babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Global Warming Scare May Have Peaked
August 16, 2008 - 6:38pm
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/08/the_global_warming_scare_may_h.html
The other issue is that people are not willing to make the changes required to do anything substancial. Mark my words withing two years, people will return to bigger vehicals, large trucks and suv's, I have been through this more than once over the last few decades and it just keeps repeating itself.
I too get a little suspicious when church groups, governments and businesses take up the issue of climate change and the environment.
I smell big profits here, and the collection plates are going to get a lot bigger.
Every government wants to appear green. BC for example, imposes its carbon tax will on people saying we are getting serious about the environment. These same politicians, are continuing to ensure sales are strong for the export of coal for the Asian industrial market that continues to polute at will, go figure.
Yes the climate will fade in importance, just like, trying to save the whales and God knows what else, a lot of people are ready to move on because this will cost them money. The problems will still be here, but our focus won't be
(end quote)
You don't believe the problems are going to grow, in dimension and number?
With optimism like that, I can't see you as "damn" grumpy. Maybe a bit?
[ 17 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Global warming concerns may have dipped, like oil prices, as economic concerns have deepened, but I think this is too pessimistic a view. The polls show that people are convinced climate change is a serious problem, but are divided on what to do about it. The largest catastrophe possible in the near term in Antarctica would be a significant increase in ice mass loss causing a significant increase in the current rate of sea level increase. And that would affect a majority of the global population because of the fact they live on the coasts, and storm surges would be that much more devastating.
A Century of Cycles
Gore calles for civil disobedience
Video of talk: Global Initiative
That is the core of the problem, division on what to do. Climate change is merely a symptom of a bigger problem which is gross over-consumption which drives the economic activity that pushes up global warming along with the depletion of sustainable resources, to mention just two negatives.
Two thirds of the world needs to reduce its per capita consumption from 20-80% or more, and the ones that need to reduce it the most are the ones with the most power and biggest economic stakes.
We are going nowhere until politicians can get elected on platforms of reversing growth and shrinking the economy, instead of the standard promises of more.
The melting of glaciers worldwide should be a clear sign to everybody.
Sea level rise It is hard to see a 2 or 3 mm per decade (or whatever rise) in sea level when the tide varies up and down by a thousand times that twice a day!
And the global warming doubters have a field day with science when change is so hard to measure.
I found a new word today.
Seiche I have heard of standing waves before but didn't realize they could be so high.
And all those complexitys allow for more doubt to be caused.
Brian
It should, but it won't. Since the majority of people have never seen glaciers, this won't mean a thing. In a world where science takes a back seat to religion, I think we will all have to grow gills.
Well, there has been no glacier shrinkage here in the Rockies for at least the last 2 years, and people here, not me, laugh their asses off about alleged glacier shrinkage from global warming. Indeed, they tell all and sundry tourists, from around the world which visit here, numbering about 5k a day or more, that there is no glacier shrinkage occuring, and they also say that the glaciers have expanded over the last few years. And they are correct. But yet their misinforming still occurs.
Trying to explain to the locals here, that what they are seeing is climate change, is very arduous. They get that it has been colder here than normal and way rainier than ever before recorded, in the summer, but they see it as just another trend in the weather patterns.
They get it, somewhat, with respect to why the pine beetles are not dying, because the winters are too warm, but somehow they can overlook that and still say; "no global warming here, hell, the snow did not even leave all the mountains this year."
IMV, there will have to be a hellva lot worse things happen climatically, before the majority of the world's people will seriously believe anything about and actually get involved to change the way they live, or consume.
[ 24 September 2008: Message edited by: remind ]
Consumption - "over-" or otherwise - does not drive economic activity. It is not the greedy consumer that is the engine of economic growth and the waste of resources.
It is rather the necessity to strive for constant growth, in order to counter the inherent falling rate of profit, that drives capitalism to overproduce and to consume as many natural resources as it can get its paws on for free. The workers who produce the goods and services cannot afford to consume them all, because they are paid less than the market value of what they produce. Production therefore always outstrips the capacity of the producers to consume its products. It's not their greed, but the greed of the owners of capital, and the inexorable logic of growth driving the system of production, that causes waste and overproduction.
It's not a matter of consumers exercising some kind of self-control to reduce their consumption. It's a matter of reducing production, through collective ownership and control of the means of production and planning for need, not greed, in a sustainable manner.
So, are you saying then, that if everybody stopped consuming the economic activity would continue as usual? That producers would produce even without being able to sell their product or make any income from it?
Oh, so we don't need to reduce consumption by 80%, rather just reduce production by 80%? [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
I agree that production should be based on need, not greed, and that legitimate need must be defined, but production and consumption go hand in hand, no consumers, not much production.
Then there is also the point where even with only very basic consumption we could be over-consuming our ability to sustain ourselves at any given level merely because of the total number of consumers.
Are you saying that it's more practical to reduce consumption than to reduce production, through socialized ownership and planning?
Everybody isn't going to "stop consuming" or they will die. Nor are capitalists going to stop producing goods and exploiting resources and labour because they will starve as well.
Obviously capitalists try to adjust the level of productive activity in their enterprise according to the anticipated demand for the product as well as competitive pressures (if any) from other capitalists. In fact, these levels fluctuate contantly and much effort is spent by governments collecting statistics about them.
But just because the level of productive output goes down, it doesn't mean the enterprise, or indeed the economy as a whole, is more "sustainable" ecologically - and it certainly is not sustainable economically for the capitalist, for without a long-term increase in production the enterprise will fail. Growth and expansion are in capitalism's DNA.
The great financial crisis of 1929 was a crisis of over-production, when capitalists produced more goods than the workers who produced them could buy. So yes, capitalists do tend to produce more than what is necessary to meet demand.
