Althouse: "I don't want to talk about the environment. The environment sucks. Nobody's fixing it. We're all gonna die."

April 20, 2019

"I don't want to talk about the environment. The environment sucks. Nobody's fixing it. We're all gonna die."

Said one 20ish woman to another, after they walked by a man who asked them (in an expansive, exuberant voice) if they wanted to talk about the environment.

ADDED: Overheard on the street... by me, first-hand.

ALSO: As I say in the comments (controverting some inferences): "The woman did not sound depressed or cynical. More mocking and like she couldn't be bothered with climate guy."

111 comments:

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: Not finding a link to an article. The exuberant, expansive voiced man was Meade?; 4/20/19, 4:43 PM
Birkel said...: The environment for humans has never been better, in America.
Ignorance of how terrific things are now and how much they sucked before is amazing to behold.
We have the best human environment in human history.; 4/20/19, 4:46 PM
effinayright said...: These vapid and vacuous 20ish women are totalitarians in the making, little Rosa Klebbs, the lot of them.; 4/20/19, 4:48 PM
Darrell said...: Lefties always picture a post-apocalyptic world.
That is what she is really longing for.; 4/20/19, 4:51 PM
glenn said...: She’s exactly right. The only thing she’s unclear about? When.; 4/20/19, 4:55 PM
traditionalguy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/20/19, 4:56 PM
traditionalguy said...: Sad. She has been Brainwashed from birth to believe in a Fake Science based on altered data run through a rigged computer predicting mass death just so a World Government can take over and steal everything and end most human lives.

But the Global temperature continues going down and Global biomass continues flourishing from restoration of CO2 to higher and higher levels.; 4/20/19, 4:56 PM
mockturtle said...: This climate craze is yet another form of mass hysteria brought to us by the producers of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But these people [probably the same people] are even more fanatical regarding this fantasy than they are about Trump. It can't end well and there will be blood.; 4/20/19, 5:00 PM
mccullough said...: I love Fake Nihilism.

Easiest way to shut up an Environmentalist and a Jehovah’s Witness; 4/20/19, 5:00 PM
Jupiter said...: So, given the choice between bandying supposed "facts" with some hyper asshole with a fund-raising agenda, and resigning herself to the distant prospect of a horrible death brought about by a global temperature increase of two or three degrees, she chose the latter?

Good for her. There is hope yet for the youth of America.; 4/20/19, 5:03 PM
ccscientist said...: As Matt Ridley has pointed out, the environment is so much cleaner than 50 yrs ago. Species have largely stopped going extinct. Most of the crises like running out of landfill space, straws, plastic bags, are fake crises. If you want to see what the climate of 2100 is projected to be, just go to the downtown of any city (urban heat island). It is manufactured hysteria. I think the lack of belief in God leaves people fearful about the future.; 4/20/19, 5:04 PM
mockturtle said...: I don't like to copy and paste but this from Jim Treacher on PJ Media is worthwhile regarding the latest Emma Thompson movie:

"I first heard about the environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion just a few days ago, but they've already taught me so much. Did you know that the planet is in such imminent peril, the only way to stop it is to yell and scream and destroy other people's property and glue yourself to things? It's true! And now they've taught me another valuable lesson: Celebrities are saving us all by scolding us, so they don't need to practice what they preach."; 4/20/19, 5:05 PM
n.n said...: Was the coup worth it? Now they miss Richard Nixon. Anti-war. Pro-environment. Pro-life... what? Death to the warlock.; 4/20/19, 5:07 PM
Lyle said...: That woman is an agnostic or an atheist, and she must not have been on the road to Damascus.; 4/20/19, 5:08 PM
n.n said...: The environment for humans has never been better, in America.

And the climate, despite an attempted coup, multi-trimester warlock trial, Antifa uprising, alien invasion, and the common criminals, has been unusually stable.; 4/20/19, 5:11 PM
Ann Althouse said...: The woman did not sound depressed or cynical. More mocking and like she couldn't be bothered with climate guy.; 4/20/19, 5:13 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: The women were probably influenced by Trump's fear mongering.; 4/20/19, 5:18 PM
tcrosse said...: Everybody talks about the climate but nobody does anything about it.; 4/20/19, 5:21 PM
Mid-Life Lawyer said...: Progressives have to get more and more hysterical about all the supposed ills in order to get the intellectually and emotionally weak agitated enough to give money and vote for them. The reason they keep having to up the hysteria is that things keep being so damn good. I keep thinking there will be a tipping point but I keep being wrong.; 4/20/19, 5:27 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Isn't the world a wonderful place in 2019? Sure, individuals have their problems, but overall we are healthier and wealthier and better educated than any people in the history of the planet. This is true in the US and in the world as a whole.
And every human being has the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.
So cheer up. Things could be worse.; 4/20/19, 5:34 PM
Gahrie said...: The woman did not sound depressed or cynical. More mocking and like she couldn't be bothered with climate guy.

