President Obama Re-Elected - Page 587

On September 25 2012 17:26 Defacer wrote:


Yeah, but good, comprehensive transportation infrastructure takes decades to plan, build and develop, and it happens in phases. And it's not every city will magically become green all at once. All the more reason to start now. Oil cars and companies have thirty to forty years to evolve and adapt. By then, hopefully we'll have fuel cell technology anyways.

We use Oil to manufacture and transport every single thing around us. Oil companies have nothing to worry about.

On September 25 2012 13:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:


I get that. But then I see graphs like this:

+ Show Spoiler +

Now, I don't doubt at all that industry pumping CO2 into the atmosphere contributes to global warming. But it seems that nature plays a role as well. Until someone can convince me that they can separate the two accurately, I find it difficult to support aggressive measures to fight global warming.

On September 25 2012 13:46 aksfjh wrote:

Even if it is proven, I still think the proper course of action would be to either
a) Don't combat climate change/warming. Instead, global investment in sustainability in resources and lifestyle. This allow cultures to survive through the adverse weather.
b) Combat the symptoms. There are ways in which we can cool the Earth that requires little change in lifestyles for anybody. This can be direct cooling, or we can speed up the process of CO2 absorption into the earth.

Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Coming from a resident of Iowa, a state where people are polite even to soybeans, this was a powerful condemnation of the Republican nominee.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Even before the stench article appeared, there was a strong sign that Ryan was freeing himself from the grips of the Romney campaign. It began after his disastrous appearance on Friday before AARP in New Orleans. Ryan delivered his remarks in the style dictated by his Romney handlers: Stand behind the lectern, read the speech as written and don’t stray from the script.

Ryan brought his 78-year-old mother with him and introduced her to the audience, which is usually a sure crowd pleaser.

But when Ryan began talking about repealing “Obamacare” because he said it would harm seniors, one woman in the crowd shouted, “Lie!” Another shouted “Liar!” and the crowd booed Ryan lustily.

Who boos a guy in front of his 78-year-old mother? Other 78-year-old mothers.

That was Friday, and that was the end of Ryan following the game plan. At a certain point, all running mates on failing campaigns feel they must break free from the manacles placed on them by the top of the ticket. Sarah Palin began pursuing her own path once she learned that John McCain was having strategy sessions with his morning bowl of Farina.

Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers, has kept a tight grip on Ryan, traveling with him everywhere and making sure he hews to the directions of the Romney “brain trust” in Boston. (A brain trust, rumor has it, that refers to Ryan as “Gilligan.”)

But on Saturday, the day after he was booed, Ryan broke free. Appearing at a town hall meeting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Ryan showed the glitz, the glamour, the razzle-dazzle that he was supposed to bring to the campaign in the first place.

He did a PowerPoint presentation for the crowd. According to the National Journal, be began thusly: “ ‘I’m kind of a PowerPoint guy, so I hope you’ll bear with me,’ Ryan told the audience as he began clicking through four slides, which showed graphs depicting U.S. debt held by the public from 1940 to present, debt per person in the United States, percentage of debt held by foreign countries and a breakdown of federal spending. He then launched into a 10-minute monologue on the federal debt.”

A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show presentations.

Conducting a PowerPoint presentation is a lot like smoking a cigar. Only the person doing it likes it. The people around him want to hit him with a chair.

PowerPoint is usually restricted to conference rooms where the doors are locked from the outside. It is, therefore, considered unsuited for large rallies, where people have a means of escape and where the purpose is to energize rather than daze.

Ryan’s PowerPoint slides were officially labeled: “Our Unsustainable Debt (U.S. Debt Held by Public as a Share of Economy),” “Your Share of the Debt,” “Who Funds Our Reckless Spending?” and “How the Government Spends Your Money.”

The Romney campaign was furious. But Ryan reportedly said, “Let Ryan be Ryan and let the Stench be the Stench.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81618.html

On September 25 2012 20:08 DoubleReed wrote:


Er... what? That graph proves my point. We were in a state of global warming when industrialization happened. But we've more than doubled the natural effect in a shorter amount of time than nature would have.

