Another quote — from Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: "In many ways we kind of whacked the Earth system with a sledgehammer and now we see what Earth's response is."
With photographs and maps, the article concentrates on the reduction in air pollution. There's also a bit about wild animals taking the opportunity to show themselves on city streets. But I'd like to see more about climate change.
All the article says is:
The greenhouse gases that trap heat and cause climate change stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, so the pandemic shutdown is unlikely to affect global warming, says Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. Carbon dioxide levels are still rising, but not as fast as last year.But this can be viewed as an experimental head start on the Green New Deal we've heard so much about. What had seemed impossible to begin is now a way of life we've plunged into. We've gone much further than what the climate activists were proposing, though we've done it for a different reason, by government order, under the fear of death by disease, and seemingly only for a few weeks (or months).
Why aren't people saying that when we emerge in phases from this lockdown — as we must, or we face economic doom — we should not attempt to go back to everything that we were doing before but go forward into some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?
Shouldn't the Democrats be saying this? Where's Joe Biden?
Could Donald Trump and the Republicans offer something like this? I know the term "Green New Deal" has a Democratic Party sound to it, but why can't they present something visionary and future-looking that inspires hope instead of merely presuming that what's best is whatever we happened to have had in the past?
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Because the Green New Deal is a scam.
First of all, any argument premised on the way the earth "should be" is a on-starter. There is no should be. There is only more amenable to our needs and less amenable to our needs. Thinking in terms of should be is evidence of a broken reasoning process. A weird godless religion.
Second, you're wrong. Far too many people are using this as a way to say "now's our chance!" Our chance to make humanity miserable to feed their own arrogance and narcissism.
Third, and this can't be emphasized enough--see "First," above.
we should not attempt to go back to everything that we were doing before but go forward into some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?
Workable? Just what might that be? The question itself exposes the ignorance...
If you liked the economy with the Wu Flu, you'll freaking LOVE the carnage of the Green Leap Forward.
Killing all the liberals would go a long way to improving the planet more to where it 'should be'. Let's develop a workable plan for that...
Sorry to say, but this is nice and yes, we all want a more beautiful world. But right now people are having a very real problem. No jobs. Businesses closing. Farms and food processing plants closing or having to turn under crops. Food shortages are already starting to appear in some places. Long, long lines at food banks. The poorer you are, the less you're going to have- both in your stores (if you have any) and in your home.
Money can continue to be printed by our government, but what's it worth in real value as we keep printing it, and when Goldman Sachs continues to be the recipient, what does it matter?
Not to say we don't all want to strive to have a more beautiful planet, but first- go talk to China about this. See how they cooperate (somewhere around how they cooperated with the facts on Covid), then go ask the average American: do they want their business to not go under, do they want a paying job, do they want food in their stores- or do they want another greenspace that they can look at?
Good thing warming causes CO2 levels to rise, not the other way around. Stuart Pimm, Chris Field, and Seth Borenstein should surrender their college degrees if they can't be honest. Perhaps COVID-19 was sent to sweep people like them off the planet. We wasted more than a $1 trillion dealing with the antropogenic climate change nonsense.
Isn't the COVID-19 virus as much a natural part of our beautiful planet as anything else?
We need to go back in time when the world was so much cleaner, and we had glaciers everywhere. Even the elephants had hair.
I know the term "Green New Deal" has a Democratic Party sound to it, but why can't they present something visionary and future-looking that inspires hope instead of merely presuming that what's best is whatever we happened to have had in the past?
Trump ran on making America great again.
Hillary ran on being the first woman President.
Which one had a more hopeful message?
Trump is running on creating more opportunity for Americans.
Biden is running on transferring student debt into government debt.
Which one had the more hopeful message?
The constant creation of crises by the media is to make the hopeless Democratic agenda look like “hope”, while proclaiming the American dream dead and any reference to it pining for the reintroduction of slavery.
The Earth without humans is just another rock circling the sun. How cliche.
Read the Earth Day predictions from 50 years ago.
Read the “no more snow in England” predictions from just a few years ago.
Compare the polar bear population or ice pack to predictions from a decade ago.
Statistically compare the number of hurricanes or tornadoes to the past. There’s no uptick.
The models don’t agree. They can’t model clouds, which control a lot of climate.
Compare actual temperature data for a particular location to the massaged data after “adjustments” are made and see the differences- always trending up, it seems.
Climate change makes everything worse-there is never any upside.
I think there is already a suspicion that everything we've gone through was mostly unnecessary and also not really that helpful in that it didn't really save the people it meant to save given how many old folk in nursing homes have been left to die from the virus.
It might be that there are some things we can be convinced of now that will be wonderful new environmental advances coming out of this largely unnecessary and unhelpful fracturing of our daily lives but I'm not sure which politician has the savvy to pull off such a craven and manipulative pivot from this virus to an agenda that will most likely cause even more disruption and painful sacrifices. Certainly not Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
I would be interested in hearing about the medical lessons that have been learned in dealing with this experience. Or what government has learned about what to do or not to do in response to a feared pandemic and what needs to be put in place to manage such a crisis more effectively. These are areas that would seem to have the more obvious connection to what we've gone through the last couple of months.
I'll know they're serious when they're willing to give up some of the things they hold sacred- the above private sector level compensation and defined benefit pensions, the early retirement, the no show patronage jobs, the layers of government bureaucracy that spills over into the offices around DC and the state capitols, the political wealth transfers, the buying of votes with taxpayer dollars, sitting on the 'other' side of the negotiating table with your union pals...
Where's Joe Biden?
There's no difference in rural America. Maybe the city folk long to live here.
"Sorry to say, but this is nice and yes, we all want a more beautiful world. But right now people are having a very real problem. No jobs. Businesses closing. Farms and food processing plants closing or having to turn under crops. Food shortages are already starting to appear in some places. Long, long lines at food banks. The poorer you are, the less you're going to have- both in your stores (if you have any) and in your home."
You see why that's a straw man argument?
You're presenting it as a choice between beauty and economic success. Protecting the environment is important to the economics of the future, and no one is suggesting restructuring everything around beauty. The challenge is to use the current horrible situation to move into a future that would be better economically in the long run. I don't accept the idea that we should just pretend climate change is not a problem and that the economic arrangements of the past are the best we can do.
Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem? People are not rising to the occasion, not seeing the challenge and taking it seriously.
You can make cities more rural by moving the houses farther apart.
Darrell's Law--The first group that destroys raw data loses the argument.
"Why aren't people saying that when we emerge in phases from this lockdown — as we must, or we face economic doom — we should not attempt to go back to everything that we were doing before but go forward into some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?"
The left doesn't want a 'livable, workable' form of the New Green Deal.
They want it all, and anything short of all the marbles will be seen as a sell-out.
And: the jobs that have stayed open are primarily work-from-home jobs, where you can work against a background of streaming opera. Those people would be fine with that being the new normal.
The ones that were forcibly unemployed, however: those will be the ones to find that their jobs must be sacrificed for the New Tomorrow.
The Eloi like the new way, and would like it to stay. Less messy.
Meanwhile, the Morlocks can scrounge for crumbs in the chaos as our betters reaffirm the winners and losers.
Meanwhile, the dirtiness that gets food on tables will try to function in a constrained state, and little brown people on the other side of the world will starve.
Which is sad, because they are the ones that need streaming opera most.
I am Laslo.
When you think back to what the world was like, you have to remember that once upon a time, there were dinosaurs walking around with absolutely no snow anywhere, then on and off periods of time when glaciers covered great areas with ice, then, think about what it's like right now, and you should realize that our current climate is what is odd.
All we need is just a little collective Utopianism and the World Will Be A Better Place.
