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If global warming is "wrong" we needlessly reduce our economy and people today feel real hardships from lower wages, lost jobs, and higher prices. If global wa

If global warming is "wrong" we needlessly reduce our economy and people today feel real hardships from lower wages, lost jobs, and higher prices. If global warming is "right" we might have a problem 100 years from now with rising sea levels and different weather. If you have the luxury to be worrying about rising sea levels 100 years from now, you haven't seen someone trying to scrape together a buck in change to buy a cheeseburger at McDonalds recently. Who do you think businesses will be cutting first when they have to make up for carbon credit costs? Hint - not from the top. This is what people who are pro-climate change legislation sound like to me, a bunch of whiners completely over exaggerating the consequences of global warming (existential crisis? really?) while completely ignoring the real human suffering their ideas will cause in the short term. Lets wait until we can really prove global warming is true before we jump to conclusions, because we could very well be inducing even more massive suffering on the lower class in our country who have already been squeezed very badly over the last 10+ years with stagnant wages, lost jobs, and rising healthcare costs. I haven't seen inconclusive proof in a scientific sense (we're programmers, we all know you can put garbage in and get garbage out from a computer "model" if you do it one way or another. and if they aren't showing the data they have (see the whole lost temperature data debacle) and in same cases the code for the models, what are they showing?)

tome 17y ago
Well I don't know about you, but personally I'm pretty scared of the damage that could be sustained to me and my country over the next 50 years when I'll still be alive, and the next 70 or 80 when I might be. If we have to make sacrifices now to mitigate that risk I'm prepared to do so. I'm also prepared to pay more tax to help the less well off who lose their source of income. We've been doing it in my country for nearly a century.
- krschultz 17y ago
  Then you are out of touch with the realities of what is going to happen if we pass this bill. We already pay more for labor, energy, environmental regulations compliance, and corporate tax in the USA than pretty much anywhere else. When you start making energy even more expensive, the economics are going to shift for the remaining factories and we're going to ship pretty much every one left in this country to somewhere they don't have cap and trade. That is going to cost a lot of blue collar jobs. Then food will be significantly more expensive because of the increased energy costs - and not to mention they produce a lot of CO2. Who gets hit most by the cost of food? Those at the bottom or those at the top? Everything about this is really really regressive. You are willing to "make sacrifices now", because frankly you don't have to make any sacrifices. "I'm willing to pay more tax". Wow, what a sacrifice. Might have to pass up on the next iPhone. Taxes take away discretionary income from the upper classes. Big deal. Regressionary laws that destroy blue collar jobs and make the cost of living higher for those at the bottom cause real, true, heartbreaking hardship. Get off Hacker News and go into an area like Detroit that has been hit by these problems and see what I mean. If you can't afford food and can't afford your rent and lost your job and are trying to raise kids, those are more than just little sacrifices. Honestly that is way worse than the alternative. What is going to happen if climate change comes? Sea levels will rise and some houses will be lost in most areas on the coast, and cities will have to have levies built. Is that better or worse than destroying the lives of millions of people today? Not to mention, if you pass cap and trade you won't actually do a damn thing to help the climate. Every factory that moves offshore will be going somewhere they don't enforce these kind of laws. In fact a lot of countries you offshore to have incentives to reduce automation and increase job supply, so something that might take 1 guy here takes 4 there. Generally that is related to reduced automation and reduced technology. Which is also related to lower efficiency and higher emissions. The power plants in the US are a heck of a lot cleaner than the equivalent in a lot of the countries we are outsourcing to. And then you have the transportation emissions getting it here. So you are talking about definitely hurting a lot of people today, and hoping that just maybe you might be able to make tomorrow better than it could turn out to be if these computer models are correct, or it might make tomorrow just as bad or worse if compliance isn't 100% globally - which it won't be.
  - tome 17y ago
    I think you might have confused me with someone else. I'm not trying to pass a bill. I'm expressing concern about my own future, and the future of others in the possible case the climate change is catastrophic. The problems of offshoring jobs could be solved by Obama at Copenhagen if he gets China to sign up to a cap on its omissions.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    If we apply cap and trade regulations to imports as well, there's no escape--all goods consumed in the US would have to be accounted for against the US carbon budget. You're right that it's pointless to tie cap and trade purely against production. The rest of your argument rests on a lot of mistaken labor-leftist political ideology, but I'm not interested in arguing it right now.
