A Balanced View of Climate Change

[ReinyDays]

We've never owned an EV and Lord willing will never have to. Most auto makers here in the U.S. are cutting back sharply on their EV production if they haven't discontinued making them altogether. People just aren't buying them. Our so-called President promised lots and lots of new of charging stations built for EVs with the massive infrastructure bill passed through our Congress. So far according to the news last night they have built one.

Remember though that your government nor our government was involved in the development of videos or video players and VHS was reliable and effective and affordable from the beginning and opened up a great new market for businesses to provide them for sale or rent. The private sector generally does these things more competently and economically than any government will or can do.

If left to the private sector there might or might not be EVs. They are probably pretty okay for those who don't live in very cold climates and who don't need to drive long distances. They are pretty impractical for folks who live in say Alaska or out her in the American west where there can be 60 to 100 miles or more between towns and it isn't unusual for there to be hundreds of miles to cover to your destination. Takes five minutes or so to fill up the gas tank. Having to wait 30 minutes to an hour or more even on a rapid charger is frustrating for many impatient Americans.

And if the ambulance or fire truck or police car is on a charger when you need one. . .

That's a great analogy with the VHS tapes ... there's a Free Market solution here as well ... it's an economic question, why are you driving? ... I'm a concrete finisher so I'm driving a 3-ton, because 3 ton is at 5 mpg is cheaper than 1/2 ton at 25 mpg ... maybe you walk to work when the weather's dry, an a lil' golf cart is exactly what you need to get to and fro ... upscale them a little as technology improves ... keep the damn things off the freeways ... I wouldn't make a fire engine out of a golf cart ... or a golf cart out of an old fire engine ...

No ... Tesla had the right idea ... EV is a poor man's Ferrari ... $20,000 for new battery pack is cheap compared to the bill from the Ferrari mechanic ...

 

[Foxfyre]

That's a great analogy with the VHS tapes ... there's a Free Market solution here as well ... it's an economic question, why are you driving? ... I'm a concrete finisher so I'm driving a 3-ton, because 3 ton is at 5 mpg is cheaper than 1/2 ton at 25 mpg ... maybe you walk to work when the weather's dry, an a lil' golf cart is exactly what you need to get to and fro ... upscale them a little as technology improves ... keep the damn things off the freeways ... I wouldn't make a fire engine out of a golf cart ... or a golf cart out of an old fire engine ...

No ... Tesla had the right idea ... EV is a poor man's Ferrari ... $20,000 for new battery pack is cheap compared to the bill from the Ferrari mechanic ...

The private sector is profit motivated and succeeds or fails in how successfully they provide products and services that people want and will pay for. And the product will be priced to produce maximum profit which will likely not be the most the seller could charge or the least the seller could charge. The private sector without government subsidies, tax breaks, etc. would likely test the market in the densely populated big cities where people could always have a place to 'plug in' their EV and never have to drive it too far.

Initially probably only the rich would buy EVs as was the case with gasoline powered cars, but that would be profitable enough to keep developing and improving the product and streamlining production until they were attractively prices for a much larger market. At the time the gasoline powered vehicles were going into production, the government was serving the people more than itself. It observed the trends and accommodated them with better roads and highways for the automobiles and trucks and providing tax incentives for increased oil production and refinery capacity to meet a growing need for affordable fuel. It was win win for everybody.

Now with a natural--not forced--transition to more EVs a good government would leave that alone but would be using its ability to improve the power grid and with tax incentives it would be encouraging more businesses to put in charging stations and other accommodations necessary for the EVs. That would be win win for everybody.

Good government follows the private sector activity with infrastructure and useful services. Bad government tries to micromanage the whole process and is wholly unsuitable to do that anywhere nearly as attractively, profitably, economically, effectively, usefully, competently as will be done by the private sector.

Government now is mostly bad government with no incentive to be economical or effective, does not care about the long range or sometimes even the immediate consequences of what it does, is almost entirely self serving rather than interested in improving the lives, options, choices, opportunities for all Americans. As a result Americans are having their resources unnecessarily drained and wasted and are steadily losing their liberties, choices, options and opportunities.

 

[ding]

Ice age ... 30 million years ... I think you mean weather changes ...

You said "how much colder the arctic would be if the heat conveyor shut down" ... the heat conveyor never shuts down, not as long as the Sun shines and the Earth spins ... but if they did, the equatorial oceans would boil ... without sunlight at all, the poles would accumulate ice ... if that could happen, it would have by now ...

