I saw two interviews by a girl who goes by the name Klein, don't remember her first name, one on cspan the other on msnbc she brought up the label "watermelon" green on the outside and red on the inside she embraced the label and said, that is exactly what we are, in order to solve the climate crisis, government will need to control energy and the days of capitalism control will be over
what do I think? There was a time in this land when the earth could grow more trees in one day than man could cut down in a year. No wonder they considered her to be a source of endless bounty. I think we all have a little of that DNA still programmed in our hearts. But now we can burn more oil in one day than it takes the earth a million years to produce. Common sense tells me that if you keep doing that, sooner or later it will catch up to you. Now, you have the watermelons, green on the outside and red on the inside, and you have those of us that are limes. Green on the outside and green on the inside. Where green is the color of money. And the guy who figures out a way to create renewable energy is going to be very green.
An interview with James Hansen. Hero. Catastrophic climate change can be averted, Hansen says, but only if we start “putting an honest price on the fossil fuels that includes their environmental costs, both their effect on human health, those costs being paid completely by the public, their effects in air pollution and water pollution, but also their effects on climate.” He scorns the current “dishonest” cap-and-trade scheme. “You have to have a simple system which is transparent and which actually reduces the fossil fuel use. There’s really no value added by bringing the big banks into the problem. But with the cap-and-trade (system), the prices fluctuate and because there’s so much politics involved the prices can collapse, and so no one has any confidence in that system. “And the banks of course”—he laughs—“JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, they have skilled trading units, hundreds of highly capable people who will make big dollars out of trades—but it adds nothing of value to the system, and where does that money come from? It doesn’t come out of thin air; it comes out of the public, the people, paying more for their energy. “ The so-called cap-and-trade “offsets,” which award carbon credits for preserving trees, “can be really hokey, really hard to verify—and they don’t actually pay attention to the physics of the problem, which tells you that the fossil fuel carbon that you put into the atmosphere will stay in the climate system for millennia. ... That means that there is a limit on how much fossil fuel you can burn. And they’re trying to trade other things in there as if they were equivalent to this fossil fuel carbon, but they’re not.” Instead, Hansen favors a simple carbon tax or what he calls “fee and dividend,” with a rising surcharge on fossil fuels that is rebated in full to all taxpayers. “The reason for the fee is simple—it really needs to be collected at the domestic mine or port of entry so that it’s just across the board—but unless you’re giving that money to the public, the public will never allow the fee to continue to rise because they will see the impact on the cost of gasoline at the pump and in their utility bills until there are some alternatives.” The alternative that Hansen favors—a rapid worldwide expansion of nuclear power—is highly controversial among environmentalists, to say the least. “I just published a paper with (fellow Goddard scientist) Pushker Kharecha, in which we point out the number of lives that have been saved by nuclear power. And that’s nuclear power of the early generations, 50-year-old technology. Even with that old technology, the accidents that did occur—the number of lives lost—was very limited in comparison to the number that are killed every year by coal, by the air and by water pollution from fossil fuel burning and fossil fuel mining. “ Hansen believes that new cooling systems and advanced reactor designs can answer concerns about accidents like the meltdown at Fukushima, Japan—“that’s solvable now”—and how to dispose of radioactive waste. “With a fourth generation of nuclear power, you can have a technology that will burn more than 99 percent of the energy in the fuel. It would mean that you don’t need to mine uranium for the next thousand years. We have got enough excess weapons material and nuclear waste to provide the fuel for many centuries.” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item...ering_climate_scientist_james_hansen_20130426
he has it half right. cap and trade is a ridiculous crony scam. it will no doubt lead to a communist command and control system run by the cronies to pin the competition to the floor... eventually causing the cessation of innovation and progress.
All of the carbon emission control measures, proposed or implemented, are premature. We don't have the science nailed down yet. It is impossible to do a cost benefit analysis, since we have no way to assess the benefit of the proposed measures. Get the science right first. Then decide what to do if anything.
There is certainly a cost that is not included now. Some cost must be included. We can do that with a slowly ramping tax on carbon. The Earth’s changing climate is costing the global economy $1.2 trillion a year and killing 1,000 children a day, according to a new study—and the U.N. warns the summer’s record heat and drought could trigger a catastrophe. Nearly 1,000 children a day are now dying because of climate change, according to a path-breaking study published Wednesday (PDF), and the annual death toll stands at 400,000 people worldwide. Climate change also is costing the world economy $1.2 trillion a year, the equivalent of 1.6 percent of economic output, reports the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by 20 of the world’s governments whose nations are most threatened by climate change and released on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. Most of the 400,000 annual deaths are “due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children in developing countries,” concludes the study, written by 50 scientists and policy experts from around the world.
I agree. They don't want to control the climate, they want to control energy. Funny thing is, if you are young and buy and hold, some of the best stocks to invest in for positive climate change are XON and BP. Just because they have ads on tv claiming they are working on renewables doesn't mean they are lying. so every time you fill up the tank in your car with gasoline you are supporting renewable energy research. But I don't know, if we have another cold winter or another hot summer I might vote for the government to do something about it.
well, while we are waiting for the climate to change back to the way it was before the industrial revolution, the least we could do is buy those 400,000 people that are dying due to bad weather, cars and air conditioners and water heaters and washers and dryers. Perhaps what they need is a good old fashioned industrial revolution. Very few people in developed countries seem to be dying from climate change.
Although the Communist Party of the USA was a prominent supporter and attendee of the recent climate march, the organizers of the climate march neglected to mention them in a list of organizations that supported the march. http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/climate_marchers_unite_.html
whatever, if they are really concerned about climate change all they need to do is hold their march not that far north from New York City where if you are not careful you will run down one of those Amish buggies with the orange triangle on the back, and simply ask them, "How must we live to change the climate?" The good thing is, the Amish now let you have a telephone as long as you keep it out of the house in a little booth in the front yard.