    - krschultz 17y ago
      Well considering I'm a libertarian, that is quite false. But I am an industrial engineer, so I know a thing or two about factories.
  - gnaritas 17y ago
    > What is going to happen if climate change comes? Sea levels will rise and some houses will be lost in most areas on the coast, and cities will have to have levies built. I think you seriously underestimate the change and damage that will occur with climate change. There will be large effects on the natural world, on other species; species we may not be able to live without. To blow it off like oh it's just a few houses isn't very smart.
    - forensic 17y ago
      If doom and gloomers would publish their data and code maybe I would start to believe their fantastic visions of the apocalypse. The burden of proof is on you... and the only evidence we really get is a giant appeal to authority and a billion dollars spent on commercials.
andreyf 17y ago
Rising sea levels and "different weather" could lead to the flooding of cities and death or displacement of billions (yes, with a B) of people. Reducing carbon emissions would mean employing engineers and professionals to upgrade much of our industrial infrastructure. More employment, not less.
jstevens85 17y ago
You're view of the impact of climate change is surprisingly and disappointingly American centric. The result of doing nothing will be far worse for the world's poor in Africa and Asia than for the American working class if carbon emissions are restricted. Also, if we're waiting for "proof" of the existence of global warming, I image we'll be waiting quite a while. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe it's possible to prove anything in the physical sciences. Newton's theory of gravity was believed to be correct for over two hundred years before scientists began to suspect that it was inaccurate in certain cases.
tensor 17y ago
I've never been convinced by the "it'll ruin our economy" arguments. Why? How could you possibly know this? Are you ignoring the potential jobs green legislation could create in the area of green technology? Personally, I see plenty of reason to proceed with green initiatives regardless of the global climate change issue. Do I want cleaner air in cities? Yes. Legislation to reduce car emissions has already made a very noticeable impact in my own city in just a decade. Do we really want to have air like they have in China? The same can be true of power generation. We need more power, and nuclear waste is dangerous * independently* of climate change. Coal and gas have negative impact on our air quality. Thus we are left again with green technologies for now. I don't know if all the proposed changes intended to help climate change have other benefits like the ones I described. That would be an interesting question to have answered.
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  Why? How could you possibly know this? Are you ignoring the potential jobs green legislation could create in the area of green technology? Have you not noticed how dependent we are on fossil fuels at all?
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  This is economics 101. If there were an alternative that were more profitable and green, don't you think somebody would already be doing it out of greed if not altruism? No, the fact that those greedy capitalists must be forced to do it pretty much shows that it's losing money, relative whatever else they might do with that money. And what might those alternatives be? Why, investing in new businesses to create jobs, improving infrastructure, etc. Really, the idea that the government is so much wiser about business and economics than the corporations, so the laws will drag us kicking and screaming into prosperity, are just absurd. The government is incompetent at managing the entire system. And Friedrich Hayek's Nobel-Prize winning work proved that this is necessarily so -- it's absolutely impossible for any centralized authority to integrate all of the distributed data about needs, priorities, resource availability, etc. Only the distributed cloud of the market can do that.
  - 17y ago
philwelch 17y ago
"If you have the luxury to be worrying about rising sea levels 100 years from now, you haven't seen someone trying to scrape together a buck in change to buy a cheeseburger at McDonalds recently." OK, in a single sentence you've managed to: -understate the extent of the climate risk -play the "what about the poor working class?" card, which is the Rust Belt, recession-era sequel to "but what about the children?" -intimate, without actually proving, that reducing climate emissions will hurt the poor -systemically dismiss any and all long-term concerns, implying that there's no point tackling larger problems if someone, somewhere, has trouble affording a cheeseburger. None of what you've said anywhere else in this thread seems to overcome the essential weaknesses of that argument.