How has the Oceanic Climate changed over these past 30 million years, or 2.2 billion years for that matter ... because my comment was about all the climate, not just one small insignificant part of it ...

No. I mean all of those oscillations between glacial and interglacial periods.

Please stop wasting my time with this nonsense. The ocean affects on the planet's climate has been well established even if the AGW is distracting from it.

 

[ReinyDays]

The private sector is profit motivated and succeeds or fails in how successfully they provide products and services that people want and will pay for. And the product will be priced to produce maximum profit which will likely not be the most the seller could charge or the least the seller could charge. The private sector without government subsidies, tax breaks, etc. would likely test the market in the densely populated big cities where people could always have a place to 'plug in' their EV and never have to drive it too far.

Initially probably only the rich would buy EVs as was the case with gasoline powered cars, but that would be profitable enough to keep developing and improving the product and streamlining production until they were attractively prices for a much larger market. At the time the gasoline powered vehicles were going into production, the government was serving the people more than itself. It observed the trends and accommodated them with better roads and highways for the automobiles and trucks and providing tax incentives for increased oil production and refinery capacity to meet a growing need for affordable fuel. It was win win for everybody.

Now with a natural--not forced--transition to more EVs a good government would leave that alone but would be using its ability to improve the power grid and with tax incentives it would be encouraging more businesses to put in charging stations and other accommodations necessary for the EVs. That would be win win for everybody.

Good government follows the private sector activity with infrastructure and useful services. Bad government tries to micromanage the whole process and is wholly unsuitable to do that anywhere nearly as attractively, profitably, economically, effectively, usefully, competently as will be done by the private sector.

Government now is mostly bad government with no incentive to be economical or effective, does not care about the long range or sometimes even the immediate consequences of what it does, is almost entirely self serving rather than interested in improving the lives, options, choices, opportunities for all Americans. As a result Americans are having their resources unnecessarily drained and wasted and are steadily losing their liberties, choices, options and opportunities.

I have a little different relationship with government and electricity ... Bonneville Power Administration in the Columbia River watershed provide dirt-cheap carbon-neutral hydro-hyphenated-power to the four States that border on the Columbia ... plus butt-loads of excess to ship to California ... run by the US Army Coups of Engineers ... government done right ...

EVs are cost effective here ... God knows why anyone would burn coal to charge a battery and think that's better for the environment ...

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Paraphrased from my source for this thread: more than a million people are killed and multi millions injured in traffic accidents every year that goes by. We could reduce that carnage to near zero if we just reduced traffic speeds to 3 miles an hour. Anybody willing to agree to that to save all those lives? I think 99.9% of people world wide would think that an unreasonable remedy for the problem.

So let's look at unreasonable 'remedies' for the climate change problem.

I have long argued that whether human activity is the driving force behind climate change or not, human kind is here to stay for now. The world's population has expanded from one billion people at the beginning of the industrial revolution to more than eight billion people now. And there is no realistic way to convince eight billion people that, for our foreseeable future, living in a fossil fuel free world is either desirable or even possible unless they are clueless re the facts and the cost.

Instead of confiscating so much of the world's financial resources to 'combat climate change' that obviously isn't combating climate change, a much better approach would be to find ways for humans to constructively adapt to inevitable climate change.

Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus, presents the reality of how governments deal with climate change and, while he does not deny that climate change is occurring and will continue to occur, he has a much more realistic and honest approach to how the world should 'follow the science.'

Emphasis in the quoted material is mine:
". . .A new peer-reviewed study of all the scientific estimates of climate-change effects shows the most likely cost of global warming averaged across the century will be about 1% of global gross domestic product, reaching 2% by the end of the century. This is a very long way from global extinction.

Draconian net-zero climate policies, on the other hand, will be prohibitively costly. The latest peer-reviewed climate-economic research shows the total cost will average $27 trillion each year across the century, reaching $60 trillion a year in 2100. Net zero is more than seven times as costly as the climate problem it tries to address.

Our goal in forming climate policy should be the same we bring to traffic laws and any other political question: achieve more benefits than costs to society. A richer world is much more resilient against weather extremes. In the short term, therefore, policymakers should focus on lifting the billions of people still in poverty out of it, both because it will make them more resilient against extreme weather and because it will do so much good in a myriad of other ways. For the longer term, governments and companies should invest in green-energy research and development to drive down the costs and increase the reliability of fossil-fuel alternatives.

