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No. Science is true whether you believe it or not. Take for instance someone who believes the world is flat. We don't think of that as their opinion, we know they are wrong. Climate change has roughly the same percentage of scientist who believe in it as percentage of scientist who believe the world is round.
Climate change is really not that complicated. Humans burn fossil fuels, releasing greenhouse gases, trapping the sun's heat, making the Earth hotter.
These scientists know what they're doing. It's their job.
And yet, somewhere out there is reality.
The Greenhouse Effect is either working on a planetary scale or it isn't.
We're either increasing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or we're not.
The details are fantastically complex, but the basic questions are pretty straightforward. And the answers are clear.
Not really...
Saying 'Its a basic question' means nothing....
'Does God exist?'... this is a basic question but yet one which is impossible to answer.
Economics is a widespread, studied subject but yet there are 1000's of different opinions and approaches regarding its application
I can teach anyone how to play chess in 40 mins but the game takes a lifetime to master....
You are grossly underestimating the compexity of the subject I'm afraid and thus cannot grasp why there are no 'simple answers'...
Climate change is really not that complicated.
LOL
These scientists know what they're doing. It's their job.
Yes and politicians know what theyre doing. Its their job.... Oh wait hold on
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Climate change is really not that complicated.LOL
These scientists know what they're doing. It's their job.Yes and politicians know what theyre doing. Its their job.... Oh wait hold on
1." LOL" fails to rebut my argument. Please give me a valid reson why I am incorrect.
2. Are you saying that because some people are incompetent at their job, all people ae incompetent at their job? That's like saying since Uranium is radioactive, iron must be as well. Also, do you really believe 97% of politicians are incompetent?| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
2. Are you saying that because some people are incompetent at their job, all people ae incompetent at their job? That's like saying since Uranium is radioactive, iron must be as well. Also, do you really believe 97% of politicians are incompetent?
and keep in mind that their actual job may not be what you think their job is.
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And yet, somewhere out there is reality.
The Greenhouse Effect is either working on a planetary scale or it isn't.
We're either increasing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or we're not.
The details are fantastically complex, but the basic questions are pretty straightforward. And the answers are clear.
Not really...
Saying 'Its a basic question' means nothing....
'Does God exist?'... this is a basic question but yet one which is impossible to answer.
We can't say god exists because there is no convincing evidence god exists. We can't say god does not exist because it is impossible to prove a negative.
We have a lot of evidence for climate change. Your analogy does not hold.
Economics is a widespread, studied subject but yet there are 1000's of different opinions and approaches regarding its application
There is a lot of variety of opinion on how the economy works, but the basic questions are still simple. Do things have value? Does that value change with circumstance? Do people make decisions based on information?
Like with climate, the 'how's of economics are complex and contradictory. But we all agree there is something we call the economy.
I can teach anyone how to play chess in 40 mins but the game takes a lifetime to master....
It doesn't take a master to play the game. It doesn't take a scientist to understand that human activity affects the climate.
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Fact 1: Facts exist
Blatant liberal bias.
I read this entire thread over the last two days (dear god, why?) and the only thing I don't understand is how climate change deniers are still a thing when they are so bad at it! Seriously, if I ever actually met a denier, I would just show them this thread.
What gets me is that there is NO point to the conspiracy. There is no conceivable reason for the conspiracy to exist. "yes! you just want a million in funding for a free trip to the arctic! All the.. white.. open.. spaces. And time spent crammed 57 people into an igloo. And fun...digging holes..."
No... there really are things other than just opinions.
They're called facts. For example;
Fact 1: Facts exist
Not really....
Whenever I come across people who adopt this approach to matters such as this, I always say..
Stop whatever it is that you are doing NOW. You have all the answers.... You must write a book. In your case the title would be something like....."The 100% facts about Global Warming and the 100% foolproof best solution for mankind"
If youre correct then you will become a global best seller and very rich in a short space of time.... the scientific community will be clamouring for your approval!! Even if you dont care about the money, surely the kudos and imminent Nobel Prize will be worth it?!
The fact is that actually although humans in all probability have/are influencing the climate..... the real question is,does it matter in the long term? In all high probability no.... not remotely.