Which is precisely the correct position to take.; 4/20/19, 5:39 PM
JackWayne said...: I wonder when rational people will start doing public interventions on warmunistas?; 4/20/19, 5:42 PM
Gahrie said...: This climate craze is yet another form of mass hysteria brought to us by the producers of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

No, to be fair, the climate change hysteria has been around in one form or another since the 1970's. And even then it's an evolution on the standard "the world is ending" hysteria that pops up in history time after time.

TDS is just a product of the Left's inability to handle the fact that they lost the election.; 4/20/19, 5:43 PM
Jaq said...: People are bored because life has become too easy. This is how wars start, people are bored.; 4/20/19, 5:49 PM
Wince said...: I don't want to talk about the environment. The environment sucks. Nobody's fixing it. We're all gonna die.

"There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man. We're all gonna die."; 4/20/19, 5:49 PM
bagoh20 said...: The environment in the west is doing extremely well. Even with the expanding population, we are managing it well, and are getting better every year. It's the rest of the world that is now making a mess. That is mostly due to the widespread poverty outside the west. Prosperity allows people to care for the environment rather than simply exploit it. The reason the rest of the world has not prospered as well is 1) lack of rule of law, and 2) lack of free market capitalism with intelligent, minimal regulation, 3) religious fundamentalism. Socialism, despotism, and lawlessness has held back billions of people and is the main threat to the environment now and going forward.; 4/20/19, 5:50 PM
OldManRick said...: I'll see your 1970's and raise you a 1920's!

Climate hysteria traced as far back as 1922!

Check out from the O:52 mark of this talk

These guys must be the 3% skeptics in that survey I keep hearing about.; 4/20/19, 5:54 PM
Jaq said...: I first heard about the environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion just a few days ago

Me too! I heard about them when the cab driver told me that it ws going to take over an hour to get to my hotel because the Waterloo Bridge was shut down and they were going to completely disrupt the traffic in London until the government there negotiates and en to capitalism with them. Apparently before Brexit is even settled.

I don’t think they have made many friends among the cabbies. One suggested that after they carried them off, they should just toss them in a wood chipper. I *think* he was kidding.; 4/20/19, 5:56 PM
Seeing Red said...: I’d love to talk about the environment with the loons.; 4/20/19, 5:56 PM
jeremyabrams said...: To debate the environment with a Warmist you first have to educate the Warmist on their own theory, since they don't know it. The theory, universally held by climate "scientists," is that CO2 will warm the globe by about 1 degree C, and that will set in motion a reaction over the tropics that will cause a huge amount of water vapor, and the water vapor is the more potent greenhouse gas that will cause a vicious cycle of warming.

We've seen the 1 degree rise, though no further rise, but we haven't seen the reaction. Will it come? Who knows? Warmists don't.

Hard to argue with people who don't know their own position.; 4/20/19, 6:06 PM
Jaq said...: In assessing how fast climate may change, the next IPCC report probably won’t lean as heavily on models as past reports did, says Thorsten Mauritsen, a climate scientist at Stockholm University and an IPCC author. It will look to other evidence as well, in particular a large study in preparation that will use ancient climates and observations of recent climate change to constrain sensitivity.. - ScienceMag

Unbelievable, instead of using the output of computer programs as if it were actual climate measurements, they are going to look at the data gathered from the planet itself! Hint: It’s not warming anything like the models said it would.; 4/20/19, 6:07 PM
dbp said...: I think it is the perfect response to the question and in the small chance someone accosts me about the environment, I plan to spout some version of the sentiment.; 4/20/19, 6:09 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Somebody said: "...We're all gonna die."

Who knew?

On the other hand, perhaps not such bad news after all.; 4/20/19, 6:13 PM
Quaestor said...: Easiest way to shut up an Environmentalist and a Jehovah’s Witness

Answering the doorbell nude is very effective vis-à-vis the Bystanders.; 4/20/19, 6:26 PM
Francisco D said...: I wonder when rational people will start doing public interventions on warmunistas?

I like the term Watermelon as in Green on the outside and Red on the inside.; 4/20/19, 6:27 PM
Jupiter said...: To be fair, we don't what position Climate Guy was pushing. Maybe he was just trying to get laid.; 4/20/19, 6:31 PM
Ken B said...: American education is a 20 year Milgram experiment; at the end some passively accept having their opinion poured into them.; 4/20/19, 6:32 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Species have largely stopped going extinct."

Not quite.; 4/20/19, 6:33 PM
Big Mike said...: Actually it's been fixed long ago, and fixed so well by us Baby Boomers that people have to invent cow farts and the CO2 we exhale with every breath as pollutants in order to keep having a reason to run around with their hair on fire.

