Myron Ebell Takes On the E.P.A.
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/11/natural-gas-ambush-killed-...
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Cheap-Natural-Gas-...
For some people, it is easier to perceive that a bureaucrat is against your industry, as opposed to find out that the economic value created is exceptionally low. When a person loses a job, it will be heartbreaking for the person to realise the job performed earlier has low economical value.
Telling someone "We do not need your services anymore" is harder than telling "Well, all those bureaucrats that live elsewhere decided it...".
I do think that economic value of coal is low and it is economically swapped out for other sources.
What happens to all these people, their families and lives put in disarray. This is what the economic and political system of a society is supposed to address - the well being of all citizens. And we can clearly see this is where globalization and the current economic dispensation falls apart spectacularly.
Wishing it away or washing your hands off is a kind of sociopathy. Are these people to be left alone to form an underbelly of society susceptible to any demagogue willing to exploit their disenchantment for their own ends. This self serving plan of action directly leads to social unrest, breakdown and worse.
And, FWIW, Obama did favor natural gas.
Corporate oligarchs have always tried to make the results of their deliberate decisions and the candidates they throw money at sound like the inevitable march of progress. But it isn't. And this election was a repudiation of that.
Easier said than done when one's entire social structure is rooted in one place, and has been since before one was born.
We forget how lucky we are that we can do our work from anywhere in the world; those of us who've moved around also tend, I think, to forget the real value of staying where one grew up.
- Having a kid? Now your whole extended family is available to give you help and advice, to babysit, to be there for you when you need them.
- Need a job? It's a lot easier to find one when you have a personal network in a place already.
- Something terrible happen in your life? You now have a built in set of folks to help you through it.
There's incredible value in having a large local support group. Yes, it's possible to compensate for the lack of it with friends, and those of us who have moved far from home tend to do that, but that's a pretty straightforward second best compared to being with family, people you've grown up with, etc.
Being able to and wise enough to move, is a survival instinct that all living things have.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/from-coal...
There is no evidence for this what so ever.
Anyone is capable of moving. It's hard and it's disruptive but it's possible. And increasingly it's going to be a necessity if you want to have long term prosperity.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/coal-o...
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/05/obama-kept-his-promise-830...
It's the same thing with factory jobs. The US produces more than it ever has (at least the last time I checked), but many of those jobs were automated away.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outpu...
1. Price of natural gas is very competitive. 2. Automation. Mechanisation inside coal mines becomes more effective. 3. As old coal plants are retired, their replacements require exceptionally high capital expenditures. While running an already built coal plant can be feasible, competition for building new plants is not economically competitive.
In the end, it is the free market that took those jobs. In the end, the market always wins.
If the industry was already on it's way down the smart thing to do would have been to let it run it course instead of pushing regulations that wouldn't matter any ways and swung the state against you. Similarly if the factors killing coal really are not driven by government regulation than installing a pro-coal guy at the EPA shouldn't have any effect.
None of the costs of medical treatment or loss of life were borne by the coal industry itself prior to regulation.
It is currently stayed by court order; a Trump administration could decline to defend it, and thereby permit it to die in court.
Low natural gas prices are in part because the Obama administration has strongly resisted any significant restriction or regulation of fracking. They have resisted it because they want gas prices to fall and displace coal.
When it comes to energy development, it's hard to think separately about technology and policy; they are both factors in every change.
I find it odd to require that they continue to operate, while more effective options for energy generation emerged in the last 50 years.
Yes, let me iterate it - so many coal plants were older than 50 years, that it is a miracle they operated for so long.
Obama's administration did not change their age; they were on their way out.
It is hard to separate technology and policy, but I find it hard to stipulate a policy to deter an upgrade of a 50-ish year old to be good policy.
What the Coal industry wants is even more federal handouts. We already give them a ton of money to keep going on the grouds that it's a transition economy and a bridge for the US economy. But the Coal Industry is really damn greedy as a whole.
Even with high profile failures like Solyndra, in general green energy runs at a fraction of the cost. This of course hurts workers, because the labor involved is less well compensated as part of that cost reduction. However, as far as I can tell we're already turning the corner to where (for _generation_, ignoring environmental costs), solar and wind already outperform coal on a cost basis.
People who want to preserve bulk coal generation do so for ideological reasons. From a more "green" perspective, there are more important things we should be doing with our coal and natural gas then burning them to heat water.
Fund the build out of solar production without worrying too much about profits. Not at a loss, just choose to fund factories that will build solar panels as an investment in the future rather than from a portfolio of competitive investments as an attempt to maximize profit.