1. The GND is designed to deindustrialize the USA, which we are about to learn from our brief experiment, is a stupid and dangerous way to introduce scarcity and famine to a world that had come a long way towards bringing the last 10% of the World out of poverty for the first time in history after reducing poverty 90% in the last century.
2. The actual results we are seeing are caused by a pause in pollution from China and India, who were never going to join the GND anyway and are trying to crank back up right now.
3. The purpose of deindustrialization was to reallocate power from elected leaders in the USA to unelected global “experts” who will run things for us.
Despite this temporary calm, the exciting “results” you see are an illusion, because the millions of your fellow Americans in pain and misery and uncertainty are being hidden from you while the useful idiots in the DNC-Media feed you tales of how great the New Normal is, and blame all the ills on the industries they are trying to strangle by shutdown. Never before has the world seen instant unemployment of the scale we have now. Never before have we destroyed our food supply chains. Already 25% of our pork production is idle and producers are euthanizing hogs, poultry and warming us cattle are next. Is this what Fauci and Birx warned us about?
No. It’s much much worse.
I passed a girl bicyclist who was out for the first time probably, the product of boredom, I'd guess. She was walking her bike up a hill, is how you know she was new.
Into a 15mph headwind, which is going to discourage her. The first mph of wind knocks 2/3 mph off your speed. Maybe she'll notice how fast it is going the other way.
I don't accept the idea that we should just pretend climate change is not a problem...
You're ignoring awful lot of nuance in those two words.
An owl banged into the back of my head a couple of weeks ago. Fuck wildlife.
Did you know that NASA or NOAA published a paper saying the the planet is greening and deserts are shrinking, and that close to 3/4 of it is due to increased CO2?
These before-and-after images show the change
Only in New Delhi, for some mysterious reason, and the 2nd pair demonstrates a dishonest use of telephoto vs wild-angle lenses.
madison.com is one of the worst websites - there were 254 advertising/tracking elements on that page.
Not sustainable with the number of people on the planet.
AOC is indeed saying this. She is saying exactly this. I don't have a link because I saw a clip on another news show.
It's the same flawed logic as with covid- if we shut everything down for as long as we necessary the magic will happen. That vaccine may never happen. There may be natural occurring climate change outside the control of humanity. Despite dramatic efforts Climate change may not 'reverse' itself.
...but by golly if it saves one life. (Ignore the deaths from the 'cure'...waves hand in Jedi mind trick)
This IS the Green New Deal THIS is what they want.
I think the people saying it are despicable. All we need to clean the planet is to lock people inside, scare billions of people away from seeing their loved ones, and let small businesses across the world fail. Let's do it!!!
"we should not attempt to go back to everything that we were doing before but go forward into some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?"
Workable form of the Green New Deal? I need a laughing emoji here. This IS the AOC's Green New Deal. This is what it looks like. The starvation just hasn't set in yet. But totalitarian control of our lives has begun. Give it a bit.
"Could Donald Trump and the Republicans offer something like this?"
Inspires hope? Not for me. The fear of climate change is ignorance.
At least the fear that the earth will get too warm and cause us terrible problems. Please look at those temperature records from EPICA and Vostok, in the Antarctic. The cooling-to-warming to cooling cycle has occurred at least five times they can demonstrate in the last half-million years. Farther-back data strongly suggest more of it.
It is the cold that we have to fear and it will come someday, but possibly not for a couple thousand more years. In the meantime, do no harm!
To me the change shows: it doesn't do lasting damage, this living of life. We aren't killing the earth. We are simply using it.
A New York Frame of Mind.
if we can just get the Majority of people on earth, to DIE...
Think how pretty the world will be!
let's legalize birth control; for married people, so they don't have more kids
let's legalize birth control; for single people, so they don't get married
let's harp, on and on about THE POPULATION EXPLOSION!!
let's legalize infanticide; to Kill the babies birth control missed
let's pretend that people are FREEZING the World! BAD HUMANS!
let's pretend that people are Broiling the World! BAD HUMANS!
let's talk about HOW BAD Norman Borlaug was, for helping people Not Starve!
let's talk about HOW WONDERFUL pandemics are!!!
IF ONLY THOSE DEPLORABLE HUMANS WOULD JUST DIE OFF!!
No, we should not become communists and plan the future.
That is what the Democrats, in their alliance with the CCP, are proposing.
No plans. Open up. Leave it up to the individual.
Communism has a horrifying environmental track record. This is another instance of romanticizing the ideals of communism, instead of observing performance in reality.
Here is AOC
They loathe 'finance', thus don't recognize that government is starved of funds if we go back to huddling naked in trees.
Althouse there is no “challenge to take seriously” when you start either the GND. Deindustrialization is NOT going to happen without a war to enforce it, except for right now. We did clean our environment. We did have clean water. It’s China, the same bad actor that caused the virus who also is causing the pollution. Apply your persuasion skills the them and India if you want a radically cleaner environment. The problem with global plans to address the GND is that they NEVER got China and India to do their part. What “serious” idea do you have? This Article wasn’t serious.
The gist of the answer from the cultural elites is "let them eat ice cream".
some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?
You're the advocate. Please explain to me what is the Green New Deal? Last I heard it was all about no cars, no planes, rebuilding every structure in the US and no farting cows all within 10 years. There is nothing workable in that "plan".
I'm not an intellectual so therefore slogans, pure wishes and pipe dreams have no persuasive power over me.
What do you want? Higher density and mass transit for everyone? Ban air travel? One child policy?
Spell it out and Then we'll talk.
This is what it looks like. The starvation just hasn't set in yet. But totalitarian control of our lives has begun. Give it a bit.
people NEED to REALIZE that civil liberties are Given to them by the state: for Good behavior
people NEED to REALIZE that property is something Given to them by the state: through amazon.com
people NEED to REALIZE that they ONLY have the 'right' to protest WHAT the state Wants protested
IF WE CAN JUST SAVE ONE LIFE, IT WILL ALL BE WORTH IT!!!
(did we mention, that the Real Problem is Over Population?)
"I don't accept the idea that we should just pretend climate change is not a problem"
Climate change is not a problem.
Over the last 20 years, I've moved from belief in the theory to the belief that it's a money-sucking scam and a lever to power over our lives.
It started when, around 2000, Bjorn Lomberg was declared a non-person by Scientific American. His crime? Believing in global warming, but suggesting that it would be better to mitigate its effects rather than embark on expensive programs of dubious worth to move the needle less than one degree.
Next, there was the NASA study of ocean temperatures, in which they dropped thousands of buoys that would sink to various levels and take readings. Instead of confirming the theory, the results contradicted it.
Then, we see that NOAA has temperature stations that were on the edge of developments being placed in parking lots and building roofs, creating a heat-sink effect that raised temperature readings.
Then there Michael Mann's "hockey stick" chart, for which he refused to release the raw data or discuss his findings.
Now, every time they release temperature readings, they're "corrected" to show global warming, with no discussion of the science behind it. No scientific debate.
Then there's the sight of 2,000 private planes flying to Switzerland to discuss global warming. Obviously, they can't be too concerned about it.
You know when I'll take it seriously? When they ban private jets, something that only the top .01% use, and which dumps a lot of C02 into the air.
So, no, I no longer believe in global warming.
LOL!!! The maps showing polution before and after. The Red colors show where the worst pollution is.
Ironically, the Red States,>also areas outside of the cities world wide), flyover country USA, are blue on the map. The Red areas (polluted) areas are the Blue States and big Democrat Cities. The Blue STATES and Flyover areas always have had Blue Skies.
Note. On the pollution map NYC is a stew of red and black. Upstate New York was and still is blue colored on the map. Amazingly the colors are reveresed politically. Blue (Dummocrat) NYC and Red (Repbulican) Upstate.