tome 17y ago

Well I don't know about you, but personally I'm pretty scared of the damage that could be sustained to me and my country over the next 50 years when I'll still be alive, and the next 70 or 80 when I might be. If we have to make sacrifices now to mitigate that risk I'm prepared to do so. I'm also prepared to pay more tax to help the less well off who lose their source of income. We've been doing it in my country for nearly a century.

krschultz 17y ago
Then you are out of touch with the realities of what is going to happen if we pass this bill. We already pay more for labor, energy, environmental regulations compliance, and corporate tax in the USA than pretty much anywhere else. When you start making energy even more expensive, the economics are going to shift for the remaining factories and we're going to ship pretty much every one left in this country to somewhere they don't have cap and trade. That is going to cost a lot of blue collar jobs. Then food will be significantly more expensive because of the increased energy costs - and not to mention they produce a lot of CO2. Who gets hit most by the cost of food? Those at the bottom or those at the top? Everything about this is really really regressive. You are willing to "make sacrifices now", because frankly you don't have to make any sacrifices. "I'm willing to pay more tax". Wow, what a sacrifice. Might have to pass up on the next iPhone. Taxes take away discretionary income from the upper classes. Big deal. Regressionary laws that destroy blue collar jobs and make the cost of living higher for those at the bottom cause real, true, heartbreaking hardship. Get off Hacker News and go into an area like Detroit that has been hit by these problems and see what I mean. If you can't afford food and can't afford your rent and lost your job and are trying to raise kids, those are more than just little sacrifices. Honestly that is way worse than the alternative. What is going to happen if climate change comes? Sea levels will rise and some houses will be lost in most areas on the coast, and cities will have to have levies built. Is that better or worse than destroying the lives of millions of people today? Not to mention, if you pass cap and trade you won't actually do a damn thing to help the climate. Every factory that moves offshore will be going somewhere they don't enforce these kind of laws. In fact a lot of countries you offshore to have incentives to reduce automation and increase job supply, so something that might take 1 guy here takes 4 there. Generally that is related to reduced automation and reduced technology. Which is also related to lower efficiency and higher emissions. The power plants in the US are a heck of a lot cleaner than the equivalent in a lot of the countries we are outsourcing to. And then you have the transportation emissions getting it here. So you are talking about definitely hurting a lot of people today, and hoping that just maybe you might be able to make tomorrow better than it could turn out to be if these computer models are correct, or it might make tomorrow just as bad or worse if compliance isn't 100% globally - which it won't be.
- tome 17y ago
  I think you might have confused me with someone else. I'm not trying to pass a bill. I'm expressing concern about my own future, and the future of others in the possible case the climate change is catastrophic. The problems of offshoring jobs could be solved by Obama at Copenhagen if he gets China to sign up to a cap on its omissions.
- philwelch 17y ago
  If we apply cap and trade regulations to imports as well, there's no escape--all goods consumed in the US would have to be accounted for against the US carbon budget. You're right that it's pointless to tie cap and trade purely against production. The rest of your argument rests on a lot of mistaken labor-leftist political ideology, but I'm not interested in arguing it right now.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    Well considering I'm a libertarian, that is quite false. But I am an industrial engineer, so I know a thing or two about factories.
- gnaritas 17y ago
  > What is going to happen if climate change comes? Sea levels will rise and some houses will be lost in most areas on the coast, and cities will have to have levies built. I think you seriously underestimate the change and damage that will occur with climate change. There will be large effects on the natural world, on other species; species we may not be able to live without. To blow it off like oh it's just a few houses isn't very smart.
  - forensic 17y ago
    If doom and gloomers would publish their data and code maybe I would start to believe their fantastic visions of the apocalypse. The burden of proof is on you... and the only evidence we really get is a giant appeal to authority and a billion dollars spent on commercials.

andreyf 17y ago

Rising sea levels and "different weather" could lead to the flooding of cities and death or displacement of billions (yes, with a B) of people. Reducing carbon emissions would mean employing engineers and professionals to upgrade much of our industrial infrastructure. More employment, not less.

jstevens85 17y ago

You're view of the impact of climate change is surprisingly and disappointingly American centric. The result of doing nothing will be far worse for the world's poor in Africa and Asia than for the American working class if carbon emissions are restricted. Also, if we're waiting for "proof" of the existence of global warming, I image we'll be waiting quite a while. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe it's possible to prove anything in the physical sciences. Newton's theory of gravity was believed to be correct for over two hundred years before scientists began to suspect that it was inaccurate in certain cases.

tensor 17y ago

I've never been convinced by the "it'll ruin our economy" arguments. Why? How could you possibly know this? Are you ignoring the potential jobs green legislation could create in the area of green technology? Personally, I see plenty of reason to proceed with green initiatives regardless of the global climate change issue. Do I want cleaner air in cities? Yes. Legislation to reduce car emissions has already made a very noticeable impact in my own city in just a decade. Do we really want to have air like they have in China? The same can be true of power generation. We need more power, and nuclear waste is dangerous * independently* of climate change. Coal and gas have negative impact on our air quality. Thus we are left again with green technologies for now. I don't know if all the proposed changes intended to help climate change have other benefits like the ones I described. That would be an interesting question to have answered.

run4yourlives 17y ago
Why? How could you possibly know this? Are you ignoring the potential jobs green legislation could create in the area of green technology? Have you not noticed how dependent we are on fossil fuels at all?
CWuestefeld 17y ago
This is economics 101. If there were an alternative that were more profitable and green, don't you think somebody would already be doing it out of greed if not altruism? No, the fact that those greedy capitalists must be forced to do it pretty much shows that it's losing money, relative whatever else they might do with that money. And what might those alternatives be? Why, investing in new businesses to create jobs, improving infrastructure, etc. Really, the idea that the government is so much wiser about business and economics than the corporations, so the laws will drag us kicking and screaming into prosperity, are just absurd. The government is incompetent at managing the entire system. And Friedrich Hayek's Nobel-Prize winning work proved that this is necessarily so -- it's absolutely impossible for any centralized authority to integrate all of the distributed data about needs, priorities, resource availability, etc. Only the distributed cloud of the market can do that.
- 17y ago

philwelch 17y ago

"If you have the luxury to be worrying about rising sea levels 100 years from now, you haven't seen someone trying to scrape together a buck in change to buy a cheeseburger at McDonalds recently." OK, in a single sentence you've managed to: -understate the extent of the climate risk -play the "what about the poor working class?" card, which is the Rust Belt, recession-era sequel to "but what about the children?" -intimate, without actually proving, that reducing climate emissions will hurt the poor -systemically dismiss any and all long-term concerns, implying that there's no point tackling larger problems if someone, somewhere, has trouble affording a cheeseburger. None of what you've said anywhere else in this thread seems to overcome the essential weaknesses of that argument.