"Killing Coal: The Obama Administration’s Intentional Assault on an Industry" http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/19/killing-c...
Please don't kill information simply b/c you disagree with it; otherwise there can no dialogue and ycombinator becomes little more than a billboard for the current dominant political whim.
Is news.ycombinator.com a "real news source"? Should it be renamed to "notnews.ycombinator.com" or such?
Who decides what is and isn't a "real news source"?
Perhaps the judgement:
"breitbart.com is not a real news source."
is an example why so many people were astonished at the election results. After all, if you only talk to people who agree with you then you'll certainly be unaware of those who don't. And when there's a vote, you'll really be surprised!
This attitude is destructive as it's making it so difficult for us to come to any agreement on what we accept as a trustworthy third-party. Where do we start to give people some benefit of the doubt? As it is, even "trust but verify" can appear impossible. I'm not advocating some "can't we all be friends" platitude. As a practical matter, how do we move forward from here?
Edit: minor wording changes to remove generalization and grammar improvement
There's no way to prove objectively which sources are better but we still have to make judgments. The judgment about Breitbart is not a difficult one.
Slate.com does not describe themselves as a news source, so apparently not. I've certainly never thought of them as informative.
I can't personally comment on Breitbart's content, but apparently a number of their employees quit earlier this year, believing that the site has lost its journalistic integrity since the death of Andrew Breitbart.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/21/le...
Time to update my news reading preferences!
edit: I suppose there might be a selection effect. The large networks are watched by everyone, and the smaller ones are sought out.
This website has a higher bias towards both people interested in running a business (and the economic climate around it) and interested in disruptive businesses. We see many articles about Tesla, alterantive energy, energy research, and updates to gas and coal based technology.
As such, the article linked really won't fall on receptive ears. We've got a lot of other sources pointing out how very subsidized the coal industry is and we're all well aware that every time an industry risks losing subsidy it immediately performs a football flop to try and stop that, as it's really quite nice to have the taxpayer help bolster your bottom line.
In general, most Americans polled believe that alternative energy is in fact a good thing to pursue and we have evidence of other first world economies making it work and turning a profit while doing so. When we then put slick and popular corporate branding on alternative energy (Tesla's latest offering, but we could name others if you please) then it gets even more popular.
The denial of coal-based power as a harmful and inefficient industrial revolution technology is a minority opinion in the US, but it gets amplified by groups either losing employment or groups hoping to leverage the fact that people are losing employment.
That's why I think you got downvoted. I am ratelimited on this site, so I couldn't spend one of my few daily posts to respond to you yesterday. I apologize for the delay. But very few people here would go, "Oh, I see!" at that article, as it conflicts a lot of other diverse and less partisan sources that pass over this website daily.
Blaming Obama for the decline of coal's commercial viability was a convenient fiction.
But coal is bad. The coal industry costs about half a trillion in externalized damage to health and the environment annually in the US alone: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/831755.
And ironically, the voters in Appalachia being courted are bearing the brunt of it so people in surrounding urban areas can have cheap power: http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/blasting-appalachian-economy.
I understand that this is wrong, and I know it's part of the messaging campaign of climate change deniers (which doesn't make it wrong, but does raise questions about it). First they said it isn't happening, then it isn't caused by humans, then it costs too much to fix, then there is nothing we can do about it. It's just one fallback position after another.
Climate change is a problem of degree; it's not binary. It can be better or worse, depending on what actions we take. The global temperature can rise 2 deg or 2.5 deg or more or less. The sea levels can rise X feet or X+1 feet or more or less. Droughts and can be more or less long and severe. These are very significant differences.
In terms of national priorities, even among Democrats, climate change takes a back seat to (1) jobs; (2) pensions; (3) education; and (4) healthcare. At the same time, it'll require a bigger change to the economy than any of those things.
And that even simple steps like not subsidizing coal, when natural gas is cheaper and there for responsible for the decrease in coal mining, it too expensive of a step?
>climate change is a problem
Do you "deny" that climate change can have non-problematic effects?
Can a temperature increase in one area be beneficial? Can a drought in one area mean more water in another area?
Or to put it in more stark: whatever minor benefits exist are outweighed by the massive risks to mid-long term survival of the human race.
Some think we can simply out-evolve/adapt these changes. That, to me, stinks of hubris.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
Anyone who does not at least agree that there is evidence that is worrying and worth discussing does not know enough about the subject to be having opinions and posing suggestive questions about it. If you don't at least start with: hey, I understand you are not a total idiot and I understand how it may seem like there is strong anthropogenic climate change going on, but here is why I think that that is not the case, then discussion is pointless.
