ocean conditions are changing due to Rapid Global Climate Shift

Mark,
It takes international agreements to have any real effect on global CO2 emission, and those agreements have to include USA and China. Even without those agreements it's a moral issue to carry our reasonable share of the burden even if China and USA refuse to carry their part. A hotter climate isn't going to be a great problem for northern Europe, and if the countries that should be more concerned won't cooperate there's not much we can do about it.

Another pragmatic, but realistic, view is that we're going to burn all the cheap oil there is anyway. It's too easy and there won't be an agreement in place before the cheap oil is used up anyway. The key is to not continue with coal and liquid fuel synthetisized from coal.

I know that there are believers in eternal cheap oil but I don't think anyone would stake their own money on the oil price not increasing.

Erik

 

I don't know. Is there really any difference between Mark's avatar of Al Gore and Alec Baldwin? Here's a picture of Alec Baldwin to compare...

Looks like the same guy to me!

 

Never trust a man in a bowtie.

 

I about bust a nut when I see those two side-by-side... and that's a fact, Hoyt!


Erik, I guess we just have different ways of looking at it. I feel there IS NO WAY of getting China to stop. Iran, same, Africa, same, India, maybe the government but try pulling all of those factions throughout their country together on this. I really feel that it would require police action, in other words, more war, to get these places to stop. We can handle all of that - but China is going to leave a mark! I just don't think we're prepared to go that far. So, That means that if we want to feel good and do our part, we will tax industry and build green infrastructure, both of which cost money and reduce options (You won't have the option of driving a big, fuel-hungry Mercedes, for example. Another way of saying "options" is "freedoms"), but that's not the biggest thing!
I'm not a scientist, Erik, none of us are that I know, and scientists are human and fallable and forgot scientific method, in large part anyway so I cannot definitively say "Man had no part in changing the climate". I believe that man had no part, by definition I have seen no convincing argument that man had a part, and I just feel the recent hysteria...sorry, shall I say "exuberance" is as destructive as any possible consequenses of GW.
Interesting point you have about Northern Europe not being hurt by a little warming... I live part of the year in Alaska (This year, ALL year, dang-it!) and from this perspective (my climate on the coast is similar to Stockholm... perhaps a bit warmer but with less precipitation), warm sounds good! But, I also have a home in Mexico City and a vacation house in Cuernavaca and if something went wrong with the climate there it could be devastating. Cuernavaca already has no water, Mexico city has quite a few people and if there were a water problem, I hate to think of the consequenses. Both places could stand to be a bit warmer, however, IMO.
I know, my opinion doesn't matter - we should try to maintain moderacy in the climate if for no other reason than that it belongs to future generations, as well, and it is wrong to take chances with their portion of the Earth. Regardless of how I can be painted by my verbal opponents as some kind of non-caring, knuckle-dragging relic from a strip mall - or strip mine, I am actually quite aware and versed in environmental issues. Just not buying into this environmental issue. Perhaps my background plays a role in this, in fact I'm sure it does so indulge me here a bit...
I grew up in a military family with a father that got shot up and captured by the Chinese in Korea. By the time he got back, he appreciated every moment of freedom and instilled in his children an appreciation for preparedness and conservatism (fiscal conservatism), in other words, being a man that was born in a sod lean-to on an Indian reservation (I still have his horse-hair blanket from when he was a child), and using empty Folger's cans and such for cookware, he taught us that it was just as easy to run on the top half of the tank as it was the bottom. He never spent a dime that he had not already earned. Moving on, I earn in a year almost what he earned in a lifetime - yet he lived better. What happened to the value of that money? I studied finance in school, so I have an idea but more than that, I jsut hate to see people doing to the world what was so well driven into me to not do - Spending money they havn't yet earned. It's a big deal to me and I'm sure I'll never get over it. Maybe I'm the wrong one to be debating global warming because I simply cannot see beyond taking care of the business at hand, first. Get us debt free. Show me a government that doesn't spend money that is not their's...and I'll back it. I'll say "tax CO2 or bread crumbs or scotch tape - I don't care!" Right now, though, anything anyone does to hurt this economy is an act of treason.
"För Sverige i tiden" - "With the Times", you guys try and you do a good job, I think but it's harder to stay with the times as things spiral a bit out of control. It's not all roses there either, I've read. Immigration, a recycling problem ( http://mises.org/daily/2855 ), you had a crazy gunman the other day... I understand you don't want to just drop something as potentially important as "man changing the environment" but you might consider that it will be more productive to slow down a bit and fix some of the other problems first.

 

if ya cant stop three or four people from jumping off a bridge should you jump with them

We live on a finite world, if some of us are poisoning the atmosphere should the rest simply because for some short period of time its profitable to do so. Specially when there is no practical way to remove the poison.