The climate has been orders of magnitude more extreme than it is now and no damage was done whatsoever. Global extinction events have come and gone several times and yet the Earth is still ticking over nicely.
Even if human beings unleashed full MAD on ourselves... the Earth would be just fine in the long run. Of course we'd all be dead but then thats the point isn't it.... human beings have an infinitely small chance of doing any real damage to the planet.
Here's a fact... I will keep on checking back with you to see how that book is coming on. I wonder if you'll end up getting round to writing it.... after all an 'expert' like yourself would be mad not to right? Even though no-one on the planet does have the right answer, you apperently do right?? Get writing!!! :)))
I think there are most definitely a couple of people on here claiming (perhaps not explicitly) to have all the answers actually!
Taking an additional viewpoint, you could look at the situation from an evolutionary perspective..... human beings through natural selection and evolution have found themselves in this position... ergo the situation regarding 'Climate Change' is by default an entirely natural one and not something to be concerned about. And as all things eventually are regarding this aspect, it will be resolved by 'nature' itself.
A possible/likely solution....Human beings will wipe ourselves out or massively deplete our numbers so as to no longer be able to affect the climate.
With our rapidly increasing population combined with decreasing resources and heightened intra-species tensions... the above could easily happen in the next 100-200 years.... possibly sooner!
The joys of philosophy!!
Mother nature ALWAYS balances the books..... ALWAYS
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With our rapidly increasing population combined with decreasing resources and heightened intra-species tensions... the above could easily happen in the next 100-200 years.... possibly sooner!
You realize that strategies for combating climate change also address aspects of these political issues, don't you? Diversifying sources of energy and increasing efficiency for some of the most valuable limited resources on the planet. And that's before factoring in the preservation of clean water and arable land.
What you are saying is along the lines of "We have two really big problems that might kill us, so we should just ignore both."
I think there are most definitely a couple of people on here claiming (perhaps not explicitly) to have all the answers actually!
Taking an additional viewpoint, you could look at the situation from an evolutionary perspective..... human beings through natural selection and evolution have found themselves in this position... ergo the situation regarding 'Climate Change' is by default an entirely natural one and not something to be concerned about. And as all things eventually are regarding this aspect, it will be resolved by 'nature' itself.
A possible/likely solution....Human beings will wipe ourselves out or massively deplete our numbers so as to no longer be able to affect the climate.
With our rapidly increasing population combined with decreasing resources and heightened intra-species tensions... the above could easily happen in the next 100-200 years.... possibly sooner!
The joys of philosophy!!
Mother nature ALWAYS balances the books..... ALWAYS
I moved the bolded portion, because I wanted to address this specifically.
World population is not rapidly increasing. The world population in one sense is already at a stasis. The current "growth" is not from the addition of more children, but rather longer life spans. We reached "peak children" in 1966, in the world as a portion of world population (38%). Right now, children represent only 26% of the world's population. You see similar dates when looking at the highest and lowest growth rates over the past 60 years also. The highest world population growth was in the mid 60's, at 2.1%, and we are currently at the slowest growth ever recorded at 1.1%. If the trend were to follow best fit line (based on all the years from 1951 to now), we'll hit 0% growth in 2103, and then go into world wide decline.
Both China and the US are below replacement rates for birth rates. India is above replacement rate, but at 2.4, it isn't very high above and is trending down. That accounts for 1/3 of the world's population (remember, the US is the 3rd most populous nation on Earth).
The only places with high birth rates are in Africa and don't actually represent a massive portion of the world population. They're also the places with the highest infant mortality rates, often have significant internal strife (like Somalia) and receive some of the worst health care in the world.
If the world had continued at just 1980's levels of population growth, we'd be over 10 billion people on the planet right now. Due to the slowing in growth, that it is now predicted to happen in 2100 (note, that's also when growth is predicted to stop happening, coincidentally). Most of the growth is going to come from extended life expectancies around the world. People will continue to live longer, making the world population older. Eventually that will level off as the children of today age into older demographics, but the number of children remains constant.
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I read this entire thread over the last two days (dear god, why?) and the only thing I don't understand is how climate change deniers are still a thing when they are so bad at it! Seriously, if I ever actually met a denier, I would just show them this thread.