Can you imagine how bad global warming must have been in the 1800s when the west had herds of millions upon millions of wild bison, each emitting farts?; 4/20/19, 6:34 PM
hawkeyedjb said...: "...they are going to look at the data gathered from the planet itself!"

Not for long, if they get the wrong answer. There goes the funding...; 4/20/19, 6:39 PM
madAsHell said...: We were walking the Magnificent Mile, and the temperature was below freezing. There were two individuals on Michigan Street that wanted me to stop, and talk about their trans-genderism.

I'm cold, and carrying shopping bags full of over-priced shit. I don't want to hear about the time you cut your dick off!!; 4/20/19, 6:41 PM
Mark Jones said...: Gahrie said, "No, to be fair, the climate change hysteria has been around in one form or another since the 1970's. And even then it's an evolution on the standard "the world is ending" hysteria that pops up in history time after time."

Yeah, I remember The Coming Ice Age (tm) propaganda from the 1970s.

As for "the world is ending" hysteria--I have a hypothesis. It's that many people cannot really wrap their minds around the idea that the world will survive them. They simply cannot accept that the world will soldier on after they die, and that eventually they'll be as dead and anonymous as J. Random Neanderthal while billions of humans are born, live, fuck, reproduce, and eventually die without ever giving a single thought to their existence.

So, clearly, the world cannot outlast them--or not by long. Thus, the world MUST be ending in the near-to-medium future. It just HAS to be.; 4/20/19, 6:48 PM
Hagar said...: It is not just hysteria. There is an awful lot of money - big money - and power involved in this scam too.; 4/20/19, 7:12 PM
walter said...: Yeah, so true. No point in voting. That would be so..meh.; 4/20/19, 7:26 PM
Hunter said...: @Robert Cook

I’m always interested enough to read counterpoint articles, but then I got to the words:

“Study co-author Paul Ehrlich”; 4/20/19, 7:30 PM
Sebastian said...: "The environment sucks. Nobody's fixing it. We're all gonna die."

As a mocking memento mori, it might work. But as others have said, as a statement of fact, it sucks: "the environment" is manifestly better than it was 50 years ago, and for most people, better than it was 100 years ago. Even leaving aside that "the environment" now supports several billion more people.; 4/20/19, 7:36 PM
whitney said...: That's funny. It sounds like something I would say; 4/20/19, 7:37 PM
walter said...: We gonna party like it's..err..sometime down the line"; 4/20/19, 7:38 PM
JPS said...: Julian Simon at an environmental forum: "How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” Almost every hand is raised.

“Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” No response.

“Is there any evidence I could give you—anything at all—that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?” Again, no response.

“Well, excuse me. I’m not dressed for church.”; 4/20/19, 7:48 PM
glenn said...: tcrosse wins the internet 4/20.; 4/20/19, 7:48 PM
LYNNDH said...: Why "fix" something that ain't broke.; 4/20/19, 7:53 PM
John henry said...: On a positive note:

Congress passed bipartisan legislation that aims to streamline the regulatory process for commercial nuclear plants, bringing relief to an industry that has witnessed decline and uncertainty.

The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act was approved in the House of Representatives by wide margins Friday, clearing the chamber by 361 to 10. The Senate had already approved the bill on Thursday by a voice vote.

Note the lopsided vote 361-10

The Senate voted on it by voice.

Annnnnd...

President Trump signed it into law on January 14, 2019

In case anyone has missed it, I am pro-nuke. Especially Gen4 Nuclear.

Clean, cheap and no CO2 emissions. I could care less about CO2 but it seems like a big deal to a lot of people. So if it makes them happy and more inclined to support nuclear power, fine by me.

the old Roosevelt Roads Naval Station would make a fine location for a plant. That way I could watch it from my house.

John Henry; 4/20/19, 7:57 PM
walter said...: John henry,
What about the methane? You know, nuclear farts.; 4/20/19, 8:02 PM
John henry said...: there are currently several problems with nuclear energy in the US:

1) Unreasonable, illogical, fear by an aignorant public

2) Excessive delays, mainly due to regulatory slowness, in the time it take between start and finish. 10-20 years to build a nuke plant

3) Unreasonable fear by stupid people

4) Non-standard designs. Every plant is unique. We need to have a standard design, say 500MW that can just be dropped into a site.

5) The way utilities are regulated. Since they are monopolies their prices are regulated and based on their costs. Utilities have a vested interest in jacking up costs to the max they can get by regulators. 5% return on a plant cost of $1 billion is only a third of the return on a plant costing $3 billion.

6) Did I mention unreasonable fear of nuclear by ignorant people?

If I ruled the world, I would put the China Syndrome movie on constant rotation on all TV networks, headline it at Netflix and Amazon and make all school kids watch it once a month for a year.

Best Pro-Nuke propaganda movie. Ever!

John Henry; 4/20/19, 8:05 PM
John henry said...: First I've heard of methane being emitted. How does that happen? How much methane is emitted?

