Obama makes bold climate initiative; GOP goes postal

[nordictruce]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/0 ... 28632.html

Also interestingly enough on the same day Neil Degrasse Tyson does a 1 hour sermon on Cosmos on climate change

http://news.yahoo.com/cosmos-visits-ven ... 46461.html

I care bout the environment but watching that TV show was the first time someone put it into terms in which could actually scare the shit out of me lol.

I found a few things interesting


1. We're pretty much all f**k by 2050 per NDT


2. We could power the entire world (within reason I don't expect solar powered airplanes or anything) off 1% of the sun's energy


GOP does a really good job of making alternative energy look.. what's the word I'm looking for.. inefficient, clumsy... like it would take an entire wind field to power my street block or something, but according to what I saw that is not the case at all.



Why does the GOP have a problem with conserving the planet?


I think it's pretty clear that the oil / coal corps are running the show and don't want competition.

I don't think Obama's plan is strong ENOUGH. That's my problem with Obama in general people think he's liberal but in reality he tries too hard to stride the fence. If he really wanted to kick start this, he should do something like provide guaranteed government backed interest free loans on any green start up company, make them tax exempt (would not shock me if this were the case already).


I don't understand the GOP's argument cutting emissions will cut jobs... That's like a 300 pound person saying yeah your "diet plan" doesn't include chocolate chip cookies and ice cream lol. Of course it doesn't, but the benefit of going from 300 pounds to 200 pounds is far greater than the benefit of keeping 50k jobs. That's not even to say we won't create new jobs that in the long run, CAN'T be outsourced. The irony being that green jobs are the key to rebuilding the economy.

[The Dharma Bum]

why should a few crazy billionaires decide our environmental policy?

no wonder we are in the shitter

[John Galt]

the us is already cutting emissions anyway: natural gas is cleaner, far cleaner than coal, and it is cheap and abundant. by using 2005 as a baseline i think they would have made that 30% cut in emission anyway



f**k WE ARE ALREADY HALF WAY! YA! GO OBAMA! YOU'RE TOTALLY THE REASON! NO IT'S NOT FRAKING IT'S OBAMA THAT DID IT. COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE FRAKING

in 100 years we'll be using what ITER gives us: plasma energy, but until then, use what we got. sure solar can contribute but it's not on demand like we need it (unless it's in orbit). recreating what the sun does on earth, on the other hand, will give us more energy out of the reaction than what we put in and plasma is the way of the future

[Medius]

As far as wind farms go, you have to talk to the environmentalists. People have tried to build more and they get blocked due to impacts on bird migration.

Solar power on the other hand, would be great. If it weren't expensive. If it were more affordable, I'd happily load up my house with solar panels.

[nordictruce]

I believe if you create the jobs people will become qualified to do them.

It's one thing to lose jobs overseas you can rally around that. But if the overseas people come here and take your jobs because you're too stupid to do them yourself, that's a different animal and will wake people up.

[The Dharma Bum]

you guys gotta come to terms with the fact that human labor is rapidly becoming obsolete, especially professional services that require a high degree of training and high labor costs. but that includes all jobs other than that of being some sort of attendant, or a technician, really

by 2050 half of current jobs will be gone. in 100 years it will all be gone and it will be a different world. whether it is to better or worse is up to us

[Kane]

Dharma, do you make sweet sweet love to Roubini daily?

[The dane]

This is an important step forward.

We often hear the claim that coal is the cheapest energy source, but that's actually not true at all. When you include all the costs related to polution coal is one of the most expensive energy sources, but so far the energy producers have been allowed to pass all those costs onto the rest of society. With this new rule they still won't pay for the damage that they do, but at least they will need to reduce that damage.

[The dane]

[Spider]