Quark Blast, don't you have anything better to do than constantly scream the same tired old "WE'RE ALL DOOMED" tripe? I'm not even sure what your goal is. Convince us we can't do anything, so might as well cut down the forests and pollute the water and air, because why bother? It's not worth fighting for? Or are you just so personally offended at any sort of optimism that it's your mission to try and make everyone as miserable as you?
You cherrypick, you always go with the worst-case scenario, and in doing so you become hypocritical. At one point you say that there's no point in trying to chart climate change because the models are too complicated, and next you claim that if we don't immediately stop producing CO2 NOW, we're all dead. If climate change is too complicated to map out, then how do you know its too late to do anything?
Or how you constantly accused CB of not reading your links just because he doesn't agree with you, and claim he's at fault, blasting him for his supposed ignorance. Once it was proven that you were at fault, you immediately try to brush it aside and claim it was a simple honest little mistake that anyone could make, and why do we care?
In short, what are you adding to the conversation? Why are you here? What do you get out of trying to convince us there's no hope?
I got it wrong.
I'm glad you admit that. Some of us have recognized that for a long time now.
What? Cherry-picking and out-of-context quotation may not be the best way to establish truth? Some of us have recognized that for a long time as well, which is part of what helped establish the paragraph above.
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They're at 55% renewable generation now and expect to get to 90% when the current round of construction ends in a couple years. After that they're going to look at the infrastructure changes needed to get to 100% renewable. All while keeping rates steady and making a tidy profit.
Claims that we will do nothing to stop global warming because of the cost are simply out-dated. We will stop global warming because continuing with current fossil fuel based power generation would cost MORE than switching to renewable power.
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The deciders, being rich and powerful (and human and selfish), will do for climate change exactly what they've done for every other endeavor where there is money to be made and power to be had.
They will maximize their short term profits.
I agree.
That's why fossil fuel power is now being replaced by cheaper renewable power.
As with that utility in Iowa... wind power is so much cheaper that they can stop raising their cost through 2030, build out a completely new power plant infrastructure, and still make more money than they would have with fossil fuels.
They will maximize their short term profits... and that is what will stop global warming.
My accusation against CB is rather obvious. He claims, again and again, that I misunderstand the sources I cite. Yet not once does he quote intelligently from said citations to show that my understanding is in error. He simply asserts I'm wrong and merely alludes to the thing I've cited.
When you quote a passage and then 'explain' it as meaning something completely at odds with its content I don't need to cite anything else... anyone can read it and see that it does not say what you claim it does.
Just as you insisted for weeks that this link and that link and the other link backed up your claim that we had already emitted so much CO2 that we would hit 2.5C warming even if we stopped today...
NONE of them actually said that.
Indeed, as I showed in the prior post (linked above)... your own 'sources' have repeatedly contradicted your position. All of those supposed 2.5C warming from past emissions links actually contradicted that position. Just as your claim that climate models cannot predict how global warming will progress... was 'sourced' to a study showing how global warming will impact regional weather patterns.
Admit it... you're doing this on purpose. Some kind of weird performance art?
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You cherrypick, you always go with the worst-case scenario, and in doing so you become hypocritical. At one point you say that there's no point in trying to chart climate change because the models are too complicated, and next you claim that if we don't immediately stop producing CO2 NOW, we're all dead. If climate change is too complicated to map out, then how do you know its too late to do anything?Easy. It's too complicated because that is the nature of complex dynamic systems. Look up Chaos Theory, Complexity, or Chaoplexity. You'll see.
Except that... no. That's not what "chaos theory," "complexity," "chaoplexity," or any of the rest of the terms you don't understand but repeatedly cite mean.
A chaotic system has a formal definition, which has even been cited upthread. It's a dynamic system that displays sensitivity to initial conditions, in that the difference between two similar initial states may diverge to an arbitrarily large amount. ; given a sufficiently large time, the inevitable errors and approximations in the initial conditions can (but not necessarily will) result in a lessened predictive accuracy.
It's a very powerful mathematical theory, but (like many mathematical theories) doesn't mean much applied to small amounts of time. And by "small," we could be dealing with periods of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, or even the expected lifetime of the universe -- after all, even that's "small" compared to infinity.
