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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:32 am 
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Peeps wrote:
vacatetheword wrote:
LittleWing wrote:
Oh... So the price gap isn't close at all... got it.

all i'm saying is you should have to pay a penalty for polluting. build the price to the environment into the price of the energy


flat

out

insane

are you serious? how so?

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:39 am 
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oil is used in alot more things than just fuel, in fact, your probably using atleast three products of oil right now as you respond to this

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:59 am 
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i never mentioned oil. i'm talking primarily about coal. oil can come later

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:28 am 
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Quote:
all i'm saying is you should have to pay a penalty for polluting. build the price to the environment into the price of the energy - vacate


So like...are you gonna tax me every time I fart?

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:22 am 
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Peeps wrote:
oil is used in alot more things than just fuel, in fact, your probably using atleast three products of oil right now as you respond to this



Congratulations - a gold star for you

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LittleWing sometime in July 2007 wrote:
Unfortunately, it's so elementary, and the big time investors behind the drive in the stock market aren't so stupid. This isn't the false economy of 2000.


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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:45 am 
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glorified_version wrote:
Peeps wrote:
oil is used in alot more things than just fuel, in fact, your probably using atleast three products of oil right now as you respond to this



Congratulations - a gold star for you


its too bad youre not just another statistic in NYC

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:13 pm 
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All energy sources are subsidized on some level, so lets not dwell on that point.

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:53 pm 
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Yes. Let's dwell on it. Subsidies in any free market are bad mmmmkay.

Peeps, thank you for saying things that I'd get banned if I said. You take the words straight from my heart.

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 1:05 pm 
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Human Bass wrote:
Oh, I agree. But there is a lot to improve even if they will never reach the same level that we did. Getting ethanol from corn is like getting milk from a mare. You can, but its dumb.


True. My point was that in world where 1 billion people are facing starvation and probably half of the human race are sustenance farmers, it's not 'right' to setup a system where we fight our machines for food.



vacatetheword wrote:
carbon tax.


Here's an interesting blog posting on carbon taxes:

"Since we have breached the topic again, let me remind everyone that taxes on a good do not, and never have, accelerated the creation of a better substitute for that good. It usually creates an inferior good -- War on Drugs and rise of crystal meth case in point. Or more on topic, the unfolding Ethanol-Agriculture-Corn/Meat/Milk pricing disaster, raising everyone’s costs.

But let's look at a gallon of gas in light of this idea of taxing into existence a substitute. (It even sounds like contradiction in terms doesn't it?) The refinery profit on a gallon is approximately 5 cents, and due to the high fixed cost infrastructure and regulations, doesn't vary much. However, the cut to the government is approximately 45 cents in taxes. Virtually all the rest is cost. Thus the tax-to-profit ratio, an old and trusted ratio, is a whopping 9-to-1. (It's higher once you realize that the refinery pays tax on its 5 cents, and of course, the dealer on his profits.) Once we would have called that punitive taxation.... and that still hasn't made a single alternative viable. The .gov get away with this by letting the refiner get the profit (taxed at corporate rates) but make you pay the excise tax. Nice racket taxes huh? Nuclear, which would have worked, was the market-driven superior substitute, was killed in its infancy by regulation. Europe and Japan have considerably higher prices and no sign of a substitute showing up there either...

The idea that you can change behavior thru taxation and force is a statist fantasy. It has never been achieved in any good or service. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Nor can you screw with price either. Nor can you just kill the market or good. Legions of examples: See all Sin taxes. See Rent Control disasters in NY, Boston, San Francisco. See Car property tax. See Prohibition. See War on Drugs. See FDA War on Supplements. See California's electricity "market". 100% of the time taxation simply penalizes folks for living their lives in a way that is in conflict with how some statist bureaucrat thinks they should act. Worse, it also penalizes the supplier of the good, since taxation inevitably raises the prices and reduces the supply available, making the market smaller. Big Oil allows it because taxation prevents the dangerous newcomer from accumulating capital and since business monopolies fear competition more than taxes... well -- you see the shameful state of things as a result."