The problem of "Global Warming" has been pinpointed. Big Cities, Urban Congestion, Democrats and Big Government.
By all means, let’s go back to the Garden of Eden.
CAGW is a scam based on models even more wrong than the Covid19 models.
"You're presenting it as a choice between beauty and economic success."
That's not a straw man. With 7 billion people on the planet, it's a pretty accurate prediction. Economic success is way above starvation and famine on any scale.
Unless, of course, you are fortunate enough to live in a town where State has it's seat of Gov't, and the 'intellectuals' gather for cush work. They had it pretty good in Capitol of Panem. Lot's of beauty.
The irony. In trying to illustrate pointing out a straw man argument, countering an argument illustrating food shortages, the good Professor describes Food Supply, as "economic success". Low bar for success I guess. The output of UW.
Nothing's greener than introverts.
"People are not rising to the occasion, not seeing the challenge and taking it seriously."
Maybe because we are just coming out (hopefully) of a catastrophic Cry Wolf scenario.
Where people rose to the occasion, took it seriously, and saw the government use that as an excuse to overreach.
And now we are asked to trust the people with the scary models again.
And the Eloi will be happy, and the Morlocks fucked.
As Jesus said: There will always be Morlocks, and shall they ever be fucked in this world.
I am Laslo.
You mean the Green New Deal that nearly all of us agreed we couldn't afford last year? Good thing we're so much wealthier now!
If you 3-d print groceries, everything can be done at home.
Maria Baritromo had a guest on this morning and she listed some of the companies being invested in by USA. They weren't producing kumbaya videos. Reportedly laughing at our childish gullibility. So, yeah, let's Teach The World To Sing...
Poor countries adjust by dying off. Rich countries live for a while off of capital.
go forward into some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?
Of course not.
The article didn't show any "before and after photos" of any city in any civilized country because 3rd world countries are far more polluted than modern industrial countries which have relatively high standards of living, because first-world countries already have workable, and working, methods to cut pollution.
How 'bout a Better "Green Contract with America" ?
1) We solve the perceived problem of nuclear waste. Aside from industry we have piles of material left over from our weapons programs. Finish the depository at Yucca Mountain. Charge ALL utilities a small fee for transport, and gather wastes into a safe spot.
2) License smaller nuclear cores and allow them in more crowded communities. In particular the sort of electrical-hogs of (Google or Amazon or Pixar) "server farms" could come off the common grid and run their own nuclear generators. Small cities can as well.
3) End bio-fuel subsidies. Grow food for people not for fueling vehicles.
4) End "electric" and "hybrid" vehicle subsidies. Let manufacturers compete on basis of prices. If (nuclear) electricity price per KWh is low enough, electric vehicles would need no subsidy.
5) "Harden" the grid against EMP -- both weapons and solar flares. This includes manufacturing and stock-piling transformers in North America. It means, too, quit planting trees directly under power lines.
6) Match "end of life cycle" requirements for solar and wind farms to those imposed on coal and nuclear plants -- utilities must accrue and escrow funds from their operations to pay for the disposal of toxic panels and blades when those wear out.
etc etc. "Common sense" power regulations.
The lockdown is also starting to have an effecting on the food chain. Tyson Foods closed its largest pork-processing plant that alone accounts for 4% of the nation's supply of pork.
It's only going to get worse the longer the shutdown goes on.
It’s China, the same bad actor that caused the virus who also is causing the pollution. Apply your persuasion skills the them and India if you want a radically cleaner environment.
did ya notice, that when the article wanted to show the change in China and India,
they used PICTURES; to show the change in the USA, they used GRAPHS: of invisible chemicals
WHY didn't they show how much cleaner the air got here? 'cause it's ALREADY CLEAN
See Ann.... I guess living comfortably in the Capital of Panem, a little bit more poverty for the outliers in order to improve the beauty of the morning walk by the lake is just a sacrifice we all have to be willing to make. We're in this together....
Blessed are the online cheesemakers.
It's Life On The Serengeti out here. Clearly not in Birkenstock Land, but in the real world.
Fly Like an Eagle to be Free.
The Earth does not have a system without humans here to describe it.
The only way I will take that professor seriously is if the commit suicide.
Today.
Voila! Simply by labeling half of America’s jobs “non-essential” we have a full-screen preview of the green nude eel. Has Althouse considered all the things that supply chains have stopped supplying? Like clothing, income, autos, income, furniture, income, food, income, fuel, income, electronics, income, building materials, income, appliances, income, air conditioners, income, bicycles, etc.
quit planting trees directly under power lines
That's nature. There's a regular and predictable cycle of field-to-forest evolution, as to what plants itself and grows there and in what order.
Bill Peschel said..."The lockdown is also starting to have an effecting on the food chain. Tyson Foods closed its largest pork-processing plant that alone accounts for 4% of the nation's supply of pork."
Hey Bill. Did you notice how in the first paragraph of the article "Tyson Foods suspended operations Wednesday at an Iowa plant that is critical to the nation's pork supply but was blamed for fueling a massive coronavirus outbreak in the region."
Because we all know Arkansas and Iowa are just hotbeds of COVID-19, bodies everywhere. The AP. What a joke.
The seductiveness of central planning overwhelms the egos of eggheads.
Five Year Plans. The Great Leap Forward. The War on Poverty.
Genocide, forced labor, the destruction of the black family.
But, the intentions were good! Just the wrong people in charge! This time it will be different!
“why can't they present something visionary and future-looking that inspires hope instead of merely presuming that what's best is whatever we happened to have had in the past?”
I don’t have time to look up the exact phrase, but I believe it’s something like “doing nothing is a high standard to meet.” I think that applies here. You can’t just assert there’s a problem, you have to demonstrate likelihood, severity and solvability. The article asserts that shutdown has demonstrated co2-driven climate change, but then only says it’s too short term to see effects.
I don't accept the idea that we should just pretend climate change is not a problem
Do the models for this disease path make anybody pause and think about the global warming models?
Every day is different depending on the winds.
How nice will Earth be when bands of human animals come together to seek dinner from the food stores of rich professors? I would bet there are a fair few guns in and around Durham, NC and that this professor will look like a juicy target if he gets what he wants.
Watch the nature shows through to the end. Go look at the bloody carcasses who were not quite fast enough.
When the Wisconsin State budget is short because sales tax collection has tanked, income taxes are low, and property values down, I'm sure the population of UW-Madison pensioners will be willing to give up a little of their check for the common good...and beauty of course.
Two of the aspects of the Green New Deal;
Higher-density living and increased mass transit.
What have we just found in areas like that?
High rates of COVID death.
I'm sure there wouldn't be any other contrary surprises.
Step one: we take any of the elites in high-density areas and forcibly relocate them to the countryside to farm.
Be a part of the New Pol Pot.
I am Laslo.
Never believe anyone named Zeke.
Coincidentally the “science” behind the present lockdown is exactly as reliable as the “science” behind global warming. Exactly. And both unexpectedly happen to benefit the same exact class of “experts” and “statesmen” selling us both!
The poorer we are, the more the environment and wildlife are going to suffer. In the long run, the Kung Flu will make the earth less wild and dirtier.
The GND is roughly this level of economic constraint, forever. In the face of short-term consequences, after a month, people are asking whether this was really necessary; whether the threat is all it’s cracked up to be; whether the experts have an axe to grind; whether those pushing this public policy hardest are going to continue to live the good life while everyone else is supposed to embrace the suck, for the greater good.
I might not sound like it but I’ve been a COVID hawk. This isn’t just a bad flu, and we were going to have to take unusual measures, based on maddeningly partial information, to mitigate its spread. What we’ve done is to throw common sense and judgment out the window, implement measures people were never going to live with in the long term, and question the motives or intelligence of anyone who complained.
