Naomi Klein: Capitalism vs. the Climate

[SEGsby]

You mean "feel".

What did you do when Climate Gate I was debunked? Repent? Apologize to those you rubbed that PR BS up their snoot? Of course not.

No, you held to your personal 'opinion' on the matter-- even when the facts totally dispute the media hype and spin surrounding the issue. And you never learned to distinguish FUD from fact, when you saw it. :P

Sad...

http://www.alternet.org/story/149193...es_you_stupid/

[NeilBlanchard]

[AR-51]

Originally Posted by SEGsby

You mean "feel".

What did you do when Climate Gate I was debunked? Repent? Apologize to those you rubbed that PR BS up their snoot? Of course not.

No, you held to your personal 'opinion' on the matter-- even when the facts totally dispute the media hype and spin surrounding the issue. And you never learned to distinguish FUD from fact, when you saw it. :P

Sad...

http://www.alternet.org/story/149193...es_you_stupid/

Ok, so I was trying to avoid getting into the debate, but I came cross climategate II, and just could not resist posting it (I'm guilty). I was then called stupid , so I guess I have noting to lose if I get into it . No one knows where I leave, so my collection of Hummers are safe (disclaimer, I do not own any hummer).

First thing first, educate me ,point me to the scientific evidence that prove your point (please, no YouTube video saying that climate change is a fact). Educate me with the vast scientific knowledge you have amassed. I heard everyone saying it's a fact, but they never give any evidence.

Before I continue, let me just point out that I do believe that human contribute to pollution. Do I believe that Armageddon is upon us, no. Do I think less pollution is best, yes.

Next point I want to make is that Climate change is inevitable. No one can stop it.

1) Not to long ago and asteroid was only 202,000 mile from earth.
2) What happen to all those dinosaurs that were living in harmony with the earth?
3) The sun does not have eternal life.
4) Have you ever heard of a super nova?
5) humane lifespan is about 100 year, so lest say we all decided to live like cavemen (without using wood to cook, and live in caves dug with our bear hands). 100 years later the next generation could decide that life is too short to be wasted saving the planet .

OK, so we have established that the earth is doomed (unscientifically). Now to the next part.

What if two people live in a garage and each of them have there own car, one drive a Prius, the other a hummer. The Prius driver tells the Hummer driver turn off his hummer because the pollution from the Hummer will kill them all. The Prius driver then turns on his Prius to listen to his favorite nature song.

The point of this story is, if environmentalist realy bealive in global warmming why are they contributing to it?
They go to the same grocery store that the rest of us go too. (we don't have rainbow powered trucks yet)
They gladly turn on their coal powered supper efficient light-bulbs at night. Yes they have solar panes on their roofs, but why are they still hocked up to the grid? For some reason I don't think is because they want to sell electricity.
They frantically turn on the heater on a cold night, some of them might even secretly burn wood in their chimneys. (lest stop and say a prayer for tree).
Some even work for some evil cooperation that pollute the planet. They then go home to use a computer that was created and powered by solar panels. I'm sorry, I said solar panels, but I meant coal or oil.

It is impossible not to pollute. Life depends on pollution (try not breading and see what happens). In cace you haven't realized it pollution is natural. Closing coal power plants is not going to save the planet, nature has already given us the solution.. I can't tell you what it is because .

[Grendal]

AR-51. Excellent points and a well reasoned argument. As human beings, we consume and pollute. We eat, breathe, poop, pee, and reproduce exclusively on this planet. There are now 7 Billion people on this planet with us and that number will continue to grow. Each of us also needs a bit of space for our stuff. For this discussion I'll call all of that our "footprint" on the planet. Industrialization and social interaction can adjust the size of a human beings footprint.

There are those that argue that industrializtion is a bad thing and want it to go away. It started with the plow 5000 years ago and there is no going back. If we had stayed Hunter-Gatherers (which we stayed with for over 150K years) and not embraced industrialization eventually some natural disaster would have wiped us out. With industriaization we have the possibility to avoid that fate. It certainly doesn't mean we're free and clear, however. 7 Billion industrialized people and growing is a lot of consuming and polluting. We need to keep that under control or somehow keep our worldwide population under control. If we move out into space we won't have a choice but to keep our consuming and polluting under control because we'll be bringing our biosphere along with us.

Shrugging our shoulders and saying it's too big a problem is just leaving the problem for the next person to figure out. Does that mean we are obligated to fix everything ourselves? No. You live around your peers and need to respect their needs as well.

So, my point is to find a happy balance. Consume and pollute because you have to, but try and keep your footprint to a minimum...

Sorry for the speech and I hope I was coherent...

[AR-51]

Originally Posted by Grendal

AR-51. Excellent points and a well reasoned argument. As human beings, we consume and pollute. We eat, breathe, poop, pee, and reproduce exclusively on this planet. There are now 7 Billion people on this planet with us and that number will continue to grow. Each of us also needs a bit of space for our stuff. For this discussion I'll call all of that our "footprint" on the planet. Industrialization and social interaction can adjust the size of a human beings footprint.