* It's from 2009
* It's not an official report or conclusion, but appears to be more of a discussion aimed at "scoping" the next report.
Still, it's far better than what previously informed our discussion here.
What evidence is there that climate change could cause more famine than it could increase crop yield?
Why is migration undesirable?
Have you been paying attention at all to European or American politics? Even the very small amount of migration being driven by the Syrian civil war has caused massive amounts of discontent and unrest in the richest nations on Earth. Now imagine whole regions full of people wanting to move because rainfall patterns change, or sea level rise displaces them.
Social unrest is the biggest risk that climate change creates. People like things the way they are, and get very upset when they think things are going to change.
Evidence-based consensus is good, and I am primarily interested in the evidence.
What evidence is there that rising sea levels will cause more harm than benefit?
What evidence is there that there can't be more crop production at more northern, theoretically then warmer, altitudes?
What evidence is there that there can't be increased animal diversity as previously colder areas become more habitable to different species?
A common misunderstanding of global warming is the belief that all points on Earth will see their temperature rise by the same amount.
The average temperature will rise, but many regions of Earth will actually see their temperature go down. Unfortunately, those regions are already not particularly warm, like Antarctica.
Northern regions of Earth have their temperature heavily tied to the amount of sunlight they receive. While they will indeed get warmer compared to now, they will still be cold, and there is nothing that can be done about the six months of night time. Going to Siberia is not the answer, no matter how much you like Mr Putin.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Projecte...
As for rising sea levels: for obvious reasons, settlements near the sea are common. Rebuilding all those cities will be a tremendous cost. Human migration will also be politically straining, which may cause a part of the US to secede. Immigration tends to irritate people for some reason. A famous US president was recently elected thanks to that resentment.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/6m_Sea_L...
As for wildlife, rapid changes in temperature are correlated with mass extinction according to the fossil record. In fact, we are already currently undergoing a mass extinction, which is expected to go on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction#Global_war....
I point out that a group of people who are employed primarily by a single source are going to generate opinions that are favorable to that source.
If they don't, they are handicapping their ability to put food on the table. Work can still be found without catering to the primary source, but it's not as financially beneficial to do so.
This happens all the time in marketing. Although, to be fair, those studies are often preceded by a number of more accurate private studies, and only the publicized one is suspect.
It's a loose, circumstantial, conspiratorial aspersion, which has nothing to do with the facts of climate change. Maybe they could make more by providing credibility to the oil and gas industry.
Again, look up IPCC reports. We're not a forum of climate scientists. I believe gravity also exists; I haven't read the papers myself and don't have time to find them.
Nor would your or your loved ones' lives be saved next time you're in the hospital.
I only point out that there is an incentive to agree with the hand that feeds you. This goes for labs employed by industry as well.
You seem to be conflating the benefits of society with the benefits of a living, breathing academic who has kids to feed and bills to pay. There is no conscious "government" - there are only conscious individual actors.
No, they have to produce real, scientific studies which are peer reviewed by other scientists all over the world. If there's a bullshit study, that's usually quickly discredited and the scientist's reputation damaged. (See: Andrew Wakefield)
You're also living in a delusional world where scientists are not in high demand and can't find a much higher paying job at a private corporation, if they wanted to.
Doing science for a government contract is a step down for most scientists.
These are highly trained, skilled, educated, and intelligent people you're talking about.
If a scientist is biased by having an employer with an agenda, and that bias manifests in a study, then that study can be exposed as faulty by other scientists. That's how science works. So unless you believe a global cabal of thousands of scientists and their many different employers are all somehow coordinated in their unwillingness to judge each other's studies as flawed, you must give credence to the overwhelming support among scientists for the idea of anthropogenic climate change.
Likewise, if you believe the multitude of studies is flawed, then go ahead and show how. Pick any couple of dozen and have at it. There are plenty of employers with a strong and admitted bias against global warming (e.g. the oil and gas industry), and they employ scientists. If those scientists produce irrefutable studies disproving anthropogenic climate change, then that would become the accepted science, and those scientists would be viewed as luminaries in the field.
As for the cabal: unfortunately, many believe in exactly that -- including, nominally, President-elect Trump, who has stated climate change is a "hoax". I doubt he believes it's literally a hoax, but I don't doubt he understands that acceptance of the science threatens the bank accounts of those making money from the implicated processes. The same people driving the regulatory capture process, plowing money into congressional elections, etc. The real cabal is the force against the science.
There are so few studies leaning in the other direction that it should be easy to choose an "unfairly" discredited one and expose its field-wide refutations as illogical and biased.
