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Let's say just for the sake of argument that AGW is real

I agree, we don't need to mitigate it, but I was trying to play the game.

It simply means the regions closer to the equator will become hotter, and the regions nearing the poles will become mare habitable. Siberia, Alaska, etc. could become booming population centers. Beachfront property will be several feet higher. So what? populations naturally move anyway.
I don't care if a given population moves or dies. I say let evolution take them out if that's what's in store.

IMO allow everything, and let mother nature's bad ideas be eaten by her good ones.
 
Well bull, why don't you answer your own question? What if the temp is going to rise 6 degrees by 2100?

What should we do?

Nothing at all. The growing season just gets longer and some areas will become more desirable and others less desirable, but ultimately, we'd ease into it without really noticing any difference. And that's provided that worst-case 6 degree rise that is predicted turns out to be real..... Given the "pause" in global warming over the last 15 yeas, I don't think we'll see anything approaching a six degree increase. In fact. I'm guessing that within ten years, it will be so evident that "AGW" isn't a real threat that the enviro-whackos will have moved on to some other serious problem.... acid rain... holes in the ozone... next ice age..... global warming..... anthropogenic climate change......

We can only guess what the next one will be. Maybe anthropogenic earthquakes. They're already gearing up for that with studies linking fracking to earthquakes.
 
We can only guess what the next one will be. Maybe anthropogenic earthquakes. They're already gearing up for that with studies linking fracking to earthquakes.

I'm not sure what the next eco panic will be (though oceanic acidification seems to be the one waiting in the wings) but rest assured there will always be one and you will always be guilty and always have to pay ... no matter what. I always thought that death and taxes were the only constants . I think we can add environmental panics to that list now too ! :(
 
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What if the Asians wont sign up and threaten to call in thier financial tab if anyone tries to force them to ?

They won't do that. They need our economy to be healthy so we can buy their cheap plastic slave labor crap.
 
They won't do that. They need our economy to be healthy so we can buy their cheap plastic slave labor crap.

Oh yes they will because its they who will now set the agenda in future not us . They view this whole thing as a Western ploy against thier expansion and subsequent sequestration of Western market share so good luck selling them that green turkey :(

It aint gonna happen coz we need them more than they need us right now. The worst part for us is .... they know it !
 
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Nothing at all. The growing season just gets longer and some areas will become more desirable and others less desirable, but ultimately, we'd ease into it without really noticing any difference. And that's provided that worst-case 6 degree rise that is predicted turns out to be real..... Given the "pause" in global warming over the last 15 yeas, I don't think we'll see anything approaching a six degree increase. In fact. I'm guessing that within ten years, it will be so evident that "AGW" isn't a real threat that the enviro-whackos will have moved on to some other serious problem.... acid rain... holes in the ozone... next ice age..... global warming..... anthropogenic climate change......

We can only guess what the next one will be. Maybe anthropogenic earthquakes. They're already gearing up for that with studies linking fracking to earthquakes.

Ah. So your question was rhetorical and basically just a platform for your own misguided thoughts. Any degree of warming is just peachy for you, because you choose to ignore the ramifications.

I should have listened to Surveyor....
 
I agree completely. If we could make changes that had no impact on us economically, it would be a ridiculously easy decision to go ahead and make those changes even if there was just a slight possibility that AGW was real and catastrophic. But the fact of the matter is that if we are to unilaterally make changes that would significantly reduce Co2 emissions the economic impact would be very high. So we carefully have to evaluate the risk/reward before taking action. Without any certainty that there would be dire ecologic consequences at all, it can be very hard to persuade people to take or tolerate actions that would create dire economic consequences in hopes that it would preclude the problem. More so if it's unilateral and wouldn't have a significant impact on the problem.

It's unrealistic to expect their to be no impact, all I'm saying is that when looking into problems like these is to try to focus on the fewest numbers of sources, then weed out those with the highest costs, what your left with might be 10-20% of the sources of the problem that emit 60-80% of the CO2.


(though not an example of the 80-20 rule)....

For example, there are 5.6 million semi-trailer (18 wheeler) trucks in the US. Comparatively there are 254 million cars. Trucks average 100,000 miles per year, while cars average 15,000. The average car gets 25mpg, the average truck is closer to 8mpg (your welcome to correct me on the former, but I think even if I'm off, the premise of what I'm writing will still be true).