There are those that argue that industrializtion is a bad thing and want it to go away. It started with the plow 5000 years ago and there is no going back. If we had stayed Hunter-Gatherers (which we stayed with for over 150K years) and not embraced industrialization eventually some natural disaster would have wiped us out. With industriaization we have the possibility to avoid that fate. It certainly doesn't mean we're free and clear, however. 7 Billion industrialized people and growing is a lot of consuming and polluting. We need to keep that under control or somehow keep our worldwide population under control. If we move out into space we won't have a choice but to keep our consuming and polluting under control because we'll be bringing our biosphere along with us.

Shrugging our shoulders and saying it's too big a problem is just leaving the problem for the next person to figure out. Does that mean we are obligated to fix everything ourselves? No. You live around your peers and need to respect their needs as well.

So, my point is to find a happy balance. Consume and pollute because you have to, but try and keep your footprint to a minimum...

Sorry for the speech and I hope I was coherent...

Excellent point.
The ironic thing is that industrialization has actually reduced pollution. Can you imagine if 7 Billion of us had to burn wood to cook and keep warm? Not to mention that solar panels most likely would have never been invented.

Edit: After thinking about it, maybe industrialization did not reduce our footprint since we are now able to pollute in other ways. From my point of view industrialization is a good thing and the only solution to pollution (Aptera anyone?)

[NeilBlanchard]

Burning wood and burning oil are two very different things.

Wood contains carbon that came from the atmosphere in the recent decades or maybe century.

Oil contains carbon that came from the atmosphere millions and millions and millions of years ago.

Burning wood doesn't change the quantity of the carbon in the air over time. Burning oil (and coal and gas) adds to the quantity of carbon in the air.

One gallon of gasoline represents close to 100 TONS of biological material. That is why it is so powerful.

We have learned a lot, and we have benefited from the energy we have consumed -- but we need to keep on learning. What we have learned is that burning a lot of "old" carbon rapidly leads to rapid warming.

++++++++

Please watch the whole series of videos, that include the two I posted above. They are the best synopsis of the science and the myths of anthropogenic global climate change:

http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer.../0/52KLGqDSAjo

After that, I hope you can watch Richard Heinberg's talk called Peak Everything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRz91eimTg

Of course we can reverse global warming -- we caused it to happen. But we will not have to go back to living in caves. That would be silly. We have learned a lot and that knowledge will continue to be useful. What we need to do is to change from using "old" carbon based fuels, to using renewable energy. Renewable energy will be here as long as the earth continues to exist -- about another BILLION YEARS.

[AR-51]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Burning wood and burning oil are two very different things.

Wood contains carbon that came from the atmosphere in the recent decades or maybe century.

Oil contains carbon that came from millions and millions and millions of years ago.

Burning wood doesn't change the quantity of the carbon in the air over time. Burning oil (and coal and gas) adds to the quantity of carbon in the air.

One gallon of gasoline represents close to 100 TONS of biological material. That is why it is so powerful.

We have learned a lot, and we have benefited from the energy we have consumed -- but we need to keep on learning. What we have learned is that burning a lot of "old" carbon rapidly leads to rapid warming.

++++++++

Please watch the whole series of videos, that include the two I posted above. They are the best synopsis of the science and the myths of anthropogenic global climate change:

http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer.../0/52KLGqDSAjo

After that, I hope you can watch Richard Heinberg's talk called Peak Everything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRz91eimTg

Of course we can reverse global warming -- we caused it to happen. But we will not have to go back to living in caves. That would be silly. We have learned a lot and that knowledge will continue to be useful. What we need to do is to change from using "old" carbon based fuels, to using renewable energy. Renewable energy will be here as long as the earth continues to exist -- about another BILLION YEARS.

Thanks for the videos Nile.

Wood might contain less carbon, but you would need a large amount to match oil or coal (deforestation). Trees also take a long time to grow. Using oil and coal is a better alternative. Not to mention the most important part of having trees, witch is cleaning the environment.

The first 3 videos by Richard Heinber were informative, but when he got to video 4, his bias started showing and it went down hill for me.
You said renewable was the solution, but in his video he said that renewable cannot produce all the energy that we need (paraphrasing).

Richard's videos also razes some interesting questions. If oil and coal has already peeked, then why all the fuss about them? They would be gone soon anyway.
I don't really care much for his doomsday scenarios. He assumes that humans are stupid, and that population will continue to increase. We already know that developed countries reduce their birth rate without government intervention. I think Japan is desperate for new babies. Plus the more costly oil and coal becomes the more competitive renewable would become. Supply and demand is a natural regulator.

Still watching the videos from potholer54, liking it so far.

[Grendal]

One thing you did not mention is that humanity has deforested the planet. Humans need space and trees are one of our most useful tools for building things. Forests also inconvenience us from getting from place to place quickly so we remove them for that reason as well. But forests are the lungs of our world by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. We have a lot less trees on the planet than we did 500 years ago before wide scale industrialization. I have no doubt that has had an impact as well.

