'Not the greatest crisis' - Trump's EPA pick downplays climate threat

[bristolboy]

11 minutes ago, Nyezhov said:

Im not giving up my lifestyle so some elitist bureaucrats, activists, snake oil salesmen and ignorant millennial busybodies can gin up some purported existential crisis and get more control over my life, especially when they ignore settled science in favour of dictatorial solutions.

 

Even assuming arguendo that it matters, when Chinas CO2 drop, give me a holler. If you are an American and are so worried about Global warming, move to Cali or Washington state and pay your carbon taxes. Or permit nuclear plants faster to generate some of the clean electric you will need to run your clean cars. And dont go running to Conferences all over the place on someone elses dime emitting more pollutants than I can do in a lifetime on a steady diet of beans. Until yall get that straightened out, pass me a Burger and a Ford V-8.

 

 

 

"especially when they ignore settled science in favour of dictatorial solutions."

The "settled science" is that anthropenic climate change is real. What settled science are you referring to? Astrology?

And that know-nothing nonsense about conferences is such a piece of trolling. A tiny fraction of power consumption is somehow indicative of hypocrisy. When you devise a teleportation machine, beam it over to the rest of us.

And China is taking huge steps to curb CO consumption. Over half of all investment in solar power in 2017 was by China. They are now working on a huge ultra high voltage DC power lines to bring solar power and wind power generated electricity from the less developed west of China to the population centers of the east. It will take them some time to bend the curve to a negative slope but it is bending.

 

[Redline]

19 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

 Well this is a breath of fresh air. So called climate change, and how to extract the maximum amount of money from populations to fix the pie-in-the-sky theory makes me sick to the back teeth. Unproven, disagreed on by many scientists, many "green" energies causing untold damage mining hazardous materials to make batteries and other accompanying hardware. It's all a total nonsense. Good to see Wheeler concurring. Fossil fuels will be and should be our primary fuel sources until a) climate change is proven and realistic plans are made to deal with it, or b) fossil fuels are finished. We should be fine for another few hundred years - time to develop realistic plans.

I guess you follow the clown posie ???? keep it up-you’re getting there ????

[RickBradford]

The issue of climate change has been a zombie for at least 3 years now - it's turned into just another tiresome set of social justice antics which everyone tunes out like a car alarm in a parking lot.

 

As one observer noted, all that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers. 

 

It breathed its last at the "historic" Paris Agreement of 2015, where the text included typical SJW rhetoric, stating that climate action must include concern for "gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity" as well as "the importance for some of the concept of 'climate justice'."

 

The lack of action taken over the past few years underlines the point; most national governments have backed away from forced-marched decarbonization, ignoring the shrill demands of the activists, and that's the way it's going to stay. 

 

Horses don't come much deader than the climate one.

[bristolboy]

16 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

The issue of climate change has been a zombie for at least 3 years now - it's turned into just another tiresome set of social justice antics which everyone tunes out like a car alarm in a parking lot.

 

As one observer noted, all that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers. 

 

It breathed its last at the "historic" Paris Agreement of 2015, where the text included typical SJW rhetoric, stating that climate action must include concern for "gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity" as well as "the importance for some of the concept of 'climate justice'."

 

The lack of action taken over the past few years underlines the point; most national governments have backed away from forced-marched decarbonization, ignoring the shrill demands of the activists, and that's the way it's going to stay. 

 

Horses don't come much deader than the climate one.

Except of course for the accelerating use of renewable energy thanks to its drastic plummet in cost and the fact that economically competitive battery storage is already a reality. And the cost of renewables and storage is still plummeting. In fact way ahead of predictions even made less than a year ago. In fact, while it used to be thought that natural gas would be a long term transition fuel, now it seems likely that it too will be priced out of the market.

 

And if it's true that "most governments have backed away from forced-marched decarbonization" that's because the economics in favor of renewables are now compelling. 

https://data.bloomberglp.com/bnef/sites/14/2018/01/BNEF-Clean-Energy-Investment-Investment-Trends-2017.pdf

https://www.rdmag.com/article/2018/04/global-green-energy-investment-increased-2017

And the economic benefits of renewables should also include the positive health and environmental effects of reduced pollution. It's bizarre how denialists don't even acknowledge that.

 

[BangkokBaksida]

On 1/17/2019 at 11:43 AM, Krataiboy said:

You must be choking, squire. . .  as are most Bangkokians right now, not to mention the millions around the world suffering death and disease resulting from the use of fossil fuels.

