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I believe that is vastly over exaggerating "save the world in the few decades". Do you have trustworthy scientific research to suggest the world is going to end

I believe that is vastly over exaggerating "save the world in the few decades". Do you have trustworthy scientific research to suggest the world is going to end in a few decades if we don't find "100% renewable energy"? I'd imagine that would be headline news. I know that I am being tongue and cheek, but that's the point. Fear tactics to push political or economic agenda should not be tossed around so casually (absolutely on both sides) without scientific data. Furthermore I believe the US government is horrendous at spending money and innovating, so I'd much rather leave energy solutions and innovation up to private companies. Do you honestly believe that big oil and energy companies are not working on this? The first one that crack the 100% renewable nut literally will be printing money for eons.

fallingfrog 8y ago
Are you genuinely willing to be open to the possibility that climate change might be worse than you think? If you are curious about the science behind climate change, here: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294#sec-8 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/2012... is a link to a paper by James Hansen from 2013, which provides a technical but good overview of the whole field. My favorite quote: "Burning all fossil fuels would produce a different, practically uninhabitable, planet. Let us first consider a 12 W m−2 greenhouse forcing, which we simulated with 8×CO2. ... Our calculated global warming in this case is 16°C, with warming at the poles approximately 30°C. Calculated warming over land areas averages approximately 20°C. Such temperatures would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world [130]. ... More ominously, global warming of that magnitude would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans. The human body generates about 100 W of metabolic heat that must be carried away to maintain a core body temperature near 37°C, which implies that sustained wet bulb temperatures above 35°C can result in lethal hyperthermia. Today, the summer temperature varies widely over the Earth's surface, but wet bulb temperature is more narrowly confined by the effect of humidity, with the most common value of approximately 26–27°C and the highest approximately of 31°C. A warming of 10–12°C would put most of today's world population in regions with wet a bulb temperature above 35°C [132]." The reason this is not more well known has to do with the fact that climate denial is funded by very deep pocketed fossil fuel companies and ideological activists: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-... The problem here is that many people on the right have a deep set ideological, almost religious belief system that markets are rational and can solve every problem, when that is clearly and obviously not the case. Corporations only act to increase shareholder value; to the extent that they behave morally it's because of the legal framework they operate in. And if they can buy politicians to avoid paying the costs of pollution, and save money by doing so, then of course they will. And that's what is happening. If they are doing a cost benefit analysis, and the benefit of humanity at large is a cost to them, then they don't care.

fallingfrog 8y ago

Are you genuinely willing to be open to the possibility that climate change might be worse than you think? If you are curious about the science behind climate change, here: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294#sec-8 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/2012... is a link to a paper by James Hansen from 2013, which provides a technical but good overview of the whole field. My favorite quote: "Burning all fossil fuels would produce a different, practically uninhabitable, planet. Let us first consider a 12 W m−2 greenhouse forcing, which we simulated with 8×CO2. ... Our calculated global warming in this case is 16°C, with warming at the poles approximately 30°C. Calculated warming over land areas averages approximately 20°C. Such temperatures would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world [130]. ... More ominously, global warming of that magnitude would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans. The human body generates about 100 W of metabolic heat that must be carried away to maintain a core body temperature near 37°C, which implies that sustained wet bulb temperatures above 35°C can result in lethal hyperthermia. Today, the summer temperature varies widely over the Earth's surface, but wet bulb temperature is more narrowly confined by the effect of humidity, with the most common value of approximately 26–27°C and the highest approximately of 31°C. A warming of 10–12°C would put most of today's world population in regions with wet a bulb temperature above 35°C [132]." The reason this is not more well known has to do with the fact that climate denial is funded by very deep pocketed fossil fuel companies and ideological activists: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-... The problem here is that many people on the right have a deep set ideological, almost religious belief system that markets are rational and can solve every problem, when that is clearly and obviously not the case. Corporations only act to increase shareholder value; to the extent that they behave morally it's because of the legal framework they operate in. And if they can buy politicians to avoid paying the costs of pollution, and save money by doing so, then of course they will. And that's what is happening. If they are doing a cost benefit analysis, and the benefit of humanity at large is a cost to them, then they don't care.