In any event, methane is fuel, capture and burn it in a gas turbine.

John Henry; 4/20/19, 8:09 PM
cf said...: if I haven't said this on Althouse, i will here:

Trump did Climate Change and the world a big favor getting out of the Paris Accords, especially IF the Fear-Mongers are correct, because now we can start thinking fresh and consider other ideas, like Bjorn Lomborg, instead of the punishing One-World-Rule solution that has been the ONLY WAY since the 90s.

Trump has given us a new chance, we save tons of money that would have been squandered, states and entrepreneurs can test solutions and develop ideas small scale for starters, like Scott Adams talks about with Generation 4 nuclear prototypes.

If doom is our current destiny, Trump may have saved us all by giving us a startover chance to fight it better! Salud.; 4/20/19, 8:16 PM
chuck said...: Sad what has been done to several generations. I recall an article where some poor woman raised in Berkeley needed counseling before she could drink from a styrofoam cup. Handling the devil's cup was that traumatic.; 4/20/19, 8:20 PM
bagoh20 said...: "Species have largely stopped going extinct."

Peak diversity is like peak oil.; 4/20/19, 8:44 PM
JPS said...: John Henry, 8:05:

"Did I mention unreasonable fear of nuclear by ignorant people?"

I'm largely with you on this. I've been accused online of being a shill for the nuclear industry, or a liar on behalf of the government, for pushing back on some very ill-informed scaremongering. But I have two points to make in defense of those people.

The first, and I'm sure you know this, is that the only way you can sense being exposed to radiation is if you've been suddenly taken a massively lethal dose. (I'm thinking criticality accidents here, people taking a flash of 2,000 rem or so.) Just enough to probably kill you, you couldn't know. The idea that if someone you have no contact with, let alone control over, screws up, you could be exposed to enough radiation to cause you lasting damage, cause your kids lasting damage, in an extreme case kill you - and have no way to know it was happening or had already happened - I can understand that giving people the willies.

Second, I look back at some of the lies the government told about above-ground nuclear testing back in the day, tests gone wrong, significant fallout over populated areas - and all the while the assurances that everything was fine! - and then I look at people thinking the government is lying or would lie to them now. Gosh, guys, where's the trust?; 4/20/19, 9:03 PM
n.n said...: "Did I mention unreasonable fear of nuclear by ignorant people?"

To be fair, the government did combine weapons and energy development, which forced a phobic response and created a vehicle for an industry to color both as, if not equal, then politically congruent.; 4/20/19, 9:11 PM
Gahrie said...: "Did I mention unreasonable fear of nuclear by ignorant people?"

Fear deliberately created by agents of the U.S.S.R. and their willing dupes.; 4/20/19, 9:20 PM
Ralph L said...: A good 15 years ago, a neighbor here in the Piedmont said he wanted to move to Wilmington but thought it would be flooded in a few years. It took a lot to keep a straight face.; 4/20/19, 9:44 PM
Simon Kenton said...: Nobody:
"Unbelievable, instead of using the output of computer programs as if it were actual climate measurements, they are going to look at the data gathered from the planet itself! Hint: It’s not warming anything like the models said it would."

Really. They have been looking at the data all along. It has displayed a troublesome recalcitrance, so they have spent the last 20 years lowering the temperatures in the early part of the historic record, and increasing them in recent years. Thus, each year gets its turn as the second warmest in 140 years of record. This is called calibration (the instruments couldn't have been right; they differed unacceptably from this year's version of The Model), and involves falsification of data on a scale so vast that this is (not really "is," but "should be") the greatest science scandal in all history. But, it is in service to a greater good: ending capitalismo and entrusting the economy to Senorita Ocasio-Cortez. Or, as we may fondly put it, Kiss the knout, kulaks.; 4/20/19, 9:51 PM
iowan2 said...: Robert Cook said...
"Species have largely stopped going extinct."

"not quite"

The article is very iffy. Sounds like other experts believe the study to be very much over estimated.

Not so says the Author. We have been very conservative careful to stay on the low end of estimations(there's that word again)

The Author? Paul Erlich. His earlier best seller predicted the end of the world through overpopulation of humans. "The Population Bomb"

(I know when I want to make a point, I always pick academics with a track record of wild unsubstantiated predictions that were massively wrong.); 4/20/19, 10:13 PM
Gahrie said...: (I know when I want to make a point, I always pick academics with a track record of wild unsubstantiated predictions that were massively wrong.)

To be fair to the watermelons, they don't have much else to chose from.; 4/20/19, 10:27 PM
Anonymous said...: You're living in dangerous times. Do you like the world you made?; 4/20/19, 11:03 PM
Michael The Magnificent said...: It's not just 20-something year-olds that are misinformed and misguided. I know a 60 year old woman with a masters degree in education that refused to believe me when I told her the air is far cleaner today than it was in the 70's. I even provided her a link to an EPA document.