The best understood and most well-known example of a chaotic system shows exactly how fatuous your argument is. The N-body problem -- predict the motion of N individual celestial objects -- is well understood to be chaotic even for N = 3. However, NASA has no problem predicting the motions of the individual planets for time scales that are by human standards extremely long. Yes, we may not know where Venus will be in its orbit ten trillion years from now. The math may diverge. But we also believe, for other reasons, that Venus itself will no longer exist. The fact that the N-body problem is chaotic does not cause a problem for making predictions of celestial events. Would you like to know about the solar eclipse that will happen on August 28, 2994? It's due to be rather short (1m 31s) and will probably not be particularly convenient to see unless you live southwest of Australia. It will probably be much more convenient to wait for the total eclipse on 26 April, 3000 because you can see it well from Suriname or from Northern Africa.
Remember -- this is important -- eclipse prediction is chaotic as it involves three bodies : the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. And yet we can predict eclipses nearly 1000 years out to the tenth of a second and to within a single degree of latitude and longitude. (Actually, we can do a lot better than that, but NASA doesn't bother to publish all the digits in their predictions.) A thousand years is roughly thirty billion seconds, so we can predict these events to an accuracy of roughly 0.00000003%.
Or, in other words, the idea that a chaotic system can't be predicted over finite lengths of time is patent nonsense. But that's your argument, which suggests that when CB "claims, again and again, that I misunderstand the sources I cite," that he's absolutely correct.
I'd argue, in fact, that it doesn't merely suggest it, but proves it. You have no idea what you are posting about.
(Oh, by the way, there will also be a total solar eclipse on August 24, 5851. The uncertainties start to pile up, though, Which makes sense, because it's a chaotic system, after all.)
They're at 55% renewable generation now and expect to get to 90% when the current round of construction ends in a couple years. After that they're going to look at the infrastructure changes needed to get to 100% renewable. All while keeping rates steady and making a tidy profit.
Claims that we will do nothing to stop global warming because of the cost are simply out-dated. We will stop global warming because continuing with current fossil fuel based power generation would cost MORE than switching to renewable power.
The other day I was listening to a report about the cultural importance of the coal industry in the Appalachian coal country. The interviewees expressed a universal opinion that coal mining was so culturally important on a local level that their children would just never, ever stop mining coal. Living in coastal New England, I couldn't help but think of all the whaling museums we have here.
Whaling was and still is culturally important to us, but we don't do it because whale oil isn't a viable lighting source anymore. I think in 50 to 100 years we'll have coal mining museums throughout the Appalachians, but coal mining won't be how anyone earns a living at that point. Geological studies will get the same respect that Oceanological studies do here in coastal New England right now.
My point has something to do with the economic replacement of combustibles with renewable energy sources, but I still heat my house with a wood stove, so I guess I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I'm just saying we'll have to wait 50 to 100 years before people stop arguing about global warming for the sake of politics, I don't know.
Anyone ever read the book Rocket Boys, or see the movie version, called October Sky?
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...They're at 55% renewable generation now and expect to get to 90% when the current round of construction ends in a couple years. After that they're going to look at the infrastructure changes needed to get to 100% renewable. All while keeping rates steady and making a tidy profit.
Claims that we will do nothing to stop global warming because of the cost are simply out-dated. We will stop global warming because continuing with current fossil fuel based power generation would cost MORE than switching to renewable power.
The other day I was listening to a report about the cultural importance of the coal industry in the Appalachian coal country. The interviewees expressed a universal opinion that coal mining was so culturally important on a local level that their children would just never, ever stop mining coal. Living in coastal New England, I couldn't help but think of all the whaling museums we have here.
Whaling was and still is culturally important to us, but we don't do it because whale oil isn't a viable lighting source anymore. I think in 50 to 100 years we'll have coal mining museums throughout the Appalachians, but coal mining won't be how anyone earns a living at that point. Geological studies will get the same respect that Oceanological studies do here in coastal New England right now.
My point has something to do with the economic replacement of combustibles with renewable energy sources, but I still heat my house with a wood stove, so I guess I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I'm just saying we'll have to wait 50 to 100 years before people stop arguing about global warming for the sake of politics, I don't know.