Whether or not you believe all that, the point that much higher taxes in the EU and Japan have failed to drive the market towards an alternative is true. The reason? Governments rely on fuel taxes and do not want to lose that revenue. They have it both ways. They tax consumers for using fuel, polluting, and then use regulation and subsidies to prevent alternatives, which they would then have to tax and look anti-environment, from gaining ground. That's why a carbon tax is so appealing to regulatory (the UN/EU) and taxing (government on all levels) bodies. It's more money in their pockets without having to actually change anything. It would be simple for a government to give public land to a company to build a wind farm. But it means less tax money so they won't. If governments would reduce regulation and taxes on alternative fuel markets, making them more profitable, they would expand. It's that simple.

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:46 pm 
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"It has become fashionable to predict that high oil prices will spark a free-market response to climate change, setting off an “explosion of innovation in alternatives,” as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently. Alberta puts the lie to that claim. High prices have indeed led to an R&D extravaganza, but it is squarely focused on figuring out how to get the dirtiest possible oil out of the hardest-to-reach places. Shell, for instance, is working on a “novel thermal recovery process”–embedding large electric heaters in the deposits and literally cooking the earth.

And that’s the Alberta tar sands for you: The industry already contributing to climate change more than any other is frantically turning up the heat. The process of refining bitumen emits three to four times the greenhouse gases produced by extracting oil from traditional wells, making the tar sands the largest single contributor to Canada’s growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, the industry plans to more than triple production by 2020, with no end in sight. If prices stay high, it will soon become profitable to extract an additional 141 billion barrels from the tar sand, which would place the largest oil reserves in the world in Alberta."


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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 9:42 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:
Yes. Let's dwell on it. Subsidies in any free market are bad mmmmkay.

disagree. you're assuming that markets are perfect.

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Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:40 am 
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Quote:

A Skeptical View of Climate Models

By Hendrik Tennekes
retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute,

Here in the Netherlands, many people have ranked me as a climate skeptic. It did not help much that I called myself a protestant recently. I protest against overwhelming pressure to adhere to the climate change dogma promoted by the adherents of IPCC. I was brought up in a fundamentalist protestant environment, and have become very sensitive to everything that smells like an orthodox belief system.
The advantages of accepting a dogma or paradigm are only too clear. One no longer has to query the foundations of one's convictions, one enjoys the many advantages of belonging to a group that enjoys political power, one can participate in the benefits that the group provides, and one can delegate questions of responsibility and accountability to the leadership. In brief, the moment one accepts a dogma, one stops being an independent scientist.

A skeptic, on the other hand, accepts both the burdens and the pleasures of standing on his own feet. One of the disadvantages a skeptic has to cope with is the problem of finding adequate research support. The other side of that coin is that an independent scientist has a great opportunity to think better and delve deeper than most of his or her colleagues. Let me take an example in which I have been involved for thirty years, the problem of a finite prediction horizon for complex deterministic systems. This, the very problem first defined by Edward Lorenz, still is not properly accounted for by the majority of climate scientists. In a meeting at ECMWF in 1986, I gave a speech entitled "No Forecast Is Complete Without A Forecast of Forecast Skill." This slogan gave impetus to the now common procedure of Ensemble Forecasting, which in fact is a poor man's version of producing a guess at the probability density function of a deterministic forecast. The ever-expanding powers of supercomputers permit such simplistic research strategies.

Since then, ensemble forecasting and multi-model forecasting have become common in climate research, too. But fundamental questions concerning the prediction horizon are being avoided like the plague. There exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies. As a turbulence specialist, I am aware that such a framework would require the development of a statistical-dynamic theory of the general circulation, a theory that deals with eddy fluxes and the like. But the very thought is anathema to the mainstream of dynamical meteorology.

