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I imagine this point has already been made but: didn't the US Gov help fund all manner of infrastructure that was mainly put in the hands of private companies? From energy to transportation to communications, ever since we built railroads, private groups have sought aid from the government because it has powers they do not and they, in turn, promise that they'll use their new trains/planes/mining operations/telephone lines for public benefit. Isn't that pretty much the long and short of it? And if that is the case, how can there still be so many people who don't want use looking to prospective energy models which pollute less and cause less harm? My only assumptions can be a) I'm totally wrong in my guess and have "drunk that koolaid" b) they don't know what they're talking about or c) they have some kind of investment in the status quo and don't want to be inconvenienced.
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May 18, 2016 07:13
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phasmid posted:I imagine this point has already been made but: didn't the US Gov help fund all manner of infrastructure that was mainly put in the hands of private companies? From energy to transportation to communications, ever since we built railroads, private groups have sought aid from the government because it has powers they do not and they, in turn, promise that they'll use their new trains/planes/mining operations/telephone lines for public benefit. Isn't that pretty much the long and short of it? It's all three, and also because kush smoking hippies (who are obviously homosexual, socially liberal , and possibly in favour of
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May 18, 2016 09:38
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Does anyone know any good speeches by scientists on Youtube about climate change?
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May 18, 2016 09:44
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blowfish posted:It's all three, and also because kush smoking hippies (who are obviously homosexual, socially liberal , and possibly in favour of I can brush the stigma off one on one, like any heated political debate. But by christ I would hate to go to a town hall in my home state and try to talk over the crowd, even if the mic was on maximum pickup. Most likely I'd one too many rocks to the skull and spend the rest of my days sipping a box of juice and wondering who the gently caress put all these newfangled cartoons on my coloring books. Still, I remember in his first or second year (I think) Obama caught a bunch of flak for his tenuous connection with Solyndra. It was just the most absurd thing. I mean, yeah, if they're calling insider trading, that's a big deal. But it seemed a whole lot more like they were riding his rear end about being some pro-solar anti-oil hippie man. Which Obama responded to in his own style, by folding. It would make a great example if the gov would just say "gently caress you, Mr. Shale and Mr. Tarsands. We're going to invest more heavily in renewables instead of turning to worse and worse alternatives." Maybe that's pie-in-the-sky but  I'm not concerned with the politics of the moment, since they're just hogshit anyway, however it's going to be amusing when the tide finally - and quite literally - does turn and we'll be seeing commercials like "Ford/Chevy/Toyota proudly brings you the cleanest car that runs better than those old clunkers that cavemen drove!" and starts a happy lil feel-good wagon for everybody who wants to save the planet and give money hand over fist to people who til yesterday had been wanted by the druid police on multiple rape charges.
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May 18, 2016 10:44
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phasmid posted:I imagine this point has already been made but: didn't the US Gov help fund all manner of infrastructure that was mainly put in the hands of private companies? From energy to transportation to communications, ever since we built railroads, private groups have sought aid from the government because it has powers they do not and they, in turn, promise that they'll use their new trains/planes/mining operations/telephone lines for public benefit. Isn't that pretty much the long and short of it? The U.S. government has also been funding the research that's been making advancing the modern world possible. It also turns out that the increasing hatred of public funding for science from the right has been making American progress stagnate. We're actually behind the rest of the developed world in a lot of ways and are progressing rapidly toward looking more like a third world nation. Pretty much every major innovation or leap forward by the private sector has been because the government dangled a huge bag of money in front of them and said "hey if you do X this is yours." Granted that technique is very effective; "hello Company Inc, we have a public project we want done and you can accomplish it. We'll give you a huge bag of money that you can just keep if you pull it off." The other side is, of course, that a ton of private companies just kept the money and did gently caress all because there was no punishment for doing so. In other cases the government had to pass laws to force companies to do things. Telecom was the worst for that; the only reason rural areas ever got phones was because the government showed up and said "you'll connect everybody or else." ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 13:33 on May 18, 2016 |
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May 18, 2016 13:31
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The U.S. government has also been funding the research that's been making advancing the modern world possible. It also turns out that the increasing hatred of public funding for science from the right has been making American progress stagnate. We're actually behind the rest of the developed world in a lot of ways and are progressing rapidly toward looking more like a third world nation. What is your involvement / experience with research?
