It doesn't matter if you believe in climate change or not. It's happening. And if left unabated, life on this planet could be over with.
While we debate things of seeming importance like tax rates, the budget, foreign policy, and guns, the biggest fucking elephant in the room is whether our grandchildren will be able to survive. So far the answer is no.
We should make no mistake. This is a man made problem. It is a problem that capitalism created and perpetuates. It means that those who continue to perpetuate it are no better than the genocidal maniacs of Hitler and Stalin. Only, they're worse since those nutcases pretty much stuck with butchering human beings.
Make no mistake. The game is already over. We're already fucked. We are past 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. The clock is ticking and we're running out of time.
While many have rightfully focused on what we do to release carbon into the air, what many have failed to focus on is how do we take carbon back out of the air.
Here's the good news. Mother nature does it for us, so long as we allow her to.
There are parts of the world where it's wet all the time. Parts where it's dry all the time. And about two thirds of the world's land masses are wet and dry depending on what time of year it is.
Everything evolved in a certain way. Grasslands would grow. Herds of animals would eat the grass. They would shit and piss everywhere. And then they'd run along to keep from being caught by predators.
The amazing thing is that this behavior from herd animals has acted to stabilize the climate. It allows new plant life to grow, with fertilizer, which helps the soil retain water, and in doing so, it prevents desertification and it pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere and locks it away into the soil.
Modern farming practices have changed this. Instead we're feeding cows corn. They get sick. We tend feed them antibiotics. Now we have antibiotic-resistant diseases. Grasslands die out. Turn to deserts. CO2 goes up, the planet warms.
It is estimated that we could reduce our CO2 back down to pre-industrial levels if we just stopped the way we farm today and go back to the way mother nature intended. And this is already working. Whole areas have turned from deserts into lush greenlands just by changing the way we farm.
So my apologies to GaG. He's not quite a killer as I claimed. As it turns out we should have been blaming the farmers.
-- Modified on 4/14/2013 9:26:30 AM
You've beaten up on the oil industry for the billions of dollars of so called subsidies it gets. Why don't you do a bit of research on who is really feeding at the government trough?
When oil prices were spiraling everyone was pissed at the oil companies, but no one blamed the corn farmers for getting just as rich as corn prices eclipsed $8 a bushel, and farmers were still getting pain NOT to grow crops. Now that's a travesty.
Incidentally, I have challenged you, and others, for years to show exactly what these subsidies that oil companies supposedly actually are, most are simply the tax treatments that allow oil companies to write down their losses more quickly in an extremely risk fraught business, and are not subsidies at all in the traditional way. So far all I have heard on the subject since is silence.
-- Modified on 4/14/2013 11:05:51 AM
that I am not a white guy?
This idiot is beyond stupid. I think he believes that I am some old, rich, white guy from the south. He gets dumber by the day.
These white guys, or "gentiles" as my friends who belong to the tribe might call him, crack me up with their "white guilt". A guy who flat out admitted he had to get advice from a black co worker on how to treat people of color thinks he can lecture the rest of us, some of us minorities ourselves, on how to treat people of color.
We spent what? Around 5.7 trillion to guarantee the oil industry would have a product to sell.
But I'd certainly agree that agriculture gets a metric shit ton of subsidies. At this point, the US tax payer might as well fucking own ADM, since we're paying for most of their shit anyway. Monsanto is no better.
I've never taken a super close look at it, but if I were a betting man, I'd suspect that Big Agriculture gets a shit ton more subsidies than Big Oil.
But then again, we never went to war to protect corn flakes.
is that since the world, not the country, but the entire fucking world, runs on oil and oil is not produced only in the ME. IF the Iraqi oil had been lost to the world forever, contrary to hurting the oil business, oil prices would have gone through the roof and oil companies would have arguably made even MORE money than they do now, not less.
So lets try again, a lot is made about these so called subsidies to the oil industry, I'd really like to see them quantified, and I mean real subsidies, not the fantasy ones that you pull out of your ass.
And yes, I understand that the entire world runs on fossil fuels. Hell, it's so closely tied to our economy, that we'd be fucked without it. All we have to do is look at the oil embargos of the 70's to understand that.
But what if we didn't go to war in Iraq? We'd have nearly 6 trillion more in the bank. Oil prices would have skyrocketed, I'm sure, but that also would have pushed alternative energies along much faster. The oil companies would have made more money in the short term, but unless they adapted to a changing market environment, they'd be out of business.
I was recently reading a rather illuminating article about how much utilities (who are mostly powered by coal, I believe) are very worried about solar power. It could permit decentralized energy production, effectively putting them out of business. (see link below)
It seems to me that the Iraq War was nothing more than trying to guarantee that Big Oil would still have a market in the near future.
Now I admit that's not exactly as clear cut a case of a public subsidy as say paying farmers not to grow corn in order to stabilize the market price, but I don't think a 10 year resource war is something anyone should sweep under the rug and ignore.
...isn't bad but what does it say about our world that Psy's follow up to Gangnam Style has had 32 million views in the first 24 hours?
-- Modified on 4/15/2013 2:15:11 AM