Climate models are quasi-deterministic and have to simulate daily circulation patterns for tens of years on end before average values can be found. The much more challenging problem of producing a theory of climate forecast skill is left by the wayside. In IPCC-documents one finds phrases like "climate surprises", showing that the IPCC-staff is unaware of the ignorance it reveals by that choice of words, or unwilling to state forcefully that climate predictability research deserves much more attention than it has received so far.

This is no minor matter. A few years after launching my slogan on forecast skill I chanced upon a copy of Karl Popper's "Open Universe" and discovered that Popper had anticipated the problems caused by the Lorenz paradigm. His claim that scientists should be held accountable for the accuracy of their predictions boils down to the requirement that they have to compute in advance the reliability of their computations. For complex models, Popper wrote, this demand leads to "infinite regress": computations of forecast skill are much harder than the forecasts themselves, and the next level, forecasting the skill of the skill forecast, is insurmountable when a complex system such as the climate is involved. Popper concluded that the positivist claims of science are in general unwarranted. In 1992 I wrote an essay for Weather to explain the issue in detail.

Climate skeptics also face a sociological problem. They agree only in their protest against the prevailing dogma. Some base their protest on various versions of the neoconservative paradigm. Bjorn Lomborg, for example, ignores the many efforts of the environmental movement that have contributed to improving conditions in the industrialized world. Speaking scientifically, I submit he has overlooked a crucial social feedback mechanism. Other skeptics use other paradigms. Roger Pielke Jr. bases his work on the vulnerability paradigm, a choice very appealing to me. Lots of outsiders in the climate business employ a supremacy of physics paradigm, attacking one or more of the physical details of the climate problem, and hoping that they can prevail by proving the climate orthodoxy wrong.

In my view, their conceptual mistake is that the physics of complex systems does not provide opportunities for settling the climate debate that way. In 1987, I gave a speech in London entitled "Illusions of Security, Tales of Imperfection". I dealt with the shortcomings of numerical weather forecasting there, but similar arguments apply to climate forecasting. The climate orthodoxy perpetrates the misconceptions involved by speaking, as IPCC does, about the Scientific Basis of Climate Change. Since then, I have responded to that ideology by stating that there is no chance at all that the physical sciences can produce a universally accepted scientific basis for policy measures concerning climate change. In my column in the magazine Weather in February of 1990, I wrote:
"The constraints imposed by the planetary ecosystem require continuous adjustment and permanent adaptation. Predictive skills are of secondary importance."

Today I still feel that way. I cannot bring myself to accept any type of prediction paradigm, and choose a adaptation paradigm instead. This brings me in the vicinity of Roger Pielke Sr.'s emphasis on land-use changes and Ronald Brunner's modest bottom-up alternatives. It goes without saying that I abhor such dogmas as various claims to Manage The Planet or Greenpeace's belief in Saving the Earth. These ideologies presuppose that the intelligence of Homo sapiens is capable of such feats. However, I know of no evidence to support such claims.

Back to Lorenz. Complex deterministic systems suffer not only from sensitive dependence on initial conditions but also from possible sensitive dependence on the differences between Nature and the models employed in representing it. The apparent linear response of the current generation of climate models to radiative forcing is likely caused by inadvertent shortcomings in the parameterization schemes employed. Karl Popper wrote (see my essay on his views):
"The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple models. Theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true.
Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification, the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit."

If Popper had known of the predictability problems caused by the Lorenz paradigm, he could easily have expanded on this statement. He might have added that simple models are unlikely to represent adequately the nonlinear details of the response of the system, and are therefore unlikely to show a realistic response to threshold crossings hidden in its microstructure. Popper knew, of course, that complex models (such as General Circulation Models) face another dilemma.

I quote him again: "The question arises: how good does the model have to be in order to allow us to calculate the approximation required by accountability? (…) The complexity of the system can be assessed only if an approximate model is at hand."

From this perspective, those that advocate the idea that the response of the real climate to radiative forcing is adequately represented in climate models have an obligation to prove that they have not overlooked a single nonlinear, possibly chaotic feedback mechanism that Nature itself employs.