Now do the math....

5.6 million semi's use 70 billion gallons of fuel annually

254 million cars use 152 billion gallons of fuel

Thus semi's make up 2% of the vehicles on the road, but use almost 1/2 the fuel.

If I was responsible for spending taxpayer money for "stimulus", I would have take the 700 billion (or whatever it was) and gave grants (200 billion?) to colleges nation wide to research technologies to bring the MPG on trucks by say...20-30%, allowing the discoveries to be sold by the colleges to reinvest in capital expenditures and some to go to grants to pay tuition.

I would give a large portion of the money to retrofit the road going fleet with aerodynamic bolt-ons (like the side skirts we're seeing now that save 5-7% in fuel) with, perhaps a portion of the costs to be born by the truck owners. Super single tires (that save 5%) and other reasonably inexpensive technologies to bring the current fleet up to 10% or more thus seeing a return on investment within the first few years.

This would create jobs here in the US.

Buying in massive bulk would keep costs on retrofits low.

The technologies discovered would, by mandate, only be available to US companies (at least at first).

This would significantly decrease fuel usage nation wide helping to decrease demand and drive fuel costs down

Drive the cost of shipping down

Given that 99% of the stuff around your desk was, at one point shipped by semi truck, then this would also decrease the cost of anything shipped.

And at the end of this rainbow of chocolaty goodness, decrease emissions by increasing efficiency...

Thus the initial investment would come back in the form of lower prices on goods and gas, and something that would eventually propagate around the world.

I dunno, just a thought :mrgreen:
 
They won't do that. They need our economy to be healthy so we can buy their cheap plastic slave labor crap.

With all due respect, seems a little shortsighted to make such an assumption. World governments of any kind are a bad, it allows the consolidation of power into even fewer hands. I'm giving you a big thumbs down on that idea and implore you to reconsider espousing anything like that in the future.
 
With all due respect, seems a little shortsighted to make such an assumption. World governments of any kind are a bad, it allows the consolidation of power into even fewer hands. I'm giving you a big thumbs down on that idea and implore you to reconsider espousing anything like that in the future.

Theres a misguided assumption here too that somehow the West is still in a position to call the shots viz China et al and we can transpose our green sensibilities onto them.

We cant and never will :(
 
It's unrealistic to expect their to be no impact, all I'm saying is that when looking into problems like these is to try to focus on the fewest numbers of sources, then weed out those with the highest costs, what your left with might be 10-20% of the sources of the problem that emit 60-80% of the CO2.


(though not an example of the 80-20 rule)....

For example, there are 5.6 million semi-trailer (18 wheeler) trucks in the US. Comparatively there are 254 million cars. Trucks average 100,000 miles per year, while cars average 15,000. The average car gets 25mpg, the average truck is closer to 8mpg (your welcome to correct me on the former, but I think even if I'm off, the premise of what I'm writing will still be true).

Now do the math....

5.6 million semi's use 70 billion gallons of fuel annually

254 million cars use 152 billion gallons of fuel

Thus semi's make up 2% of the vehicles on the road, but use almost 1/2 the fuel.

If I was responsible for spending taxpayer money for "stimulus", I would have take the 700 billion (or whatever it was) and gave grants (200 billion?) to colleges nation wide to research technologies to bring the MPG on trucks by say...20-30%, allowing the discoveries to be sold by the colleges to reinvest in capital expenditures and some to go to grants to pay tuition.

I would give a large portion of the money to retrofit the road going fleet with aerodynamic bolt-ons (like the side skirts we're seeing now that save 5-7% in fuel) with, perhaps a portion of the costs to be born by the truck owners. Super single tires (that save 5%) and other reasonably inexpensive technologies to bring the current fleet up to 10% or more thus seeing a return on investment within the first few years.

This would create jobs here in the US.

Buying in massive bulk would keep costs on retrofits low.

The technologies discovered would, by mandate, only be available to US companies (at least at first).

This would significantly decrease fuel usage nation wide helping to decrease demand and drive fuel costs down

Drive the cost of shipping down

Given that 99% of the stuff around your desk was, at one point shipped by semi truck, then this would also decrease the cost of anything shipped.

And at the end of this rainbow of chocolaty goodness, decrease emissions by increasing efficiency...

