https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ok-icelan...XwVVbWVxAl



The date of the monument’s planned installation ― August 2019 ― is printed at the end, along with the phrase “415ppm CO2,” a reference to the record-breaking amount of carbon dioxide recorded in the atmosphere in May this year.

Cymene Howe, an associate professor of anthropology at Rice, said in a statement that the monument to OK “will be the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world.”

Howe, who co-produced the 2018 documentary “Not OK” about the lost glacier, said she hoped that “marking OK’s passing” will help “draw attention to what is being lost as Earth’s glaciers expire.”

Plaque says we know what needs to be done.

What needs to be done?

(07-21-2019 05:57 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Plaque says we know what needs to be done.
What needs to be done?

Yes, what?

Wait for the climate to change again as it’s done for 1000s of years

(07-21-2019 08:11 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Wait for the climate to change again as it’s done for 1000s of years

Or maybe listen to the climate scientists and treat this like the crisis that they are describing?

(07-21-2019 09:19 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 08:11 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Wait for the climate to change again as it’s done for 1000s of years

Or maybe listen to the climate scientists and treat this like the crisis that they are describing?

But that's the problem. Past, "Run in circles, scream and shout," nobody has really come up with a plan that will have a meaningful impact on the situation.

This is what I find troubling. All of those people who are telling us how terrible it is going to be aren't doing much to come up with a solution.

(07-21-2019 09:34 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 09:19 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 08:11 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Wait for the climate to change again as it’s done for 1000s of years

Or maybe listen to the climate scientists and treat this like the crisis that they are describing?

But that's the problem. Past, "Run in circles, scream and shout," nobody has really come up with a plan that will have a meaningful impact on the situation.

This is what I find troubling. All of those people who are telling us how terrible it is going to be aren't doing much to come up with a solution.

I agree that it would be much better if there was a plan that all the countries on earth could buy into.

(07-21-2019 09:34 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 09:19 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 08:11 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Wait for the climate to change again as it’s done for 1000s of years

Or maybe listen to the climate scientists and treat this like the crisis that they are describing?

But that's the problem. Past, "Run in circles, scream and shout," nobody has really come up with a plan that will have a meaningful impact on the situation.

This is what I find troubling. All of those people who are telling us how terrible it is going to be aren't doing much to come up with a solution.

Is it that people aren’t offering solutions, or you disagree with them?

(07-21-2019 09:39 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 09:34 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 09:19 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 08:11 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Wait for the climate to change again as it’s done for 1000s of years

Or maybe listen to the climate scientists and treat this like the crisis that they are describing?

But that's the problem. Past, "Run in circles, scream and shout," nobody has really come up with a plan that will have a meaningful impact on the situation.

This is what I find troubling. All of those people who are telling us how terrible it is going to be aren't doing much to come up with a solution.

I agree that it would be much better if there was a plan that all the countries on earth could buy into.

I know. What if, hear me out, a bunch of countries got together in a major city and outlined a framework that each would follow, to help reduce future climate change? Maybe you could even name it after that city.

(07-21-2019 10:12 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I know. What if, hear me out, a bunch of countries got together in a major city and outlined a framework that each would follow, to help reduce future climate change? Maybe you could even name it after that city.

Except that isn't what happened. Not at Paris. Not at Kyoto before that.

At neither one did they produce a framework that either 1) they followed or 2) would reduce climate change if they had followed.

A bunch of bureaucrats on expense accounts got together in a nice city to visit and wrote a bunch of meaningless BS that they could all sign and pat themselves on the back and have great photo ops.

(07-21-2019 10:14 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 10:12 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I know. What if, hear me out, a bunch of countries got together in a major city and outlined a framework that each would follow, to help reduce future climate change? Maybe you could even name it after that city.

Except that isn't what happened. Not at Paris. Not at Kyoto before that.

At neither one did they produce a framework that either 1) they followed or 2) would reduce climate change if they had followed.