Popper would have been sympathetic. He repeatedly warns about the dangers of "infinite regress." As a staunch defender of the Lorenz paradigm, I add that the task of finding all nonlinear feedback mechanisms in the microstructure of the radiation balance probably is at least as daunting as the task of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. The blind adherence to the harebrained idea that climate models can generate "realistic" simulations of climate is the principal reason why I remain a climate skeptic. From my background in turbulence I look forward with grim anticipation to the day that climate models will run with a horizontal resolution of less than a kilometer. The horrible predictability problems of turbulent flows then will descend on climate science with a vengeance.

References
Turbulent Flow in Two and Three Dimensions. Bulletin American Meteorological Society, 59, 22-28, 1978.
The Outlook: Scattered Showers. Bulletin American Meteorological Society 69, 368-372, 1988.
Numerical Weather Prediction: Illusions of Security, Tales of Imperfection. Weather 41, 165-170, 1988.
A Sideways Look at Climate Research. Weather 45, 67-68, 1990.
Karl Popper and the Accountability of Numerical Weather Forecasting. Weather 47, 343-346, 1992.
An Ecological Grammar for Meteorologists. Weather 51, 326-328, 1996.


Quote:
Hendrik (Henk) Tennekes (born 1936) was the former director of research at the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut, or KNMI), and is a professor of aeronautical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. Tennekes pioneered methods of multi-modal forecasting. He authored The Simple Science of Flight and A First Course in Turbulence. Tennekes was a strong proponent of scientific modeling, and he challenged the use of incomplete or unproven scientific models by those trying to explain complex phenomena such as global warming.

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:43 am 
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It's great to read this thread and see a bunch of people talking to themselves. There's no debate or discussion in this forum, it's just people insisting that they are right and attempting to illustrate how. How you can be such an expert and not consider anyone else's opinion must be refreshing.


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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 4:09 am 
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black dahlia wrote:
Quote:
Hendrik (Henk) Tennekes (born 1936) was the former director of research at the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut, or KNMI), and is a professor of aeronautical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. Tennekes pioneered methods of multi-modal forecasting. He authored The Simple Science of Flight and A First Course in Turbulence. Tennekes was a strong proponent of scientific modeling, and he challenged the use of incomplete or unproven scientific models by those trying to explain complex phenomena such as global warming.

Does posting people's credentials mean we should ignore the equally valid credentials of people with an opposing view?
Oh, and I can research people's backgrounds too:
Quote:
No published research in last 15 years
Tennekes is a retired researcher from the Netherlands that, according to a search of 22,000 academic journals, has not published any original research in a peer-reviewed journal since 1990. Prior to 1990, Tennekes has published research mainly in the area of meteorology.

Tenekes and Dr. S. Fred Singer
Tennekes has written numerous articles for Dr. S Fred Singer's organization called the "Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). The SEPP and Fred Singer have a long history of attacking the science of global warming. Fred Singer has been connected to organizations that were involved in denying the link between second-hand tobacco smoke and he has also received funding from oil companies.


Please respect the purpose of this thread by posting this stuff in the appropriate place:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6894

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Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.


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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:27 am 
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Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
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The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 4:15 am 
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Quote:

Alarmist Global Warming Claims Melt Under Scientific Scrutiny

June 30, 2007
BY JAMES M. TAYLOR

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.

If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.

A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."

Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

Each of these cases provides an opportunity for Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell.

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:13 am 
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We could put forth restrictive policies that restrict fuel emissions in the US to half of what they are today within the next 20 years and it would have little effect. Our population is growing, but more importantly countries like India and China with populations far above ours are industrializing and counteracting any conservation policies the western world could possibly be employing.

The answer is to create a renewable energy policy that is both cost effective and does not have a negative impact on the environment. It is not something you can legislate or force. You have to make it beneficial to business to adopt, create, use, and sell. So we should subsidize car and energy companies but only for specific technologies that promote a clean air initiative.