Anyone ever read the book Rocket Boys, or see the movie
As part of my previous job, I regularly had to travel to areas that were primarily dead Appalachian coal mining towns. Hearing the locals simultaneously complain about work in the coal mines dying up in the 80s and blaming the Obama era regulations, which never went into effect, for it was a truly eye opening and oft maddening experience in cognitive dissonance.
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Coal mining as a cultural way of life is essentially already dead and has been for years. Mountaintop removal and mechanization killed it, even before the fracking boom killed the industry.
US Solar now employees more than twice as many as coal
...and less than a third of those coal jobs are mining positions.
So, not quite 'dead' yet, but coal mining jobs started dying off 40 years ago and the industry as a whole has been in a death spiral for the past decade.
In ten years there will be only a few coal power plants left, natural gas will be where coal is currently, and oil will be just at the start of its collapse (like natural gas is currently).
As part of my previous job, I regularly had to travel to areas that were primarily dead Appalachian coal mining towns. Hearing the locals simultaneously complain about work in the coal mines dying up in the 80s and blaming the Obama era regulations, which never went into effect, for it was a truly eye opening and oft maddening experience in cognitive dissonance.
Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to take that. I've grown increasingly infuriated that a large segment of the population have become so self-delusional that they are drowning themselves and taking the rest of us down with them.
@Orfamay Quest You talk about chaotic systems.
No, you talk about chaotic systems. Here's a recent quote: "Look up Chaos Theory." So I did.
Not that I actually needed to, since, as it happens, I've not only taken classes in chaos theory, but I've taught them. But it was helpful to dig up some of the more accessible references on the Web.
The global climate is a COMPLEX dynamic system. Different animal entirely.
Really? Then perhaps you would enlighten us as to your idiosyncratic notion as to what the difference is. i'm not going to claim that the two concepts are synonymous, but I really don't think that you understand the extremely subtle and not very relevant differences. I'll give you a hand: here's an appropriate Wikipedia article for a starting point.
There's no useful definition of complex system that you can produce that excludes the long-term solution of multiple differential equations like the N-body problem. Which, of course, makes historical sense, since complex systems theory in many regards arose out of 19th and 20th century attempts to deal with the complexity of celestial mechanics.
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Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to take that. I've grown increasingly infuriated that a large segment of the population have become so self-delusional that they are drowning themselves and taking the rest of us down with them.
Make sure you shake your fist at them and tell the rural impovrished to "check their privilege" while talking down to them. I've heard they love that.
Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to take that. I've grown increasingly infuriated that a large segment of the population have become so self-delusional that they are drowning themselves and taking the rest of us down with them.Make sure you shake your fist at them and tell the rural impovrished to "check their privilege" while talking down to them. I've heard they love that.
<shrug> I've heard ER physicians discuss motorcycling without a helmet. I've heard epidemiologists discuss home misuse of antibiotics. I've heard oncologists discuss teen smoking. In fact, I read long ago a heartbreaking case study (in, IIRC, an ethics journal) by a surgeon who had reattached all four fingers on a man's primary hand, only to have the man ask a friend to smuggle a pack of cigarettes into his hospital room, and as a result, lose all of the reattached fingers to gangrene.
Compared to what has been said, CBDunkerson's statement almost qualifies as praise for the coal-enamored segment of the population.
A person may not like being told that they're making a stupid and ultimately self-harmful choice. That doesn't, however, mean that the choice they're making isn't stupid and ultimately self-harmful.
What a stupid idea. "Machines should only do what humans cannot."
Shrug. Machines already do only what humans cannot. Humans cannot work 24/7. I've never seen a factory that turned off the alpha shift of robots, rolled them into storage, and cycled in the beta shift.
Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to take that. I've grown increasingly infuriated that a large segment of the population have become so self-delusional that they are drowning themselves and taking the rest of us down with them.Make sure you shake your fist at them and tell the rural impovrished to "check their privilege" while talking down to them. I've heard they love that.
Is there a polite way to tell people that they're factually wrong? Because there is no other way to have a conversation with someone about reality unless they enter into reality.
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<shrug> I've heard ER physicians discuss motorcycling without a helmet. I've heard epidemiologists discuss home misuse of antibiotics. I've heard oncologists discuss teen smoking. In fact, I read long ago a heartbreaking case study (in, IIRC, an ethics journal) by a surgeon who had reattached all four fingers on a man's primary hand, only to have the man ask a friend to smuggle a pack of cigarettes into his hospital room, and as a result, lose all of the reattached fingers to gangrene.