So the lesson with respect to AGW (if you don’t just think it’s a hoax, and I don’t) is to convince people to buy into increments, not to insist on maximalist solutions. To adapt. And - this is true to a much greater extent than in viral response, because it’s for the long term - to see prosperity as a good thing, not The Problem. Because the only solutions to AGW that people will buy into, given any choice in the matter, are ones that don’t impoverish them, and these are solutions that only prosperous societies are able to devise. If you’re barely scraping by and there’s a bunch of hydrocarbons lying unburnt in the ground, why the hell would you leave them there?
Wittgenstein said that a chair thinks in the air around it, rather than in its brain.
I would like a Venn diagram with the people who thought millions of Americans were going to die in a few weeks from COVID, and who believe that man made climate change is an urgent issue.
I mean, can't we take a pause out of respect for the eleven-million dead in the US before going on to the next problem to be solved?
I am Laslo.
Less people = cleaner planet. the right amount of people = equilibrium.
One of the Keystone Species - the wildebeest- they instinctively know the right amount of their own herd population.
The sun's activity and impact out-weigh anything we can pump into the atmosphere.
PORGIE has the answer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A5DftXzIqs
I'm reading Wittgenstein in morse code. That was Saturday's reading. It rained Sunday so there was no Wittgenstein.
We only say of something human or human-like that it thinks, he said. His answer to can a machine think. He means that think has no regular rules for machines, it doesn't come up so meaning has been developed. It's like gay marriage.
This isn’t just a bad flu...
That's the refrain of the day...but is there any truth to it? There's data to contradict it, like cruise ship population data. I'm skeptical...
We've gone much further than what the climate activists were proposing, though we've done it for a different reason, by government order,
It's the same method -- government order -- if not reason, as the Green New Deal, isn't it?
I've always believed much of what climate change activists demand should be pursued for other, pragmatic reasons. If we could develop a way for renewable energies to be economically feasible, that's good environmentally and strategically. Reducing waste? Common sense. I've seen what it takes to make a modern landfill. Etc.
Goes back to Andres Sullivan from yesterday: Just because Trump said the COVID cure might be worse than the disease doesn't mean that's not correct. A lot of what environmentalists seek isn't wrong, people just don't trust giving them the power to do it.
JPS at 8:04- wonderful comment
3rd world countries are far more polluted than modern industrial countries which have relatively high standards of living, because first-world countries already have workable, and working, methods to cut pollution.
This is what our factory jobs are competing against this (not including worker safety and workers rights laws). And this competition is called Free Trade.
One more idea so stupid you have to be an "intellectual" to believe in it.
Just think now much CLEANER the Earth would be if we humans were all gone! Why, this pandemic is just what mother Gaia needed!
Notice all of these "there are TOO many people" folks never take their own advice? I don't wee all of them lining up to remove their own "blight" from this world.
"What had seemed impossible to begin is now a way of life we've plunged into. "
Right. And everybody sees how absurd and destructive it is to humanity.
"by government order, under the fear of death by disease, and seemingly only for a few weeks (or months)."
By coercion, indeed, and under fear, not "science." Everybody can see that's a recipe for disaster. Of course, progs like coercion, and they exploit fear, and popular delusions will support them up to a point.
"Why aren't people saying that when we emerge in phases from this lockdown — as we must, or we face economic doom — we should not attempt to go back to everything"
People are saying we should not attempt to back to everything. On this very blog, both pro-panic alarmists and pro-sanity skeptics have said we should not go back to relying on China as much as we have, and the pro-sanity faction has been very clear that we should not go back to relying on bad science exploited for bad political purposes.
As a trial run of prog tyranny, The Panic of 2020 is instructive: it tells us how bad things can get -- and also that a portion of the public is very susceptible to the manipulation needed to bring that about. Progs pay attention: they now know that if you can tell the Althouses of America that you have "real calculations" that something awful will happen, but that if we "follow the experts" all will be well, you can get away with a lot.
“Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem? People are not rising to the occasion, not seeing the challenge and taking it seriously.”
Yes, why? Is it just stubbornness because the so called left has been embracing this idea? Anything the left might see as worthy is automatically rejected?
I would like a Venn diagram with the people who thought millions of Americans were going to die in a few weeks from COVID, and who believe that man made climate change is an urgent issue.
Draw one circle.
“The challenge is to use the current horrible situation to move into a future that would be better economically in the long run.”
Chairman Mao smiles. Thinks of Great Leap Forward.
Stalin smiles. Thinks of a Five Year Plan.
Stuart Pimm smiles. Thinks academia won’t be affected.
Althouse doesn’t have many blind spots but the ones she has are doozies.
Eleven million dead would've somewhat reduced the carbon footprint, I would think.
I am Laslo.
Anything the left might see as worthy is automatically rejected?
A good starting assumption since the left is now openly embracing CCP style rule.
Yes, communism should be automatically rejected. First, because of the 100 million murdered.
Has anybody besides me noticed that the Democrats yearn for CCP style rule? They aren’t even bothering to hide it any more.
In the 50s the Hudson River flowed day-glo green around Albany NY (observed on a student solo cross-country trip). Then somebody decided that we were rich enough to pay for a clean river, and all that polluting was banned. The result was that prices went up, which is how we paid for the clean river.
The pollution cost savings had gone to consumers, not manufacturers. The advantage in polluting, like today's advantage in outsourcing to cheap labor, goes to consumers, having been competed away. It only benefits a manufacturer if he's the only one doing it.
So rich societies are the clean ones. The consumers have to be rich enough to pay for it. Businesses in poor clean societies would go out of business because nobody could afford their products.
Why would the onus be on the Republicans to come up with a "workable form" of a Democrat idea that is inherently unworkable?
"pure wishes and pipe dreams have no persuasive power over me."
I would prefer talking frogs, dancing unicorns, typing monkeys, and magic eight balls myself.
Also- all the disposable PPE isn't especially green, is it? Are masks and gloves recyclable?
“why can't they present something visionary and future-looking that inspires hope instead of merely presuming that what's best is whatever we happened to have had in the past?”
We have about 2 weeks until the throngs throw off the chains, with exasperation, to get back to what they think was pretty great here in the USA - the best economic engine in our lifetimes. If we should change that with some hopeful presentation, best get crackin'!
All new constriction in Boulder county - they force everyone to install solar panels.
Where are solar panels made?
CHINA.
How are they made? What chemical by-products destroy the environment and cause cancer in local Chinese communities?
UNREGULATED TOXINS AND POLLUTION.
But it's important for local leftists to feel good.
go forward into some livable, workable form of the Green New Deal?
Absolutely. Tear down the wind farms, forget solar, promote fracking, go nuclear, and disperse the cities into the countryside. It's not Bayesian statistics.
Why can’t we go back to the garden of Eden? Now, I’ll read through the comments before mine and see if anyone has the answer.
The mask comes off. At the end of the day climate change zealots really want to kill a whole bunch of ( not them mind you ) people.
"You're presenting it as a choice between beauty and economic success"
The historical evidence shows that economic success is a condition for environmental care. Poor societies ruin the environment; rich societies protect it.
I am getting a sense that Althouse has never read anything about environmental history, or about the history of economic growth for that matter. Even if she has, this seems like another exploitable form of ignorance, enabling "experts" to her that a nice new kind of economy can bring about just the kind of beauty she likes, if only we carry out policy x and shut down y and extract money from group z. Don't go back to the way things were! Make the planet beautiful! If you just want growth, you are not helping, and racist! Science says! The slogans write themselves.
I expect when we all have to stay indoors because the climate is so awful, and the oceans have over taken our beaches and beach homes, and the sky is dark with pollution because we didn't do enough for the climate, we and all of our peers will have a good attitude and do what we are told to do without question. To stay safe.