It works on several levels. Not only do we remove our dependency on foreign energy, but we create a new market and promote local economies. Instead of trying to destroy Exxon and GM, we motivate them to be the leaders in renewable energy and create a completely new sector of business that is both beneficial to industry and the environment.

The problem I see with current policy is that you have the right ignoring the problem, and the left condemning the right for ignoring the problem. Neither policy corrects the problem. Even when you look at the more constructive aspects of the left, they seem much more concerned with convincing everyone that there is a problem and climate change exists, over the basic goal of finding a solution. You will never be able to convince or force a socialist idea of energy consumption for the greater good. What you can do is create a market for energy that is both worthwhile for the nation and for the environment. You promote environmentalism through a constructive and profitable shift in industry instead of just regulating. You present the argument as "Hey, we can develop this new cheaper fuel, it will be better for the Earth, and we can make a shit ton selling it to the world." You do not present it as "Hey you dumb fuck you. Stop driving that SUV, you are killing us all. Not only that, but your cunt soccer mom wife cannot drive for shit."


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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:14 am 
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Quote:

Global Poverty via the Ethanol Industry

by Sabine Barnhart

The more the state plans, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.
~ Friedrich Hayek

Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
~ Ludwig von Mises

Each year in early October my grandfather summoned my entire family to come to his farm and harvest potatoes. Hunched over on all fours, each person quietly filled their buckets with these "earth apples." Each year he used a different field for his crop. One year he would plant potatoes, the next year beets or wheat. The potato replaced the grain diet on the European continent. It became survival food, especially during the two World Wars. Dumplings, potato salad and mashed potatoes are only a few potato dishes found in a long list in the European cuisine. The easy adaptability of the potato to grow almost anywhere in the world can produce an annual crop of 322 million tons of potatoes. Many African countries greatly benefit from growing the potatoes because they make them more self-sufficient in their food production.

In the age of nation building, stamping out of global warming, and driving for energy self-sufficiency, the new state appointed rival of the potato is maize, which is better known as corn – the yellow cob-born grain used in the production of ethanol fuel. As a blend with gasoline, biofuel powers automobiles and farm equipment. Its environmental friendly side effect is to reduce greenhouse gases, and some say it is the key to everlasting energy security in the future.

Ethanol fuel production received its first stimulus after the Arab oil crisis in 1973. During 1978 the US federal government sealed the project with the Energy Tax Act authorizing tax exemptions by blending gasoline with 10 percent ethanol. A floodgate of free money opened up for farmers and ethanol producers as the energy and agricultural departments spent billions of dollars on subsidies. This year’s estimates are between $5.5 billion to $7.3 billion of our tax dollars to be handed out to corn growers.

The incentives for farmers to grow corn in the US is not to meet the needs of a market that entails a healthy profit. Instead, they plant corn because they get paid to do so by a federal government interested in ethanol production. And as it turns out, producing ethanol is an expensive process. Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) out of Illinois, one of the largest producers of ethanol, received as much as $10 billion in subsidies between 1980 through 1997 along with favorable tax breaks costing taxpayers an average of $30 for every dollar ADM earns in profits. Add to that the $500 of federal and state subsidies it takes to reduce one metric ton of CO2-equivalent, one can literarily say that it is governments who heat up the globe by burning cash.

This year corn production has already increased by 15 percent over last year. Even President Bush, not a green lover but excited about ethanol, is expecting that farmers will plant 90.5 millions of acres of corn in 2007 in order to meet the demands of ethanol production of 132 billion liters by 2017. Corn prices already went up by 50 percent. The average price per bushel of $1.95, which had held steady over the past eight years, jumped up to $3.05 in January of this year, and is expected to rise as high as $3.40.

Corn is feedstock. It is consumed not only by humans but also by hogs, chickens and cattle. The drastic side-effect of higher corn prices is now reflected in the higher prices in the grocery store. The price of food went up 3.9 percent last year – faster than the inflation rate, which ranges around 2.7 in 2007. In particular, pork, beef, milk, eggs and poultry show drastic increases in their prices. So do fruits and vegetables. Considering that most people spend an average of 10 percent of their disposable income on food, higher prices in grocery reduces the spending on cars, homes or clothing. Health Nazis should also be concerned, since these higher prices drive people to cheaper processed foods that add to increased health risks in the poor segment of the population.