We're SOL on stopping climate change, but what we're doing now will define how bad it gets, and the later we start the worse it will be and the harder the mitigation, as it has been since the 70s.
It's not a question of "SOL" or "token gestures" it's a question of how fast and how far it will go, and how much time we will have to handle such concerns as mass population displacements.
Not doing anything is a giant middle fingers to those who follow us, or for those of us who won't be dead within a generation (aka pretty much anyone other than the boomers), a middle finger to future us.
I really want to push back on this. This is in fact an anti-climate-change talking point used to say, "Look it just doesn't matter what we do." While it's true that the destabilizations currently taking place are absolutely a part of our lifetime, in the 200 year timeline the scientific consensus is that if we cut our emissions substantially within this century we will in fact avoid locking our descendents into a full climate flip that is NOT avoidable.
The canonical paper people quote about this is: http://www.ecoequity.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/meinshau...
We need to play an aggressive game before 2050, and we can save the ice caps. That is not a token gesture. That's the line that we can draw to not destroy every coastal city in the world.
It's disingenuous to claim that there are only token gestures. Chinas commitment is real, Europes commitment is real, India is more questionable, but the Obama administrations actions through the EPA were also real.
Trumps win will cost us. It means many many more gigatonnes of CO2 in the air, that means a hotter planet, and that means more dead poor people. To the best of sciences ability to tell, THAT is reality.
Empathy, education and concession seems like our best chance.
To adapt a quote.... when they go low and don't realise it, you should still go high.
The "clean coal" that Trump has pushed for costs way too much money to create, transport, and responsibly store the solid carbon. Coal already has a price advantage when compared to natural gas.
However, I agree with you that the voters in Appalachia generally vote against their own interests. Usually for social reasons.
Duck duck go even have a bang command for it (!ud).
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/phytoplankton-climate-kachur-1...
http://nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankton-bre...
By "bearing the brunt" you mean "having jobs"? Have you asked them whether they would rather have jobs or not?
Also, they know perfectly well that closing their coal mines doesn't mean that coal doesn't get mined and burned. It just gets mined and burned in other countries where environmental regulations are non-existent.
The simplistic "coal is bad" thesis has a) put a huge number of Americans out of work and b) made the global environment worse.
I'm confident you have sources on b.
Yes.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9751
1) China consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined.
2) Environmental regulations in China range from "minimal" to "non-existent". Do you need sources on that as well?
1. https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/wor...
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China
Yes, China does produce a lot of solar but what percentage of electricity is that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China
You are speaking in generalities and not using hard data. That is no way to analyze a problem.
I'm not sure why this is confusing.
I'm also not sure why people are modding down factual posts. That type of behavior is exactly what's given you President Trump.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-column-russell-steel-china... http://www.ita.doc.gov/steel/countries/pdfs/imports-us.pdf
If this happens, history will remember Trump as the Neville Chamberlain of the climate catastrophe. He won't just be screwing America's plans, this is one of those areas where "leader of the free world" isnt hyperbole - America's decisions will have massive domino-effects on related economies.
Repealing Obamacare, dismantling the EPA and CFPB, appointing judges to the Federal and Supreme Courts who are friendly to rolling back gay and reproductive rights, privatizing Medicare -- these are all mainstream positions.
There is nothing preventing the Supreme Court from deciding to hear an appeal (eg, of a Clerk who doesn't want to issue marriage licenses) and then issuing an sweeping decision completely to the opposite of the new status quo.
That is the risk of relying on the Supreme Court to recognize unenumerated rights; the recognition will only last as long as the Court remains favorable to the right.
That isn't a negative personality trait either, we cannot as a people expect anyone to have empathy for a group they have no personal ties to, especially in contrast to real threats against themselves.
Both are problems, it is just those who are in danger of suffering from Trump's racism / xenophobia / sexism and their immediate peers see that as the more immediate threat, because he can undo decades of civil rights and equality in the first days of his presidency.
He can set in motion programs to destroy the climate more in the first days of his tenure, but it will take years to suffer the consequences of them, even if they are much more permanent than immediate regressions in liberty. For individuals, permanence does not matter - your time is limited, and everything Trump takes away represents days or years you will never get back of oppression.
I'm not sure this is true, but not because the sentiment is wrong: It implies that at some point, climate change will be as universally recognized for its negative effects as Hitler is, and that people will go back to examine how it happened. I don't have a lot of faith in the U.S. to get to either of those points; if I've learned anything from this election, it's that we have an astounding capacity to look at all the facts and just say, "ah, no thanks."
They'll look back on us and ask "what did they do when they had the best opportunity to stop this?"
