Text 11638, 183 rader
Skriven 2007-02-05 23:08:55 av Josh Hill (15077.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Cath0licism and Creati=nism
=======================================
On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 22:59:22 -0600, "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:1c28s21jsb71tpckeb4hlcff267ontrqo9@4ax.com...
>> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 21:21:16 -0600, "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>>news:6ns7s2d8pj9r13f50p9j5d719j1hhrik47@4ax.com...
>>>> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:48:06 -0600, "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>><snip>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>All of the things that are practical and reasonable (and won't destroy
>>>>>>>the economy) won't be enough to make much difference for a very
>>>>>>>.long time. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to minimize
>>>>>>>  the damage we cause, but get past the "If we don't do this
>>>>>>> right now..." rhetoric  and accept that if GW
>>>>>>>proponents are right, we're going to have to deal with it and
>>>>>>>everyone in the US giving up cars completely and having
>>>>>>>solar panels and windmills in our back yards won't prevent it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't think that entirely true. Which is to say that while some
>>>>>> warming is inevitable because we've already released the gases, even
>>>>>> some of the most vociferous scientific warming advocates have said we
>>>>>> can head off the most dire consequences if we take serious action now.
>>>>>
>>>>>There are other factors that are causing warming, and even if you were
>>>>>able to completely negate all of them (not just the human caused ones),
>>>>>there is still a certain momentum created that will last quite some 
>>>>>time.
>>>>>
>>>>>> I've devoted a fair amount of time to researching the engineering end
>>>>>> over the last year and -- putting on my professional hat for the
>>>>>> moment -- I'm convinced that we have, or could with minimal effort
>>>>>> have, all of the resources we need to slash greenhouse emissions
>>>>>> without economic damage or hardship.
>>>>>
>>>>>That would also require buy in from the Chinese and others.
>>>>>The Russians have never exaclty been known as environmentalists either.
>>>>>India?  Not likely.
>>>>
>>>> I think there's a simple solution to that -- slap tariffs on any
>>>> nation that refuses to adopt reasonable carbon limits. The French are
>>>> already threatening to do that to /us,/ with IMO complete
>>>> justification:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/world/europe/01climate.html
>>>
>>>
>>>Oh yeah, tarrifs and sanctions work ever so well.  Look at Iran.
>>>I doubt it would deter China much.
>>
>> The sanctions on Iran are at best nominal, thanks IIRC to the
>> Russians. Even so, they are having an effect -- there's apparently a
>> lively debate within Iran about whether they're worth it.
>>
>
>Sanctions never work because other countries always cheat.
>Tarrifs always result in counter tarrifs.

Fropm what I've seen, sanctions tend to be too little and too late to
do much good. I don't think it's accurate, though, to say that they
never work -- look at the effect of the recent American banking
sanctions on North Korea.

The threat of tariffs seems to be effective, perhaps because it's
generally made against a saner class of countries, which know that
trade wars are economically damaging. I'd place China in that class.
They're empiricists, and they know that their growth is dependent upon
exports. Just look at how quickly they acted when Congress got antsy
about their manipulation of the exchange rate.

>> Tariffs would I think almost certainly have an effect on the Chinese,
>> who are a good deal wiser and more economically pragmatic than the
>> nutcase president of Iran, or Saddam.
>
>And exactly how are you going to apply a tarrif to the Chinese when
>all they have to do is sell goods to an American, European, etc.
>company that either uses the part or rebrands the item and then ships
>it here.

Hardly the same from an economic point of view.

>> I wasn't referring to the wall, but rather to the height above sea
>> level once you move a bit inland.
>
>You'd be surprised how far inland just 20 feet would go.
>Again, add more for bad weather.

Just got around to watching the Gore movie, and they had some animated
maps showing the areas that would be flooded.

>> From today's account of the UN report:
>>
>> "They said the world is already committed to centuries of warming,
>> shifting weather patterns and rising seas, resulting from the buildup
>> of gases in the atmosphere that trap heat. But the warming can be
>> substantially blunted by prompt action, the panel of scientists said
>> in a report released here today."
>
>If the major component in GW is man, the sheer volume of
>atmosphere affected and the resulting after-effects don;t seem
>like they'd simply react like an on/off switch with a long lead time.

You're oversimplifying the mechanism. It involves the melting of
massive ice sheets, e.g., the Greenland ice sheet. That's happened
before in geological time and it's a strongly non-linear process, in
part because as the ice sheet shrinks, more sea is exposed, and sea
has a different albedo than ice, meaning that less sunlight is
reflected into space. So as the rate of melting accelerates.

What we have to do is avoid warming the earth to the point at which
that happens, because if and when it does, we face that huge 20 foot
sea level change and other serious consequences, e.g., a cessation of
the North Atlantic conveyor with possibly disastrous climatological
consequences for Europe.

>I also think the odds of "prompt action" by the world to the degree
>necessary to reduce emmisions by a significant fraction of what
>we added are about .5%

People said the same thing about the ozone hole, but the world did
exactly what had to be done to deal with the problem. So I'm a lot
more optimistic than that: I'd say it's closer to 100%, and that the
process will begin as soon as this astoundingly incompetent
administration is out of office.

>>>>>As for New Orleans...  right now it is a less dense area.  Rebuilding
>>>>>in an area that is already below sea level when the sea level may rise
>>>>>feet seems like a dubious choice.
>>>>
>>>> If you were talking about a featureless suburban tract somewhere, I'd
>>>> say sure, but a city like New Orleans is more than just some houses.
>>>> My only regret is that the redevelopment, like the rescue, has been
>>>> botched. Among other things, they should be abandoning the
>>>> neighborhoods most susceptible to flooding, and retreating to a more
>>>> sustainable perimeter.
>>>
>>>Accounting for not 20 but perhaps significantly higher seas in bad
>>>weather, how much of the area is sustainable?
>>
>> Oh, it would probably be history -- I believe I heard a climate
>> scientist say as much once. But I'm optimist enough to think we'll be
>> smart enough to keep things from going that far.
>
>Your optimism is based on what? :)

Stupidity?

But seriously, the solutions are known and practical, and the rest of
the world has expressed its willingness. Even business wants a
solution at this point. Our national inaction can only be understood
in terms of the unprecedented incompetence of an administration that
couldn't even get a few buses to New Orleans. The current state of our
government, which has perversely destroyed the civil service by
outsourcing work on the spoils basis and replacing capable
professionals with cronies chosen for loyalty rather than competence,
provides an inaccurate reference point, as does years of conservative
anti-government propaganda which has convinced the public that
government can't do anything right -- the same government that ran the
Manhattan Project and took us to the moon.

During World War II, while fighting an all-out war on two fronts,
emerging from an unprecedented depression, and with half the
population we have today, we exceeded our goal of producing 100,000
airplanes a year. By way of contrast, the Bush Administration couldn't
even armor a few humvees. It's not that we can't solve this problem --
it's child play for us -- but rather that the government has been
hobbled, and won't be fixed until we have a competent president.

-- 
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
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