The US Federal Government’s targeted goal is to replace gasoline with corn-based fuel as an alternative energy source. This has caught the attention of poorer countries. Mexico, for example, is gradually replacing agave, a spiky-leaved, large plant which grows on high and arid land and takes eight years to reach maturity, with corn. Agave is the main ingredient for Tequila. Mexico produced 25 to 35 percent less agave this year and farmers take less care of their agave crop in favor of higher corn prices. The World Food Program (WFP), which recently stated that it can no longer feed the poor due to the impact of biofuel demand on food prices, is foolishly encouraging African and Latin American countries to take advantage of the rising demand of biofuels by planting corn; a popular world practice that is now devastating 900 million of the world’s poorest which rely on the UN feeding program.

It is quite clear that the state-inflated demand for corn is causing a global imbalance in food production. Farmers are replacing a variety of vegetables and fruits with corn due to the higher profit-per-acre corn brings. The two-year practice of crop rotation for corn drains the soil and requires more fertilizers on the following soybean crop. The additional cost ends up with the consumer. As food prices rise, it is the poor who suffer most from this inflated demand for biofuel. It is a burden that most people cannot afford as inflation keeps rising because of irresponsible spending and government debt.

The federal budget for the fiscal year beginning this October called for $2.9 trillion dollars in government spending. It includes increases for all the various cabinet-level departments. Among them were a 5.4 percent increase for the Department of Energy and 3.6 percent increase for Agriculture. According to Richard M. Ebeling, President of The Freeman, the average US household would have to shell out approximately $25,845 in taxes to cover the budget. Include with it the US federal government’s pre-existing liabilities of several trillion, and the average US household would have to pay an additional $31,000 a year for 75 years to pay off the debt already incurred by government spending. How can an average income household cover the basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter when tax burdens already devour the wages of a lower income population? Poor people only become poorer as spending continues.

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul seems to be the only congressional member who understands the global effects of subsidies. During his second presidential debate the question came up about oil profits. His response was: "I don’t think the profits are the issue. The profits are okay if they’re legitimately earned in a free market. What I object to are subsidies to big corporations when we subsidize them and give them R&D (Research & Development) money. I don’t think that should be that way. They should take it out of the funds that they earn..."

Here lies the answer to many of the energy questions. Let the private sector find a solution to new energy sources. Already technology advances at a rapid speed and its products remain ultimately competitive on the market where prices drop and become affordable to the average consumer. Just think of recent changes from VCRs and phonograph records to DVD’s and CD players, and the addition of cell phones and portable computers to modern life. All are now available at reasonable prices to low-income households. Industry continually comes up with new inventions that contribute highly to communication, organization and entertainment. The only sectors that remain high in cost with outrageous prices are sectors that are under government regulation and control: health care, medicine, education, housing, and now food prices. It would be a life-saving act of mercy to close these various departments of government, if people want to have a future for the next generation.

The trouble caused on the global market by the federal government’s sponsored ethanol industry increasingly outweighs the good it does. The idea of sacrificing food production in the name of biofuel as a future source of energy is an irrational concept. The consequence of higher food prices due to corn production hasn’t come from consumer choice but from government coercion. If the demand for energy is increasing, and biofuel is the answer, then where will the world grow its food? The big believers in a government supported biofuel industry might have to prepare for another big tsunami to hit the shores of Third World countries and at home if this insanity isn’t stopped. Just don’t blame capitalism if and when it comes.

July 21, 2007

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:48 am 
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Ethanol is not bad, corn ethanol that is ^_^"

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 Post subject: Re: What should be done about climate change?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:00 am 
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hey, americans, go to this website: http://www.solar-nation.org/

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