Seems it really was too good to be true.
This is just another race the US is losing.
They've still got a long way to go, but the signs that they are turning the ship are clear.
http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/10/21/china-coal-crack...
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...
I predict the opposite. China knows that climate change is real, and will seek to take a leadership position in fighting it as means of building long-term international prestige.
The U.S. built its reputation today by defending freedom during WWII and then by handing nations back to their citizens after it won.
Fascism, authoritarianism, communism--those were the greatest threats to human society in the 20th century, and the U.S. led the fight that beat them. But the generation who experienced all that personally will soon be dead.
What is the greatest threat to society now? In the long term, it has to be climate change. It's like fuel for every other social unrest you can think of.
50 years from now, international reputation might hinge on who did the most to limit the effects of climate change. If China sticks to it, and the U.S. fails, the U.S. could find itself pretty damn unpopular.
In addition to (eventual) climate change China has been making itself increasingly unlivable due to conventional pollution (in all forms)...but the leadership there has always seen this as a temporary cost that must be borne to catch up with the west.
Internal pressure will already force China to do something sooner rather than later; handling the problem is a good way to consolidate power internally and thus tackled enthusiastically.
Throw in the USA voluntarily ceding its position of world leadership and it's an opportunity to go from barely-tolerated semi-pariah to increasingly-respectable world leader.
In particular expect China to "save" Africa once the worst begins. But, not immediately; groundwork is already being laid, but right now they can afford to be patient.
Sounds like he's really a shining example of those hippie ideals. Strike back at "the man" and his regulations on behalf of those poor oppressed oil, gas and, coal corporations.
Pardon my language here, since I think of hacker news as a place for intelligent and respectful discussion, but, fuck
That's why people believe this rhetoric even though it seems absurd on its face. They see the faces of people who have lost jobs that is largely obscured from other parts of America because it's of the geographic distribution of signed paychecks to the American middle and lower class.
To defeat that rhetoric over the next 2 years, liberals and socialists need to find a story for how they're going to solve that problem and preserve a livelihood for folks suffering.
And to be honest, that's a wee bit frustrating because as a whole millennials are already tackling these economic challenges without the safety net of a massive lobby, while being told they're lazy and valueless, and often with crippling student debt for a poorly conducted degree. But a vote is a vote, and not every citizen can or will vote against direct self-interest on moral grounds.
I fear from now until the world becomes uninhabitable through climate change that these useless people will remain useless and keep voting in fascists and ultranationalists that will quite literally destroy the planet out of spite for the "elite" who were lucky and skilled enough to be useful to society.
Until we have a way to offer adult education in a way that is financially viable to individuals AND preserves their dignity and aligns with American distaste for pure subsidy, this issue will be nothing but a token talking point for both parties.
Yes, I agree that this type of appointment deserves attention, but Republicans are completely in charge, and Democrats are not know for putting up a fight.
We're really screwed, because this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Imagine what happened during the Bush regime, then scale it up.
If you don't know what happened during that last Republican administration, here's a summary:
1. Statements by govt scientists had to be vetted by political appointees. Expect that to continue, because it's the same anti-science group that surrounds Trump.
2. Corporations were given free rein to do anything. The word regulation was taken out of their vocabulary. Expect more of the same. They're already talking about undoing the Dodd-Frank Act, which was put in place after the 2008 financial crisis.
3. Not a single anti-trust case was brought against any company. And this in an environment where these corporations where going gang-busters. This new gang is going to be even more "business-friendly."
With your attitude, I would say Lemming, not serfs. <a href=" https://youtu.be/AOOs8MaR1YM?t=57">lemmings jumping off cliffs</a>
https://web.archive.org/web/20080827140005/http://www.wired....
And the Bush administration's decision to tell residents of Lower Manhattan that the air in that area was save was the first decision of that kind.
By the end of that administration, it was practically official policy.
Now a pragmatist's pitch: the US has the potential to lead in the transition away from fossil-based fuels. Look, if the Arab countries are getting involved, that should tell you something. Don't do with energy what Kodak did with the digital age...
We are suppose to be the smart ones, the doers, the dreamers. Prove it! DO SOMETHING to change the world.
I think it's also worth looking at your own personal standing in society. E.g., many business owners are starting to recognize the economic costs of climate change, and they can talk to various business associations. People interested in national security also see climate change as a potential threat (due to disruption of large populations and increased competition for access to resources like water and arable land). I know some veterans have been speaking out on this. Climate change will have very broad effects, so many can speak out about what it means to them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_positions_filled_by_pr...
0: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-not-allow-myron...