Capitalism requires continual long-term growth; negative growth is possible only in the short term, and it is a disaster for the capitalist if it continues for too long. Eventually, production must return to a growth scenario or the enterprise dies. This growth drive is not consumer-driven or demand-driven - it exists because of the inherent contradictions of the capitalist mode of production.
No, but that is beside the point, and social and economic structures, though important in how they achieve things, are also beside the more fundamental point that we can not sustain ourselves in any given level of consumption if we consume more than the ecosystem can sustainably produce. Consumption in this sense not meaning merely that which comes out of the factory door or from the farm, but every thing that we utilize from the air that we breathe and water that we drink, so on and so on.
True, but it brings up the points:
1) It really isn't about capitalism because even a fully socialized system that met everyone's needs, and no more, at whatever level we defined needs, would run into the same problem when the number of needs to be met exceeded the ability of the eco-system to provide for them sustainably; and
2) Just because capitalism requires this, and because it is so deeply entrenched in our system, nothing of major consequence is going to happen without a significant sea change in social and economic thinking, a change that would greatly reduce (by their current view) the living standard of much of the population in the developed world, and pretty much destroy the capitalist class.
The most likely scenario might be that when things do get bad enough the wealthy will build enclaves for their survival, leave the rest of us to perish, and toast any resistance that may arise.
And they've done this to a certain extent already with gated and "drawbridge" communities in various cities, mainly in the U.S. There has been an increase in private security firms over the years and all.
[ 24 September 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Are you saying that we have to learn to breathe less air and drink less water in order to become a sustainable society?
It is about capitalism, because capitalism is only able to meet people's needs so long as it is profitable for someone else, whereas a socialist system would put human needs first and would if necessary ration the available resources in an equitable way, and have more resources to meet people's needs because of having no need to divert resources into the private wealth accumulation of the owners of capital.
A sea change in economic thinking can occur very quickly, given sufficient catastrophic change in the environment and mass starvation. Hunger tends to focus the mind quite sharply.
Besides, major social change doesn't come from a change in "thinking" - that's historical idealism. Societies didn't evolve from feudalism to capitalism, for example, because everybody thought it would be a "good idea". The change came as a result of changes in material conditions, at different rates and times in different countries, and the new ways coexisted with the old ways for a long time.
Very few individuals were actually conscious of the long-term picture and the nature of the changes while they were occurring. Certainly there was no need to persuade the masses of serfs and peasants living under feudalism that capitalism was a "better idea" before a transformation to a capitalist system could take place.
Collectively, yes, although using air as an example is a bit extreme. We can not take more from a system perpetually than it can supply perpetually without destroying the system, no matter what kind of social or economic framework you organize it with. Are you contesting this? Unless you believe that the ecosystem is a cornucopia without limit, we really have no difference on this.
You miss the point entirely. I don't disagree with you on the way capitalism works, but that is beside the point that you can not take more from a system than it can provide. Even a socialist system could over consume the ability of the planet to support it.
I agree. You reinforce my argument that nothing is likely to happen without some major and probably catastrophic events, or at least a widespread and serious acceptance that such events are likely to occur.
Actually it does, if the thinking did not change, then neither would the responses to situations.
Probably true, but so what?
Environment will take back seat to economy, says oil patch So there you have it. The US will "soften" it's approach (I still can't stop laughing) and the only problem that remains to be cleaned up is the "dirty image" of the oil sands. Presto.
[ 25 September 2008: Message edited by: Polunatic2 ]
I have to agree with Jerry here and because it appears to me that he's done his homework on ecological "footprint", biocapacity and all that. The Soviet syetem relied on industrialized economy, and their industries polluted, too.
However, I don't believe Soviet economies were driven by supply and demand. Our own economies are increasingly driven not by supply and demand anymore but rather speculation and "bubble" economies dictating everything from prices of global trade in commodities to stock share values to the value of even our money.
By comparison, the Soviets did make technological advances, but they also tended to be military in nature and were not handed off to private enterprize for profiteering in a western-style consumer driven economy. No economy is as dependent on oil and voraceous consumption levels today like the U.S. economy. It seems that throughout the cold war era, nations friendly to the west started adapting to conumer driven economies as well as commodities based export-driven economies for those countries indebted to the IMF and World Bank. Their leaders were instructed to open up their economies to marauding capital, foregn lumber and mining companies in order to maintain credit ratings and paying on high interest emergency IMF loans. Wall Street and Bay Street keep the old debts alive by selling and re-selling old thirdworld debts. What else can they pay with but to step up deforestation, strip mining, mechanized farming and so on to a frenzied pace in-line with compound interest on mounting debt?
[ 25 September 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]
Maybe it's peaked among those hypnotized by the trash the MSM feed the public. They've become numb to the term "global warming" and are back to watching "reality" TV shows with little discernment of what's happening outside their plasma screens.
Carbon Is Building Up in Atmosphere Faster Than Predicted
Washington Post, Sept. 26
Enough tipping points reached, and warming will get out of control (hello, 5-6 degrees global rise).
Now, another Arctic survey has found that it's a real problem and it's now observable.
But even in the face of this, you will have people saying the world is cooling, that's it's sunspots, that we're being alarmist.
Jerry, your quote is the "easy" part for a non-scientist to understand.
But have you followed what happened to several attempts around here to begin discussions on fashioning social and economic responses to this crisis?
It seems to me that, as the evidence of need for a response builds - but the seeming possibilities for a response fade - we will all turn into Sarumans (the first guy dressed all in white) and give up.
There should be a "law" requiring that any mention of environmental Armageddon has to be accompanied by mention of solutions to that particular concern.
You know...i.e. fossil fuel energy sources producing greenhouse gases to be replaced by nuclear ? [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]