Climate Change? Nahhh ...

I'd say that would depend on how much of the program to attempt to fix the problem will actually be implemented, and what percentage of it Congress will play budget games and political kickball with.

How do you make a confident estimate?

 

It’s only that because people have told us it’s myth. We could have done this cheaper, but no. So the house is going down. We could have spent $2,000 a year keeping it up, now repair bill is astronomical. When you’ve kicked the can you can’t complain about the cost, Boomer.

 

Depending on the source, $50 trillion is roughly half the money in circulation in the world right now. They want half the world's money to fix a problem, and they can't even given an educated guess on how much of a fix it'll be.
It's not a matter of “I got mine and I don’t want to pay for yours." They're saying they want all of mine and everybody else's. And as bad as you think climate change will make things for humanity, do you really believe global economic ruin is any better?

 

And unfettered climate change will be good for the economy?

 

How do they make a confident estimate the other way when there are the same infinite number of variables in play?
If you're asking for $50 trillion — again, which is roughly half the world's financial resources and nearly double the current national debt — you better be able to answer that question.

 

If we have the resources, we can adapt to climate change. Humans have been doing it for millenia. The first caveman who harnessed fire was adapting to the climate, and if he hadn't then we wouldn't be sitting here arguing in our air conditioned houses still adapting to the climate.
That's all much harder to do when you blow all your resources on the green energy equivalent of scratch off lottery tickets, hookers and blow. These people want a blank check based on vague goals and ideas, which is a terrible idea no matter the situation. If it's that much of a crisis, and their plan to solve it — hell, even mitigate it — then asking how much their plan will lower temperatures is a common sense, reasonable question. The fact that this official couldn't or wouldn't even pull a number out of his ass to get through that awkward moment shows how full of shit he is.

 

I mean, yes, humans by the nature of our civilization have put carbon in the air. The issue is since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve put ungodly amounts in the air. So before, we put up carbon that was more than natural but a) we had significantly fewer people and b) we had enough global forests to mitigate the increase. So for millennia, Earth’s climate fluctuated but no more than one would expect.

Where it’s bad is when we burned more, found oil, burned it and cut forests. The carbon in the atmosphere in the last 150 years had been incredible and devastating to the earth. So what do we do? The guy should have turned the question on it’s head. He should have pointed out what we know will happen if we do nothing and what that can happen as a result. Instead he gave dipshits like the senator or certain posters who are just asking questions but really want to bury their heads in the sand ammo to not do anything. Why can’t we answer? Because carbon from 150 years ago that was put in the atmosphere is still there. So even if we suddenly stopped all emissions, the stuff that is already there causing problems will continue doing so until Earth’s natural balancers can set back. And we won’t be completely zero because breathing and heating and natural fires. It will take time.

Our biggest problem is we’ve gone all in on fossil fuels to the point where it’s incredibly damaging to our society to abandon them. We had a chance 40/50 years ago to find an alternative and have it be phased in. We didn’t. We’re here. The price is hard to swallow. My issue with other posters (not you because you can produce a cohesive point) is this give up mentality. We can’t look at the price tag and be “welp, if this was a car, we’d sell it.” We can’t give up. It will cost money. It will take sacrifice. It will mean a global overhaul of how we live. We need to start because there are countries that will cease to exist if we don’t. Societies that will die off. Areas that will no longer be livable. That’s a cost we pay if we do nothing. Maybe the current plan isn’t ever we do, but it needs to be something and it’s going to cost something that will make people cringe.

 

How is he supposed to answer anything? His large bills are just massive spending.

 

There is no Planet B.

 

How many more games will the Jets win with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback this season? Answer exactly. And if you get the number wrong, it wasn’t worth getting him.

We agree that’s not how being a GM works, right?

You know he’s better than Zac Wilson, the cost for him is large, and you make the trade for Rodgers anyways because he improves your team and the alternative is bleak.

It might still go badly, but you do it because the alternative is hopeless.

The planet’s climate has Zac Wilson at quarterback right now. Now, you can argue that the response should be beefing up the roster around Wilson. I’m open to chasing other ways of fighting it through other means than the way it’s been tackled so far, but doing nothing and adapting like cavemen is not an answer.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the smartest man in the world.

 

Not hopeless to everybody.

Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins?

The dirty little secret: Climate change stands to benefit a bunch of people . . . who aren't American.

And even some . . . who ARE American.