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May 18, 2016 13:56
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I'll inject what might be a little optimism into this thread. The climate change finance world has been exploding in a positive direction recently. some random developments that have emerged recently:
Anyhow, there's a lot more than just this going on, but the over-all trend is that there are some very large movements in global finance toward responding to climate change impacts. Any company that's a heavy polluter is going to see their stock price going the way of coal since their value is going to be undercut via regulation, litigation, or a forced accounting of the cost of the negative externalities they've been keeping off their books. The global governance trends are pretty clear on this. At the same time that dirty, volatile companies are losing value, clean companies are promising investors greater and more stable returns. There's also a wide variety of research emerging showing that investment portfolios that are constructed using social/environmental impact criteria are more profitable and have less fluctuations in value than those which are constructed using only traditional financial criteria. Al gore's gone all in on this and it's an area that the Clintons and others have been active in since the 90's. Trillions of dollars of retiree investments are moving to incorporate this research into their strategies and hundreds of investment firms are springing up to "advise" on how to best do it. Question the motives all you want, but money is going to move to different places than it used to as a result.
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May 18, 2016 21:11
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That's good news. It will make me happy to see polluting companies stock prices suffer.
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May 18, 2016 23:21
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It's also an example of regulation fixing a free-market problem or correcting for things the free market doesn't take into account. The only way capitalism as a system can be forced to deal with climate change is through private regulation born from public perception and pressure, and actual national and international legislation. And it does need to be forced. While this is moving forward, I still don't have faith that capitalism can be made to fully accept the consequences of climate change and adjust accordingly. The pushback from rich investors and the corporate upper-class will stall or delay significant regulation almost no matter the consequences.
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May 19, 2016 08:38
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^moreover, this is regulation fixing what actually hasn't been a free market for a long time.
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May 19, 2016 15:18
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Would the world financial markets even be able to handle the writing-off of all those oil, gas and coal revenues that will suddenly vanish from the books? This is assuming the mandated total changeover to renewables, let's say in a fantasy world where humanity actually wakes up. A pretty significant chunk of all money in circulation is borrowed against unburned fossil fuels that, if utilized, will most certainly doom our civilization. That's one hell of a catch-22.
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May 19, 2016 16:32
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VectorSigma posted:Would the world financial markets even be able to handle the writing-off of all those oil, gas and coal revenues that will suddenly vanish from the books? This is assuming the mandated total changeover to renewables, let's say in a fantasy world where humanity actually wakes up. A pretty significant chunk of all money in circulation is borrowed against unburned fossil fuels that, if utilized, will most certainly doom our civilization. That's one hell of a catch-22. The entire world economy is not financially dependent on oil. Some of it is but all of it? No. The other side of it is that nobody that knows anything about investment throws everything they have on one huge bet. Well, nobody competent anyway...even so portfolios are diversified and I figure financially smart people are looking at the writing on the wall and working on shifting away from oil for a ton of reasons. So really, yes, if they want to move away from oil they will. Granted some are going to stick to oil forever anyway. Those people will lose.
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May 19, 2016 17:58
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VectorSigma posted:Would the world financial markets even be able to handle the writing-off of all those oil, gas and coal revenues that will suddenly vanish from the books? This is assuming the mandated total changeover to renewables, let's say in a fantasy world where humanity actually wakes up. A pretty significant chunk of all money in circulation is borrowed against unburned fossil fuels that, if utilized, will most certainly doom our civilization. That's one hell of a catch-22. If we woke up tomorrow and someone had, overnight, invented some kind of solar/battery system that was scalable and could be cost-effectively implemented worldwide to replace the entire power grid in a year? No. In the reality where a changeover will produce plenty of new investment opportunities and take 30 years if we're being super optimistic? There will be some shakeups, but nothing too serious.
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May 19, 2016 18:08
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Unfortunately, if the change over takes 30 years, it will kill our civilization just as nicely as it not happening at all.
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May 20, 2016 01:30
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Rime posted:Unfortunately, if the change over takes 30 years, it will kill our civilization just as nicely as it not happening at all. That's not really right on a number of levels. First, we don't actually need to stop all petrochemical use, we just need to stop using it for energy. It is ok for the climate to keep using oil for plastics. Second, a 30 year timeframe to 0 petroleum fuels would be absolutely huge. That's a large chunk of total emissions. That plus actions like the Clean Power Plan would be most of what the developed world needs to do (plus fund things). Also this "climate change will destroy civilization no matter what" is both not backed by fact nor really productive dialog. Unless you determine civilization is destroy if they change the big mac recipe.