A bunch of bureaucrats on expense accounts got together in a nice city to visit and wrote a bunch of meaningless BS that they could all sign and pat themselves on the back and have great photo ops.

Right... it is really difficult when you don't have buy-in from every country that is a significant polluter.

That being said... the approach CANNOT be "Well... it doesn't seem easy to come up with a good solution. Guess we'll ignore the problem". The issue is so critical that every possible approach needs to be considered.

(07-21-2019 10:23 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 10:14 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 10:12 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I know. What if, hear me out, a bunch of countries got together in a major city and outlined a framework that each would follow, to help reduce future climate change? Maybe you could even name it after that city.

Except that isn't what happened. Not at Paris. Not at Kyoto before that.
At neither one did they produce a framework that either 1) they followed or 2) would reduce climate change if they had followed.
A bunch of bureaucrats on expense accounts got together in a nice city to visit and wrote a bunch of meaningless BS that they could all sign and pat themselves on the back and have great photo ops.

Right... it is really difficult when you don't have buy-in from every country that is a significant polluter.
That being said... the approach CANNOT be "Well... it doesn't seem easy to come up with a good solution. Guess we'll ignore the problem". The issue is so critical that every possible approach needs to be considered.

No, but it CANNOT be, "We'll put together a bunch of BS that none of us plans to follow, but at least it will make us feel good." At least, not if it's a real problem.

And "every possible approach needs to be considered"? Even approaches that are counterproductive or nonsensical? See, that's the thing that concerns me. We keep being told how terrible fit will be, but no viable solutions. It's almost as if the object is to stir up so much hysteria that people will do stupid things.

(07-21-2019 05:57 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Plaque says we know what needs to be done.

What needs to be done?

No answer yet.

It appears even though she says we know what needs to be done, nobody knows what we need to to do.

Every solution I have heard -Solar power, kill the cows, planting trees, whatever - is aimed at slowing the rate of heating, not reversing it.

And nobody can say what the target is, if we could reverse it.

But she says we know what needs to be done. What?

The good news is that AOC has a plan to correct it all in 10 years. At little or no cost.

If we really do know what needs to be done, tell us.

If we don't, stop telling us we do.

The disappearance of the OK glacier takes me back to when the glaciers disappeared that gouged out the Great Lakes. That too was global warming.

(07-21-2019 10:23 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 10:14 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-21-2019 10:12 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I know. What if, hear me out, a bunch of countries got together in a major city and outlined a framework that each would follow, to help reduce future climate change? Maybe you could even name it after that city.

Except that isn't what happened. Not at Paris. Not at Kyoto before that.

At neither one did they produce a framework that either 1) they followed or 2) would reduce climate change if they had followed.

A bunch of bureaucrats on expense accounts got together in a nice city to visit and wrote a bunch of meaningless BS that they could all sign and pat themselves on the back and have great photo ops.

Right... it is really difficult when you don't have buy-in from every country that is a significant polluter.

That being said... the approach CANNOT be "Well... it doesn't seem easy to come up with a good solution. Guess we'll ignore the problem". The issue is so critical that every possible approach needs to be considered.

How critical is it?

This plaque will be interesting for cultural anthropologists to study. It is yet another example of the extreme hubris of human nature and surely it will be mocked and studied profusely once the current academic society that permeates our universities has rightfully pushed into a shallow grave.

