Global Warming Debate

[xort]

Originally Posted by sck5

If I were a conservative (which I am not) here is what would be pissing me off. All of things that are argued as "solutions" to GH gas warming are things that have been promoted for decades for other reasons entirely. (e.g. put a tax on gasoline or energy more generally). A conservative could well come to the conclusion that the libs failed to carry the day with the old arguments and so are moving on to new ones in hope that these might work better. That would piss me off. On the other hand, if you are a liberal you would look at this and say, Well, there is one more good reason to do what ought to have been done 30 years ago, why dont these people get it yet.

And people ask what proof we have that the left is up to something?

You've condensed the whole issue right there. Keep throwing stuff, something's bound to stick eventually.

[sailaway21]

Good post, Windy. Very well stated.

sck5,
Here's a couple of thoughts.
Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Smoking is assosciated with higher rates of cancer. We don't know what causes cancer.

Cancer research, btw, has been the biggest fraud ever perpetuated on the American taxpayer. We have spent trillions and we are absolutely no closer to discovering what causes a cell to turn cancerous Only now are a few scientists debating whether or not our entire approach to cancer research has been misguided, ie...we've been looking in the wrong areas all along. This is what you get when you have government research. Research that sets a course they are powerless to change. I might add that the medical community, including the pharmaceutical's, has no real interest in what actual causes cancer, all the money is in treating the symptoms! Think about it. You could even expand the topic to AIDS research which has followed a similar path, on your dime.

You are right in saying that a transition will likely be abrupt to oil's replacement. The market will make it abrupt. Oil will either become too expensive or a lower cost solution will be found. Simple and possibly an abrupt solution.

In the meantime, let's consider government's role in the matter. Because THAT'S what we're really talking about. Oil companies are actively researching alternative energy sources, including solar. Why wouldn't they? they're in the energy business, not necessarily just the oil business, and if you were confronted with, if not geological, then political reasons that your cash crop was about to expire you'd be looking for something new also.

So how does government treat those companies? Well, the hew and cry is for windfall profits taxes. Taxes that otherwise would have been spent on research as well as exploration. Instead, what you are espousing, is that government do the research. As mentioned above, we don't have a real good track record on government doing those things. More to the specific point, perhaps you'd like to look up the history of the synthetic fuels program from the 1970's. You'll find massive amounts of money, perhaps in the trillions, invested by government in oil alternatives. You know what it got us? It got us $10/Qt synthetic motor oil that still is uncompetetive with natural motor oil, thirty years later! This is not a NASA moonshot project with certain limited goals. This is a project, the quest for a viable alternative fuel, that is going to take unbelievably massive amounts of money to be invested. And most of that money is going to be wasted. Even wasted by private industry. What incentive is there for private industry to waste such massive amounts of money? Profit, the same incentive that inspired John D. Rockefeller to waste massive amounts of money to provide oil as an alternative fuel to Americans. And the breakthrough, assuming there is one, will likely come out of some future Bill Gate's garage! Please don't tell me your solution is to start searching out and subsidizing the nascent Bill Gates' of energy!

I've posted on bio-fuels earlier and if you have not read it, I'd recommend the excellent link detailing the economies of them. Cellulose, smellulose! Brazil is just a notch above a third world country. Does anyone have a calculator big enough to conceive of the amount of infastructure change that would be required to just collect, sort, and process all the available and viable sources of cellulose in the US? Here's another dirty little secret; recycling doesn't work. Except in a few narrowly defined areas, we spend more on pick-up, sorting, and processing than the cost of the raw materials. The vast majority of our garbage still goes to land-fills. Did you ever have a burn-barrel out back when you were a kid to burn the stuff that you didn't want to pay the garbage man to haul away? I did, and I can tell you that it took a bunch of time and effort to sort out the plastic, the glass, and the cans from the burnables. Nobody sorts their garbage that way anymore and you can't make them at double the disposal rates. And you can't pay someone to do it for them and make a profit on the job.