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May 20, 2016 01:57
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Trabisnikof posted:Also this "climate change will destroy civilization no matter what" is both not backed by fact nor really productive dialog. Unless you determine civilization is destroy if they change the big mac recipe. There's fossil fuels in the big mac? On the "destroy civilization" thing, I'd say major problems are coming our way no matter what. Lots of crises in the world are arguably already exacerbated by climate change (Syria, Ethiopia, Venezuela), and it's only going to get worse, and since population keeps growing too, lots more people are going to be affected. I think if we accepted major reductions in terms of lifestyle (construct products that are durable and can be repaired, don't own a personal car if you live in a city, don't use excessive indoor heating / cooling, don't eat meat every day, don't have more than two children) we could bring emissions down to sustainable levels and maybe even figure out a renewable-based energy system, but people won't do that. So its "technological solutions" or nothing, and good luck with that.
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May 20, 2016 06:10
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Trabisnikof posted:That's not really right on a number of levels. First, we don't actually need to stop all petrochemical use, we just need to stop using it for energy. It is ok for the climate to keep using oil for plastics. Second, a 30 year timeframe to 0 petroleum fuels would be absolutely huge. That's a large chunk of total emissions. That plus actions like the Clean Power Plan would be most of what the developed world needs to do (plus fund things). It's really cool that you are a cornucopian idealist and all, but it's as tiresome and annoying a schtick as Arkane. Please tell Syrians or Venezuelans about how civilization hasn't collapsed for them due to the knock on effects of climate change (drought, and drought), and then tell us how that won't similarly impact the west in under 30 years. The west, which relies on a vast network of imported goods from impoverished and borderline unstable nations in order to keep its entire economy functioning. The west, which faces increasing food insecurity of its own in major producing areas due to sustained drought. The west: which has demonstrated inherent systemic inflexibility in the face of minor domestic or international concerns such as poverty reduction or medical insurance, let alone a mind bogglingly complex threat which threatens to destabilize our entire biosphere in a generation and which will almost certainly require the death of consumerism (and thus our economy) to even begin to mitigate. Bonus points: explain how the infrastructure for extraction and rendering of hydrocarbons into industrial purposes such as plastics or lubricants can be carbon neutral. You've never seen a cracking plant, have you. Sure, yeah, we've got 30 years: to make peace with the inevitable. Rime fucked around with this message at 07:23 on May 20, 2016 |
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May 20, 2016 07:20
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May 20, 2016 07:30
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Rime posted:It's really cool that you are a cornucopian idealist and all, but it's as tiresome and annoying a schtick as Arkane. Please tell Syrians or Venezuelans about how civilization hasn't collapsed for them due to the knock on effects of climate change (drought, and drought), and then tell us how that won't similarly impact the west in under 30 years. I'm pretty sure climate change wasn't the root cause of either crisis. The Syrian conflict is far more complicated than some people no longer had access to food and water and I'm pretty sure you have zero evidence the issues Venezuela faces are primely caused by drought. About 5% of Venezuela's economic output was agriculture. Even if the entirety of all food production stopped, it wouldn't explain the high rates of inflation that exceeded 50% last year. A halving of the oil price, unrelated to climate change, however would. quote:Bonus points: explain how the infrastructure for extraction and rendering of hydrocarbons into industrial purposes such as plastics or lubricants can be carbon neutral. You've never seen a cracking plant, have you. From the EPA CO2 emission stats, only 15% of CO2 emissions are related to ALL industry. Certainly some CO2 emissions will be unavoidable, but hopefully those emissions can be offset with some efforts at CO2 sequestering and large reductions can be made in other areas.
