161–170 of 223 posts
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I've heard it said that in the UK a fatal car crash increases GDP by about £1 million.
I think you mean 'decreases'
It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…
It's very likely that local band-aids are the most effective way to deal with this. Your train example is a pretty good one, but you've mixed up the metaphor. Here, "stepping out of the way" = mass migrations out of coastal cities. "A mechanized winch that temporarily lifts us over the train" = flood control projects like in Tokyo, Houston, Venice, or the Netherlands. "Calling the train company and asking them to sto…
You can't generalize at this level of granularity. Humans have done a lot of "adapting the environment to us" - draining swamps, building canals, reversing rivers, building dams, making water, power, and sewage distribution systems.
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Oh, the things I could write... Let's do just that, shall we? Warning, this could take a minute. The Big Dig was pretty much my first project outside of the lab. I am not overly fond of admitting to my part in the project but it could be worse, much worse. Truth be told, we did our job just fine, but I digress. By the time I got involved with the project, it had been in planning stage for quite a while and had underg…
> There is tons of waste in government, I think we know that. But, politicians will add more - so long as it gets them votes. Interestingly, in this case, the guy campaigned on prosperity for the local economy. The project must not disrupt local business. Got to make money, after all. Yet, it slowed the project down and probably added a good 10% to the overall budget. The lengths we went to were absurd. Contrast that…
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Oh, the things I could write... Let's do just that, shall we? Warning, this could take a minute. The Big Dig was pretty much my first project outside of the lab. I am not overly fond of admitting to my part in the project but it could be worse, much worse. Truth be told, we did our job just fine, but I digress. By the time I got involved with the project, it had been in planning stage for quite a while and had underg…
> There is tons of waste in government, I think we know that. But, politicians will add more - so long as it gets them votes. Interestingly, in this case, the guy campaigned on prosperity for the local economy. The project must not disrupt local business. Got to make money, after all. Yet, it slowed the project down and probably added a good 10% to the overall budget. The lengths we went to were absurd. Contrast that…
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It's not true that a stable equilibrium is always reached. It's also possible that irreversible changes are set into motion which shift the equilibrium so far away from livability that humans cannot survive.
See, for instance, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
> A study based on a coupled climate–carbon cycle model (GCM) assessed a 1000-fold (from 6 °C within 80 years
Am I reading this right that it would take 80yrs to get to +6c, so it would still be a gradual increase? Is it an exponential increase?
Anyone recommend a documentary about this?
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This issue is too political for normal people to properly understand. I don't mean to offend you personally but there's little value in the feelings of someone who's been immersed in a social atmosphere of global warming propaganda, calls to action, and pressure to shut down dissenting voices. Even scientists can't safely publish work on positive effects of climate change or areas where it's not as bad as previously…
The Permian extinction was a global warming extinction. The atmosphere was methane and hydrogen sulfide. Oxygen levels dropped too low for anything to survive... read the book 'Under Green Skies' which makes the case for that. There are reasonable people predicting that type of mass extinction will occur within our lifetime. This blog makes a pretty good argument it will happen: http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/exti…
Have they got Paul Erlich on board?
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yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip This. Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Telecommuting is a thing. Home-solar is a thing. Electric cars are a thing. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally,…
Changing economic behavior with public campaigns has a pretty much zero success rate. Anyone remember Pres Ford's "WIP" buttons (Whip Inflation Now)? It had the hubris that inflation could be stopped if only people would just stop raising prices. Even as a kid, I laughed at the absurdity of that campaign. Of course it had zero effect. Something that will work is to tax pollution, i.e. a carbon tax. Making it more exp…
It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…
This is all a great illustration of support for Elon Musk's idea that a carbon tax is the best way to fight climate change. Unfortunately, a global carbon tax would put the billion dollar Climate Change Bureaucracy Industry nearly out of business. And people act like we haven't seen this kind of perverse incentive structure--bureaucratic inertia--before with the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terrror, etc.: the…
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The way I see it, the only possible way to stop the coming disaster is for the entire world to come together, collectively, and limit population with sterilization lottery programs. We need to bring things down to 1 billion or less people. Nations that don't volunteer willingly will have to be drug along by force. This probably won't happen, though. We're f#@^ed.
Every single country that has become wealthy has seen a drop in reproduction rates to rates lower than what's necessary to keep population numbers steady–except the US because somehow they managed to be become more religious with time. Meaning you can make excellent progress towards your goal without committing injustices on an industrial scale. Instead, you get to work on empowering women and bringing education, eco…
It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…
Japan didn't (over)build that flood control system because they're worried about global warming or thousand year floods. They did it to create jobs. In the same way the US is said to have a "military industrial complex", Japan has a "construction industrial complex", wherein the government builds a whole lot of infrastructure the country can't really justify or even maintain. Flood control, rail lines, airports, etc.…
Or do you have any sources?