And I just posted a climate change skeptic who explains how he was convinced that they are incredibly separate. Here it is again: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www


http://berkeleyearth.org/images/annual-comparison-small.png

Look, I understand that the idea of manmade climate change is scary. I understand that people don't like the economic implications of it. But the economic implications of climate change if we do nothing to stop it could be catastrophic. It's incredibly myopic to think "yea, but do we actually want to do anything about it?"

It's also a dangerous precedent you're setting for your opponent's claims. It sounds to me like there is no way to convince you, even when all the evidence is against you. Exactly what do climate scientists need to show you before you are spurred to action? Because there is a scientific consensus on this. The scientific community has been overwhelmingly convinced of how serious this is. But you, like so many others, have convinced themselves to be more skeptical than scientists and choose not to do anything about it. This is a seriously dangerous precedent.

On September 25 2012 22:27 Souma wrote:
Romney is now dubbed the 'Stench,' courtesy of Paul Ryan.
+ Show Spoiler +

On September 25 2012 22:27 Souma wrote:
Romney is now dubbed the 'Stench,' courtesy of Paul Ryan.

On September 25 2012 22:39 ZasZ. wrote:


Going from 275 to a little under 400 is not "more than doubling." I agree with most of your points, but just saying.

Also, I can't tell how much of that article above me is satire and how much is actually true. The bit about powerpoint was off-topic but kind of funny.

On September 25 2012 23:00 TheTenthDoc wrote:


This...this has to be satire right? Holy cow.

On September 25 2012 14:44 sam!zdat wrote:


I agree with you to some extent, but we're neglecting some really obvious ways to integrate sustainability into the development, because our market doesn't get any signals from ecological costs; so even if the market really were as rational as economists love to claim it is it still wouldn't be making the right choices.

What we need to do is plan our development with an ecological end-game in mind, and there are good strategic investments for the overall plan that we are currently missing due to undervaluation of ecological concerns both economically, in terms of the lack of representation of negative externalities in the market system, and ideologically, in terms of the cultural prejudice against a respect for nature and cyclical time more generally (western culture is oriented linearly - myths of progress and the like [note that "myth" here is not used in a necessarily negative connotation]).

For example, we should not be building any more cities around automobiles, and we should be turning the cities that are into modern cities with efficient and well-maintained public transit. Anyway, who wants to sit around in traffic all the time? It blows. And it [public transit] is FAR, FAR CHEAPER.

Also, even without worries about carbon cycles, burning fossil fuels is bad for air quality. Cities with bad air pollution have much higher rates of asthma - as someone grew up in a polluted city and had asthma, I'm kind of against this. We could have nice air to breathe everywhere and it would rock!

And any reduction we could do in carbon emissions would be good, because you are lowering the magnitude of what you are inputting into the turbulence of the global climate, which can affect the outcome in entirely nonlinear ways.

Another important topic is agriculture - we are going to have a crisis there due the unsustainable nature of monoculture. Also, there's things like the fact that America throws away something like half of its food - simply no reason to do that, we could feed everybody in our country well if we would stop doing that.

There's a bunch of other shit we could be doing - if you want more detail you should check out Amory Lovins - he writes books on sustainability for a business crowd, lots of charts and things I don't totally understand but I'm sure you'll love it.

edit: how do you compete with a civilization that is doing this??: http://thomasallison.com/image/28745440682

On September 25 2012 20:08 DoubleReed wrote:


Er... what? That graph proves my point. We were in a state of global warming when industrialization happened. But we've more than doubled the natural effect in a shorter amount of time than nature would have.

And I just posted a climate change skeptic who explains how he was convinced that they are incredibly separate. Here it is again: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www


http://berkeleyearth.org/images/annual-comparison-small.png

Look, I understand that the idea of manmade climate change is scary. I understand that people don't like the economic implications of it. But the economic implications of climate change if we do nothing to stop it could be catastrophic. It's incredibly myopic to think "yea, but do we actually want to do anything about it?"