Compared to what has been said, CBDunkerson's statement almost qualifies as praise for the coal-enamored segment of the population.
A person may not like being told that they're making a stupid and ultimately self-harmful choice. That doesn't, however, mean that the choice they're making isn't stupid and ultimately self-harmful.
Getting mad at people for not putting aside very present, manifest problems (losing their house / not being able to feed their kids) in lieu of far-off, theoretical problems (global warming) is naive in the extreme. The solution to convincing people is to align their interests with your interests in a tangible way. Want to get Appalachia on board with green technology? Build more solar panel plants there. Ranting at them is a waste of everybody's time.
Getting mad at people for not putting aside very present, manifest problems (losing their house / not being able to feed their kids) in lieu of far-off, theoretical problems (global warming) is naive in the extreme.
What if i told you that there's enough money for both, but greedy corporations and not tree huggers are why people are going to lose the house?
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What if i told you that there's enough money for both, but greedy corporations and not tree huggers are why people are going to lose the house?
Getting mad at people for not putting aside very present, manifest problems (losing their house / not being able to feed their kids) in lieu of far-off, theoretical problems (global warming) is naive in the extreme.
It's not me you have to convince. Appalachians are not going to give a s~$& about excuses, only results. Right now, for these people, green technology needs to compete with the rose-tinted memory of coal (which provided low-skill well-paying jobs, albeit it decades ago).
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I do agree ranting at them is a waste of time, but even in CB's post he's not saying "They need to give up coal to stop global warming", he's responding to "Hearing the locals simultaneously complain about work in the coal mines dying up in the 80s and blaming the Obama era regulations, which never went into effect."
The conflict you're posing may be more understandable, but it's not the real situation. Economic reasons are killing the coal mines (and killing the coal jobs even faster - not global warming regulation. That certainly wasn't the reason 30 years ago and it even more certainly wasn't Obama's fault then.
I'm not sure about that; hypocritical locals grousing is unlikely to drown anybody, let along everybody. I'm pretty sure he made the jump from "people b+$$*ing" to "people voting anti-environmentally".
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I'm not sure about that; hypocritical locals grousing is unlikely to drown anybody, let along everybody. I'm pretty sure he made the jump from "people b&!#~ing" to "people voting anti-environmentally".
The people who are so self-deluded that they can blame Obama policies which never went in to effect for job losses over the past thirty years are EXACTLY the people who voted for Donald Trump and every other GOP charlatan who has promised to 'bring back coal jobs' by destroying the environment and/or enacting bigoted policies against <insert scapegoat minority group here>... and yes they are absolutely dragging all of us down with them. Donald Trump is president. Republicans control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and most states... BECAUSE people in complete denial of reality keep voting for them when they promise things that cannot possibly be delivered.
Donald Trump WILL NOT bring back coal jobs. Not because he doesn't want to... because it is IMPOSSIBLE. Coal costs more than natural gas. Coal costs more than wind. Coal costs more than solar.... and that's just nameplate cost. If pollution costs were factored in every coal plant in the country would close tomorrow.
Democracy only works if people vote to improve their situation. When a large segment of the population is so deluded that they routinely vote against their own self interest the system turns against itself. The GOP and their denial based governance have become a cancer on democracy.
Getting mad at people for not putting aside very present, manifest problems (losing their house / not being able to feed their kids) in lieu of far-off, theoretical problems (global warming) is naive in the extreme.<shrug> I've heard ER physicians discuss motorcycling without a helmet. I've heard epidemiologists discuss home misuse of antibiotics. I've heard oncologists discuss teen smoking. In fact, I read long ago a heartbreaking case study (in, IIRC, an ethics journal) by a surgeon who had reattached all four fingers on a man's primary hand, only to have the man ask a friend to smuggle a pack of cigarettes into his hospital room, and as a result, lose all of the reattached fingers to gangrene.
Compared to what has been said, CBDunkerson's statement almost qualifies as praise for the coal-enamored segment of the population.