Reasons to call out global warming alarmists for their intellectually bankrupt thinking:

1) Warming is good: Warming is massively beneficial to human civilization. The worst possible thing that could happen to human civilization is a period of significant global cooling from current levels. Even small variations downward would kill likely billions of people as can be documented from historic cold spells and their outsized effect on populations in Europe (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/...be-alive). If we had any choice (which we don't) of global temperatures, there is scant evidence that cooling would be preferred to warming. All we "know" now is that "change" is bad. Sure, there is some lightweight evidence suggesting a positive correlation between bad things happening weatherwise and an increase in temperatures, but we still don't have a solid meteorological record of either temperature nor catastrophic events over a long enough time period to draw any firm conclusions. High resolution meteorological observations simply did not exist before the space age, so we are relegated to decent surface stats since 1960 and decent satellite stats since the 1970s. What is clear is that the Ice Age of 10,000 years ago would be catastrophic (although the temps in Houston would be nice again but Minneapolis would be under a few thousand feet of ice), and likely even the cool weather that the northern hemisphere experienced in the late 1970s (the original climate scare lol) would deplete winter heating fuels and severely limit the growing season for crops (side note: I am an energy trader and if we saw a few of the winters of yesteryear like 82-83, there is no way we aren't dealing with extended power and gas outages nationwide...people would die by the thousands if not higher magnitudes). Thus far the downsides to higher temps are massively better growing conditions for crops and a bunch of rich people (and of course poor people in already poor countries) losing beachfront real estate. Some old stuff might get flooded also and the weather might be marginally "worse" depending on where you live (anyone caught extolling the virtues of warmer weather will be immediately excommunicated from climate church, so don't get any bright ideas about growing more wheat in Canada or Russia).

2) Ocean Acidification is Probably Bad (and easily proven): The most dangerous part of CO2 is the *rapid* acidification from oceans. We could see massive upheavals in marine life via extinction events that could severely impact human food supply and disrupt the life cycles of phytoplankton and other important organisms that regulate the chemistry of our atmosphere that may not be able to adapt quickly enough to changes in ocean chemistry. Of course, the brain dead "scientists" and other money whores at NASA don't want to talk about this even though ocean acidification is a more straightforward and convincing argument against CO2 emissions as it is a variable that can clearly be observed in real time and checked against highly accurate geologic records. Why aren't they making a big fuss out of this? Because CO2 has never been lower in the atmosphere since the extinction of the dinosaurs and the maximum level of CO2 measured since 65 mya was during the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%...um#Ocean_2 which did see mass extinctions of marine life. But...guess what? Oh ****... that is when mammals took over the world. Turns out that super high CO2 levels are f'ing great for mammals. So much for that theory...let's make sure mention of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) never makes its way into the NYT or people might get grand ideas about the ideal levels of CO2 which are likely way higher than they are now. I am sure PhDs are currently being awarded for any geologist that can show that a recurrence of PETM would be a disaster in our modern age in complete rebuttal of the historical record. In all honesty on my part, this could be a significant issue if we see a severe enough change in ocean chemistry to affect marine life. This would be pretty straight forward research to place keystone species in lower pH/higher temp waters to test their suitability for a rapidly changing environment. The current rate of change in CO2 is what is massively different versus the PETM where the changes appeared to be very gradual.

3) No way China & India will ever change in next decade: Even if you can ignore 1 & 2 and still "believe" that CO2 is a boogeyman that must be conquered, there is essentially no way forward to reduce emissions without waging total war on China and/or India thereby killing billions of people or forcing them to live in perpetual poverty. Their CO2 emissions are skyrocketing; ours (the USA) are dropping. Even if we do something crazy and drop our emissions by 50% of current levels by 2050, China & India's emissions will dwarf ours in just a few years (they are already higher) and they show zero signs of slowing down. China stated that their first goal of the Paris agreement was to reach peak CO2 emissions by no later than 2030! None of these proposed climate agreements do anything to mitigate China & India's emissions until so far in the future that current politicians will be dead and buried. The only onus in the next decade is on the developed world to provide aid to developing countries (per the Paris agreement, why would the United States provide aid to modernize China's economy?) This is a key tragedy of the commons. If you really think CO2 is going to kill us, then you had better be ready to go kill a lot of Chinese and Indians because there is no other way they will go along with it at any reasonable reduction level. The commons for CO2 are a global thing, not just in your Los Angeles suburb where everyone cool drives a Tesla. None of these global agreements even touch on this, and in fact are just massive wealth transfers to benefit multinational corporations as they continually shift their manufacturing bases to the lowest common denominator in terms of human rights and environmental rights (except now they would get paid to do it!). By the time any of these proposed regulations would arrest the increasing rate of CO2 emissions to a neutral state, global CO2 concentrations will be well into the 500-600 range if not considerably higher. They are effectively much too little and way too late if you happen to believe the modern state of the art with respect to climate science. India and China need to be shut down now and start reducing tomorrow to have any hope of keeping CO2 concentration levels steady.