“People are saying we should not attempt to back to everything. On this very blog, both pro-panic alarmists and pro-sanity skeptics have said we should not go back to relying on China as much as we have, and the pro-sanity faction has been very clear that we should not go back to relying on bad science exploited for bad political purposes.”
While people with this attitude are in power, no changes will ever be made. By the way that this commenter divides the American populace into these two distinct groups tells one that there is such a deep resistance to change, that they will bite off their own noses to spite their faces. There is no chance for compromise possible with the attitude expressed above.
Considering just about every leftwing idea turns into a pile of shit and a waste of money, time and resources - it's safe to say "new green deal" = another green energy boondoggle used to stuff money into D-prog-leftist pol pockets and starve the enemy. (those pesky dirty deplorables)
As someone pointed out here, disaster zones like Chernobyl and the DMZ are teeming with wildlife. Why should your urban park be any different?
Utopian proposals end like a fairy tale when they describe them but like a nightmare when implemented. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens over the next year.
I thought that conventional, particulate pollution levels in the air (not CO2) actually blocked sunlight and caused the planet's temperature to increase.
Inga, here's my global warming solution. Build nuclear plants for zero emissions energy and place a 100% tariff on any imported product that comes from a country that has less stringent environmental or worker safety laws.
If you don't support that New Green Jobs Deal you are a nazi who hates Gaia.
You see why that's a straw man argument?
I'm not presenting a straw man argument. I agree that in the big picture it does not have to be one or the other. But to talk to me about global greening you have to deal with the reality of a couple of things.
First- the Chinese and Indians are the worlds largest polluters. The US, by comparison, has gone more green that any country on earth, including those in Europe. We have done, and will continue to do a lot. China and India do nothing. Europe hosts great cocktail parties and gives nice speeches, but when it comes to crunch time, they too fall short.
Second- who is to make this grand plan? Some government panel? Perhaps a global NGO? Or all of them together?
The priority for people in the streets- right now, today- is very urgent and compelling. What you are talking about is nice, but not something that needs our attention or energy for the next 30/60/90 days. This is not a straw man. This is the reality for 90% of the people.
The skies outside of Houston, TX may be looking clearer today, and the smell of refineries might not be as noticeable, but there are about to be hundreds of thousands of people out of work in and around the energy sector. (500,000 alone just in the 'clean energy' sector which is typically a government subsidized industry anyway.) Sure, we can tell them they'll all have shiny new jobs in green energy and they should be making solar panels anyway, but when will that actually happen in an economically sound way? Three years? 10 years? 20 years?
We're already starting to bring back plastic bags because, lo and behold, our own cloth bags are bacteria filled messes. Not a surprise. The planet is cleaning up because humans have been told to take a time-out. What happens next? We cannot sit in our corners staring at the wall for another 6 months.
Right now- this morning- people are staring at today and wondering how to put food into their kids mouths, pay their rent, keep their business afloat (and keep their employees), make rent payments, car payments, utilities. The Government cannot keep the US population in paychecks indefinitely while the best of the best come up with new ways to power the planet.
Priorities matter. Today is the priority. It has to be. Not saying it's right or wrong, but it's reality.
"but why can't they present something visionary and future-looking that inspires hope instead of merely presuming that what's best is whatever we happened to have had in the past?"
Because there is no way to know that the vision in the fancy presentation actually is better. The way forward is a mass of random acts by millions of independent agents trying and failing, or succeeding, in doing some little thing in some tiny slice of human civilization better, which is copied by others until it becomes the new SOP in that bit of the whole.
This does not work as theater, so its impossible to sell like that, but it is how it is.
I have a 15w solar panel in the side yard. It's been there for a decade, charging a 12v battery in the basement, though I've never gotten more than 4w out of it even with a MPPT controler.
It gets used seriously once a year for the ARRL field day. I qualify for the using emergency power category.
The batttery at the moment is at 12.75 volts, according to my desktop meter. It will go up to 14.6 volts at around 2pm.
rehajm, 8:08:
I base this off the guess that 1.6 million in NYC have the virus. One fifth, about like that cruise ship. About 17000 of them are dead and it isn’t over yet. That’s over 1%, or about ten times the flu.
In northern Italy, where I am currently a guest, 150 doctors have died from this. That didn’t happen in their most recent outlier flu season. In the harder-hit areas, the Army was called in to transport decedent remains elsewhere. This likewise doesn’t happen in bad flu seasons.
There have been absurd extrapolations and arguments from authority. That this thing isn’t as bad as the worst alarmists insist doesn’t make it nothing out of the ordinary.
Saving Planet Earth Step 1 - start mining the moon and asteroids.
Sooner rather than later.
This panic, by the way, was deliberately incited by the CCP and the Democratic Party to get rid of Trump and to pave the way for great communist egghead central planning in the U.S.
So, success?
You're not this stupid. What's your motivation for this post?
The government workers and the pensioners and the elite never really had any skin in the game regarding the COVID scare: the checks still came. There were still Morlocks to stock the shelves and deliver the take-out.
If we had truly 'all been in this together' there should've been significant cuts in those checks, to help fund other aspects of the crisis.
Now those same ones tell us how we should proceed to build on the positive aspects of the past months.
Something tells me they would not be so trusting in the right decisions being made if they had only been getting 30% of their regular checks.
Meanwhile, those on the outside saw the pictures of what the Dorian Grays were really like.
I am Laslo.
My neighbor's oldest son, who I really like and respect he's a cool dude. He lives with his wife and kids in DC area and he works as some sort of advocate or lobbyist for the nuclear energy industry.
and he's a democrat.
The smart money is on new clean technology. Does anyone dispute that? We will be in a much better position in the global economy if we are the leaders in the development and use of this new technology. But right now we see Trump having government put it's heavy thumb on the market place in favor of coal and oil.
So the liberal says to the conservative, I'd like you a lot better if you would just agree with me and adopt my ideas. The conservative replies, I'm not that concerned with being liked.
“You're presenting it as a choice between beauty and economic success. Protecting the environment is important to the economics of the future, and no one is suggesting restructuring everything around beauty. The challenge is to use the current horrible situation to move into a future that would be better economically in the long run.”
This is you trolling us right?
This is the BS Obama bamboozled people with. “No one is suggesting restructuring everything around beauty”. Who’s setting up straw men now, Professor?
And “protecting the environment is important to the economics of the future”? AYFKM?
Show your work, We’ll wait...
Until then F the GND. This is the US of A that Bernie and AOC want...
I’ll pass.
Our civil liberties were revoked and we were placed under house arrest to enforce this great greening.
That’s a feature, not a bug.
That’s built into central planning, no matter how grandiose sounding the intentions.
Anyone who travels knows that the air in US cities is much cleaner today than ten, twenty or fifty years ago. Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, London, even Beijing are all better today. As noted above we in the US have led in cleaning up the environment.
The notion that we are rewilding during the lockdown is the kind of horseshit these agenda driven “scientists” are always peddling
Oh, Mr Scientist, too bad but we don’t believe any of your models anymore. None.
Your opposition to environmental clean up in order to support a highly wasteful consumer culture is music to the ears of the davos globalist robber barons. Of course your biggest concern the lack of pork in the most obese country the world has ever seen.
Useful eaters. It's good to see the lack of engorgement of phony riches of our trinket obesity economy has not touch your mental illness.
I'm in Spain, only slightly better off than Italy.
But most of the Earth is not Italy or Spain or New York, and at this point few other places look like they will approach these conditions.
In many of those places, also suffering badly from the economic consequences of the lockdowns, the cost of mitigation is absurdly high vis a vis the likely losses from coronavirus.
