This isn't climate change though. That's just localized weather patterns. I can just say where I live on the east slope of the rockies at high elevation we get mild winters without much snow. But the last two winters have had record lows and snow falls, so climate change is a hoax. Climate change is measured over many hundreds of years to remove the spikes and valleys from naturally occurring weather patterns. Climate change is a real thing, and humans are a big contributor to it. I just don't see humans being able to stop it without making really hard choices about how we live. Green renewable energy sources don't work from either an economic or technical viewpoint. If they did companies would implement them. Hell, even if they were close technically I could get behind larger government incentives to make the economics work out. I've designed solar projects for some of my clients and the numbers just aren't there. My client would need to sink $1M usd into a grid tie solar project to provide enough power to run our equipment for peak sun (roughly 4.5hrs/day in his location), the remainder of the time they are using grid supplied power. Currently they spend about $55k a year on power. Implementing that solar system will save him about $10k a year in power costs. That's an ROI of 90 years without including any interest costs. How does that make sense for a business? Even with incentive programs they might get down to 50 or 60 years. Wind power is the same. Solar and wind power have their place. Remote locations, places that don't have access to stable utility grids, etc. I'm willing to bet that China's renewable energy investment will be in rural areas that don't currently have any utility system. They will continue to power their factories and industrial areas from coal and other non-renewable power sources. That being said we're making strides in the area. I love what Tesla is doing with battery technology. They've made huge jumps in Li-ion technology and are continuing to do so. They arguably have the longest range electric car and it's close to a gas powered vehicles range. As batteries become better and cheaper we'll start to see a shift over to renewables. I also love what researchers are doing with Fusion technology. We're 5 years from prototype reactors and probably 10-15 years from commercial applications. This is huge. Stopping green house emissions with our current level of technology will fundamentally change how you live. - Removing coal fired power plants and other emitters and replace with solar/wind power. Triple or Quadruple the cost of your power bill. - Take more vehicles off the road by limiting oil extraction or increasing taxes on the roads. Remove fresh fruit grown in other countries from store shelves. Increase costs on every consumer product because everything you buy is shipped via truck. I, like most people don't want to do this because I like having a fridge that keeps my food cold, eating oranges/avocado's in December, buying new clothes instead of patching up ripped clothes, and a car that I can get into and go where ever I need to.
The biggest market distortion affecting the price of renewables vs fossil fuels right now is that the carbon externality is not properly internalized. What the true cost of that externality is hard to determine, because we've never seen an externality on this scale before. If the climate projections are even remotely accurate, the true cost of burning oil/coal/gas could be anywhere from 10x to 1000x what we're currently paying for it, making renewables a bargain at double their current cost. The path forward I would like to see is a significant tax on carbon emissions, increased wind and solar where it makes sense under this new cost structure, significant government assistance in getting Gen III and IV fission reactors up and running, and two parallel Manhattan Project style research efforts into nuclear fusion and energy storage.
I think this is a good point. Its easy to sit in an ivory tower or a hippie tree fort and say we should do all these things and make all these compromises. Its another thing to change day-to-day life. I also think renewable resources will come along in time. Economics has shown when one product becomes too expensive, too scarce, culturally unacceptable, that new products will replace those existing ones. A classic example of this is whale oil. At one point that was the standard for lamps and people couldn't imagine living without it. Then oil was discovered and lamps were lit that way, then a different cheaper resource replaced oil lamps, and AC dominates the lighting game. I think the same thing will happen with non-fossil fuel resources. Give it time, and public pressure, and the resources will be developed and the price will drop, but it takes time, and I think it takes the amount of time that a lot of alarmists don't have the patience for. Now that electricity is a necessity, how its powered and created is the new game. First it was hydroelectric and coal and nuclear for a bit. That was kind of the first generation, now we're moving onto other generation sources, that takes time.
There's apparently a weird dynamic at play where they're refusing to answer questions and providing no legal basis for their refusal. Whatever they know and whatever it means, they consider it important to keep under wraps for now. I'm not sure what that means, other than that it's going to take quite a while for this all to be settled.
Speaking of previews of the main event: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-jcomey-060817.pdf
Interesting that you had that take away, I had a similar reaction. I suppose the 5th Amendment is a legal basis for it?
I don't think the people giving testimony today were concerned about incriminating themselves. My assumption was that if they were to give too much detail, it might damage Mueller's investigation and possibly tip his hand to the Whitehouse. I didn't get to listen to the live coverage, but from what I read about it, the senators seemed annoyed by the lack of cooperation. Comey's written statement was interesting. I think it should be known that a lot of talk will go around about it being really difficult to prosecute an obstruction of justice case because it's hard to prove intent. However, I read an interesting bit today from an attorney who said that obstruction isn't a specific intent crime. Meaning, the person who does it doesn't necessarily have to think they are "obstructing justice", but that their behavior was intentional and might classify as such. It's not about successfully obstructing an investigation, just an attempt to.
True. I guess the summary of it is, "Trump may have tried to stop an investigation into himself that wasn't actually occurring."
It might not have been directly into him, but he might be involved. I still stand by the retard theory. That Trump is a retard and really has no clue the game he is playing right now. Comey and the others like him are playing this game at the highest level and Trump is behaving like a cartoon bad guy or a hokey Bond villain.
I agree. It's not like he just started acting stupid while campaigning or anything, there's literally seven decades of stupid shit like this to compare to his actions while President.
He's basically been a wannabe mob boss his whole life, but in reality, he's just the insecure fat kid who gets mad when he's not taken seriously. And his American Psycho sons remind me of that little squealing creature on Jabba the Hut's shoulder.
That's true, but the fact remains that he has yet to be implicated in any actual wrongdoing, no matter how much CNN is currently trying to spin it. Tomorrow will tell the tale I think.
Bias news networks need to stop crossing their fingers for their "team" to win one and doubling down on things such as what right now, which is for the time being just X vs. Y. It makes them look less assclownish if they come out a loser. We all remember where we were laughing when they opened Al Capone's vault. Or Rachel Maddow's hilarious fuck-up for that matter.
The too dumb to know what he's doing theory huh? Same thing Comey let Clinton off for even though the statute in that case didn't really require intent as well.
Will CNN be coming out to apologize for misleading the American public because the "anonymous source" said Comey's testimony would refute Trump's position that he was assured he wasn't under investigation? I seem to recall everyone implying that Trump fired him to get him off his case, which was the dumbest logic ever and when challenged about this the response was basically: "Well, Trump is dumb and doesn't know any better" Does anyone know of a news source out there today that I can turn to for facts-based reporting? Is there one? Is there a youtube channel, something?
If you consider the modeling data and why it needs to adjusted so often and is so inaccurate in it's climate change predictions; is it possible that the assumption on how sensitive the climate is to CO2 may be flawed? It seems as though that is the biggest point of contention out there from people skeptical of the conclusion on global warming. If that is so, maybe the market has correctly baked in the cost of CO2 emissions? I don't know the answers but I think if scientists can answer the following question then maybe we will better understand the climate. What ended the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago. Something caused the Earth to warm up and it wasn't an industrialized society. Some how, some way the Earth warmed without human intervention. Today the Earth is allegedly warming and the contention now is that all or most of that warming is caused by man. What is different now from the last ice age?