[quote]pookie wrote:
I’m not sure I understand the point you’re trying to make here. Signing the Kyoto accord will reduce the heat waves in Chicago?[/quote]
Sorry, I was agreeing with the ‘preparation vs. prevention’ point by trying to show that preparation is already saving lives now at a lower cost whereas Kyoto might save some lives someday at a drastically different cost.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
but there is a large degree of uncertainty about the mechanisms involved and hence also about the likelihood or time-scales of such transitions.[/quote]
That’s exactly right. We’re going some place, but we don’t know where, it might be over a cliff, or it might not be, we can’t tell, and the rate of change is accelerating. You regard this as an occasion for inaction?
Prudence dictates trying to put on the brakes until we get our bearings.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
I was agreeing with the ‘preparation vs. prevention’ point by trying to show that preparation is already saving lives now at a lower cost whereas Kyoto might save some lives someday at a drastically different cost.[/quote]
This is a false dichotomy. What’s being spent on a useless war right now dwarfs any reasonable proposal for either purpose. By all means raze Chicago’s slums and build something better - something air conditioned to suit our new, improved planet. Do you think the only benefit to flow from that would be fewer deaths in the next heatwave?
A few hundred died in Chicago. How many lives might impeding GW save? Since you don’t know that number, how can you claim you understand the cost benefit ratio? You can’t even demonstrate that the prospective costs of slowing GW, which you have no good grip on either, are not offset by still other benefits, as has been the case here in Portland.
And you’re so steamed about controlling emissions, you don’t seem to notice that slowing deforestation is also a big issue.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Prudence dictates trying to put on the brakes until we get our bearings.[/quote]
You’re assuming we have breaks. Also, cars are well engineered and vehicular travel is very predictable with few uncertainties.
A better analogy might be finding out we live in a running nuclear reactor that has some uncertain possibility of melting itself down and saying we need to shut it down without knowing how or if we can/should.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
You’re assuming we have breaks.[/quote]
No, I’m not. I’m saying we should try real hard to find out. By doing less of what we’re doing to screw up Carbon balance.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
Prudence dictates trying to put on the brakes until we get our bearings.
You’re assuming we have breaks. Also, cars are well engineered and vehicular travel is very predictable with few uncertainties.
[/quote]
Actually, the simile I had more in mind was a blind nurse out for a stroll on a mountain path with the baby in the pram.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
A better analogy might be finding out we live in a running nuclear reactor that has some uncertain possibility of melting itself down and saying we need to shut it down without knowing how or if we can/should.[/quote]
In your analogy I am not advocating shutdown, I’m saying we should stop pulling the control rods further out.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
This is a false dichotomy. What’s being spent on a useless war right now dwarfs any reasonable proposal for either purpose.[/quote]
Wait, you’re using the Iraq War as an argument that global opinion on GW is objective and unswayed by sensationalism, propaganda, and false data?
Given current technology, razing, rebuilding, and air conditioning Chicago’s slums would significantly hinder Chicago’s ability to ‘comply with Kyoto’.
Actually;
The loss of human life in hot spells in summer exceeds that caused by all other weather events in the United States combined, including lightning, rainstorms/floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes." Weather hazards such as tornadoes, floods, lightning, and winter storms each result in about 100 deaths per year on average, while heat waves result in about 1000 deaths per year on average.
Changnon, S. A., K. E. Kunkel, and B. C. Reinke, 1996: Impacts and Responses to the 1995 Heat Wave: A Call to Action. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 77, No. 7, 1497-1506.
Okay, so somebody comes to you and hands you a contract promising an uncertain benefit for an incalculable sum of money and you rush off to find a pen?
I’m not saying that the things Portland did were wrong, I’m saying that the motivation was flawed.
So how are we to raze and rebuild the slums of Chicago without burning any fuel or cutting down any trees?
How are we to provide terrorist-free fuel to biodiesel and flex fuel vehicles w/o making more farmland?
Or could we just say fuck off to the retarded contract that promises uncertain benefits for an incalculable sum of money in favor of contracts that offer us certain benefits for defined costs some of which are much more impending than GW.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
lucasa wrote:
A better analogy might be finding out we live in a running nuclear reactor that has some uncertain possibility of melting itself down and saying we need to shut it down without knowing how or if we can/should.
In your analogy I am not advocating shutdown, I’m saying we should stop pulling the control rods further out.[/quote]
See, you keep assuming information we don’t have. The evidence that we’re even capable of pulling them out is far from conclusive, and we have no evidence that if we stop our portion of pulling them out it will have any effect, or that pushing them back into a hot reactor core won’t melt them or cause the reaction to shut down entirely.
But by all means, go on believing the fairytale.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Second, insuring coastal properties is far more difficult than it was years past because the values of the properties have skyrocketed.
Sorry Zap, that’s actually not correct. Insurers have been taking a shellacking and are getting out of the market altogether, and homeowners can’t find coverage at any price, even when their property values have increased at only a steady pace, or even recently stagnated. They are not taking renewals on existing policies in many areas. This is not a long term trend, it is new this year. According to the NYTimes article I read recently.
…[/quote]
The insurance thing has been an issue for years. If the NYTimes is claiming it is new and it is because of global warming they are just showing their bias.
The truth is coastal property values have skyrocketed and where a hurricane would have only done a few million dollars worth of damage 20 years ago will now do far more financial damage due to the increased density of devlopment and the increased value and quality of the properties.
Basically insurance companies have wised up that some eastern coastal areas are developed more than should have been and are making the overdue adjustments.