Stay Safe said...
The smart money is on new clean technology.
Go ahead, explain this new technology that you'd like to see.
The government workers and the pensioners and the elite never really had any skin in the game regarding the COVID scare: the checks still came. There were still Morlocks to stock the shelves and deliver the take-out.
And they're already pushing for new taxpayer bailouts for pain they never had to suffer. Never let a crisis go to waste!
We could have a dialogue about a more sustainable way forward, if the Green New Dealers acknowledged the huge contribution to greenhouse gasses that open borders immigration from third world countries has had. But the fact that this is absolutely unmentionable, off the table, racist even to suggest, tells you that the Green Party is just the Red Party in disguise. The only solutions they will negotiate all involve the destruction of the bourgeois class of independent economic players.
new clean technology
OMG! New clean technology! wow. someone cracked the code. WTF is New Clean Technology?
We are waiting, Safe Space... Do explain. Tell us about the chemicals left downstream after one solar panel is generated. Or tell us about the giant spent rusted wind turbine blades - with no-where to live.
There is no such thing as "clean technology".
The total lifecycle cost (including waste handling) of anything "clean" is never part of the analysis, for good reasons.
The smart money is on new clean technology.
Windmills and solar panels aren't new or clean. See Michael Moore's latest movie for details.
A Gatsby quote that pertains:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and . . . then retreated back into their money . . . and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
I am Laslo.
“...but why can't they present something visionary and future-looking that inspires hope instead of merely presuming that what's best is whatever we happened to have had in the past?"
Because sadly they aren’t interested in going forward with positive change, conservatives want to conserve the past, even if it was destructive. There is a lack of vision and imagination in some ideologies, not because they aren’t capable, but because they choose not to based on fear, spite, stubbornness, foolishness.
"Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem?"
They're being exercised in furtherance of the scam.
MayBee said... "AOC is indeed saying this. She is saying exactly this. I don't have a link because I saw a clip on another news show."
You don't have a link, but you give a link. What do you mean? Do you mean that what is at your link is not the relevant part? Because what is at your link is not at all what I am talking about, not "exactly" and not roughly. The quote there:
""When we talk about this idea of 'reopening society' you know, only in America, does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work. When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say 'no,' we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives.""
That's the economic inequality issue, not environmentalism at all.
Howard - strawman king. Who is against environmental clean up?
People who have never known poverty are not concerned about poverty.
They simply cannot know what is beyond their direct observations.
But reality will intrude no matter.
“The smart money is on new clean technology.”
What is this new clean technology? Please explain to us.
The cleanest technology for generating electricity is nuclear power but we abandoned that 40 years ago. Anyone who believes in man-caused global warming - a fiction - should go all out for nuclear energy. So why aren’t we seeing that? The cleanest source of power absent that is natural gas but all the clean energy types want to abandon that, too. So, what are these clean technologies? Wind and solar? Those are unreliable, expensive alternatives that cannot meet the power demands of a modern economy and only exist now because the government heavily subsidizes it. One of the biggest scams of all time.
We will never quit producing hydrocarbons: coal, oil, and natural gas. Even if we went full nuclear for energy we need these as sources for manufacturing chemical products that we rely on every day. There is practically nothing that any of us use every day that is not in some way dependent on the production of these hydrocarbons. If you want to shut all that down I suggest you get out some history books and study life in the 14th century because that is what you are asking for.
Althouse correctly identifies two different arguments for controlling the plebes.
wrong again Inga. Conservatives want to conserve Liberty.
It's the leftists who want to force, control and manipulate for the benefit of the top of your party's wealthy entrenched leadership.
What this has shown me is that we have far too many people in the chattering classes that are not really productive at helping the rest of us survive, and yet they continue to chatter, and collect their paychecks while those who actually support the species are severely damaged, ignored, lectured to, and also expected to fix it all when the chattering class comes out of their holes. The chatter would be entirely different if the shoe of sacrifice was on the other foot, and the chattering class was forced to shut up and go broke, while the rest of us told them they weren't helping, they just wanted people to die, and by the way, this is a great opportunity to shut you guys up forever. Hey, what do you say, are you on board with that?
Starchild’s hamster went full carbon, oxygen and nitrogen neutral last week. I found him stuck beneath the Community Wheel.
It’s all part of Gaia’s plan.
The more we limit hamster impact, the more beauty there is.
Technology, Science, Innovation, Creativity, Beauty, Health, Political Solutions.
Come shed your fears and share Our Hope at Peace Pavilion West
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, England was a green and pleasant land. Then came all those dark, satanic mills and coal mines blighting the green valleys of Wales. It was all very picturesque and peaceful. Outside of the occasional Peasant Revolt, the agricultural workers went about their brutish tasks in a docile manner. During years of bad harvests, their malnourished bodies were easy to hide from the folks at the manor house......Those coal mines and early factories were harsh places to work, but agricultural workers flocked to them. They offered a better deal. The amazing thing was not that this process took place but rather that the process took place without any of the artists and intellectuals of the 19th century realizing that the world was becoming a better place. The harshness of proletarian lives was clearly visible, but the chronic malnourishment of landless peasants was invisible.....It's easy to see the ugly lives that Smithfield workers endure, but their alternate lives without Smithfield are not so readily apparent. So close down Smithfield and all the other factories. A better world awaits us.
To kick start some GND action Robert De Niro could announce he is not moving forward on his plan to build a 250 million dollar luxury resort on the island of Barbuda. He has bought the right Antiguan politicians and has the backers but how many more Caribbean resorts do we need?
I've also learned that thee chattering class is mostly wrong about everything, except the stuff they pick up late. Not surprisingly though their terrible track record is never acknowledged, and thus teaches them nothing.
AllenS said...
Stay Safe said...The smart money is on new clean technology.
Go ahead, explain this new technology that you'd like to see.
Use your imagination. What is wrong with cars powered by unicorn farts and pixie dust?
And when food shortages cause mass starvation we'll cure the obesity epidemic.
It's a two-fer.
I base this off the guess
You could/should have stopped there.
MayBee, 8:09: Thanks!
Inga, 8:11, seconding our host:
"'Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem?...'
"Anything the left might see as worthy is automatically rejected?"
You are seeing this, as the left is wont to do, too much in terms of politics. I see a lot of creativity and intelligence put into addressing this problem, because I work with chemists and chemical engineers who are focused on renewable energy. Getting alternatives to fossil fuels to where people will choose them without coercion is a tough problem and the scale boggles the mind.
Progress is being made, not enough and not negligible either. It was under Obama and it is under Trump. Meanwhile the private sector isn't waiting on the government to look into promising alternatives, but it has one constraint the government doesn't: people will have to choose to spend their own money on what they come up with, or it won't fly.
Somebody should tell this guy that we're still coming out of the last Ice Age, which no one believes was caused or ended by humans.
I for one wouldn't mind it at all if the average temp were 3-5 deg. F higher. It would save me from having to plant new caladiums every year.
Prof. A: “ Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem? People are not rising to the occasion, not seeing the challenge and taking it seriously.” Disagree. People are being very intelligent and creative —look at the comments on this post! Look at the serious work done by others, to which the commenters refer. I particularly urge you to look at the work of Bjorn Lomborg. Enough said.
As for the stuff that prompted your post: Zeke Hausfather? Really? Claiming that GHG has a residence time of a century in the atmosphere? That claim of long half-life is (1) essential to the CAGW model (2) unproven (3) probably unprovable. And he just throws it into the “conversation” as if it were an obvious truth. So I ask you: how much of the GND do you think rests on handwaving and ipse dixit, magical thinking and oracular models? Have you done your homework here?