A person may not like being told that they're making a stupid and ultimately self-harmful choice. That doesn't, however, mean that the choice they're making isn't stupid and ultimately self-harmful.
Except that the very tangible problem is only negatively related to the far-off theoretical problem, and 'not putting aside very present, manifest, problems' is in fact, making those problems worse. The First Rule of Holes is to stop digging, you know.
Coal jobs are disappearing, leaving lots of towns in Appalachia without well-paying jobs. That's a problem, yes. We can all agree on that.
Solar is displacing coal? That's not actually a problem, largely because it's not true. The main reason that coal jobs are disappearing has been automation; it takes fewer people to work a modern mine than one using 1950s technology. Coal production in 1965 employed about half as many people as in 1955, despite producing more actual tons of coal -- largely because productivity per miner had more than doubled.
The solution to convincing people is to align their interests with your interests in a tangible way.
Yes, but the first step to that is to correctly identify what everyone's interest is. Do the people in Appalachia actually want more coal production? Probably not. Coal production is at close to an all-time high right now. In 2010, US mines produced roughly a billion (short) tons of coal. There's been a drop since then -- only three quarters of a billion tons were mined in 2016, but that's still roughly twice what was produced in 1960. Today, mining more coal just means that the robots work harder, not that people do.
What Appalachia needs today is not more COAL jobs, but more jobs. And the harder they fight for coal (which won't bring them more jobs), the fewer opportunities they will have to get more jobs....
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What Appalachia needs today is not more COAL jobs, but more jobs.
Yes, this is precisely correct. Realistically, it doesn't really matter what the jobs are, as long as there are jobs. I threw in solar because, frankly, it had beneficial knock-on effects (it's hard to grouse about "those environmentalists" when they are signing your checks), but it could even be simple make-work jobs; all that maters, politically, is WHO provides those jobs. With the jobs comes the loyalty.
And the harder they fight for coal (which won't bring them more jobs), the fewer opportunities they will have to get more jobs....
By themselves, you are probably correct and we will continue to see retrograde voting patterns for the area as the Right continues to make empty promises of coals return. However this might be an opportunity for green technology businesses to make a strategic investment in order to establish a beachhead there. For example, if First Solar were to make overtures to open a large plant there, understanding it was a long term investment to help build good will in a politically opposed area, you might be able to get local politicians to bite and extend them tax inducements. If the plant actually went in and provided strong wadges to local workers, that would probably go a long way to reverse opinions and break the political hegemony that the memory of coal has on the area.
Whats already been proven NOT to work is trying to convince them change their point of view; and no amount of brow beating is going to change that.
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Been a while since I posted here. I've stopped trying to convince people that scientists are correct.
I did want to point some of the folks here to look at what's happening in Australia at the moment in terms of centralised coal burning power stations.
South Australia has had close to six months of inadequate supply from the coal burning stations they have. Mismanagement mostly, however it's also beacause of dated t chnology and inefficient systems.
So, Elon Musk stepped up and showed all of his research into solar power and tesla batteries. All of which has demonstrable proof of success in locations it's been implemented. He said he could fix the problem in a year, or its free!
Our government, in response, said "while we like the idea, we're going to stick with coal."
So, in the face of a failing technolgy, with a system of failing powerstwtions that will cost more to replace an improve than they will actually make back in money over try course of their life time, and given a chance to fix a problem at potentially no cost to them, or government decides to run with the one that gives them the most kickbacks.
Blank stare.......
Political corruption at its best.
Humans don't need to fight climate change. Humans need to fight human ignorance and capitalism.
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Additionally, in Queensland and NSW we had masssive foods. In that time one of the largest coal processing plants we had got inundated ( which is what happens when Yu build these things near river heads for ease of shipping).
The overhead photos taken by a number of independent sources after this event, clearly show the coal dust dissolved into overflow and pouring out into the ocean and surrounding rivers.
If you know anything about Australian environment, will ur rivers and oceans don't handle excess pollution like that very well at all. Generally we're a nutrient poor soil area, and our oceans and rivers are suited to that.
Environmentally it's a disaster, and coupled with the bleaching of my ur reef at the moment (from two years of exceptionally hot summers ) means our oceans have now been proclaimed as irreparable damaged.
Yay coal.