Are all Climate crisis deniers conspiracy theorists?

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Quantum Quack, Sep 25, 2019.

  1. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Well, it seems to be all down to the kids and a few geriatric cinema performers.
    It should be no problem getting young volunteers for tree-planting projects (our newly elected federal government has one in its platform), and the government - as well as corporations that could use some public good-will - might do well to hire labourers made redundant by automation. There's a ton of urgent remediation and retrofitting to do on ocean-front and northern communities; dam-building on flood-plains, moving vulnerable installations, etc: plenty of work to replace the oil-fields and coal-mines.
    To me, the most important mitigating strategies should be
    1. demand-reduction. It starts with eliminating the unconscionable amount of waste, maximizing the efficiency of resource use, transportation, food production and housing .
    and 2. distribution of energy generation. "The grid" has always been a bad idea: sloppy, dangerous, expensive, wasteful, vulnerable, costly to maintain and unsightly; in the prevailing climate, it's flat-out insane - and that's what they're hooking the wind farms and nukes into.
    But politicians are afraid to tell people they can't have the good old days back again.
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think it makes any sense to say that in 5 years there won't be an economy. In 5 years Iceaura wants it be be like pre-1980 again.
     
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  5. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Keeping an eye on the economic situation in California over the next couple of years may prove enlightnening...as an example...
    And Japan, given their massive annual disaster bill...
     
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2019
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    A lot of it is generational inertia....but as the young people get onboard we might see something ...
     
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2019
  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I was just reading that a social media group (6000+ members) called the doomers (game over) were mainly aged 50, 60, 70s
     
  9. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    New slogan: "Do it to impress your grandkids and piss off your kids."
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That was a reality based argument, in response to your dismissal of an accurate and reality based claim by what it "sounds like" to you.
    You drew a false equivalence based on a Schmelzer-like comparison of the "sound" of things, with no reality check; noting that fact is a reality based observation.
    Nukes are slow to come on line, and very expensive, and generate waste we cannot handle yet at reasonable cost. So with the limited funding and time we have, quicker and more efficient investments should get priority.
    A gold standard won't do that, in the digital age. People will just denominate their debt differently, or some such workaround - like way Saudi Arabia circumvents the Islamic prohibition on interest.
    And it would make one's economy vulnerable to sudden influxes of gold, new techniques or discoveries - the way New World silver killed the Spanish economy. IIRC at least one astronomer thinks they have spotted a solid gold asteroid, for example - and the deep ocean certainly harbors an El Dorado or ten.
    The system the US had between the New Deal and Reaganomics worked better than any other the US has had - and the fact that it paid off WWII and helped rebuild both Europe and Japan points to a possible solution to the growth problem.
     
  11. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Like I said...
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    We have no problem handling the waste. They are expensive and slow to build - which is why we should start now, both with construction of existing designs (AP1000's) and with new designs (SMR's). We are planning for the next 100 years, not the next six months.
    If you are going to prioritize things like tax cuts for the wealthy over climate change mitigation, then we have already failed. Your argument is why every other climate change mitigation strategy has failed.
    This is the "people will still break the law" argument. Yes, they will. But in general, laws work.
     
  13. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Yes.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No one knows how to do it safely and cheaply - that's a problem.
    So are others. That doesn't mean your plans are the better ones.
    No, it isn't. The Saudi workarounds of the interest ban are perfectly legal, for example. So was the discovery and mining of the mountain of silver that killed the Spanish economy.
    Gold is a commodity, not a magic charm. Bad government will destroy a gold standard currency as it will any other.

    There is no substitute for sound governance.
     
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    France does. 58 years, 58 reactors, and today they generate more than 2/3 of their energy with zero carbon nuclear reactors.
    They're not my plans.
    Of course. My statement was that a gold standard works; the proof there is that gold standards have worked. Other things, of course, can be bad - like governments.
     
  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    There is no reason for this, credits are a useful tool. If one owns land, but has no seeds, another one has seeds, but no land, it makes sense for the landowner to borrow seeds, giving back more from the crop than simply returning the borrowed seed. This makes sense for both: The landowner can grow something on his land, and gets a large part of the crop. The owner of the seeds gives them away for some time, and receives more than he has given.
    No. The scheme described above can work forever, without economic growth. The seed owner makes profit, lives from it, the land owner also has enough to live, but the whole economy can be stable. Of course, the economy has to grow crops. So, something has to grow. Else, the humans could not survive. Not because of capitalism, but simply because of nothing to eat.
    The connection is quite a bit different. People have to consume something, at least food, else they do not survive. To produce something to consume, it has to be produced. There is no reason to suspect that all the production capabilities will be transformed into waste. The wealth consists, instead, in part of things which allow to produce something out of the things which are available.
     
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    There is no base at all for such fears, certainly not because of the climate change. The only way to reach such a state would be to start a global nuclear war.
     
  18. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    So, all those school children in the springtime filling all those huge garbage bags along the highway should just be... eating it?
     
  19. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    ??????????????
     
  20. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Your economic model does not in any of its particulars resemble the world as we experience it.
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Explain. Of course, there are some differences - what we experience is some quite strange form of corporatism, not a free market or "capitalism".

    My thesis is that the "Capitalism requires profit ... has to grow to survive" is nonsense. Free markets work fine even if there is no growth.
     
  22. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    The kind of Kindergarten introduction to economics you laid out has no resemblence whatever to a real world.
    Certainly, farmers in an agricultural community might lend one another seed, but they would never dream of charging interest, any more than a homeowner who lends his ladder to neighbours would demand it back with two extra rungs, so that his ladder can keep getting longer and longer until nobody else in the subdivision has any ladders at all. That would be capitalism.
    The capitalist version of the farm story is: one person or company lends seed to all the farmers and gets part of all their crops, year after year, without having to stick one in the ground himself. Moreover, the interest is compounded so that they have to pay back, not just 2-30% extra, but interest keeps getting added on to the original sum so they have to pay interest on the interest on the interest, ad infinitum. In bad years, when the farmers can't grow enough for their own need, he takes his share anyway - and then he takes their land. In this way, he owns more and more and more and more, while they owe more and more and more and own nothing, so that they have to work for him and pay him rent and buy from him.
    By profit is meant: intake greater than outflow, or money left over when all maintenance, energy, material and labour has been paid.
    IOW: more
    More has to come from somewhere outside the system: expansion, growth
    What typically happens to a company that does not make a profit three years in a row?
    What typically happens to capitalist nation when its GDP has 0 growth rate?
    Negative growth rates occurring in two consecutive quarters often mean that the economy is in a recession.
    Has anyone ever seen a free market in the wild?
    Yup: it was a co-op; a communal communist community
    *shudder*
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2020
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed. However, I would amend that to "capitalism, as currently implemented, requires growth to survive." You could create a form of capitalism that works at an average zero growth - but you'd need to get rid of concepts like debt based monetary policy.
     

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