'I Feel Duped on Climate Change'
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Duck Dodgers
1,000+ Posts
To be fair, his biggest event had about 350 cars. The one I went to in Houston yesterday had about 1500 cars, with no speaker, no celebrity, and certainly no one running for President.
So, my dad used to say that the best thing that could ever happen to China is that we would get in a war with them, kill off half their people and then they'd rebuild after the war. Pretty morose, and not sure he was serious. But I digress....
I was just thinking when I looked at this chart how fantastically reasonable and high-level Germany and Japan have been since WWII. I know they both have had longer and stronger cultural histories even than the US, and we did not exactly "make them what they are." After all, we barely got past them in a fight to the death. Still, with the remodel we gave both countries after WWII of a decent government to strap onto decent family/cultural populations with great work ethic, great science and engineering, they are pretty remarkable. Keep in mind, Germany (really, W. Germany) is already carrying its little brother E. Germany on its back, redeeming a half-nation crippled by socialism for 50 years. Then, Germany is basically carrying the EU on its back, too.
Think about what it means when you see something "Made in Japan," or "Made in Germany." Pretty dang good, right? I'll take a German or Japanese knife, or piano, or car, or appliance, or road or bridge or almost anything on equal par with the best American products available.
(I guess Italy isn't in this discussion....)
So, I was just reading this chart and thinking that the US, Japan and Germany are the only places where people can prosper, but sensibly reduce the emissions along the way, and keep quality up, even while carrying dead weight along, too.
I was just thinking when I looked at this chart how fantastically reasonable and high-level Germany and Japan have been since WWII. I know they both have had longer and stronger cultural histories even than the US, and we did not exactly "make them what they are." After all, we barely got past them in a fight to the death. Still, with the remodel we gave both countries after WWII of a decent government to strap onto decent family/cultural populations with great work ethic, great science and engineering, they are pretty remarkable. Keep in mind, Germany (really, W. Germany) is already carrying its little brother E. Germany on its back, redeeming a half-nation crippled by socialism for 50 years. Then, Germany is basically carrying the EU on its back, too.
Think about what it means when you see something "Made in Japan," or "Made in Germany." Pretty dang good, right? I'll take a German or Japanese knife, or piano, or car, or appliance, or road or bridge or almost anything on equal par with the best American products available.
(I guess Italy isn't in this discussion....)
So, I was just reading this chart and thinking that the US, Japan and Germany are the only places where people can prosper, but sensibly reduce the emissions along the way, and keep quality up, even while carrying dead weight along, too.
Monahorns
10,000+ Posts
You can't do that sustainably though. To grow you have to produce and that means more energy output. The decrease in emissions is due to switching to natural gas plants and cleaner coal. But at some point emissions go up. Unless you switch to nuclear. US regulations doesn't permit that today.
Yeah, I'm not against anything you are saying. I am a "climate change denier" at least as far as believing that there is a not a substantial amount of global warming that the USA can prevent by changing its policies. I don't mind reducing CO2, if it's easy, which apparently we are doing. Even as a conservative, I am very glad we have cleaned up our air and water--of course. My point was really not the main point of the thread. I was just saying that it's interesting from an historical (yes I said "an"--I'm a throwback) viewpoint that Germany and Japan were joining us on that particular list of reducing emissions. And it reminded me of what my late father said about having a war with China and bringing them in to the modern industrialized world. Isn't it kind of interesting that the "bad guys" of the 40s are now the most solid similarities to the US in the 2020s?
As a baby lawyer, I worked on the South Texas Nuclear Power Plant litigation. It seemed that the government was trying to make nuclear power impossible. Then, I also have a memory of being in London in 1982, in Hyde Park, and they had an anti-nuclear rally with almost a million people there. They burned an effigy of Ronald Reagan. The hippies from those days--now the elder democrats--committed to the idea that nuclear power was of the devil.
Duck Dodgers
1,000+ Posts
The big rallies in the UK, which were funded by the Russians, were in regards to the deployment of intermediate range nukes like the Persian missiles, and nuke tipped cruise missiles, not nuclear power plants, hence the hatred of Reagan.
Replaced by hatred of H Bush, replaced by hatred of W Bush, replaced by hatred of Trump, it's as if the Euro left hates any US president who stands up for America instead of being a pushover to foreigners.
Replaced by hatred of H Bush, replaced by hatred of W Bush, replaced by hatred of Trump, it's as if the Euro left hates any US president who stands up for America instead of being a pushover to foreigners.
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I am sure you are right. Still, the "no nukes" slogans, which may have originated with opposing our use of tactical nuclear weapons to protect Europe from being overrun by the Soviet's overwhelming conventional forces, easily transitioned into a blind opposition to nuclear power as an energy source.
You're both right. The anti-nuke idiots had big protests against the Pershing missiles and nuclear weapons being housed in Europe in the 1980s. However, they also had pretty big protests against nuclear power especially in response to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
The weapons protests are far less common since the end of the Cold War. However, the nuclear power protests still occur pretty regularly, and it's still a pretty active movement. In Germany, I remember seeing quite a few stickers on cars that read, "Atomkraft? Nein, danke." (Atomic power? No, thanks.)
And of course, those protests movements led to the rise of the Green Party. In most countries, they never became very relevant, but in Germany, they have. The reason why is that they sorta went mainstream - less protesting and more productive activism and involvement. And of course, it paid off for them. They've never commanded a majority, but they've entered into coalition governments and leveraged some major changes including getting rid of nuclear power and enacting a very aggressive green energy transition. It's **** policy and Germans get absolutely ***-raped on electricity prices, but the crackpots have been successful.
4th_floor
Dude, where's my laptop?
That is a very ugly hockey stick....Advances in technology have allowed fracking in the US to bring CO2 emissions this year to their lowest level since 1988
Statalyzer
10,000+ Posts
Where did you get that from? I'd like to follow a little more detailed numbers and sources than that chart.
American enterprise institute (AEI) using data from EIA.
Statalyzer
10,000+ Posts
Well sure I can read "source EIA" but I was hoping for more specifics than that.
I assume he means Homepage - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
Further, since when is CO2 a pollutant? 4 years of this stupidity.
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