Her response? "How can that possibly be?"

My response? Fuel injection, unleaded fuel, catalytic converters, and cars getting quadruple the miles per gallon that they once did. Coal powered power plants being converted to natural gas. Smoke stack scrubbers. Two-stroke engines being replaced with four-stroke engines. Tighter manufacturing tolerances, so less oil burned. Industrial discharge regulations. That's how.

The environment is cleaner than it was fifty years ago. Where you could once see a brown haze hanging over I-43 southbound towards downtown Milwaukee, you can now see downtown Milwaukee from the observation tower of Holy Hill Church. And it used to be, blindfolded you could smell when you were on I-94 traveling westbound through the Menomonee River Valley, but not any more.

The people who run on emotion will never look at the actual measurements. And if they do, they refuse to believe them.; 4/20/19, 11:09 PM
Michael The Magnificent said...: Notable & Quotable: Warming

From a June 29, 1989, Associated Press dispatch:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of "eco-refugees," threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environmental Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

As the warming melts polar ice-caps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt's arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study...

Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheat-lands, while the Soviet Union could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time, according to a study by UNEP and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.; 4/20/19, 11:18 PM
effinayright said...: Just ask these assholes: why didn't the Last degree of warming result in a Litany of Horribles, and the degree of warming before that? Why is the next degree the Tipping Point, even if it wasn't in the past?

We're dealing with tens of millions of neuron-depleted people here.

As for questioning whether species have largely stopped going extinct: how would we know? Every month or so people come across animals and plants that were thought to be extinct, but...here they are.

The real claim, the scary claim, is that species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate because of....humans.

Oh yeah? Prove it. Tell us what the K-T boundary means.

You'll get nowhere.; 4/20/19, 11:27 PM
effinayright said...: Robert Cook said...
"Species have largely stopped going extinct."

Not quite.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Bullshit. Since no one knows and no one has counted all the Earth's species, and no one is or can possibly track their numbers, NO ONE can say as a generality that mass extinction is taking place. Fuck your stupid article.

Anyone who argues that climate change of a degree or so is causing mass extinction is a horse's ass: why didn't the LAST degree of warming cause mass extinctions?

Why didn't the Little Ice Age cause mass extinctions? If warming is horrible, then why is most of the earth's biomass in the warmer regions?

Your head is three feet up your ass, as usual, cookie.

But I agree that the person who wrote the opposite has no basis for his statement either. Evolution does not stop, ever.; 4/20/19, 11:39 PM
John henry said...: JPS,

I will be the first to agree with you about the dangers of radiation. It is definitely bad in large doses.

But for the sake of our children, do the math, man!

Even if a nuclear power plant were to blow up every year somewhere killing a million people each time it still seems like a small price to pay.

If we don't go nuclear, if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, 6 billion people are going to die from the apocolypse of climate change.

Yes, millions will die. But billions more will live who would have otherwise suffered horrible, horrible, deaths.

We must do it for our children and grandchildren. We must do it for Gaia.

John Henry; 4/20/19, 11:52 PM
Gahrie said...: Extinction is part of nature, evolution is impossible without it.; 4/21/19, 12:01 AM
John henry said...: I hope nobody took that comment too seriously. It was meant in jest.

The reality is that we have a lot of experience with nuclear power plants. Billions of terrawatt-hours of commercial electricity have been generated around the world without incident.

The only deaths caused by nuclear power were the 50 or so first responders and workers on the scene at Chernobyl.

All the reports of mass deaths that were supposed to occur from the radiation release? Well, 35 year on and the best that can be said, for all the studies that have been done, is that a few people may have died at 75.5 years old instead of 75.7.

Kiev, almost 3mm people and the capital of Ukraine is only 60 miles from Chernobyl. No problems have been seen there. Much of the area around Chernobyl was evacuated and allowed to return to nature. It is rich in wildlife with no elevated level of two headed goats and such.

France has 58 nuclear plants generating 75% of all their power and exporting power to other countries. Ever hear any concerns about them? (Though the EU is making them close some and go to expensive and unreliable wind and solar.)

Hundred of other nukes around the world all operating safely.

My point is that we have enough experience with nuclear to know that 1) it is safe and 2) how to make sure it is safe.

We do need to pay attention to nuclear safety but it is just not that hard to do.

John Henry; 4/21/19, 12:06 AM
Michael McNeil said...: A good 15 years ago, a neighbor here in the Piedmont said he wanted to move to Wilmington but thought it would be flooded in a few years. It took a lot to keep a straight face.

You hear that kind of thing quite frequently. Indeed, our hostess here admitted recently that similar thought processes (there's only a decade before the American South becomes insufferably hot) led to her settling in Wisconsin lo these 35 years ago.; 4/21/19, 12:09 AM
bagoh20 said...: "...according to a study by UNEP and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis."