4) The Hubris of making our own Nest thermostat for Earth: Even if you think that the rise of CO2 emissions is ghastly and must be attacked using all of the might of modern civilization, you must confront the arithmetic of $ spent per degree of temperature change incurred. Even if you hack the code and scientists can agree on a specific concentration of CO2 per degree so that you can infer an ideal global temperature and then dial up the ideal CO2 concentration, there are other larger climate drivers such as solar activity, volcanic emission, etc. that will ruin your plans. Even once you distill the argument into "X" CO2 PPM gets us "Y" temp, you will likely see that there are more cost effective ways to control global climate such as cloud seeding and other similar geoengineering methods that can limit solar radiation when compared to massive reductions in economic output or the foregoing of fossil fuels (or building a train to Hawaii lol). Perhaps in the future, we will have enough economic excess to choose the most entertaining method to dial the temperature up and down as the global leadership hierarchy sees fit, but at this point we are no where near that point.

To me, you either need to be in the "f it, warming is probably good, let's see what happens" crowd or the "CO2 is actually going to kill us all very soon so let's kill a little today and be better off tomorrow" and go to total war with the people on the other side of the planet. At least a nuclear winter would likely keep warming down for a few decades while we figure out the science some more. The current proposed path of let's do very little at a great cost to literally only the United States makes zero sense on any level. But then again, the thought leaders on the left think that trains to Hawaii are a totally feasible option and there are no thought leaders on the right anymore.

I appreciate the detailed response even if much of it is above my pay grade. Maybe I need Professor Howe to visit this site and respond.

A couple of minor responses.

(1) I find it disingenuous to simply say warming is good. There are a lot of factors at play with global warming and to merely say the downsides to higher temps are massively better growing conditions for crops and a bunch of rich people (and of course poor people in already poor countries) losing beachfront real estate seems way off. For one thing, higher temps lead to extremes (droughts and flooding) so I'm not sure you can say we'll have better growing conditions if temps rise by a degree or two. Ask the midwest farmers what their crops are looking like in 2019.

And it's a lot more than rich people losing beachfront real estate - whole cities (or sections of them) would become inhabitable and those people would have to go somewhere. I'd also like to see what melanoma and skin cancer rates look like 20-30 years from now.

(3) India - I agree with you there. I think that's a lost cause - too many folks and not enough room. And a culture that just doesn't seem to have any idea on how to harness its growth and cultural differences. I think there is hope for China. First off, it's a massive country with much lower population growth now, so it seems like they can handle their population needs more effectively in the future. And secondly, I do get the sense the Chinese people are more concerned with climate issues - maybe because their cities have become so dangerous to live in terms of smog and pollution levels. And it's a simple response but when a movie like The Wandering Earth become a massive hit in China ($700 million gross), you can't tell me the Chinese people don't care about our earth's future. Maybe they have no say in the matter because the rich corporations are going to do whatever they want, but I just see China being more concerned about this issue than India. But it doesn't matter too much if Africa takes over for China in terms of corporate and environmental abuse.

And in general, I find it sad that so many of you keep saying alarmists and scientists are only saying there is a problem but not trying to create any solutions. There are many, many scientists worldwide who are trying to come up with workable solutions to a lot of our planet's problems. Do you feel the same way about cancer researchers (they're just scamming the public for money and not creating any solutions?).