I am fairly sure we can protest this AND ALSO protest Pence's promises w.r.t., rolling back federal protections for trans people, or Trumps ideological alignment with a militarized police and the danger to people of color that brings, or the now-returned promise to deport people at an unprecedented rate.
If the democrats are guilty of "not listening to the issues" presented by the tea party republicans that won this vote, then collapsing the current protests down into single issues is equally unreceptive. Trump has to be president both for the people who put him in power and the majority that didn't.
I really wish there would be the transition to a ranked ballot to encourage more pluralism.
The problem with the coal and fossil fuels is that we use a technology to produce energy that is literally 400,000 years old. We have the new technology ready (nuclear power) yet we stick to this old, polluting tech. This is insane.
Is there something more than semantics here that I'm missing? Not believing in climate change is functionally the same as denying it in this instance, correct?
- denying it: there is evidence, yet they do not accept it.
- do not believe in it: we cannot prove its existence factually and there are people who still think it exists and some who do not.
Without regulation or tax incentives, it's easy to ignore the externalities in your choices. As an example taken to the extreme: if there was no regulation against dumping your industrial waste in the river, the free market should use that option, as it's cheaper than properly disposing of the waste.
Regulation is really the first resort.
The last resort is things like out-right banning the use of fossil fuels or nationalizing the energy industry.
Do you think that Denmark, Germany and others are doing it?
You are changing the unbiled costs of emitting CO2 with the ones of cleaning up after nuclear waste and nuclear accidents
Now, if we're serious about ending climate change, why not agree to setting a global target temperature?
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
Two decimal places looks pretty sharp to me!
If you notice, the graph is not distorted, it's linear. 1 Celsius degree changes our climate in a mix of predictable and unpredictable ways that you don't want for our planet.
Plus: there's the added problem that the changes can be exponential after a while, melted Ice melts other ice more easily, permafrost defreezing releases methane that is worse than CO2 to the atmosphere, Ice changing color, etc.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...
I once believed that salt mines were a perfect storage place for environmental/nuclear crap. That is, until I read
"Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/...
British towns in the 19th century collapsed when salt miners removed subterranean salt by pumping water in and brine out:
https://www.google.com/search?q=salt+mining+in+19th+century+...
Here's a nice picture(scroll down to see the leaning houses):
http://nbgecko.blogspot.com/2012/10/wadihs-weekend-part-2.ht...
Turns out that if you pour water into a salt deposit, dissolve the salt and pump out the brine, the terrain above may collapse (salt columns were supporting it). Any remaining brine not pumped to the surface may travel who-knows-where underground to dissolve other salt deposits.
England went through decades of lawsuits and legislation wherein landowners cried for recompense of their collapsed lands from salt producers. The salt producers claimed it wasn't their mining that caused the collapses and the landowners usually lost.
Fast forward to oil/gas fracking in Texas, Oklahoma and other states:
most gas/oil deposits are under salt domes. Fracking injects water (and other chemicals) into the subterranean structures, the salt dissolves and the oil/gas is freed to rise. As in England, the brine that is not removed is free to travel miles underground, removing structure that has lain dormant for eons and collapsing the land above. But fracking also uses chemicals, not merely brine, and so the chance of pollution (esp. of water wells) is increased. The frackers say it does no harm. But funny sounds are coming from below and fracking chemicals are showing up in places (e.g., water wells) where they are not wanted:
https://www.google.com/search?q=fracking+chemicals+migrate&b...
Edit: we've known about the greenhouse effect since Victorian times, why is this still so controversial?
Basically, its in the future, its complicated, its costly if I recall correctly and our brains will turn off those kinds of things so its a trifecta of the worst characteristics if you want people to pay attention.
[1] http://www.npr.org/2016/11/08/501073160/climate-change-the-f...
IMHO, this theory explains that and many other mysteries of the beliefs of the right wing: A large segment of U.S. society now prioritizes ideology over fact. Climate change is fact, but fails their ideological test. Thus, they reject it.
They prioritize culture, heritage, tradition, community, and stability (economic and social) over academic knowledge, mobility, novelty, etc.
They are not dumb or more dishonest on average than anyone else, and the cognitive biases and blind spots they have are identical to yours. They are 99.99...% genetically identical to you.
What they have is a different goal function.
If you want to solve a monster global problem like climate change, part of it is finding solutions that can be viewed as positive from the perspective of the many operating goal functions in the world. The world is huge so this is hard. One sided answers that try to herd the rest through shame will fail, as they have for the right on other issues like abortion.