So what can explain a study by an international institute with an impressive name being so completely, inexcusably wrong? Is it composed of liars? Fools? Is it that education and degrees often make you stupider than the average person? The data suddenly changed and nobody noticed? Somebody forgot to carry the one? I think "liars" is most believable with "fools" coming in a close second.; 4/21/19, 12:13 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I know a go with a BA in physics (from Reed College). He is what I would call an left-libertarian.
He is completely irrational on the topic of science. his attitude is that if a person has a PhD in a field, that person will always be more correct on a topic in that field than a person w/o a PhD.
So, since Ehrlich has PhD in biology, and I don't, he is shocked when I say that Ehrlich is an idiot. By his lights, Ehrlich might be wrong, but I can never be more right than Ehrlich.
It's a very odd (to me) way to evaluate the truth of a proposition. The person with more knowledge on a topic will always be more correct regarding that topic than person with less knowledge on a topic.
That is true only within narrowly defined boundaries, where the sum total of possible knowledge is known, where knowledge is additive, and the category has been correctly defined.; 4/21/19, 12:14 AM
John henry said...: Blogger wholelottasplainin' said...

Bullshit. Since no one knows and no one has counted all the Earth's species,

Not only that, there is not even agreement among scientists working in that field what a "species" IS

Are polar bears a separate species of bear? Or are they grizzlies (I think it is) with white fur.

John Henry; 4/21/19, 12:19 AM
John henry said...: Speaking of polar bears:

Polar bears are doing just fine. They have rebounded from about 5,000 worldwide in 1975 to about 25,000 today. I attribute this to global climate change and the warmer weather causing them to have more sex and offspring.

Well, that and the ban, in 1975, on hunting polar bears.

Coca-Cola has been using polar bears in advertising since about 1920.

Coca-Cola gives tens of millions annually to World Wildlife

WWF promotes polar bears as victim 1 of global whatsit and is big on "Save the polar bears" fundraising.

Coca-Cola connects its polar bear advertising to climate change.

So is Coke giving WWF money to save the polar bears?

Or is WWF pormoting Save the polar bear so Coke will give them money?

Com se dice en mi barrio "Un buen negocio redondo" (Maybe one hand washes the other as a rough translation?; 4/21/19, 12:20 AM
John henry said...: Blogger Lewis Wetzel said...

So, since Ehrlich has PhD in biology,

His phd is not in biology but in entomology. (The study of insects) I believe his specialty is butterflies.

John Henry; 4/21/19, 12:27 AM
walter said...: So..his Science! cred is buggy.; 4/21/19, 12:36 AM
bagoh20 said...: How many PhD's in political science predicted President Trump? Doesn't Paul Krugman have PhD in economics? Yea, that helps him predict things really well.; 4/21/19, 1:15 AM
Fen said...: You are stranded on the highway with a flat tire.

The Conservative knows how to change your tire, but is too busy to stop.
The Liberal will stop to help change your tire, and set your car on fire in the process.

The crowd who wants to "change the world for the better" always "unexpectedly" makes it worse.
Now they want to "fix" the environment. What could go wrong?; 4/21/19, 1:31 AM
Fen said...: Since no one knows and no one has counted all the Earth's species

Reminds me I meant to ask: what species is a fetus?; 4/21/19, 1:32 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Blogger bagoh20 said...

How many PhD's in political science predicted President Trump? Doesn't Paul Krugman have PhD in economics?
This is the issue, isn't it? Poli sci and economics are humanities. They are about human behavior, not the natural world (though Krugman believes human behavior is within the natural world). Humanities don't really advance, there is no "standing on the shoulders of giants" like there is in the natural sciences. Is literary criticism objectively better now than it was a hundred years ago? No. Is physics better? Yes.
So is "climate change" about human behavior or the natural world? If both, how do you draw the line between human behavior and the natural world?; 4/21/19, 1:39 AM
Fen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/21/19, 1:42 AM
Fen said...: So is "climate change" about human behavior or the natural world?

In the same way that Feminism is about tearing down men instead of empowering women.

Climate Change is about Socialism, not saving the planet.

Human behavior not the natural world. We means we are really fucked because if there is one thing the Marxists have never been able to understand, it's human behavior.

"Gosh Vlad, we keep rewarding the proles for doing nothing, and nothing gets done! What is WRONG with these people!! "; 4/21/19, 1:48 AM
Fen said...: Even if a nuclear power plant were to blow up every year -

With a smirk but it's still a fair point. If the Left really believed the Earth had 12 years till Climate Apocalypse, they would be willing to sacrifice a few million humans here and there. It's not like they haven't done it before (several times) in the name of "progress".

Like the Democrats who don't really believe Trump should be impeached. Oh sure, they'll feed their own people with a shovel, but it's really all just Outrage Porn for their fundraising.