Suggesting that we might as well simply because someone else insists on doing something stupid while ignoring the consequences is ridiculous

cheers

 

I just addressed that with Troy, I think, as well. That's what I try to do - stop you people from jumping off a bridge! It's a different perspective, to be sure, i.e., you are trying to force me to jump from a perceived bridge of AGW, while I'm trying to convince you not to force me to jump with you from that bridge. Bos, The Western world could hardly survive a hiccup right now. We, the US and Europe, are teetering on a precipice so delicately that a moth could send us down - And you want to slap a tax on productivity? I deplore you to just let it happen, you and Erik, and the rest - give it some time and maybe some smart folks will figure out fusion or at the very least, we can get our finances in order before we flip the lights off.
There is nothing at this point in time that can replace petroleum products. We can have a slow death by banning offshore drilling and taxing diesel more and such, we can have a fast death by cap and trade and continuing to spend like meth addicts on welfare day, or we can have a chance at survival as a civilization by admitting that we have a spending problem, drastically cutting services and encouraging industry in every manner we can. Thank God that Obama hasn't been successful in almost any aspect. If he was still adored and we had a spend happy congress, we'd be further committed to failure. Better some political careers than an entire civilization, I say!
Get this congress to commit to a balanced budget and I'll join your bandwagon and even say I believe in AGW.

 

Algae based bio diesel is going to do exactly that. Replace petroleum based fuels, there is huge money being spent on the 15 or so start ups coming on line in the next year or two. CSU is giving away the technology. Stuff grows on sewage and CO2. Only thing we need to make it work is for the oil and gas giants to get out of the way or pay the real cost of burning fossil fuels. Bio-diesel is projected to cost something like $2 a gallon, whats that going to do to the economy eh. and we could have been paying that $2 years ago had the oil and gas industry not deliberately delayed the production.

Whats really obscene is we pay the oil and gas industry subsidies to pump oil. Abdul is making bank off the corporate greed your supporting. Let the locals work there own community based bio diesel fields and process the stuff right here at home. The oil and gas giants don't want local level production facilities because it negates the centralized corporate profit system, spreads out the money and eliminates the graft from transportation. Negates there investment in pipelines.

There's about a zillion reasons those clowns have been delaying the change to better greener fuels and its all profit driven. Its got exactly nothing to do with whats better for the western world or any world for that mater. Its there bottom line. Means if we want a better world we are not only going to have to create it ourselves but fight off the massive graft system of gubment and corporate greed as well.

Alternative fuels are the answer not the problem

 

I don't buy it. My guess is that the big oil companies are working feverishly to make bio happen and have a jump on everyone else. It's not that simple of a system that they can somehow stop others from doing it forever while they get rich on petroleum. If bio were that good with yesterday's tech, we would have it. Without government interference, there can be no monopoly. You make it happen, then I'll join you. Or convince me that it's going to work and I'll join you but so far, a lot of energy has been spent on it to no avail. maybe as the price of oil goes up, bio will look break-even and everybody will jump on it. I'd love to put the sheiks back on camels...but not enough to hurt us in the process. They'll be out of oil soon enough and the kook in Venezela jst announce far more reserves than previously estimated so that means they're running out too... He said 200 years of oil. I won't live long enough to see it but I think that means fifty in reality.

 

They have pulled the same stunts with the electric car that they came out with twenty of more years ago. Pulled it off the market not because it didn't work but because they didn't find all that peripheral profit in it. Its the same old song and dance with them. Now that some independents are getting into the act they are forced to jump in but they will do what they can to delay algae based bio diesel as long as they can. Its just standard operating procedure for them.

wasn't until CSU and a few others offered the new technology to start ups that the oil and gas shysters have started to come up with "plans" of there own. Reminds me of this whole hydrogen car thing smoke screen that they used as a PR tool when they yanked the electric car off the market. Excuses excuses excuses is all we'd still be getting out of them had not a few independent companies made viable plans and received huge amounts of money to make it happen. 500 million from Gates alone in one case.

Its already being done and its simply a mater of scaling up. Which is being done now. Only reason the energy companies are getting involved at all is they want the monopoly to remain in there hands. Thing is though that the cats out of the bag and the resource is transigent. Makes it a bit hard to monopolize.



This outfit in Seattle is one of the many working out the kinks in scaling now. As you can see its very simple and could be done just about anywhere.

 

What happened to the car that ran on water? Saw it in Earthyear - South African eco-magazine...... and then no mention anywhere!!??!!
That'd be good tech on a boat - run it on water!! May have to go thru a filter/purifier tho?
CSIR - came up with a solar solution - PAINT. Paint your roof and attach wires....big area like that could produce decent power? And doesn't take up any extra area. Sold the concept and it vanished.......
I see a trend forming here..... must be a conspiracy!!!
Speaking of which - you yanks have that UFO in area 52 - why aren't you using it's power source?

So - lots of debate and and and.... what solutions Boston?
If not on a large scale - then at a personal level that has a lower impact on the "western" lifestyle?
(why the need for such huge cars anyhow? Low ego/***** thing?) )

 

So the left wants to take our land away so they can build this? Drill the national parks instead!

 

it's not your land to do anything you want with

 

I won't even address the inanity of DD's "Not your land" but Bos, a monopoly cannot exist in a free market. Just make it happen - the oil companies may get on it too, but there iare a lot of people who feel like you do, and rather than appreciate the lifestyle made possible by oil, attack the companies that brought it to us because we wanted it so bad that it was profitable. Also, Please don't buy into the "Who killed the electric car" nonsense. It discredits the solid work you do.

 

a totally free market will always produce monopolies

it's regulation that keeps markets open

 

Where do you come up with this? Havn't you got some dolls to play with or something? You seriously have no valid contribution.