From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Apr 14 2002 - 10:07:36 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> On Saturday, April 13, 2002, at 12:08 am, spike66 wrote:
> > Australia is as new as the US. We can move stuff back a few meters if
> > we
> > have to. Both continents have plenty of land. All the other
> > continents do too.
>
> We can't do that in Florida. The whole state is flat and only a dozen
> feet above sea level. Twenty feet would be devastating.
Nah, it would save the US hundreds of billions of dollars in social
security, medicare, and medicaid every year. Possibly the best favor
nature could do to us... ;)
> Remember when
> hurricane Andrew was supposedly the worst disaster of all time? That
> only wiped out a few islands and the tip of the peninsula. Wiping out
> the majority of the state would be a thousand times worse.
It's only devastating if there are lots of survivors, or if most victims
are net contributors to the economy.
> Even
> spreading it out over a thousand years would be like having that level
> of disaster every year for a millennium. We simply can't face that
> level of disaster. It actually would be cheaper to take extreme
> measures to dike the whole state or try to change the atmosphere.
>
> I doubt it will come to that, however. If global warming really exists,
> it will be slow. There will be no question if the ocean rises a few
> feet that something is really happening. We won't actually debate this
> issue until it is too late. Although earlier prevention would be a lot
> easier than later, I doubt we could conceivably procrastinate too long.
> Therefore, I am not worried about having to "prove" it either way. We
> will figure it out. (I think most politicians just want to delay a
> decision until their administration is out of office.)
However, if you apply Moore's Law to the problem, it is obvious that the
longer we wait, the less expensive it gets to solve the problem. This
phenomenon of waiting to save money was recognised in the original
carbon tax studies done by the DOE and EPA in the early 90's.
So you need to match two curves: one of hyperbolically decreasing costs
to fix the problem, and another of diminishing increases in impact.
Since CO2's impact on global warming is recognised to follow a
diminishing returns curve (every increase in atmospheric CO2 has less
warming effect than the previous equal incremental increase), and the
fact that we are pretty well along the flattening end of the CO2 impact
curve, while still on the steep end of decreasing the cost of cleanup,
it's indicative that cleanup will be easily affordable sometime in the
2010-2030 timeframe.
While the real negative impacts of warming (as projected by some truly
flawed simulations which leave out significant phenomena) do not occur
for at least another 100 years, it's evident that the clamoring now is
little more than a new excuse by the left for massive taxation today of
the resources of economic development to fund massive welfare state
programs.
>
> > I was a scout, I agree with that philosphy. This planet is too cold and
> > there isnt enough CO2 in the atmosphere for optimal plant growth. We
> > could remedy both situations, leaving the campsite better than i was
> > when we found it.
>
> Spike, I can't tell if this is just your sense of humor, of if you
> really believe it. Do you really think we have a low-temperature
> problem and that we need to raise it? Do you really think that air
> quality has too much oxygen in it, and we need to push the balance
> toward CO2?
It's a fact that the history of the past several hundred thousand years
is that we've spent far more time in ice age conditions than in
relatively warmer interglacial periods. The Milankovich Theory says we
should be heading into a new ice age after the current minor upward blip
ends in a few hundred years (one of those odd periods where different
cycles intersect each other out of phase causing a sine wave of much
shorter period than those of the major cycles, the current sine wave
started in the middle ages).
> > We had teachers assuring us the population bomb would blow up in
> > our faces back then. Well, what of that? Where is the Soylent Green
> > nightmare scenario? The bomb was a dud! This global whining about
> > greenhouse gas is also a dud. Assured nuclear destruction: dud.
> > Eradication
> > of the worlds rain forests: dud. Massive extinction of wild species:
> > dud.
> > Choking on car exhaust fumes: dud. Pollution of all the world's natural
> > waterways beyond life support: dud. Universal famine, ecological
> > disaster,
> > pandemic disease: dud, dud, dud.
>
> Population explosion was not false. We changed our breeding habits and
> avoided it.
THough not because of the threat of population explosion, since there
are plenty of cultures around the world today who are quite aware of the
phenomenon but are still breeding like rabbits. Habits change when women
gain legal independence and become increasingly educated.
> The cold war was not false. Democracy won over communism, but would not
> have if we had surrendered.
> Pollution was not false. We changed our air-quality rules and now have
> cleaner air than before.
> Epidemics were not false. We invented medicines and vaccines and
> survived them.
> For example, AIDS was not false. We now have medicine so that patients
> can survive for decades.
> Let me add, Y2K was not false. We fixed 90% of our computers to avoid
> the problem that testing showed they had.
>
> These disasters were not duds because they were false. We faught these
> threats, and we won. We need to keep on fighting future threats if we
> are to keep winning. We can't assume that we will always will and then
> quit fighting. Do you advocate giving in to Terrorism because they've
> never taken over the West before? Of course not. We need to keep
> fighting these threats. Global warming, if true, could be another big
> battle that we can win. We can't just avoid fighting expensive wars
> assuming we will always win.
Nor can we deal with real threats when our resources are diverted by
chimeras propagandized by those with alternative agendas.
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