Thus the initial investment would come back in the form of lower prices on goods and gas, and something that would eventually propagate around the world.

I dunno, just a thought :mrgreen:

It's a good thought. I'm skeptical, however, that you would have thought of something the trucking industry has not thought of, though. The difference between profit and loss for them is often fuel costs, so I'm pretty confident they'd be taking a harder look at it than anyone else. Having spent a lot of time doing streamlining projects for one of the biggest corporations in the world, I feel most people would be absolutely stunned if they knew just how much effort gets put into saving fractions of cents.

I agree with your overall perspective that these kinds of things would be good and even profitable. I only have concerns that there are significant gains readily available and simply not being used.
 
Ah. So your question was rhetorical and basically just a platform for your own misguided thoughts. Any degree of warming is just peachy for you, because you choose to ignore the ramifications.

I should have listened to Surveyor....

Wrong again. That's my take on it. I'm just wondering what YOUR take on it is. Let's see how YOU think we can stop AGW without crippling our economy - or whether you think crippling our economy is a good tradeoff. No, it wasn't rhetorical. I'd like to know what YOU think we should force the country to do and like I said right up front, we can talk about how practical they are.

If we can have cleaner air, cleaner water, less use of fossil fuels and life goes on peachy keen as always with plenty of energy at reasonable costs to keep sustaining our way of life, I'm all for it. I'm just trying to figure out how that could happen. Maybe you can help explain it?
 
To quote Alvin Lee, from Ten Years After, "tax the rich, feed the poor, 'til there are no rich no more". AGW is like many other leftist causes - a manufactured vision of impending doom. The "solution" is always to let "them" implement control, always including income redistribution, and place a gov't (usually global) in charge to "make needed changes".

Kudos for the first non-Beatles record I bought. :D
 
How are you going to place a carbon tax on Asia?
The only I can see is an environmental tariff - but I've already talked about and believe in that in relation to pollution, not CO2.
 
Now do the math....

5.6 million semi's use 70 billion gallons of fuel annually

254 million cars use 152 billion gallons of fuel

Thus semi's make up just over 2% of the vehicles on the road, but use almost 1/2 almost 32% of the fuel.
Fixed it for you ...

And it's still not quite right because 31.8% of US fuels are Diesel as compared to gas, which also includes train use. I looked and couldn't find data that showed the difference between trains, trucks, and farm equipment etc.

Gasoline Consumed: 8,779,000 barrels per day
Diesel Fuel Consumed: 4,099,000 barrels per day

http://energy.typepad.com/the-energy-blog/2010/01/the-history-of-us-oil-consumption.html
 
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Theres a couple of major problems with all of that massive cost . What if we are wrong it doesnt work ? What are we still trying to fix now the warming has stopped ? One has to ask is this all about fighting climate change or simply a war against human aspiration and profit ?

Given the current obervations vs modelled predictions we should simply carry on 'as is'... in my opinion. Obviously leaner and cleaner options for current power generation should be implemented when it is economically feasible to do so but not before .

Oh, I see, you wanted an answer based on a different set of assumptions than those posed by the question.
 
I don't care if a given population moves or dies. I say let evolution take them out if that's what's in store.

IMO allow everything, and let mother nature's bad ideas be eaten by her good ones.

Huh...My survival instincts are telling me...with an attitude like that...your ideas are poison...
 
Fixed it for you ...

And it's still not quite right because 31.8% of US fuels are Diesel as compared to gas, which also includes train use. I looked and couldn't find data that showed the difference between trains, trucks, and farm equipment etc.

Gasoline Consumed: 8,779,000 barrels per day
Diesel Fuel Consumed: 4,099,000 barrels per day

The history of US Oil consumption. - The Energy Blog

Thanks for the correction.
 
Huh...My survival instincts are telling me...with an attitude like that...your ideas are poison...

Not nearly as toxic as your ideas about one world government would be if we allowed the envirofascist eco loonies to take over the asylum :shock:
 
Not nearly as toxic as your ideas about one world government would be if we allowed the envirofascist eco loonies to take over the asylum :shock:

My ideas about a one world government....care to enlighten as to what those consist of? as apparently you've mastered the art of mind-reading....

Do you people ever listen to yourselves? Or read your own posts?
 
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