OF COURSE they think their base is stupid. Once someone believes in Socialism, you can get them to swallow anything. That's why they put out these "studies" every 6 months reminding the Democrat base that "you're so much smarter than those people over there". Cooling the mark.

We now return to our scheduled programing - Democrats throwing another 2 Year Tizzy because they can't find a unicorn in all that horse shit.; 4/21/19, 1:50 AM
Fen said...: Clean, cheap and no CO2 emissions. I could care less about CO2 but it seems like a big deal to a lot of people. So if it makes them happy and more inclined to support nuclear power, fine by me.

They will not accept a solution that does not include Moar Socialism.; 4/21/19, 1:59 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Thirty years ago the number of observed planetary systems in the universe was exactly one. Ours.
So astrophysicists quite reasonably believed that our solar system was typical in the size & distribution of planets. We are not supposed to be a special case, we are not supposed to occupy a special place in time or space.
When the tech got good enough to get empirical data on other solar systems, the astrophysicists found that their models were wildly wrong. Our solar system -- small rocky planets close to the sun, gas giants further out -- is not typical.
It took a long time for that new paradigm to be accepted.
Astrophysics is a hard science, but when the astrophysicists looked into an area where they had no empirical knowledge, they filled that area with what they knew to be true, that our solar system had small rocky planets closest to the sun, and gas giants further out.
You can't, at the same time, believe that we occupy no special place in the history of the Earth and also believe that the time we occupy in the history of the Earth is critical.
"This moment, right now, is the moment when we humans can choose to save the world or destroy it" is not a scientific statement, it is a religious statement.; 4/21/19, 2:04 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: " Blogger Fen said...

So is "climate change" about human behavior or the natural world?

In the same way that Feminism is about tearing down men instead of empowering women.
"
I think of feminism as empowering the state by tearing down men. Women always get the short end of the stick.; 4/21/19, 2:09 AM
themightypuck said...: If you take the bad side of the models (which have had climate sensitivity at 1.5c to 4.5c for 30 years--so much for all that money spent on climate science) we are probably fucked in 100 years assuming we don't come up with tech solutions. If we take the good side of the models, mildly milder winters and hints of hotter summers. We should obviously care about the world we leave our grandchildren but Greta Thunberg will never feel a spit of a lick regarding climate change excepting possible iatrogenic effects of attempts to combat it.; 4/21/19, 3:08 AM
Unknown said...: They sound like climate scientists

Do you think they were scientists, part of the overwhelming consensus, including The Pope?; 4/21/19, 4:38 AM
Unknown said...: > In case anyone has missed it, I am pro-nuke. Especially Gen4 Nuclear.

Not needed where natural gas is cheaper.; 4/21/19, 4:46 AM
Unknown said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/21/19, 4:49 AM
Unknown said...: The Greenies want a reason to run your life

that is why the windmills and "batteries"

they don't want Nuclear

and they want gas to stay in the ground

just because...; 4/21/19, 4:50 AM
Unknown said...: Thomas Malthus and the Peak Oilers were right!

Hubbert Peak Oil peak says production follows a bell curve

who could disagree with that?

We didn't know technology would "bend the bell curve"

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11
> Natural gas is primarily methane (CH4), which has a higher energy content relative to other fuels, and thus, it has a relatively lower CO2-to-energy content.; 4/21/19, 4:54 AM
phantommut said...: Well, she's right about one thing.; 4/21/19, 5:07 AM
Rusty said...: "First I've heard of methane being emitted. How does that happen? How much methane is emitted?
I'm expelling some right now!!
In any event, methane is fuel, capture and burn it in a gas turbine.
I'm game!
John Henry"; 4/21/19, 7:21 AM
TheThinMan said...: We fixed the environment. No more smog or polluted rivers. There are more woods than ever before. So CO2, the giver of plant life, had to fill in as the “problem” that needs to be “fixed.” Just as, because no US soldiers died in the first Iraq war, “Agent Orange” became a thing. Once soldiers started really dying in our wars, the Agent Orange problem immediately disappeared.; 4/21/19, 7:22 AM
Fritz said...: Bullshit. Since no one knows and no one has counted all the Earth's species,

Not only that, there is not even agreement among scientists working in that field what a "species" IS

Are polar bears a separate species of bear? Or are they grizzlies (I think it is) with white fur.

As a sometime biologist who is a "lumper" at heart, I would vote to consider the Polar Bear a separate species. They split largely on habitat, with Polar Bears mostly hunting sea life around the ice, and grizzlies mostly foraging on land. Thus, they rarely meet, so they have breeding separation, but when they do meet they mostly fight, and occasionally mate and give rise to distinctive hybrids, "pizzly" bears. I don't know if the hybrids are fertile or sterile. As far as we know, Polar Bears separated from the Brown Bear (grizzly is a race of brown bear) about 400,000 years ago, about 3-4 glacial cycles. That means they have maintained a separate identity through several ice advances and retreats.; 4/21/19, 7:24 AM
Fritz said...: On a more serious note, and to the point of Ann's post. A friend of my sons overdosed a couple of years ago leaving behind a wife and 1 year old baby.