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May 20, 2016 08:03
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Rime posted:It's really cool that you are a cornucopian idealist and all, but it's as tiresome and annoying a schtick as Arkane. Please tell Syrians or Venezuelans about how civilization hasn't collapsed for them due to the knock on effects of climate change (drought, and drought), and then tell us how that won't similarly impact the west in under 30 years. Climate change is making things far worse, but neither Syria nor Venezuela will see a collapse of civilization due to Climate Change. Unless by your logic, "civilization is destroyed" when any part of a civilization is destroyed. Civilization is usually meant to be vaster than a single nation. I.e. WW2 didn't destroy civilization, even if Dresden looked as bad as Aleppo. quote:The west, which relies on a vast network of imported goods from impoverished and borderline unstable nations in order to keep its entire economy functioning. The west, which faces increasing food insecurity of its own in major producing areas due to sustained drought. Where do you get this idea we have to stop being consumerist capitalists to put a price on carbon? We can sell people meaningless trinkets of wealth/status, just make sure they're carbon neutral in effect. In fact, the only way we're going to deal with climate change is within our capitalist system. We don't have time to wait for global socialism. So yeah, I think the countries currently paying farmers to make extra food they don't need (the west), with powerful oligarchs unwilling to watch their investments burn (the west) and an actual path towards adaptation and mitigation without destroying the economy (the west) will survive. Even the Saudi's see the end of oil coming. quote:Bonus points: explain how the infrastructure for extraction and rendering of hydrocarbons into industrial purposes such as plastics or lubricants can be carbon neutral. You've never seen a cracking plant, have you. Actually, yes I am familiar with fluid catalytic cracking and other downstream processes although I've never worked in the industry myself. We don't need every single petrochemical process to be carbon neutral (but people are trying) because carbon in plastic is carbon that isn't in the atmosphere, etc. We need to focus on reducing carbon emissions, not get caught up with meaningless goals like "no oil." The the total carbon equivalent emissions from industry are much smaller than electricity, transportation and land use. We need to reduce carbon intensive fuel use, something that actually the world economy can handle pretty well. Sure it'll suck be to Alaska or Saudi Arabia, but at the same time Mexico is going to make more money on lithium, and so it goes. If anything, global climate change is going to increase international economic interconnections not reduce them. quote:Sure, yeah, we've got 30 years: to make peace with the inevitable. We have no time to waste and honestly your attitude is just as harmful as Arkane's when you both argue action is pointless. edit: I will accept that if "the west" has to start accepting responsibility for their actions, that can count as the cultural end of the civilization. Since not having to care about the results of our actions is a central value as a civilization. 
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May 20, 2016 08:23
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freezepops posted:I'm pretty sure climate change wasn't the root cause of either crisis. The Syrian conflict is far more complicated than some people no longer had access to food and water and I'm pretty sure you have zero evidence the issues Venezuela faces are primely caused by drought. About 5% of Venezuela's economic output was agriculture. Venezuela has collapsed because a severe and unprecedented drought reduced their hydroelectric production to zero, which nuked an already struggling economy. Syria has been suffering an increasingly harsh drought since the 1990s, which caused unprecedented migration by impoverished rural populations, who ultimately turned into radicalized rebels out of desperation in the face of an incompassionate government. Tl;dr: You're wrong.
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May 20, 2016 14:57
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Eh, doomsdayers have been right 0/1,000,000,000 times about the end of humanity. I mean, if you are gonna go this way Rime, you should totally try to build a cult and bang some barely legal women(men?) before the end times as a doomsdayer.
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May 20, 2016 15:22
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Claverjoe posted:Eh, doomsdayers have been right 0/1,000,000,000 times about the end of humanity. Most doomsayers are basing their claims off theology. Climate Change is based off an increasingly validated evidence backed by studies and further evidence.
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May 20, 2016 16:01
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Yeah but in the past people thought 'oh god the comet is back, we're all gonna die.' Now we have scientists who can predict with exact accuracy when comets will come around. And when say things like 'it's still technically possible to stave off complete collapse,' that is not an optimistic statement.
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May 20, 2016 16:04
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Yeah, there will probably be some misbegotten geoengineering project(s) that will stave off complete collapse with increasing understanding of how climate works. It'll suck even worse for humanity in general than the current lovely setup, but I still don't see it as the end of civilization. We are omnivorous scavengers, we are pretty drat tough when you get down to it. EDIT: Man, where did all the yoda rape avatars come from?
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May 20, 2016 19:10
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CommieGIR posted:Most doomsayers are basing their claims off theology. Climate change is based off evidence. Deranged prognostications about the collapse of the global economy are not. Climates and economies and geopolitics are chaotic systems that are inherently unpredictable, and anyone who actually believes they can make specific predictions like Rime's that civilization will collapse in 30 years is full of poo poo. The terrifying truth is that we don't know what's going to happen. Sweeping prophecies of doom are as fanciful as the most optimistic futures offered by deniers. edit: Your effort is appreciated but remember Rime is the guy who literally argued the Green Revolution was one of the world's greatest tragedy because it meant millions of people lived and raised families instead of starving to death as they ought have. The death of consumerism he envisions is the literal death of the consumers. Squalid fucked around with this message at 19:41 on May 20, 2016 |
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May 20, 2016 19:20
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You don't need to predict the outcome of chaos to know that it's bad news.
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May 20, 2016 19:25
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Rime posted:Venezuela has collapsed because a severe and unprecedented drought reduced their hydroelectric production to zero, which nuked an already struggling economy. Venezuela has collapsed because it's ruled by a kleptocracy that pretends it's a functioning government. It has jack poo poo to do with the climate.