AR-51 beat me to my point but I'll leave it.

[PatQ562]

Educate me with the vast scientific knowledge you have amassed. I heard everyone saying it's a fact, but they never give any evidence.

There are actually three separate questions regarding climate change:
1. Is the climate warming?
2. If so, are humans responsible?
3. And what if anything should be done?

Question 1 is easily answered. A host of measurements, and the direct eyewitness observations of snow levels, glaciers, ice packs, and other natural effects by people who have lived in given regions for the last 50 years agree, the average temperatures are higher than they were 50 years ago.

Question 2 is complicated since we are assessing a huge number of activities and effects. Here are some key facts which are readily confirmed by looking up credible authorities:

When early scientists first discovered the laws of thermal equilibrium (warming and cooling via radiation) they ran the numbers on the planet Earth (the sun heats the earth, which warms up until it radiates enough heat into space to balance the input, thus reaching equilibrium). To their surprise, the earth is many degrees warmer than expected. In researching the reasons, they discovered the greenhouse effect. The sun delivers most of its energy as visible light, at wavelengths where the atmosphere is transparent. It therefore passes through, the earth absorbs this energy, warms up, and radiates it as heat (infrared radiation). Unexpectedly, the atmosphere is not as transparent to this radiation, so a portion of the outgoing radiation is absorbed and warms the atmosphere, which of course warms the earth, thus making the earth warmer than it should be. The atmospheric components that absorb infrared radiation turn out to be CO2 and water vapor. (Common glass also has this effect, hence the term "greenhouse effect".) Water vapor is transient and quickly finds an equilibrium that increases with average temperature, so the key variable that drives the overall degree of warming is CO2, which is stable and lingers for long periods. (Methane is also important, but the methane level, as caused by livestock and leakage of natural gas, also tracks human industrialization).

Nature absorbs and emits CO2 though many pathways, which established a prehistoric equilibrium. (The ancient levels of CO2 are ascertained through the study of ice cores, among other things). Simple calculations, originally made in the 19th century, show that the amount of fossil fuel we burn is significant compared to the natural CO2 level, and adds more CO2 that nature can absorb. Deforestation also adds net CO2. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been measured since the 19th century and has increased about 50% since the beginning of the industrial revolution. This is a basic fact. So the question becomes: why WOULDN'T the earth warm by an additional few degrees as a result of this large change in the component responsible for atmospheric warming?

The amazing thing to me, is that so far, the earth hasn't warmed as much as these facts suggest. Short-term weather, and its long-term average, "the climate", is an extremely complex system with many feedback loops. Warming temperatures evaporate more water, which adds more greenhouse effect (a positive reinforcement) but also create more clouds which reflect more solar input (a tempering effect). Many highly expert scientists have been studying these feedbacks, trying to model the likely outcomes, and their consensus is that human activities are warming the planet. I acknowledge that "appeal to authority" is not valid logic, but none of us have the expertise to truly evaluate their findings. I observe however that science is a unified discipline; the same physics and chemistry that underlie the laptop I am typing on, the accuracy of space probes, and the control of nuclear power are used by climate scientists, and it seems highly unlikely that they could be systematically wrong when all these other scientific triumphs clearly exist.

Question 3: What should we do? This is the huge political challenge facing all of us on the planet.

Is climate change the end of the world? No, but we can expect more extreme weather due to greater evaporation and storm generation, the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb CO2, climate zones are changing faster than nature can cope, causing large die-offs, and vast numbers of subsistence farmers are struggling with new growing conditions. All of this can be regarded as a vast form of pollution, an all-too-common byproduct of human activities that don't consider what happens when you throw something "away". "Away" is increasingly in everyone else's face.

Some other scary facts: we are using more than half of the available fresh water, arable land resources, and estimated fishery capacity on this planet. If we keep growing and don't change our ways, we're going to extinguish these resources and suffer the fate of all creatures who outgrow the carrying capacity of their environment - a severe die-back. Do you feel lucky? Would you expect this to happen without recourse to the nuclear weapons still available in mass quantities, whose use really could damage the planet?

A grim scenario for a Thanksgiving Day. While expressing appropriate thanks for the chain of human hands, hearts and brains that bring the bounty of a good life into our homes, may we reflect on how to preserve this bounty for future generations.

Pat Q

[Grendal]

I, for one, am thankful for the intellegent discussion going on here.

Another point that seems very appropriate in such a discussion. With modern access to information it really becomes apparent how easy it is to find a dissenting opinion. Case in point, the Climategate e-mails proving that everything is a hoax. There are many thousands of climatologists in the world and all of them have access to the rest of us and each other via the web. Someone amongst them will have a dissenting opinion. Someone will like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other similar voices enough to side with their opinion just to prove the vast majority wrong. You get a lot of attention that way. At the very least you can take something they say out of context to prove whatever it is you want. The hardest thing to do nowadays is not get information but to be able to filter through all the crap to find the useful and relevent information.

I suppose my point is that most people will believe what they want and find the justification for those beliefs out there.