One product I would hope is very close to fruition would be a mass acceptance of truly biodegradable water bottles. If we could all be buying cheap water containers in our grocery stores instead of the plastic ozarka bottles (or whatever company) that actually are compostable, then that would go a long way towards helping our oceans and landfills. All of the little steps people do in their carbon footprints eventually add up.

Merely saying over and over again, what are their solutions seems to be a simple and crass way to get your point across.

(07-22-2019 07:13 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I appreciate the detailed response even if much of it is above my pay grade. Maybe I need Professor Howe to visit this site and respond.
A couple of minor responses.
(1) I find it disingenuous to simply say warming is good. There are a lot of factors at play with global warming and to merely say the downsides to higher temps are massively better growing conditions for crops and a bunch of rich people (and of course poor people in already poor countries) losing beachfront real estate seems way off. For one thing, higher temps lead to extremes (droughts and flooding) so I'm not sure you can say we'll have better growing conditions if temps rise by a degree or two. Ask the midwest farmers what their crops are looking like in 2019.
And it's a lot more than rich people losing beachfront real estate - whole cities (or sections of them) would become inhabitable and those people would have to go somewhere. I'd also like to see what melanoma and skin cancer rates look like 20-30 years from now.

There are good and bad aspects. A warmer earth means that more land further north becomes farmable, particularly if the warming comes closer to the poles, which most of the models seem to project. Growing wheat in places like Siberia and further north in Canada might be nature's way of dealing with global population explosion.

I worry about the oceans, but a three inch rise in sea level is not going to put NewYork under water. I wonder how much of the rise can be abated by diverting some of it into existing land below sea level, like the Qattara Depression and Lake Eyre. Probably not a lot, but more than none. There are projects to do both, and one advantage would be creating rainfall that would make certain desert areas potentially farmable.

Quote:(3) India - I agree with you there. I think that's a lost cause - too many folks and not enough room. And a culture that just doesn't seem to have any idea on how to harness its growth and cultural differences. I think there is hope for China. First off, it's a massive country with much lower population growth now, so it seems like they can handle their population needs more effectively in the future. And secondly, I do get the sense the Chinese people are more concerned with climate issues - maybe because their cities have become so dangerous to live in terms of smog and pollution levels. And it's a simple response but when a movie like The Wandering Earth become a massive hit in China ($700 million gross), you can't tell me the Chinese people don't care about our earth's future. Maybe they have no say in the matter because the rich corporations are going to do whatever they want, but I just see China being more concerned about this issue than India. But it doesn't matter too much if Africa takes over for China in terms of corporate and environmental abuse.

Ah, yes, the class warfare card. It's all the rich people and corporations who are to blame.

India and China both have the same problem--a billion plus people, with out-of-date infrastructure. They and Africa are still trying to feed their people. Environmentalism is a rich person's issue. If you don't have anything to eat, your carbon footprint is not going to be your first concern.

But India and China and the developing world are the biggies. If we can't get them under control, then what we do here is pretty meaningless. Getting meaningful reductions in those places, starting now, would seem to be a major priority. We're probably going to have to bribe our way to those solutions.

Quote:And in general, I find it sad that so many of you keep saying alarmists and scientists are only saying there is a problem but not trying to create any solutions. There are many, many scientists worldwide who are trying to come up with workable solutions to a lot of our planet's problems. Do you feel the same way about cancer researchers (they're just scamming the public for money and not creating any solutions?).

But they aren't coming up with anything. At least, nothing useful. Cancer researchers are coming upon with all sorts of solutions. The treatment I'm currently receiving for mine did not exist ten years ago and was still an experimental treatment at M.D. Anderson five years ago.

And it's not the ones looking for solutions that I think are just scamming for money. It's the ones "studying" what will be the theoretical impact 100 years from now. All right, already, it's a problem. We don't need you parsing the numbers another 10,000 ways to tell us that. If it's that big a problem, then get your ass busy trying to solve it. And give us stuff that works, not stupid meaningless and counterproductive crap.