Althouse appears to be a believer in models. Sad. And now we should pick up some good ideas from this shutdown clusterfuck and carry them forward to a future where the ideas sprout money and the air is clean. What exactly should we learn and embrace from our current classroom?
You people blanche at the suggestion to be less profligate. Where is the morality where 5% of the people produce 25% of the world's pollution? It's either put up with grotesque environmental pollution or return to the 14th century with you people. Your arguments are just as lame and stupid as those whom follow AOC.
you would feel much better if your president told you that the solution to coronavirus is to go shopping.
"Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem?"
well if "creativity and intelligence" equates to massive bureaucracies and transfer of wealth through the hands of certain friends, the left has got that in spades.
[The above suitable for any and all "problems".]
FWIW I would think the astounding changes in results from the corona virus models MIGHT,just might, give a clue about why many are skeptical of the human component to global warming/man made climate change.
Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem?
In the actions and choices of the individual in the marketplace.
Somebody should tell this guy that we're still coming out of the last Ice Age, which no one believes was caused or ended by humans.
Leftist fuckheads are now pushing the idea that the Little Ice Age was anthropogenic
global cooling caused by white colonialists killing native populations and changing land use.
(M)an is the problem, but (M)an is also the solution.
Come Back to Nature and discover a reality that’s been here all along. The best minds are busy developing new knowledge. Be good to your Community. Don’t you want to be good?
Your senses and emotions are undiscovered lands. Liberate your Self and your group from repression. Stop in the woods and LISTEN.
Explore Peace Pavilion West’s Boomer Wing. Catered meals. Modern Art. Rock and Roll. Political Awareness.
Because what we were doing before the Support Biden shutdown was working. We had the largest reduction in so called greenhouse gas emissions AND the best economy.
Innovation will protect the economy. Socialism always destroys it.
As an influential and very smart public intellectual, I certainly hope Ann Althouse would blog about what a scam CAGW is and how the Green New Deal would totally destroy America. The GND would deindustrialize America and China would really win the day.
I've commented ad nauseum on it, but the global warm scam is based on models that are way worse than the failed and wrong covid19 models. Both are pure garbage.
If anything good comes out of this coivd19 disaster, I hope it is the death of the CAGW scam.
You people blanche at the suggestion to be less profligate.
They aren't "suggestions," as the current episode proves.
They are diktats, enforced by government officials, by the revocation of civil liberties and house arrest.
Of course, Howard, you're in awe of the CCP model. Our military/intel agencies can't wait to seize that power.
Owen: most of the carbon dioxide emitted goes into the oceans and into the soil. It is that osmotic pressure that makes carbon dioxide relatively long lived in the atmosphere. It is also one of the reasons why cutting back carbon dioxide will have essentially zero effect on climate change during our lifetime and our grandchildren's lifetime.
The disappointment that I have with Zeke House Father is that he is completely ignoring the climate benefits of cutting back the short-lived toxic pollutants in the atmosphere. Not only do you get immediate climate benefits you also get short-term and long-term health benefits from reducing traditional air pollution.
Zeke knows all of this because this is one of the major points of the Berkeley Earth project of which he was a part of.
There is absolutely nothing stopping Meadehouse from putting up solar panels and windmills and digging a nice thermal heating and cooling system for their house. That is. Doing. Something. Shut off your electricity and gas and run the place on the wonderful technologies we have created. But don’t scold me for not jumping on board whatever you think you are selling.
Now that we have “flattened the curve” (remember that? LOL) We are free to move about.
“You people blanche at the suggestion to be less profligate. Where is the morality where 5% of the people produce 25% of the world's pollution? It's either put up with grotesque environmental pollution or return to the 14th century with you people. Your arguments are just as lame and stupid as those whom follow AOC.”
Compromise is seen as failure to them. They love absolutes.
Yes they are suggestions shouting Thomas. Your governor Nipple-ring Cuomo said that there is no way to enforce anything and that they are relying on the sheep-like compliance of your people. Based on what you post here it sounds like you are giving up and surrendering to the situation.
Progress (in technology, the only sort of actual progress) is incremental and serendipitous.
It comes from millions of people trying and implementing small improvements. Most attempts fail. Most successes are modest, and do not make the creators famous.
These things cannot really be ordered up at will by some great dictator or "visionary". They happen when they happen. Some subset of that mass of always busy technicians achieve a series of synergistic changes, and then you have a large change, which will all occur in its own time. Or you can throw piles of money into a vision and it can stay expensively stuck there for fifty years - like with fusion power, or "renewables".
Conservatism is really realism, seeing the way of things as they actually are, and moreover accepting them as they are. Unamuno's (a native of this city of ours) "tragic sense of life".
AllenS said...
Stay Safe said...
The smart money is on new clean technology.
Go ahead, explain this new technology that you'd like to see.
4/27/20, 8:29 AM
Well all we need is for one, just one of those magnet based, free energy generators that are all over YouTube to pan out and there you are! There are literally hundreds of those videos posted! All we need is for JUST ONE to pan out, just one! Don't you understand the ramifications of that! Boy o boy! Then once that proves out, we just need to stop all those batter makers and oil companies from buying up the patent and bury it good and deep like they did with the water based gas additive that adds hundreds of miles per gallon to gas...
Chris N:. Now that is f****** funny. You forgot to mention that the environmental purity conference is located convenient to Aspen's private jet airport
"Compromise is seen as failure to them. They love absolutes."
Typed without irony.
Let me summarize the “suggestions” our governor has implemented:
$1,000 fines for (1) not wearing a mask, (2) being out and about after 8 p.m., (3) standing within 6 feet of another human.
He’s also forced the shutdown of all “non-essential” businesses, with that qualification determined, of course, by the state.
Every social, church and music group to which I belong has been shut down by government diktat, with the threat of fines.
This is how your and Inga’s great CCP dream will be enacted, by the threat of fines and imprisonment, and by the revocation of civil liberties and house arrest. All those childish things that only spoiled brats demand, right Howard?
I can see why you’ve thrown in your lot with the CCP. They’re “efficient.”
"I don't accept the idea that we should just pretend climate change is not a problem and that the economic arrangements of the past are the best we can do."
As for me, I'm not pretending that climate change is not a problem, I don't believe it is a problem. Regarding the environment and climate change, I think you're just another liberal lemming, running with the liberal crowd and the liberal crowd wants to gain even more control over the people. Look how they've exploited the coronavirus to lock down our country and restrict people's freedom. They've already used this virus to get stuff put into the aid packages that helps them get more control over people's lives.
"The smart money is on new clean technology."
Yes, yes it is. But only because it is so likely that governmental bodies will be sending rivers of our cash flowing their way.
Remember Solyndra?
Or see what Warren Buffet said about wind and solar investment.
Howard, 8:53:
"Where is the morality where 5% of the people produce 25% of the world's pollution?"
I'm all for cutting all the pollution we can. We have made tremendous progress over the last few decades. But "pollution" is too nonspecific for this discussion.
Since we were talking (I think) about carbon dioxide, in 2019 the U.S. produced just shy of 15% of the world's emissions, not 25%: 4.8 gigatonnes out of about 33. Ours is down 1 GT in the last 20 years, the largest decline of any country over that period.
"conservation scientist Stuart Pimm"
Do we think he is a scientist? A polemicist, perhaps?
Whoa! I just dreamed that Howard fell off the ISS and landed on Inga. Strange. Be careful, guys!
Easy, trade in the TT for a Model 3....
Funny Buwaya Puti, I thought conservatism was about conservation? Not the liberal destruction of limited resources to fuel the lifestyle of the globalist billionaires while they entertain the peons with shiny gee-gaws and calorie-dense low nutrition fast food. I guess as long as the opiate and antidepressant and diabetes and heart medications are all readily available, you are quite happy to continue on with consumer culture on hyperdrive.
