Call it whatever you'd like. I call it reality, among other things.



That is the "worst-case condition" inasmuch as "The Day After Tomorrow" is the worst-case for global warming. It is, indeed, a "flap" inasmuch as a rush of UFO reports are normally referred to as a "flap." Already the impact of the reduction in honeybees has been substantially debunked since bees are far from the only way that plants are pollinated. Nor will Americans go extinct if we can't grow our own food for awhile.



Right. Because no other die-offs or complete extinctions have ever happened except at the hands of chemical companies. In fact, prehistoric man had to do battle with tyrannosaurus rex until some enterprising caveman came along and founded the Dow Chemical company that, in its quest to produce matches for easy fire-starting, accidentally came up with a poisonous by-product which, luckily, was useful at exterminaing the t-rex. A successful match wouldn't be achieved for thousands of years, but the founding caveman of Dow was able to buy a bigger cave with all the sales of his toxic t-rex posino. Lucky for us since camping in the Rocky Mountains would be a lot more adventurous if we had to be prepared to deal with some t-rex lurking around the next boulder.



That's fine. As long as high prices are determined by the market rather than arbitrary taxes, I have no problem with the cost of gas going up and up. As it goes higher, it will become more profitable for speculators to invest good money in alternative fuels. When those alternative fuels become successful, they will either replace gas or cause the price of gas to come back down to remain competitive. This is exactly the way the market works, and I'm in favor of it.



If he has so many kids that he needs a Blazer to haul them around, an increase in gas prices will not be a major increase in a major expense. An increase in the cost of health care will impact him far more than another buck or two a gallon on gas.



That's always been the case, and always will be. And environmentalists should consider that, too, because the people who "can't afford" modest price increases are the same people that will be hardest hit by increases in the cost of energy due to arbitrary and artificial limits on CO2, etc.



So? I don't care if oil companies make a lot of money. I'm happy when someone is successful at making money. They are providing a product that I find convenient at a cost which I can afford. If it gets to a point where I can't afford it, I'll stop buying it. When enough people do that, the price wil stabilize and/or come back down to a price that works in the market. And other companies will be investing in alternative energies.

There are those that see oil companies as evil and they take offense at their profits. I'm not one of those people. And, no, I have no investments in oil companies nor do I know anyone who does.



That's not the hypothetical situation you proposed before. If there's not enough energy generation capacity to meet demand, more power plants need to be built. If rolling blackouts are necessary as they were in California a few years ago, that's just reality. I'd say that, during the day, emphasis should be placed on providing power to commercial establishments since without those companies generating economic activity, people won't have money to pay for their electric bill at home anyway. During the evening, priority should be given to residential areas as more people are presumably at home.



Or another power plant should be built. As far as I know, we haven't run out of power, though, so your hypothetical either/or scenario remains a cute hypothetical.





Not to nearly the extent as Mexico and other countries do. Which is why we don't generally have to be prepared for it. That's my whole point. I've never said there is no corruption in the U.S. I deny there is a "culture of corruption" and I also deny that corruption in the U.S. is even remotely close to the level of corruption in Mexico and many other countries.



While the income distribution in Mexico is bad, it's not nearly as bad as 99.9/0.1%.

I'm also not claiming I was poor by Mexican standards. But I am claiming that I had significant contact with Mexicans of virtually all income levels--from the very wealthy all the way down to people at or below the Mexican minimum wage. You don't have to be poor to know the kinds of corruption the poor deal with nor do you have to be wealthy to know the kind of corruption they have to deal with.



As already demonstrated by another member, all that heat you're talking about in transmission is so absolutely miniscule when compared to the entire heat budget so as to be irrelevant. For that matter, so is human contribution to CO2.



Please define "mid-west". I'm curious as to what parts of the plains of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska and the deserts of Utah, Arizona, California, and Nevada you think were "nearly entirely tree-covered."



No kidding.



Yet you disappoint and depress others with your negativity.



Nor do I. But that doesn't mean I have to assume the worst. You can make your own happiness and be positive without assuming the worst.



As I said before, we disagree because you assume that my behavior requires some reconciliation. That is derived from your attitude of "assuming the worst" about a theoretical change in climate. I don't assume, I operate on facts. In the climate debate, I see a lot of psuedo-science and people wanting me to make significant changes in my life based on their emotional response to something that, the IPCC's silly reports not withstanding, have not been established to a high scientific degree. There are a lot of theories out there and just about as many politicians and environmental lobbyists with an agenda influencing IPCC reports, but the reality is that we don't know entirely how the atmosphere/environment works, the significance of the sun (though if I were a gambling man, I'd put a significant bet on 'the sun is probably pretty important'), the full significance of clouds on albedo, nor do we have a complete understanding of all the carbon sinks and how they interact and feedback, and since the carbon sinks/feedbacks are still somewhat of a question mark we don't really know how important our own CO2 contribution is... and even if we make all these assumptions, we don't know that a warmer planet is necessarily a bad thing. It's just a different thing.

Even not being a gambling man, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that whatever we do, climate will change. It will get warmer, it'll get cooler, but it won't remain the same. Thus any effort spent on trying to keep the climate from changing is an arrogant waste of money and effort.

Regards,
Craig Steiner