Guess what? Ragnar is correct. The implementation of the Global Warming action policy is the implementation of the institution's of the statist left. some even call it, Liberal Fascism. It is anti-American. It involves an elite few making far sweeping pronouncements and decisions for the rest of us and it will accomplish those things at the point of the government sword. It is cloaked in the language of the magnitude of the problem and the need for quick and massive action. The only time in the course of human events that that logic has had any rationality has been during times of invasion and war. That's why the terms, "War on Poverty, war on this or that" are so popular. Because those terms are rightly understood as signifying the rightful actions of government. Except there is no history of government EVER fighting a war on anything, other than one of a military nature, and winning. The founding father's knew this. That's why they proscribed the powers of the federal government so severely. The natural inclination of any government is to be despotic and that's why our Constitution is such a marvelous document-it's kept us largely free.

This is NOT an environmental debate nor an energy debate. those problems will be solved, to the extent they even exist. This is a political debate. And it's not even about your ability to buy and drive an SUV. That's about the last thing they'll take away from you. At that point it will be easy because you'll have already surrendered your freedom and your liberty, VOLUNTARILY!

[sailboy21]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

This is NOT an environmental debate nor an energy debate. those problems will be solved, to the extent they even exist. This is a political debate. And it's not even about your ability to buy and drive an SUV. That's about the last thing they'll take away from you. At that point it will be easy because you'll have already surrendered your freedom and your liberty, VOLUNTARILY!

The attack is occurring on many fronts, and it is best we circle the wagons. It is accelerating out of control. So.. how many "rights" do we Americans still have?
Free speech?
Right to bear arms?
Protection from search and seizure?
Self Incrimination?
Trial by jury?
But the real kicker: taxation without representation.. thats where global warming comes in.

As for the rest of your rights.. here is the UN's point of view "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." So.. if the IPCC says global warming is bad, that is a principle of the UN, and therefore no rights you have can be contrary to whatever the UN, IPCC or Al Gore deem to be their principle.
Welcome, surfs, to the global plantation.

[sck5]

xort said

"And people ask what proof we have that the left is up to something?"

Hey, if you think the left has some sort of grand plan then you should think again. The Repblicans are fairly organized and cohesive but the Dems (and the guys to the left of them even more so) are in a state of perpetual chaos. They never can agree amongst themelves. There is no strategy and there is no plan, as far as I can tell. There ARE a bunch of fairly consistent attitudes and world views, but a plan? God knows I wish the Dems would behave in a more consistent and strategic way but they dont. Every four years it depends on who gets the nomination. The Republicans, for better or worse, can be counted on to always want to cut taxes. They want it when times are good and they want it when times are bad. They want it when we have a surplus and they want it when we have a deficit. I would fault them for being so simplistic about our economy but I cant fault them for inconsistency or lack of a plan. They have one.

And you guys who are worried about the UN? Why are you so paranoid? You may like them less than I do but we are the most powerful country on earth by far and there is no way they can make us do anything we dont want to. So you can relax. You may criticize them for being a waste of money but for being an entity we here in the US should be afraid of? Come on.

[sailaway21]

Sck5,
Are you kidding? There is no plan?

Here's the plan. We all decide that it'd be nice to keep those old historic houses preserved for their fine architecture in our town so we create a historic district. You buy one of those old houses. Your roof goes bad. But you've got a tin roof on the house and you cannot afford the truly exhorbitant cost to replace it. And you're probably going to be on pretty good grounds in your ignorance because almost nobody has common knowledge of how much those baby's cost. So you decide to shingle it. You get arrested. You have to have permission from the historical commission to "modify" that house. And no, they're not going to grant you a ten year waiver so you can raise the funds to do the job like original. How'd that legislation get passed?

You've heard of radon, right? Second leading cause of cancer after smoking right? Have you looked at the actual epidemiological studies of radon cancers in the US? More unborn gay manatees die from ingesting chicken-wings than do people from radon poisoning. Go ahead and price out a radon removal system. And if you're in an area where ther is radon and you want to use the building to serve the public, you have to have a system whether you test positive for radon or not! How'd that legislation get passed?