“The challenge is to use the current horrible situation to move into a future that would be better economically in the long run.”
I well remember Fyodor explaining this to me outside the Winter Palace. Ah, youth!
Oh yes,kudos to President Obama and Bill Gates for spending tens of millions of dollars on beachfront property. These guys are using their fortunes (OK a TINY sliver for Gates) to prevent others from suffering when the oceans inevitably rise.
Part of the blame for the unrealistic view of technology and the way it is actually improved should go to the stupid "science" media. Over the last century and a half, at least, they have striven to sell dramatic narratives of heroic scientists coming up with brilliant ideas.
But reality is not theater.
This is not how it happens. It is of ideas, often small ones, and usually empirically based, with no hypothetical structure, piling up and facilitating the next idea. Example - Who credits Louis Pasteurs microscope makers? They deserve a very large part of the kudos. They made it possible for Pasteur to observe his bacilli in the first pkace, with their high quality and affordable instruments.
I don’t have any medical conditions, nor do I take any medications.
I’m content to let people decide what they want to buy, instead of having the government dictate “essentials.”
It’s not perfect, but the alternative is insanely worse.
The capitalist world has been magnitudes of orders more successful at conservation and environmental protection than the communist world.
A lot of people, including people in my own family, think that I’m kinda stupid for buying $5,000 guitars and $10,000 pianos, and that I should give the money to them.
JAORE:
I was in the crowd in Omaha when Warren Buffett said that it made no economic sense to buy all those wind turbines but he got nearly a ONE BILLION dollar federal tax credit to do so.
But earlier in the meeting the crowd was all excited and proud about their Iowa wind turbines. Or maybe they were happy about the $1b federal tax credit. Big applause.
JPS: you're welcome. Yes my environmental remediation professional has work very hard and at personal risks to ourselves to clean up pollution and pollution sources to protect the public. We have done a fantastic job and by every measure have improved life in these United States.
What you're not counting is the Total US environmental footprint carbon dioxide vocs ammonia sulfur ozone yada yada yada that the United States has offshored to India China and Southeast Asia. Those countries don't have the environmental remediation industry nor do they have state local and Federal clean air act's clean water act Superfund acts hazmat laws etc.
I thought you were a rebel Thomas. Couple of empty laws that will never be in force are scaring a big strong man like you to stay at home and stew in your manic paranoia. I hope you are comforted by your fancy expensive musical equipment.
Althouse said...
The challenge is to use the current horrible situation to move into a future that would be better economically in the long run. I don't accept the idea that we should just pretend climate change is not a problem and that the economic arrangements of the past are the best we can do. Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem? People are not rising to the occasion, not seeing the challenge and taking it seriously.
Everything else held constant, the rapid technological change needed to approach Althouse's vision is fostered best in a high growth economy rather than one of paucity.
Moreover, why isn't the environmental lesson of the lockdown be patient: the environment has shown it can "heal itself" right quick as those incremental advances do take place over time?
It's the politics that can't wait, not the "environment".
Howard requires an education in conservatism.
So do a lot of people, to be fair.
To this end, for you Americans, I have been recommending Russel Kirk's "The Conservative Mind"
Howard, and who knows how many more, really should go away and use their lockdown time productively to read that. Its available for $9.99 on Kindle.
In answer to your question Althouse, what Trump could be doing about pollution question is to suggest we bring manufacturing back to the United States where the level of environmental control is orders of magnitude greater Asia. It's the first step in a sensible version of the green New deal.
If it wasn't for the davos globalist stranglehold on the world, it would be very easy to impose strict environmental standards on our trading partners that would help level the playing field in global manufacturing.
Current Green New Deal experiment means tens of millions are unemployed, tens of thousands of small businesses closed down. If AOC and her ilk could address those human miseries, we could adopt the GND.
If millions died in this pandemic, those left behind would have a hard time restarting the economies, the demand for carbon fuels would drop, Big Oil died. The sun in the sky gives us heat in the summer, clouds blocking the sun give us coolness in winter, cities are returned to the wild, Earth to Nature. Paradise on earth, what is not to like?
The conservative mind cannoli survive in Infiniti universe of liberal enlightenment. You people are parasites living on the backs of innovators and trailblazers.
I hope you are comforted by your fancy expensive musical equipment.
Worked hard and succeeded to acquire it. You think I’m going to apologize to you for that?
That equipment is central to what you are lacking, my internal disciplines. I spend hours a day at those guitars and pianos, playing classical and sacred music, writing and meditating. They are the tools of my trade. At age 70, I’m still making a substantial income as a pro musician.
I learned how to control my own mind and body and I created a wide system of personal discipline.
You don’t know how to do this. You only know how to do what you’re told, so you’ve elevated obedience to authority into a grand moral system. And, you’d like to inflict that system on everybody else.
I wouldn't mind going back to a world where I still don't need to go physically into the office, sit and wait - just because I need to talk to a doctor.
I've had an appointment once a week for two months, to look at recovery from a toenail removal that is healing very slowly. Doctor calls me, I text him a picture of the toenail, we talk a little and he gives some instructions for the next week, maybe sends in a prescription to a pharmacy that delivers. Couple of times he told me that if it didn't do __ I'd need to come in, but so far haven't needed to.
Ten times better.
@Howard
You’re a parasite who lived on the government tit your entire life.
I’m an innovator in the fields of multimedia, online education and business development.
While you were sucking the government tit, I worked as a freelancer and contract worker in dot-com, law, publishing, media, the arts, and more.
You’re the parasite, Howard. I took the risks of the market.
"Where is the creativity and intelligence facing this problem?"
I'm willing to bet it will not be coming from an academic who champions something he has believed his whole life as some "quite extraordinary insight", and who never left the same echo chamber he settled into after discovering the hole in the wall off the girl's locker room as a freshman.
Scratch the surface of a liberal and you'll find a leftist. Someone who wants to control all of you deplorables. No car for you, but I'll need one to drive somewhere a take a picture of the sun coming up.
the relevant part? Because what is at your link is not at all what I am talking about, not "exactly" and not roughly. The quote there:
""When we talk about this idea of 'reopening society' you know, only in America, does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work. When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say 'no,' we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives.""
That's the economic inequality issue, not environmentalism at all.
I didn't have the link, then found one link.
And the economic inequality issue IS part of the GND. So that is what you are talking about when it comes to the people who want to enact it, whether you want them separated or not.
I am in the middle of something else, but will look for more. I know she deleted her tweet celebrating the collapse of the oil market "You love to see it" she said.
Have you looked to see if there are Democrats talking about it?
No, Thomas I spent my career saving commercial property developers multi-millions of dollars by preventing unnecessary expensive environmental cleanup using data and models. You're welcome.
I love how on the verge of realizing the biggest government boondoggle in history there are people using it as proof that we should start another one. Failure, destruction, and stagnation seems to be a goddamned addiction.
Histories' rebels are as likely to be "conservative" as "progressive".
Ideological maps, using present day definitions, to such historical movements are difficult. And even precisely the same set of objectives can be categorized completely differently.
Were the 16th century Comuneros who revolted against Charles V of the left? On the face of it they were "democrats" demanding local liberties, opposing a tyrant, and so they have long been part of the Spanish Republican-leftist mythology.
However the Carlists that twice revolted against centralizing liberal governments in the 19th century had the same beef as the Comuneros, but they have been reviled by the left to this day.
The same goes for a hundred European revolts and subversive movements since the middle ages. One way or another they are all the heirs of the Swiss Confederacy and Jan Zizka.
Most had the same category of complaints that the American revolutionaries of 1776. The American Revolution can be seen as just such a European peasant-townsman revolt, albeit one that succeeded.
Historical knowledge is very scarce, as we see.
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