I have first hand knowledge of this in the Myrtle Beach real estate market and am assuming the same situation applies elsewhere.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
I have first hand knowledge of this in the Myrtle Beach real estate market and am assuming the same situation applies elsewhere.[/quote]
Don’t think so, Zap. Gracious! That would be the very high end of the market, after Palm Beach maybe. Most of the places where they weren’t taking renewals in were much less swanky than that.
Even places inland where property values have not skyrocketed, the problem remains that the fifty year storm has become a twenty year storm. That’s why the customers there can’t afford economic premiums anymore.
This is a regional problem. Companies are willing to write this kind of coverage in other areas, where real estate has also appreciated drastically. The west coast, for example.
So this seems to be a skyrocket independent issue. No, its about the increasing probability of storm damage.
Just guessing, but at the very high end of the market maybe you don’t even see this problem entirely yet, because the swells can still afford to shell out for fully economic premiums. The insurers can raise their premiums to adequate levels without volume falling so much.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
The evidence that we’re even capable of pulling them out is far from conclusive[/quote]
The metaphor may have gotten scrambled, but I think we disagree on that point. I find it conclusive. By which I mean, we have had our impact on the environment, and the rate of that impact is partially under our control.
Biofuels are maybe a nice development because they could be Carbon neutral. Could it ever be major? Must it accelerate deforestation? I think no to either thing. We wouldn’t have irrigation to support it. The battle for the trees is in South America and Africa at this point.
You can have wood farmed as a renewable resource, but not at the expense of ever-increasing deforestation. You can for sure build houses out of other things than wood.
I don’t think much of what was done in Portland was actually directly motivated by Kyoto. It just happens that the policies being pursued here for urban/suburban transit and sprawl control had that result.
I’ll go with you this far: without mandatory birth control, Kyoto or anything like it doesn’t make much sense. We may as well all fold our hands and wait for the die-back.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
I have first hand knowledge of this in the Myrtle Beach real estate market and am assuming the same situation applies elsewhere.
Don’t think so, Zap. Gracious! That would be the very high end of the market, after Palm Beach maybe. Most of the places where they weren’t taking renewals in were much less swanky than that.
Even places inland where property values have not skyrocketed, the problem remains that the fifty year storm has become a twenty year storm. That’s why the customers there can’t afford economic premiums anymore.
This is a regional problem. Companies are willing to write this kind of coverage in other areas, where real estate has also appreciated drastically. The west coast, for example.
So this seems to be a skyrocket independent issue. No, its about the increasing probability of storm damage.
Just guessing, but at the very high end of the market maybe you don’t even see this problem entirely yet, because the swells can still afford to shell out for fully economic premiums. The insurers can raise their premiums to adequate levels without volume falling so much.[/quote]
I don’t think you understand. These values have skyrocketed in most markets and the insurance companies, having already been burned do not want to get burned again.
They are not looking at increased hurricane frequency. They are looking at past hurricane frequency and see themselves going out of business if they do not change their practices.
Perhaps the real estate investors and insurance agents themselves have it wrong but I don’t think so.
As I said I have first hand experience at it appears you are speculating.
It is another phony leap of faith that the global warming people make to try to link the insurance companies actions to global warming.
Of course I am sure you can find some insurance company talking head that will blame global warming and everything else before they admit that they were writing bad policies for years. Investors don’t like to hear this kind of stuff.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
The metaphor may have gotten scrambled, but I think we disagree on that point. I find it conclusive. By which I mean, we have had our impact on the environment, and the rate of that impact is partially under our control.[/quote]
That’s funny, the IPCC is expected to dial back its estimate of our impact by 25%. Not only are we not in control, we’re not even very good at estimating how much control we have.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/nclimate10.xml
Yes, at some point (estimates indicate 2039) Biofuels (or other energy source) will nearly wholly replace petroleum. Irrigation is irrelevant as there are many better ways to grow fuel crops than irrigating arable land. Additionally, with global warming we are predicted to get more precipitation and a longer growing season.
But not at the same cost (both fiscal and fuel) as wood.
I disagree. At third-world population growth rates, you’re right. For Western societies, population control seems to be self-adjusting. As for mandatory birth control, we’ve got a few more years to see how well that experiment works out for China. Although, I would concede to the idea of capital sterilization.
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
catalyst wrote:
Laura and I just watched this documentary recently. We were impressed with the material and the presentation of it.
I’m curious as to what some of you think about the climate change issue. I’m relatively young, so this seems to be reinforcing what we were taught in school. Needless to say, I was very surprised when I talked to some friends of mine that are a little older.
They said that when they were younger, people were talking about how they’re going into another ice age because it’s so cold, and that climate change is just another “The sky is falling” theory that is to be dismissed.
What does T-Nation think? How much involvement should our government have? Do you believe that we’re damaging our atmosphere? What solutions are there?
I’m sure this has been discussed on these forums before, but I’m specifically wondering if anyone truly believes that we should ignore this.
Global warming is not a scientific fact as Gore would have you believe. The fact is that they have not had instruments to measure the temperate for that long. So there is no way to accurately determine if it is really warmer or just a warm cycle. But Al is just using this for publicity like always to try and scare people into voting democrat.
The actual concern is pollution. Whether GW exists or not is irrelevant. Pollution needs to be better managed so we can just breath. So we do need to clean up the environment, but using unproven pop science to scare people is not the way to do it.
[/quote]
Al gore needs to take vaction in his favorite country North Korea. after all hes been busy lately with that Inconvinent truth crap & all.