And before you say I'm calling people 'dumb' to be influenced by media that they are consuming; I think people at every level of intelligence are influenced by the media they are consistently consuming. That's why I don't like watching Fox news -- I started realizing that I will subtly adopt their way of thinking, even if I'm consciously critical of everything they're saying.
Indeed. I think the Wall Street Journal is Fox News for the 'elite' (and both are owned by the same people).
The existence of climate change is not an issue of priorities, but of facts.
> academic knowledge
It's just knowledge about reality; reality doesn't change depending on where the knowledge comes from. Academia happens to have far smarter people and far more resources for examining the world; it's a pretty good resource. Rejecting knowledge because it's from academia is exactly what I described, putting ideology (anti-intellectualism) over fact.
> stability (economic and social)
They voted overwhelmingly for massive change and some made calls for revolution if they don't get it. The policies they favor, including radical changes to government and social programs, would greatly reduce stability.
This site is full of very smart people. Get this shit done!
Instead of having a paternalistic government claim to solve our problems, we can do so. This election might just be a sufficient catalyst to make things happen.
Also don't forget the power to not purchase from companies based on what they are doing and who they are working with.
It is easy to get outraged and for some it is even easy to take dangerous actions, but to deprive oneself of what we want in the hope that others will do the same, that, that is hard.
All of those government fueled solutions can sometimes make it better for people in the short-term, but they fail to convince in the long run. The South is still pissed off about the civil war 150 years later. If slavery had died off from persuasion instead of at the end of the gun, generations of blacks might have had a better time of it. Post-civil war could have also worked out if the government had not turned its back, but that is exactly the problem. Those who care generally get their way.
That is why one has to convince people of the way and then government can clean up the rest.
Convince 80% then government can handle the other 20%. What does not work is convincing 20% and pretending government can handle the other 80%.
Government has a role, but it truly is the will of the people first. Do your part, spread the word, make it the norm, and then government can handle the outliers.
With illegal drugs, many were against drugs back in the day, but the culture turned. The government reacted with its all-out war on drugs and yet it continues to fail while doing massive damage.
There's some small, temporary reductions in meat consumption in some countries, leveraging religious traditions, and appealing to health reasons.
Maybe, possibly, over many generations, it could work to significantly reduce overall meat consumption. Maybe.
This is already in the field for mosquito control.
I stopped flying, sold my car, cut down on meat consumption and generally try and live a low impact life, all it's done is lower my standard of living compared to my friends and neighbours. I don't regret it but you soon realise asking individuals to change their behaviour isn't going to get you anywhere.
The only real solution I can see is to shift taxes to carbon as it comes out of the ground then let the market find alternatives.
Instead, you should revel in a better life, such as having more energy from a fresher diet and more exercise, if that is true. If it is not true, then you have to do the harder (probably impossible) job of convincing them that they are dooming their descendants.
Sometimes, just being an example, one that is transparent enough to make it look doable, might make it possible.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Renewables-Are-...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world-without-...
(edited to add link to power fact)
Edit: Also, I don't know if you happen to be extremely wealthy, but this was an interesting read. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/business/energy-environmen...
But have no bother, it won't be in your lifetime. Not this lifetime anyway.
We can't even handle the planet we're already on, how in hell do you think we can terraform an entire separate planet? We're still only scratching the surface of understanding ecosystems today, the big thing these days is starting to try and understand how our internal microbiomes affect us personally, we're nowhere near understanding microbiotic effects on ecosystems at large. And all CES attempts so far have been abject failures.
He fired his campaign manager for poor result in the primary and brought on a new one who brought success to his campaign. I'm sure he will fire a number of people in the coming days.
Also Trump is probably going to rehire him - http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/12/corey-lewandowski-donald-trum...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/07/...
The point is Trump fires people for poor performance, and he is not afraid to pivot.
For the record Trump has denounced the protests against him, but not the many white supremacy marches across the country
I mean, one can make the rational (with a rather callous set of precepts) argument that if it happens after you're dead it doesn't matter - I had this argument made to me by a hedge fund owner/manager last year who I queried over his heavy investment in fossils - he is essentially looking to make a fortune and isn't concerned about the "far future".
Where things will get interesting is when these figures realise that it isn't far future, it's going to impact their quality of life - but by then it'll likely be too late.
I don't think any of us will get out.
http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/
(I posted this as a reply to one of the comments but I want to make sure it's seen, given the gravity of the situation.)
Perhaps the scariest part of Trump is that he is such an unknown blank slate, but that also offers an opportunity if we recognize it.
I'm contacting my Republican Senator and making an, admittedly, futile attempt to appeal to his reason. Please consider doing the same: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
1. Green energy becomes so much more competitive than fossil that trump and his cronies have to do a 180
2. Millions more people worldwide are inspired to go green and start generating their own green power, through wind and solar technology like musks roof tiles.