Careful science can inform us about the problem of climate change, but it can’t tell us how to solve it. Sensible public debate requires all the facts, including about the costs of our choices. Some of the most popular climate policies will have costs far greater than climate change itself. When politicians try to shut down discussion with claims that they’re “following the science,” don’t let them.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/follow-the-science-leads-to-ruin-climate-environment-policy-3f427c05?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

”

The very first premise when addressing current climate change is to state that it is primarily caused by human activity.

Else we can't have an honest discussion about what to do about it.

 

[ReinyDays]

No. I mean all of those oscillations between glacial and interglacial periods.

Please stop wasting my time with this nonsense. The ocean affects on the planet's climate has been well established even if the AGW is distracting from it.

That's what I said ... any nonsense that ensued was of your making ... the heat conveyor isn't an oscillation ...

 

[ding]

That's what I said ... any nonsense that ensued was of your making ... the heat conveyor isn't an oscillation ...

I've got my doubts about you.

 

[ding]

The very first premise when addressing current climate change is to state that it is primarily caused by human activity.

Else we can't have an honest discussion about what to do about it.

Maybe I'll call you out in the bull ring on it. You've been acting like you need a good pumping lately.

I doubt you've ever had an honest conversation in your life.

 

[Foxfyre]

I have a little different relationship with government and electricity ... Bonneville Power Administration in the Columbia River watershed provide dirt-cheap carbon-neutral hydro-hyphenated-power to the four States that border on the Columbia ... plus butt-loads of excess to ship to California ... run by the US Army Coups of Engineers ... government done right ...

EVs are cost effective here ... God knows why anyone would burn coal to charge a battery and think that's better for the environment ...

What you describe is not available to most of the rest of the country however.

 

[ReinyDays]

What you describe is not available to most of the rest of the country however.

Everywhere in this country has this ... Solar in Southern California, Wind in Texas, Hydro along the Mississippi ... if these are cheaper alternatives, then why not exploit them? ...

Yeah, that means burning coal in coal country ... oil in oil country ... I'm fine with that ... conservation saves money ... now who doesn't want to save money? ...

 

[Moonglow]

Paraphrased from my source for this thread: more than a million people are killed and multi millions injured in traffic accidents every year that goes by. We could reduce that carnage to near zero if we just reduced traffic speeds to 3 miles an hour. Anybody willing to agree to that to save all those lives? I think 99.9% of people world wide would think that an unreasonable remedy for the problem.

So let's look at unreasonable 'remedies' for the climate change problem.

I have long argued that whether human activity is the driving force behind climate change or not, human kind is here to stay for now. The world's population has expanded from one billion people at the beginning of the industrial revolution to more than eight billion people now. And there is no realistic way to convince eight billion people that, for our foreseeable future, living in a fossil fuel free world is either desirable or even possible unless they are clueless re the facts and the cost.

Instead of confiscating so much of the world's financial resources to 'combat climate change' that obviously isn't combating climate change, a much better approach would be to find ways for humans to constructively adapt to inevitable climate change.

Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus, presents the reality of how governments deal with climate change and, while he does not deny that climate change is occurring and will continue to occur, he has a much more realistic and honest approach to how the world should 'follow the science.'

Emphasis in the quoted material is mine:
". . .A new peer-reviewed study of all the scientific estimates of climate-change effects shows the most likely cost of global warming averaged across the century will be about 1% of global gross domestic product, reaching 2% by the end of the century. This is a very long way from global extinction.

Draconian net-zero climate policies, on the other hand, will be prohibitively costly. The latest peer-reviewed climate-economic research shows the total cost will average $27 trillion each year across the century, reaching $60 trillion a year in 2100. Net zero is more than seven times as costly as the climate problem it tries to address.

Our goal in forming climate policy should be the same we bring to traffic laws and any other political question: achieve more benefits than costs to society. A richer world is much more resilient against weather extremes. In the short term, therefore, policymakers should focus on lifting the billions of people still in poverty out of it, both because it will make them more resilient against extreme weather and because it will do so much good in a myriad of other ways. For the longer term, governments and companies should invest in green-energy research and development to drive down the costs and increase the reliability of fossil-fuel alternatives.

Careful science can inform us about the problem of climate change, but it can’t tell us how to solve it. Sensible public debate requires all the facts, including about the costs of our choices. Some of the most popular climate policies will have costs far greater than climate change itself. When politicians try to shut down discussion with claims that they’re “following the science,” don’t let them.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/follow-the-science-leads-to-ruin-climate-environment-policy-3f427c05?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

”

You new industry killer for the aristocrats of the world.

 

[Foxfyre]

You new industry killer for the aristocrats of the world.

Sorry. I have no idea what you are saying here.

