughter or best friend made their living as a coal minor or working an oil rig I think you would see this point.
Again, best not to personalize or go to anecdote.
There is no helping coalminers or rig workers no matter what anyone does or what policies are adopted. Everybody but you and the most extreme of rightwingers know that --- National Review, the industries themselves, any of the candidates except for the departing pantsloaded infant. 'See this point'? What point would that be? Have you followed (e.g.) coal trends and the data over the last decades ?
These are old and tired arguments, from the 1970s, as though you are 95yo and just waking up and never read the number-crunching.
\\\ I doubt you know any of those types.
oh, here we go. You probably also do not want to turn this into some blue-collar cred thing either, not if you want to present as thoughtful. It's not like a Clifford Odets play from 1934.
How many people are employed in the retail service sector: 9.8 million.
https://census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/profile-of-the-retail-workforce.html
Yet guys like wxman123 and our soon to be ex-president wax poetic about the poor coal miners while millions in retail are struggling to stay afloat because of Amazon and covid. You know what the difference is? This is who the retail sector employs--not the Fox News demographic--according to the Census bureau: But oh, the poor coal miners! The symbolism is perfect to stoke that tribalistic white nationalist animosity because 91% of coal miners are white males, and only 0.9% are black: https://bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm They are being replaced by technology regardless whether we have a green new deal or not. Meanwhile, the retail workforce is being decimated by Covid: https://cnbc.com/2020/07/22/coronavirus-retail-workforce-faces-permanent-decline.html