There is still a big part of me that wonders if this isn't all some kind of money grab. Make the rich folks and corporations the bad guys, create mass hysteria, and then use that as justification for redistribution on a massive scale. The failure to come up with solutions, and the almost neglect of that side of it, makes me wonder just what is the end game. The more we focus on how bad the problem is, and the less we focus on solutions, the greater the possible hysteria.

Quote:One product I would hope is very close to fruition would be a mass acceptance of truly biodegradable water bottles. If we could all be buying cheap water containers in our grocery stores instead of the plastic ozarka bottles (or whatever company) that actually are compostable, then that would go a long way towards helping our oceans and landfills. All of the little steps people do in their carbon footprints eventually add up.

One solution to a lot of degradable plastics issues seems to lie with hemp. The faster we can get the restrictions on producing hemp lifted, the better. And plastic goes way beyond water bottles, although that is more a pollution issue than a climate change issue. Tis is another area where getting India and China and the developing world onboard is a key. Something like 85% of ocean junk is attributable to both and east Asia.

Quote:Merely saying over and over again, what are their solutions seems to be a simple and crass way to get your point across.

No, because here is the point that gets missed. There is a lot we can do with current technology. Instead of playing around with lab experiments, figure out how to solve as much as we can with what we have.

One thing that would help is making greater use of electricity as a prime mover for more applications.

Electric cars are a technology that is still being developed and, like all developing technologies, still has problems. So we need to keep development going, but it's not something to which we can all migrate en masse. But electric trains are doable now. Europe does them. The difference is that trains can draw power from wires as they go along, instead of having to take their power with them, and that simplifies the equation tremendously. We were on the way to an electric train system here back around the 40s, but changed our minds and went diesel.

Now where to get that electricity? Wind and solar are the chic answers. But like electric cars, they aren't ready yet. Until we come up with better ways to store electricity, they can never be base load sources. Nuclear is ready and doable. A nationwide electric train system, powered by nuclear, would make a huge difference in our carbon footprint.

Key sentence: All we "know" now is that "change" is bad.

(07-22-2019 08:02 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-22-2019 07:13 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I appreciate the detailed response even if much of it is above my pay grade. Maybe I need Professor Howe to visit this site and respond.
A couple of minor responses.
(1) I find it disingenuous to simply say warming is good. There are a lot of factors at play with global warming and to merely say the downsides to higher temps are massively better growing conditions for crops and a bunch of rich people (and of course poor people in already poor countries) losing beachfront real estate seems way off. For one thing, higher temps lead to extremes (droughts and flooding) so I'm not sure you can say we'll have better growing conditions if temps rise by a degree or two. Ask the midwest farmers what their crops are looking like in 2019.
And it's a lot more than rich people losing beachfront real estate - whole cities (or sections of them) would become inhabitable and those people would have to go somewhere. I'd also like to see what melanoma and skin cancer rates look like 20-30 years from now.

There are good and bad aspects. A warmer earth means that more land further north becomes farmable, particularly if the warming comes closer to the poles, which most of the models seem to project. Growing wheat in places like Siberia and further north in Canada might be nature's way of dealing with global population explosion.

I worry about the oceans, but a three inch rise in sea level is not going to put NewYork under water. I wonder how much of the rise can be abated by diverting some of it into existing land below sea level, like the Qattara Depression and Lake Eyre. Probably not a lot, but more than none. There are projects to do both, and one advantage would be creating rainfall that would make certain desert areas potentially farmable.

