Comment by OnTheOtherHand here:
The whole [climate change] issue is so complicated that in order to understand it fully, one needs to quit life and study it full time, or one has to pick trusted sources to digest the complexity and summarise.
Based on the other beliefs that tend to be correlated with climate alarmism - e.g. big government controlling lives rather than freedom, SJW, rejection of most tradition in favour of this replacement new "religion", I tend to smell a rat with the data selected by climate change proponents.
I come from a position that every generation thinks that there is some massive problem that will never be solved - Malthus and overpopulation, global cooling in the 70s, DDT and pesticides, nuclear war, acid rain and forests, ozone layer, AIDS going epidemic in the general population, GM food, bird flu, ebola.
Global warming is one of our problems, but I am sure that it will make more sense to invest in research and innovation and adapt than to bomb our economy now for certain just to slightly reduce the possibility of catastrophic GW theory being right.
The end of the world is nigh. Repent, or at least signal your virtue by campaigning about plastic straws.
At the risk of sounding glib (some of those things were real issues which we actually dealt with; some were real issues which we learned to live with/brushed under the carpet; some were real issues which somehow sorted themselves out; and of course some were just scare stories etc), amen to that.
Thursday, 5 December 2019
"The end of the world is nigh"
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6 comments:
However, there is a finite amount of oil on this planet and it makes no sense to waste it on heating and transport when such things can be done using renewable energy.
Bayard: maybe, maybe not. The thing about this finite oil is that, just when we think we are about to run out, a whole load more is found. Since the 1870s, it has been claimed that there is "only 30 more years' supply left!" (though, now, that has been increased to 50 years, yet still more oil gets discovered; very frustrating for the scare-mongers). The real irony with your comment is that this "renewable" energy you mention is anything BUT renewable, is wholly dependent on oil, and costs more energy to install than will be returned in its projected life-span. Next, you will be saying that hydrogen is the new future, ignoring the fact that, yet again, more energy will be expended extracting hydrogen than hydrogen will give us; this is what is encapsulated in various laws of physics.
Minimise climate change by burning coal.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-everything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong/#253638b812d6
also
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/12/04/why-climate-alarmism-hurts-us-all/?emci=2ec988e8-bc16-ea11-828b-2818784d6d68&emdi=0a929482-bf16-ea11-828b-2818784d6d68&ceid=1539302#5e3dba0736d8
A sensible tax on CO2 would have already sorted this problem out. Internalise costs, let the market get on with it. IMHO.
RR, there has to be a limit to the amount of oil: the Earth is a finite size and most of it is water and rock. OK predictions of running out have been wrong in the past, but there will come a point where they will be right. Most renewable energy initiatives have been skewed by political and other forces towards the least efficient in whole-life energy cost, like wind and PV. Do you really think that the Rance barrage, which has been generating 240MW since 1966, took more energy to construct than it has produced? Just because something has been done badly is not aa reason for not doing it correctly.
B, yup, there's not much else you can do with coal except burn it.
Bayard et al. Thing is resources are created. Oil was NBG to the Arabs until Benz came along. And for all practical purposes fossil fuels are not in any way near being exhausted. Coil into oil for example and there is at least 300 + years of coal so far discovered and economically mineable st current prices in the UK alone.
These recurring alarums are a feature of all civilisations. My personal view is that they are useful for the extractive class to keep down the plebs. Look at the medieval Roman Catholic church for example.
All civilisations contain four sets of people w r t these alarums. On the alarmist side 80% (standard Pareto distribution) are what Lenin is said to have called 'useful idiots'. They go along because it gives them a creed to hang on to (Greta Thing) or just an easy life. The next lot 16% (80% of the remaining 20%) are commissars. They are their on their way hopefully to the remaining 4%. They know it's all cobblers but they are zealots for it in the hope / expectation of wealth and power. They won't, or very rarely achieve those goals, of course. The really dangerous ones are the remaining 4%. I call these the 'O'Brien's'. And I am sure you know who 'O'Brien' was/is? Yep, he's Big Brother's man in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And what does he say to Winston Smith? "It's all about Power. Imagine a hobnail boot stomping on the face of mankind for ever" [slight paraphrase]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1WI8BUe9Eg
So which of the four classes do you belong to? The daft, the deluded or the deceitful? Oh, where's the fourth class you ask? Yes, that's us. Perhaps 20% of the sentient population that have cracked what's going on. We just have to work out how to get through it all with integrity and do our utmost to agitate against the extracters whilst trying to actually have a good life and some fun.
IF the climate is changing, and IF the change is due to human activity, then I would like to see the calculations which point to carbon dioxide as the cause. The NASA site just shows a conceptual diagram of a carbon dioxide molecule, and all the rest is assertion. The total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would form a layer less than four metres deep at the surface of the earth.
A more likely cause would be reflection of radiation from water droplets in clouds, with possible changes due to changes in agricultural practice and from deforestation. The carbon dioxide panic is probably way off the mark.
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