I was talking to another friend of his a few days ago, and she said he felt bad about the environment, and Donald Trump, and said that may be why he relapsed to drugs.

Of course, that's a stupid excuse, and he really only had himself to blame, but the constant yammer in your ear about how the earth is dying and Donald Trump is the worst criminal in the world is terribly depressing to the young. It doesn't help. Except that it get votes for the Democrats.; 4/21/19, 7:39 AM
Anonymous said...: True. We are all going to die.; 4/21/19, 8:05 AM
mockturtle said...: The Greenies want a reason to run your life

that is why the windmills and "batteries"

And what could be safer than solar energy stored in lithium batteries? Eight firefighters injured in transformer fire; 4/21/19, 8:58 AM
Anonymous said...: Everybody talks about the climate but nobody does anything about it.

Everybody wants to Save the World. Nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.; 4/21/19, 9:25 AM
John henry said...: But now Sanders’ own truthfulness has come into question with his televised denial that the closure of Vermont Yankee nuclear plant contributed to a 16% rise in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“You think we should eliminate nuclear power,” noted Fox News’s Martha MacCallum at a Fox TV “Town Hall Meeting” with Sanders, “which I know they did in Vermont.”

“Sure,” said Sanders.

“But it ended up moving your emissions higher,” added MacCallum.

“Honestly, I don’t think that that’s correct,” said Sanders.

But according to data published by Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation, the state’s emissions rose 16.3% between 1990 and 2015, which was twice as much as national emissions rose during the same period.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/04/16/bernie-sanders-denies-closure-of-vermont-nuclear-plant-increased-emissions-the-data-says-otherwise/#2ea3929643d9

John Henry; 4/21/19, 10:33 AM
John henry said...: Blogger Unknown said...

> In case anyone has missed it, I am pro-nuke. Especially Gen4 Nuclear.

Not needed where natural gas is cheaper.

I would agree, but I also don't think that burning natural gas (methane) is a problem and don't believe in global whatsit.

Unless the plant is near a natural gas field, say in Texas, I don't think it will be cheaper.

In France nuclear is a LOT cheaper than NG. They export nuclear generated electricity to countries that are largely coal, oil and NG based because nuclear is cheaper.

The problem with nuclear power in the US is not the cost of generation, though that could likely be improved.

The real problem is the cost of building the plant, 10-15 years delays, uncertainties about the approval and the use of non-standard plant designs.

The other, huge, problem is the utility regulatory (Not just nuke) and pricing structure in the US. Power companies have an incentive to inflate their capital, construction and operating costs. The higher the cost, provided the regulators find it legitimate, the more profit.

If the regulators allow 5% and the cost of generation is 10c/KWH, the company makes a nickle.

If they can get the regulators to agree that their cost is 20c, now they make a dime on every KWH.

We need a more open market for electricity. We are doing some interesting things in Puerto Rico where the power company will be in charge of distribution only. Generation will be by privately owned generators ranging in size from a few KW to a gigawatt or so.

Lots of things I worry about such as undue emphasis on solar. I do think we are on the right track.

John Henry; 4/21/19, 10:47 AM
ALP said...: I admire the effort - I usually say "No" and keep walking....; 4/21/19, 1:45 PM
mockturtle said...: I'm admittedly ignorant about nuclear energy. The biggest concern, IIRC, was the waste and what to do with it. Has that been solved? And the cooling towers warming the surrounding waters?; 4/21/19, 1:48 PM
Jim at said...: These are the same fools who were screaming about the coming Ice Age in the 1970s. And the population bomb. And the hole in the Ozone Layer. And ....

But again, I ask: Let's say they're correct. How or when will we know if we've 'defeated' climate change?; 4/21/19, 1:55 PM
gadfly said...: There is this big orange ball of energy that appears to heat our atmosphere, provide clouds to produce water, grow our food while generating life-giving carbon dioxide in the process; meanwhile man is helpless to stop these natural processes. But rent-seekers with intent to steal wealth have invented a system of predicting the future using computer programs that tell us that God's Earth is out of control every time it storms. The monitor that needs to be put in place has nothing to do with climate. If only we could make climate spending measurements available. And we need to find the the answer as to how hot is too hot. One reliable measure already exists with temperature and sunspots but unreliable measurement stations, mainly in western civilization are constantly being manipulated by non-scientists to falsely show how much the minuscule atmospheric content of CO2 has risen.; 4/21/19, 7:00 PM
Skippy Tisdale said...: "The biggest concern, IIRC, was the waste and what to do with it. Has that been solved?"

Spent fuel can be reprocessed (it is all over the world) but in the US, doing so was outlawed during the Carter administration.; 4/22/19, 1:08 PM