Quote:(3) India - I agree with you there. I think that's a lost cause - too many folks and not enough room. And a culture that just doesn't seem to have any idea on how to harness its growth and cultural differences. I think there is hope for China. First off, it's a massive country with much lower population growth now, so it seems like they can handle their population needs more effectively in the future. And secondly, I do get the sense the Chinese people are more concerned with climate issues - maybe because their cities have become so dangerous to live in terms of smog and pollution levels. And it's a simple response but when a movie like The Wandering Earth become a massive hit in China ($700 million gross), you can't tell me the Chinese people don't care about our earth's future. Maybe they have no say in the matter because the rich corporations are going to do whatever they want, but I just see China being more concerned about this issue than India. But it doesn't matter too much if Africa takes over for China in terms of corporate and environmental abuse.

Ah, yes, the class warfare card. It's all the rich people and corporations who are to blame.

India and China both have the same problem--a billion plus people, with out-of-date infrastructure. They and Africa are still trying to feed their people. Environmentalism is a rich person's issue. If you don't have anything to eat, your carbon footprint is not going to be your first concern.

But India and China and the developing world are the biggies. If we can't get them under control, then what we do here is pretty meaningless. Getting meaningful reductions in those places, starting now, would seem to be a major priority. We're probably going to have to bribe our way to those solutions.

Quote:And in general, I find it sad that so many of you keep saying alarmists and scientists are only saying there is a problem but not trying to create any solutions. There are many, many scientists worldwide who are trying to come up with workable solutions to a lot of our planet's problems. Do you feel the same way about cancer researchers (they're just scamming the public for money and not creating any solutions?).

But they aren't coming up with anything. At least, nothing useful. Cancer researchers are coming upon with all sorts of solutions. The treatment I'm currently receiving for mine did not exist ten years ago and was still an experimental treatment at M.D. Anderson five years ago.

And it's not the ones looking for solutions that I think are just scamming for money. It's the ones "studying" what will be the theoretical impact 100 years from now. All right, already, it's a problem. We don't need you parsing the numbers another 10,000 ways to tell us that. If it's that big a problem, then get your ass busy trying to solve it. And give us stuff that works, not stupid meaningless and counterproductive crap.

There is still a big part of me that wonders if this isn't all some kind of money grab. Make the rich folks and corporations the bad guys, create mass hysteria, and then use that as justification for redistribution on a massive scale. The failure to come up with solutions, and the almost neglect of that side of it, makes me wonder just what is the end game. The more we focus on how bad the problem is, and the less we focus on solutions, the greater the possible hysteria.

Quote:One product I would hope is very close to fruition would be a mass acceptance of truly biodegradable water bottles. If we could all be buying cheap water containers in our grocery stores instead of the plastic ozarka bottles (or whatever company) that actually are compostable, then that would go a long way towards helping our oceans and landfills. All of the little steps people do in their carbon footprints eventually add up.

One solution to a lot of degradable plastics issues seems to lie with hemp. The faster we can get the restrictions on producing hemp lifted, the better. And plastic goes way beyond water bottles, although that is more a pollution issue than a climate change issue. Tis is another area where getting India and China and the developing world onboard is a key. Something like 85% of ocean junk is attributable to both and east Asia.

Quote:Merely saying over and over again, what are their solutions seems to be a simple and crass way to get your point across.

No, because here is the point that gets missed. There is a lot we can do with current technology. Instead of playing around with lab experiments, figure out how to solve as much as we can with what we have.

One thing that would help is making greater use of electricity as a prime mover for more applications.

Electric cars are a technology that is still being developed and, like all developing technologies, still has problems. So we need to keep development going, but it's not something to which we can all migrate en masse. But electric trains are doable now. Europe does them. The difference is that trains can draw power from wires as they go along, instead of having to take their power with them, and that simplifies the equation tremendously. We were on the way to an electric train system here back around the 40s, but changed our minds and went diesel.

Now where to get that electricity? Wind and solar are the chic answers. But like electric cars, they aren't ready yet. Until we come up with better ways to store electricity, they can never be base load sources. Nuclear is ready and doable. A nationwide electric train system, powered by nuclear, would make a huge difference in our carbon footprint.

It looks like you and AOC agree on one part of the GND :)