Each year 2 million people worldwide die prematurely from the poisonous gases that make up smog, according to the World Health Organisation. Only last year, a Greenpeace survey revealed fourteen Thai provinces had air pollution well above WHO-recommended limits.

 

Whether or not the use the burning of fossil fuels is a major cause of climate change may be open to argument. However, the horrendous health consequences to human populations - particularly across developing nations such as Thailand - is indisputable.

 

We urgently need action, not excuses for inaction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can't just consider the negative aspects of things.  Billions of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty and misery by the ready availability of relatively cheap energy provided by the burning of fossil fuels.

[bristolboy]

13 minutes ago, BangkokBaksida said:

You can't just consider the negative aspects of things.  Billions of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty and misery by the ready availability of relatively cheap energy provided by the burning of fossil fuels.

That's the past. It's the future that should be of concern.

[balo]

Anyone working for Trump are idiots. This is clearly fake news. 

 

[Krataiboy]

3 hours ago, BangkokBaksida said:

You can't just consider the negative aspects of things.  Billions of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty and misery by the ready availability of relatively cheap energy provided by the burning of fossil fuels.

True. But what is the point of lifting billions of people out of poverty if they unable safely to breathe the air around them?

China's answer to this conundrum is to concentrate on developing clean technologies to sustain a healthier great leap forward.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/business/energy-environment/china-clean-energy-coal-pollution.html

Instead of pouring even more billions of taxpayer money into the black hole of the US military/industrial complex shouldn't Donald Trump be doing the same?

[oztaurus]

On 1/17/2019 at 12:27 PM, Ahab said:

When will a commercial passenger plane or cargo ship operate on "renewable" energy? Until that time fossil fuels will remain important. 

 ....... can do it already .....

http://carbonengineering.com/

 

[RickBradford]

6 hours ago, bristolboy said:

That's the past. It's the future that should be of concern.

What idiotic nonsense.

 

Billions of people have been lifted out of absolute poverty, and there are still billions left in absolute poverty who need more cheap reliable energy, not less.

 

All of them need help with issues such as malnutrition, malaria, TB, unclean water and could also do with local electricity to help them get an education.

 

It's long been known that the Green/Left hates humanity, regularly describing humans as a "cancer" and a "plague", and would happily sacrifice the poorest people on the planet in order to bolster their own personal vanity projects.

 

I find that a reprehensible stance - just because Western nations have sufficient food, shelter and medicine is no reason to deny that to the poorest 10% of humanity.

[mikebike]

30 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

What idiotic nonsense.

 

Billions of people have been lifted out of absolute poverty, and there are still billions left in absolute poverty who need more cheap reliable energy, not less.

 

All of them need help with issues such as malnutrition, malaria, TB, unclean water and could also do with local electricity to help them get an education.

 

It's long been known that the Green/Left hates humanity, regularly describing humans as a "cancer" and a "plague", and would happily sacrifice the poorest people on the planet in order to bolster their own personal vanity projects.

 

I find that a reprehensible stance - just because Western nations have sufficient food, shelter and medicine is no reason to deny that to the poorest 10% of humanity.

Yes, of course... cheap, reliable energy eventually equals zero peeps. Poor people don't want to destroy the planet. My experience tells me those with less are happier and don't really want "western-style" help, they already understand quite well how their world works.

[RickBradford]

1 hour ago, mikebike said:

Yes, of course... cheap, reliable energy eventually equals zero peeps. Poor people don't want to destroy the planet. My experience tells me those with less are happier and don't really want "western-style" help, they already understand quite well how their world works.

I think you should  be utterly ashamed of that post, and maybe at some time in the future you will be.

 

Do you think that the world's poor people don't want to help their children to avoid dying of malaria, or being physically and mentally stunted by malnutrition, dying early because of TB, going blind because of cataracts?

 

Are their lives so worthless to you that you would deny them "western-style" help? No doubt you would like to close down the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent $21 billion improving the basic health of people in developing countries.

 

I don't mean to single you out; most of the Green/Left movement thinks broadly as you do, that the world's poor should be denied the chance of improving their lives, purely to protect the narrative that development is bad and will "destroy the planet".

 

I have nothing but contempt for that view.

[bristolboy]

2 hours ago, RickBradford said:

What idiotic nonsense.

 

Billions of people have been lifted out of absolute poverty, and there are still billions left in absolute poverty who need more cheap reliable energy, not less.

 

All of them need help with issues such as malnutrition, malaria, TB, unclean water and could also do with local electricity to help them get an education.