 

[Moonglow]

Sorry. I have no idea what you are saying here.

The aristocrats want to create a new industry and want taxpayers to foot the bill.

 

[Foxfyre]

Everywhere in this country has this ... Solar in Southern California, Wind in Texas, Hydro along the Mississippi ... if these are cheaper alternatives, then why not exploit them? ...

Yeah, that means burning coal in coal country ... oil in oil country ... I'm fine with that ... conservation saves money ... now who doesn't want to save money? ...

The point is that there is no real impelling reason and no justification for the government meddling in the process to the point that the cost of combatting climate change far outweighs any benefit and will be hugely destructive. Otherwise whatever sources of energy are cost effective and useful to the quality of life for everybody, go for it.

 

[ding]

Do the right thing, the right way for the right reason. Fake news AGW is not the right reason.

 

[Matted Joybeard]

Who is' they'? The Left are the ones introducing the specter of climate change and they are the ones that want to spend untold trillions to combat it without knowing jackshit about whether it'll do any good or who will be negatively affected. The Conservatives are the ones who are saying 'no, we aren't going to spend untold trillions on anything until we are sure it is needed and the proposed solutions will adequately work'.




I am assuming this is an attempt at sarcasm. If so, it's bullshit. First, what's wrong with everyone getting richer? Second, nobody is suggesting that extracting more fossil fuels will fix the consequences. Third, if every country on Earth stopped extracting fossil fuels then what would the consequences be for billions of people in poverty or close to it?

There's no wargaming in the OP just a vague idea that we will prevail. There's mounting concern the AMOC is shutting down in large part from deglaciation of Greenland. What's the constructive adaptability plan in this scenario, what's the cost and how rich does everyone have to be to individually cope?

 

[ReinyDays]

The point is that there is no real impelling reason and no justification for the government meddling in the process to the point that the cost of combatting climate change far outweighs any benefit and will be hugely destructive. Otherwise whatever sources of energy are cost effective and useful to the quality of life for everybody, go for it.

Do you have an example of "hugely destructive"? ... hopefully you don't see used wind turbine blades "destructive"? ...

How do you feel about the government mandate we insulate our homes? ... this is the kind of "highly destructive" policies you're concerned with, right? ... it takes half the wood to build your home except for these overburdensome weatherization requirements ... buildings made with 2x3's will last 100 years easy, today they're built with 2x6's only to provide for more insulation ... there is no structural requirement for such heavy timbers in our walls ...

Nevermind recirculating exhaust gases back through the engine ... just the PCV valve cuts gas mileage ... better for the engine, better for the economy to have draft tubes instead ... just more government overreach taking your money out of your pocket ...

I'm moved into town after retirement just to be away from all the goddam eco-freaks bitchin' at me ... now I have to deal with a National Park Service regulation that reads like a textbook ... I can go to prison for changing the outside appearance of my own home without fucking Park Service permission ... Forest Rangers with guns get nervous in town ...

Don't you dare whine to me about government overreach ...

 

[task0778]

There's no wargaming in the OP just a vague idea that we will prevail.

Didn't get your point. Wargaming? If by prevail you mean the human race will not go extinct, I don't think that's going to happen. And IMHO, everything about this issue is vague, nothing has been proven as far as anthropogenic causes and effects, nor any proposals to stop CC or adapt to it.

There's mounting concern the AMOC is shutting down in large part from deglaciation of Greenland.

Yeah, I read about that. Is there anything we can do about it that will actually work? I have to be honest here, I do not trust the IPCC or any of these other organizations that are pushing this narrative. The issue has become so politicized, and past projections have been so wrong so why should I accept this latest warning of gloom and doom?

What's the constructive adaptability plan in this scenario, what's the cost and how rich does everyone have to be to individually cope?

Here's where we find common ground. Not a lot of talk about this though, and by 'constructive' do you mean 'effective'? What will the consequences of any adaptation plan be? And what's the timeline for action? I doubt we'll see major coastal cities under water in the next year or so.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Maybe I'll call you out in the bull ring on it.

And you will sit there and diddle yourself in solitude. I don't much care what some uneducated slob on the internet has to say about it. That includes me. I defer to the scientific community.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Everywhere in this country has this ... Solar in Southern California, Wind in Texas, Hydro along the Mississippi ... if these are cheaper alternatives, then why not exploit them? ...

Yeah, that means burning coal in coal country ... oil in oil country ... I'm fine with that ... conservation saves money ... now who doesn't want to save money? ...

Exactly why would should be subsidizing the technological development of, for example, solar power.