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May 20, 2016 19:41
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-Troika- posted:Venezuela has collapsed because it's ruled by a kleptocracy that pretends it's a functioning government. It has jack poo poo to do with the climate. I hate to go all South Park here, but I do think the truth is in the middle. Climate change makes it more challenging for societies and sometimes those challenges are part of what topples ineffective societies. Climate change has worsened middle eastern food shortages and unemployment but didn't start the problem. It made stealing/ruling more challenging for the kleptocracy in Venezuela but it isn't why they have no foreign cash.
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May 20, 2016 19:51
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-Troika- posted:Venezuela has collapsed because it's ruled by a kleptocracy that pretends it's a functioning government. It has jack poo poo to do with the climate. TIL government styles determine rainfall over reservoir catchment basins. 
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May 20, 2016 19:53
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Rime posted:TIL government styles determine rainfall over reservoir catchment basins. No, but governments significantly impact foreign cash reserves. Cash is the thing used to buy new infrastructure when your current infrastructure stops working. The country is running out of beer and cola because of currency issues not hydropower ones. But keep pretending that hydropower issues is the only thing causing destabilization in Venezuela, it's pretty good at discrediting yourself. Edit: there is a good argument that Venezuela is collapsing because it was based entirely on high oil prices and the massive decline in oil prices could be argued to have some roots in Saudi Arabia et al realizing the end is nigh for oil. So in that way, the failure of the petrostate could be blamed on climate change, but that's a very different argument. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 20:02 on May 20, 2016 |
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May 20, 2016 20:00
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Mozi posted:You don't need to predict the outcome of chaos to know that it's bad news. That's really the big difference between your bog standard doomsday prophet and climate science. The doomsday prophet will typically pick a specific day. Climate science is saying "yeah uh we're going to have some problems. Not sure when, not sure how big, but bad poo poo is coming." They aren't focusing on what will happen but rather on what can't happen. At this point what they're saying is "we can't keep doing things the way we're doing them now in the long term." The thing that can't happen is global temperatures staying where they were and that is exactly the problem. They aren't entirely sure how bad things will get beyond "poo poo's gonna get worse." How worse? Nobody can say for certain; too much is in the air right now.
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May 20, 2016 23:09
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That's really the big difference between your bog standard doomsday prophet and climate science. The doomsday prophet will typically pick a specific day. Climate science is saying "yeah uh we're going to have some problems. Not sure when, not sure how big, but bad poo poo is coming."
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May 21, 2016 05:54
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Claverjoe posted:Man, where did all the yoda rape avatars come from? This is the real question at hand.
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May 21, 2016 06:00
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Grouchio posted:You know, if I had read something like this, actually listened to this and somehow managed to turn off the perseverate-thought-loop in my head back in 2012, I might not have had to suffer said paranoia loop/continuous panic attack for 30 days straight (or have to recover from such self-inflicted trauma for many months). Climate change should be a thing you worry about, but if you are literally scared shitless and become nonfunctional over it, you should get professional help. Not in the "lol u dumb" shitposting sense, but in the actual medical sense.
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May 21, 2016 10:06
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blowfish posted:Climate change should be a thing you worry about, but if you are literally scared shitless and become nonfunctional over it, you should get professional help. Not in the "lol u dumb" shitposting sense, but in the actual medical sense.
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May 22, 2016 06:38
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Grouchio posted:No no no, not that. The doomsayers coming of the Mayan apocalypse horseshit cycled through my mind 24/7 for 4 weeks straight because 1) It's what my brain does and 2) I didn't know if such a nonsensical, improbable apocalypse could occur on 12/21 because for whatever reason I'd be forced to think it might happen anyways. And then when that passed I still couldn't stop thinking that the moment I relaxed (for sleep or during normal times) I would die - for about 5 months after that. It's still probably worth seeking some therapy over so you don't do that again if you haven't already. Therapy isn't just for axe crazy people, you know.
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May 22, 2016 09:37
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I'm gong out on a limb and say that there is some very good news to be had in this post from the Energy Generation thread. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3505076&pagenumber=101&perpage=40#post460164264 quote:Renewables Are Leaving Natural Gas In The Dust This Year  The next great oil barons are actually going to be people who invested early in solar and wind c/d? Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 17:23 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 17:20
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Isn't saying 'new' natural gas capacity extremely dishonest? I'm assuming that qualifier lets them ignore all of the coal->natural gas conversions currently taking place.
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May 22, 2016 17:33
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That's at least a step in the right direction, though? As far as I understand, coal is so incredibly dirty to burn and destructive to mine that almost anything else is better.
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May 22, 2016 18:39
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