 

It's long been known that the Green/Left hates humanity, regularly describing humans as a "cancer" and a "plague", and would happily sacrifice the poorest people on the planet in order to bolster their own personal vanity projects.

 

I find that a reprehensible stance - just because Western nations have sufficient food, shelter and medicine is no reason to deny that to the poorest 10% of humanity.

"It's long been known that the Green/Left hates humanity, regularly describing humans as a "cancer" and a "plague", and would happily sacrifice the poorest people on the planet in order to bolster their own personal vanity projects."

This is the stuff of lunacy.  But it's what I would expect of a denialist/luddite. Why do you hate capitalism so much? Thanks to the ingenuity and adaptablity of the free market economy, renewable energy is booming.  Thanks the remarkable efforts of entrepeneurs and scientists, progress in economically viable renewable energy is way way way ahead of where it was predicted to be just a few short years ago.  Already renewable energy is making coal obsolete and it's beginning to displace natural gas. And this was before the announcement that zinc oxide rechargeable batteries have passed the economically important goal of $100 per kwh of capacity. In fact the company that has created this battery has been engaging in a massive test of its usefulness in the kind of poor villages in the developing world and it's been a resounding success.

"On Wednesday, an energy company headed by the California billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that it had developed a rechargeable battery operating on zinc and air that can store power at far less than the cost of lithium-ion batteries.

Tests of the zinc energy-storage systems have helped power villages in Africa and Asia as well as cellphone towers in the United States for the last six years, without any backup from utilities or the electric grid, Dr. Soon-Shiong said.

“It could change and create completely new economies using purely the power of the sun, wind and air,” Dr. Soon-Shiong, a surgeon and a biotechnology entrepreneur, said in an interview in Los Angeles before the announcement."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/business/energy-environment/zinc-battery-solar-power.html

So in the same way that mobile phones made telephone lines obsolete, this kind of energy storage will make the expensive infrastructure of power transmission obsolete. 

Those of us who actually care about the people in the developing world are celebrating. But for Luddites and haters of progress like yourself who long to keep inhaling toxic fumes and particulate matter into your lungs, the outlook doesn't look so good. Sad!

[Ahab]

3 hours ago, oztaurus said:

 ....... can do it already .....

http://carbonengineering.com/

 

Well then, go book your flight.

 

[bristolboy]

1 minute ago, Ahab said:

Well then, go book your flight.

 

Whatever the merits of the claim, most of us understand the difference between the possible, as signified by "can" and the actual.

[Ahab]

8 hours ago, balo said:

Anyone working for Trump are idiots. This is clearly fake news. 

 

Well this post is degenerating in the same manner as most topics on this website.

[bristolboy]

1 minute ago, Ahab said:

Well this post is degenerating in the same manner as most topics on this website.

Says the party who in reply to this:

3 hours ago, oztaurus said:

 ....... can do it already .....

http://carbonengineering.com/

 

wrote this:

4 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Well then, go book your flight.

 

 

[bristolboy]

3 hours ago, oztaurus said:

 ....... can do it already .....

http://carbonengineering.com/

 

It's certainly interesting as a transitional idea. The thing is, given the accelerating pace of progress in renewables like solar and wind and in battery storage, the odds are that you would end up with a huge number of stranded assets. Still, it is interesting.

[roobaa01]

alexandria ocasio cortez hailed as the rising dem sun but really she is nothing but copying ideas of others for her new green deal is just a modified plan called leap manifesto from early 2000.

corteztopia based on obsolete thrash plans, which would destroy us wealth and 3.4  million jobs.

 

wbr

roobaa01

[Nyezhov]

1 hour ago, RickBradford said:

I don't mean to single you out; most of the Green/Left movement thinks broadly as you do, that the world's poor should be denied the chance of improving their lives, purely to protect the narrative that development is bad and will "destroy the planet".

Well here is todays news from the environleft:

https://singularityhub.com/2019/01/18/the-catch-no-ones-talking-about-renewable-energy-relies-on-non-renewable-resources/#sm.000terga61e2bf74102q6uns9y58e

 

All this renewable stuff uses....limited resources!

 

Hey whats the answer?

"More importantly, it is necessary to reduce our consumption of natural resources. If we go on with mindless consumerism, we will only shift the problem from one natural resource to another."

 

Right on who wants to volunteer to reduce. We can make Al Gores place into apartments!

[bristolboy]

1 minute ago, Nyezhov said:

Well here is todays news from the environleft:

https://singularityhub.com/2019/01/18/the-catch-no-ones-talking-about-renewable-energy-relies-on-non-renewable-resources/#sm.000terga61e2bf74102q6uns9y58e

 

All this renewable stuff uses....limited resources!