Preferably both, otherwise it's goodbye civilisation in the next 50-100 years.
I have to try and be an optimist
Its kind of funny, because if we paid more in the short term we could do a lot to limit climate change, and even reduce energy costs in the future - but everyone just wants everything as cheap as possible now.
[0] Although I have seen companies offering to install panels on your property, which they own, then they pay you a % of the profits from energy generated.
This amounts to a sort of intellectual homeopathy when it comes to dismissing the scientific consensus on an issue without commensurate evidence.
It's all government funded, so why isn't it open and available?
It is very likely that within a decade the effects of climate change will go from "scientists arguing" to "transparent to everyone".
Although this will not exactly be "alien invaders"--"real life godzilla" seems closer to the mark--civilization as we know it will be faced with an external threat that cares not for what we think--indeed, that cannot be bargained with--but only for how we act (and indeed, if we act).
If nothing else that thought experiment will become a real experiment soon; I hope we make it through.
One thing to consider is how much uglier our national discourse will likely become. For example, the narrative around our recent election seems to be settling around a rejection of urban and coastal elites and experts: middle america is tired of being ignored, insulted, condescended-to, looked down upon as ignorant yokels, and so on and so forth..."show us and our opinions some respect", they say, electing the man who's now appointing the man who's going to (literally) slam the pedal to the metal while (figuratively) rolling coal all the way.
I wonder how these people will wind up being thought-of once climate change goes from deniable--as it is now, at least domestically--to undeniable (as it certainly will, and likely soon).
I mean, seriously: if for forty years you've been warned by experts that continuing to do X will eventually lead to Y, you continue to do X, and it eventually leads to Y...how can you reasonably expect anyone to respect you? To consider your opinions worth the time and energy even to listen to, let alone take into consideration? Why should you not expect to be seen as anything other than an idiot in the classical sense ("incapable of useful reasoning; danger to self and others")?
I do not expect this to end well--culturally and socially--and expect it will play out far uglier than the dust bowl...
I also think readers on this site vastly underestimate how radically the world will shift once change becomes undeniable; the default assumption seems to be that things will generally continue as they always have right up until it gets so bad it's game over for everyone.
In reality, as soon as it climate change begins having undeniable impacts expect a radical changes in financial behavior...which will likely have direct, pervasive impact upon daily life well in advance of the direct impacts of climate change proper.
Will the 30-year mortgage remain typical for home purchases? Will 5-year commercial leases remain typical? Will it remain possible to price weather derivatives accurately enough to be viable? Will SV angels continue hobby-investing in high-risk, high-reward gambles, or turn their attention to second homes in northern latitudes?
I can only see a move to shorter time horizons and more risk aversion from the private sector.
I looked at jrcii's account and see what you describe: jrcii was feeling his oats after the elections and took a Trumpic victory lap by posting a pretty snarky comment on YC. In that comment jrcii disses:
climate warning, "Silicon Valley people, LA people, NYC people, city people, liv[ing] in a bubble formed by the urban politics around you and reinforced by liberal college professors, the liberal students they create, and the liberal mass media. This is simply not reality for vast swaths of the country."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12917083
OK, so he does this once, just once. There's no pattern of misbehavior. He didn't threaten anyone (no "Second Amendment People" comin'!). For all we know he's the last conservative in SF and needs to blow off steam.
YC is a great forum. I think it harsh for a techie to be banned for a single scattergun comment especially after a heated election. I would think a caution would be better at this juncture, or even some ribbing: "OK, we hear you celebrating! Your guy won this time. But soon we'll find out whether he can ride the horse!" or such.
I appreciate your thoroughness.
jrcii is indeed a bit sensitive. From the nature of his last post, I suspect he regrets being banned from YC, where he was active for almost two years. Too bad.
As for several repeat violations mentioned in the thread, you can find several other comments in jrcii's history that have been marked as [flagged][dead].
Will they build out nuclear power? If yes, then good.
Will they engage in feel-good unilateral emissions cuts that hurt our economy and don't do anything about climate change? If no, then good.
That actually is a very bad thing.
Potentially increasing emissions during a time when not cutting them deep enough represents a catostrophic risk, is a really bad thing.
EU and China make strong push towards clean energy in few years they will have cheap, clean energy.
I think nuclear power would be great for the climate and we should pursue it, but it would be great in exactly the same way as any other unilateral emissions cut would be great (eg. tax incentives for electric cars, or a carbon tax, or replacing coal plants with wind farms).