I'll forego my diatribe on the purported dangers of second-hand smoke.

Remember the 55 mile per hour speed limit? The Fed's can't set speed limits. there's a minor nuisance called the US Constitution standing in the way. Even Larry Tribe will grant you that one. So what does the Fed. government do? It just adopts a policy of not sending any highway tax dollars back to those state's who have not adopted the double-nickel for their highway speed limit. Money they collected from the states. It took twenty years to change those speed limits back! Do you know how much lost productivity this country sustained because of that? And no, deaths did not go down. Only in the initial year, when we were in recession. Highway deaths, from recorded history, do not track with average speed, they do track with the economy though. Every year since the interstate has gone in highway fatalities per million miles travelled have fallen, as average speeds have increased. The 55 put a huge chunk of the nation's driver's into assigned risk with their insurance companies as well; we became a ntion of law breakers, because the law was stupid, it didn't save a dollar when comparing the energy savings to lost productivity, and it took twenty years to get rid of it, even after the price of gas went down.

Do you know how much land within the US that the Federal government either owns or severely regulates the usage of? Try 75% of the state of Alaska for starters. And all those new little mini-parks their so fond of starting up now? You better not be next to one because your presence could disturb the environmental cycle of one of them and you'll lose the use of your land. Forget about the fact you're the fourth generation to live there.

Do a little investigating into what the congressmen from Georgia, who's farmer's are in a drought, and the congressmen from the western states want to do about declaring the Great Lakes a "national" resource. You know what that means? That means pumping the lakes down to whatever level the Feds decide is fair so we can build houses and water theme parks in the desert and we can irrigate cotton. What do you think the people living around those Great Lakes think about that idea? But if they're "federalized" what can be done?

California is the roadmap to hell and the Fed can read a map. I just saw a news report on a guy who has to cut his redwood trees down in California. He planted tehm when he bought the house and they're now probably 50-60 feet tall. Why? Because somebody bought the land next door and built a house on it and installed solar panels. And the trees are now shading the solar panels. And California has an ordinance that says you cannot block your neigbors solar panels view of the sun with ANYTHING!

So don't tell me the roadmap for this kind of stuff isn't already printed up.

As to the UN, check out the latest action's on ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. That's the one your government is thinking about signing, the US Navy says is OK, but will require American firms to donate proceeds and technology from deep sea mining to those countries who have no ability to do so or even anything to mine. The UN will be administering the funds dispersal. Can anyone say, Oil for Food?

[sailaway21]

Here's a fairly concise summary of the costs involved, the least of which are financial, to implement what the G-8 is already considering. Brave New World, you betcha', and some of you are going to get hungry.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...r_the_cli.html

[Rockter]

Sailaway...

I will share your suspicion of this Global Warming cabal, but if you try to argue it as being similar to the ban on smoking in public places and dismissing the risks as you have done, you'll get punctured.

Those around you have a right to clean air, and not to have their clothes reeking of your second-hand carcinogens. Apparently such compounds do no harm the moment you breathe them out.

What utter crap.

Utter drivel there.

"Prove it", you will say.

"Pollute your own air", say I.

They banned it here in the UK. Oh man, the air in those public places is clean. I can breathe it, my eyes don't water, and probably will live a bit longer. Those that want to pollute the air go outside, and grumble about global warming.

[camaraderie]

Rock...banning smoking in public places should be left to those that own thos places. The gov't can ban it in their buildings...you can ban it in your buildings...but why shouldn't Sway be able to open a bar and say "smoking allowed here." You can choose not to patronize it and he will have to make a decision to cater only to smokers or change his policy.
I think that it is the issue of coeercion by gov't mandate that is at issue rather than whether smoke smells or is good for you.

As an aside...and completely distinct from your ability to be free of smoky environments...the scientific evidence actually does say that second hand smoke does NOT correlate with higher levels of cancer. (I'm sure it does aggravate asthma and people who don't like the smell! )

[RAGNAR]

zzz

[RAGNAR]

zzzz