 

Hey whats the answer?

"More importantly, it is necessary to reduce our consumption of natural resources. If we go on with mindless consumerism, we will only shift the problem from one natural resource to another."

 

Right on who wants to volunteer to reduce. We can make Al Gores place into apartments!

Another Luddite. You have so little faith in the ingenuity powered by the marketplace. That article was some elements and minerals that will be in short supply. But that zinc oxide rechargeable battery doesn't use any of them. And that's just one example. Unlike you Marxists, I believe that the capitalist system is best equipped to solve the problems of pollution and acc and will succeed in doing so, In fact, is succeeding in doing so.

[RickBradford]

5 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

Unlike you Marxists, I believe that the capitalist system is best equipped to solve the problems of pollution and acc and will succeed in doing so, In fact, is succeeding in doing so.

That's absolutely priceless - many of the loudest voices on the climate zealot side are those of  people who are either self-confessed Marxists or those who espouse actions which are taken straight from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals; demonise, ostracise, marginalise, and suppress opposition.

 

The best-selling book on the climate issue is even titled Capitalism vs the Climate, by Naomi Klein, a woman who also penned a screed called Disaster Capitalism and is as close to a Marxist as you can get.

 

If you claim you're in favour of capitalism solving the climate "crisis", you're either joking or suffering from an advanced case of psychological projection.

[bristolboy]

1 minute ago, RickBradford said:

That's absolutely priceless - many of the loudest voices on the climate zealot side are those of  people who are either self-confessed Marxists or those who espouse actions which are taken straight from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals; demonise, ostracise, marginalise, and suppress opposition.

 

The best-selling book on the climate issue is even titled Capitalism vs the Climate, by Naomi Klein, a woman who also penned a screed called Disaster Capitalism and is as close to a Marxist as you can get.

 

If you claim you're in favour of capitalism solving the climate "crisis", you're either joking or suffering from an advanced case of psychological projection.

I don't have to be claiming anything. It's a fact. Or are all these private enterprises that are dramatically reducing the costs of renewable energy not capitalistic? So are you claiming that these business are really Marxists?  I guess this is not so surprising coming from a right-wing Luddite.

[VincentRJ]

On 1/18/2019 at 11:18 AM, bristolboy said:

And the economic benefits of renewables should also include the positive health and environmental effects of reduced pollution. It's bizarre how denialists don't even acknowledge that.

It's not bizarre at all. This is the nature of denialism. It's what one would expect from a denier.  To quote:
"In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality, as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth."

 

I've never actually had any discussion about climate with a 'climate change denier'. I assume such a person would either be very ignorant of the history of past climate changes on our planet, and/or would have their life savings placed in coal and oil shares.

 

Although I'm very skeptical that small increases in very small levels of CO2 have any significant effect on climate, I'm very much aware of environmental pollution and degradation. There are environmental problems with oil spills, contamination of underground water from fracking, destruction of the landscape from open cut mining, whether mining of coal, iron ore, or lithium for batteries.

 

There are also health problems due to pollution from cheap and obsolete coal-fired power stations, petrol-driven vehicles with inadequate emission controls, and agricultural burn-off which produces particulate carbon which can be damaging to lungs. At present, Bangkok has a high degree of particulate carbon. Such pollution can be transported by winds across countries. Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant.

 

The economic drive towards renewables, especially solar power and electric vehicles, is very sensible. I would like to see a situation in the future where all new houses would have a flat roof, sloping towards the sun, completely covered with solar panels, and a small room in the house for battery storage with cheap and durable batteries. The electric car, with similarly cheap and durable batteries, could be recharged every night from the battery storage in the house.

 

As technology advances, the electric cars could also be painted with a 'solar paint' which acts like a solar panel, but with less efficiency, so the car batteries are continually being slowly charged whenever the car is in the sun, whether driving or parked.

 

Now this is all fine. The problem is, extreme weather events such as cyclones, heat waves, floods and droughts, which have always occurred in the past, regardless of human emissions of CO2, and will continue to occur in the future, regardless of CO2 levels.

 

In Australia at present, we are experiencing some 'record' heat waves. What does that mean? It means we are experiencing heat levels which are very similar to record heat waves in the recent past which were recorded with thermometers, but are currently slightly higher. This is not surprising, because we are in a warming phase. The previous warming phase was around a thousand years ago, the MWP. We didn't have thermometers then, and temperature records rely on less accurate proxy methods such as ice cores, tree rings, sediment analysis, and so on.