It's also a dangerous precedent you're setting for your opponent's claims. It sounds to me like there is no way to convince you, even when all the evidence is against you. Exactly what do climate scientists need to show you before you are spurred to action? Because there is a scientific consensus on this. The scientific community has been overwhelmingly convinced of how serious this is. But you, like so many others, have convinced themselves to be more skeptical than scientists and choose not to do anything about it. This is a seriously dangerous precedent.

On September 25 2012 23:01 Souma wrote:


He throws in some dumb jokes, but I believe the rest is factual.

On September 25 2012 21:31 radiatoren wrote:

Those points are interesting for several reasons:

a) The argument for what to do about climate is very heavily tied to sustainability. Reducing the use of oil and stone coal is a way to move from a limited resource in the inactive carbon cycle and moving it to the active carbon cycle, which is likely very unsustainable since the production of the inactive cycle carbon is tied to a million year long process. The use is and will be happening over hundred of years to thousands for the most optimistic projections! Having a 1000 times larger use of fossil fuels than production is the definition of unsustainability. Therefore a move away from oil and coal is truely a necessity regardless and increasing the alternatives to the use of those resources is fundamental in many ways (Hint: Oil will get more expensive as it gets harder to extract. Even from a longer term economic sense, alternatives to oil is a must to improve so we do not get too much of a shock from inefficient technologies when we inevitably have to make the switch!). And just to be clear: Fighting the weather is quite a stupid thing to do in almost all cases with our current knowledge of it. Any heads on fight against the weather is futile in so many ways. When we talk about fighting global climate change it is mostly in sense of reducing the future problems caused by increasing the sea- and airborne CO2, which plays exactly into the sustainability argument.

b) Give me a cheap one of those and make me a billionaire. The truth is that the CO2-absorbsion into the inactive system are almost universally scientifically dubious. The best I have heard of is releasing iron into the deep ocean to stimulate a huge production of algae. When the algae dies it will hopefully sink to the bottom of the ocean and in time get absorbed into the seabed. The others concentrate on creating carbon in a very hard to degrade form and release it to fields as a "soil improvement product". It has shown a lot of promise in increasing the yields in the field and if a significant part of it gets to be absorbed into the passive carbon storage, it is very interesting in all ways. There is also the pumping of CO2 into a deep part of the soil and praying that it gets absorbed into the passive carbon storage, but that is mpstly guessing still.
None of those technologies are even close to being viable as it stands. It might help a little, but it is still beyond speculative. Direct cooling is more or less a myth at the moment as far as I know. Painting mountains white is extremely inefficient to the point of being pointless and other solar radiation management is still completely unproven and could do far more harm than good.

On September 26 2012 01:12 aksfjh wrote:

The problem with carbon targets is like you said, the outcome is nonlinear. What happens when we cut carbon emissions by 60%, but temperatures rise by 2° C anyways?

The thing is, though, ecological costs aren't the same as economic costs.

The point I'm trying to make is that we need to be smart about this. These are GIGANTIC investments that need to be made, so we need to make them in whatever will get us the best return. I enjoy the idea of a green society, but I prefer one that is better in EVERY way to what we have now.

On September 25 2012 16:13 Souma wrote:


The automobile and oil industries would not be pleased. It's hard to get anything logical done around here with so much money in politics.

On September 26 2012 01:12 aksfjh wrote:

The problem with carbon targets is like you said, the outcome is nonlinear. What happens when we cut carbon emissions by 60%, but temperatures rise by 2° C anyways? We'll have saved the "future," but at no direct benefit to the present.

On September 26 2012 01:20 JonnyBNoHo wrote:


I asked a simple question: how do you separate man-made warming from natural warming?

Why are you responding by trying to paint me as an someone that completely ignores science?