 

During the past 2,000 years there could have been a significant number of years in Australia that were hotter than present. We simply don't know. The science is definitely not settled.

[bristolboy]

2 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

 

 

Now this is all fine. The problem is, extreme weather events such as cyclones, heat waves, floods and droughts, which have always occurred in the past, regardless of human emissions of CO2, and will continue to occur in the future, regardless of CO2 levels.

 

In Australia at present, we are experiencing some 'record' heat waves. What does that mean? It means we are experiencing heat levels which are very similar to record heat waves in the recent past which were recorded with thermometers, but are currently slightly higher. This is not surprising, because we are in a warming phase. The previous warming phase was around a thousand years ago, the MWP. We didn't have thermometers then, and temperature records rely on less accurate proxy methods such as ice cores, tree rings, sediment analysis, and so on.

 

During the past 2,000 years there could have been a significant number of years in Australia that were hotter than present. We simply don't know. The science is definitely not settled.

It's all about the increase in rate of change not the fact of change itself.

[Nyezhov]

12 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

The best-selling book on the climate issue is even titled Capitalism vs the Climate, by Naomi Klein, a woman who also penned a screed called Disaster Capitalism and is as close to a Marxist as you can get.

Dont forget the climate change is a social justice issue too, but it is blatantly anticapitalist to boot:

http://www.cpusa.org/interact_cpusa/climate-change-is-a-social-issue/

 

Quoting:

"However, in saying that climate change is driven by human activity, we must be clear: capitalism itself is the primary culprit. Capitalist production depends upon a continuous commodification of the environment to sustain its growth; a continuous and unsustainable harvesting of resources in the never-ending quest for profit.  Under capitalism, a tiny minority of wealthy shareholders profit from the consumption of entire ecosystems, while the planet and the vast majority of its living inhabitants suffer the consequences.  Because capitalism and the capitalist class stand poised against the earth itself, a truly ecological and sustainable stance must by necessity be anti-capitalist in nature."

 

The true nature of the anti capitalist "Green" movement is best illustrated by their refusal to accept nuclear power. Settled science.

[RickBradford]

Quote

Or are all these private enterprises that are dramatically reducing the costs of renewable energy not capitalistic? So are you claiming that these business are really Marxists?  I guess this is not so surprising coming from a right-wing Luddite.

 

If you think that capitalism can change the climate "crisis", fine. So do I, by the way.

 

I would therefore urge you to oppose all those Green/Left groups that demand that the capitalist system be corralled into supporting unsustainable regulations and targets. Their stated aims, in many cases, are driven by a hatred of capitalism, not to solve any climate "crisis."

 

And don't throw in playground slurs like "right-wing" or "Luddite". You know nothing about me, so silly comments like that just make you look petty and stupid.

[Chippy151]

3 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

I've never actually had any discussion about climate with a 'climate change denier'. I assume such a person would either be very ignorant of the history of past climate changes on our planet, and/or would have their life savings placed in coal and oil shares.

I agree.

American politicians who are climate change deniers really can't be that clueless.

They have their "special interests" to consider.

[bristolboy]

Just now, RickBradford said:

If you think that capitalism can change the climate "crisis", fine. So do I, by the way.

 

I would therefore urge you to oppose all those Green/Left groups that demand that the capitalist system be corralled into supporting unsustainable regulations and targets. Their stated aims, in many cases, are driven by a hatred of capitalism, not to solve any climate "crisis."

 

And don't throw in playground slurs like "right-wing" or "Luddite". You know nothing about me, so silly comments like that just make you look petty and stupid.

You are truly a master doublethinker. On the one hand you crow about how the Climate initiatives are being ignored and on the other you complain about unsustatainable regulations and targets. Of course, what's happening is that the extraordinary progress in renewable energy has been crushing to all those naysayers  like yourself who had dismissed these efforts as unrealistic and utopian. 

And you're not just a doublethinker but also an obsessive about Marxism and Socialsim. Who cares what Socialists and Marxists contend? Are the entrepeneurs and scientists creating these technologies secretly beholden to Karl Marx? You think the billions of people exposed to harmful pollution are going to regard its disappearance as a triumph of Marxism?

[bristolboy]

8 minutes ago, Chippy151 said:

I agree.

American politicians who are climate change deniers really can't be that clueless.

They have their "special interests" to consider.

There is a well documented history of funding support coming from the Koch brothers, Exxon and similar parties. In fact, before the Heartland Institute took on climate change, it was being paid by the tobacco industry to oppose the research that showed the harm of second hand smoke. Sleazy people.