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Riverwind

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Everything posted by Riverwind

  1. It is not possible to quantify the 'actual cost of purchases'. The only thing we can do is employ technology to reduce the amount of emissions used in the manufacture of the goods. If someone buys more of the same good their emissions will be larger and no amount of social engineering will change that. What this means is calling for rich people to have the same per capita emissions is the same as saying 'rich people should be taxed so they cannot buy any more than poor people'.Now you might be able to play games and say rich people should spend more when they directly consume energy because they can afford it but direct consumption is only a fraction of the emissions produced by a single person. This means the goal of equal per capita emissions is unachievable without also equalizing per capita income.
  2. Actually, I see no evidence that governments outside of the EU think it is anything more than a scam. Sure China and India say the right words but their actions make it clear: they do not think it is real crisis.
  3. Last time I checked the native groups involved are fulling supporting it. In fact, the chiefs of the 4 bands in question have been granted VIP status at the games. i.e. they get the same treatment any world leader would get if they showed up.
  4. This is your entire problem. You cannot seperate reality from virtual reality. There ZERO REAL evidence that shows that GHGs will have a net negative effect on society. There are plenty of climate models but they are not real nor are they evidence.
  5. So what would you sacrifice in order for action? Note that I said sacrifice which means you have to come up with something that matters to you. The typical "make the big bad polluter over there pay" excuse is not enough. You can't argue fairness because you have already said you think it fair to make poor people in Canada suffer in order to line the pockets of the wealth in countries like China.
  6. So far the cost of GHGs to society is a big fat ZERO. Any future costs are purely hypothetical cannot be used to rationalize fees today. Again. You are assuming that GHGs are actually a pollution that will result in a net negative economic effect. Until those effects occur and it is possible to quantify them it is not possible assess any charges against emitters based on the 'costs of pollution'. ROTFL. You talk about 'market based' mechanism and then you roll out a list of policies that are decidely anti-market. Like I said: market based carbon control mechanisms are an oxymoron. All of the actions you listed are directly connected to the extraction of resources and have costs which can be quantified. It is reasonable to expect the resources extractors to pay those costs. You logic only becomes fuzzy when you start trying to charge companies for hypothetical costs that may never occur.
  7. So you do believe it is unfair for wealthy people to have better cars, bigger houses, more food, more clothes or any other luxery? If you have no problem with wealthier people having more things then you should accept that wealthier people will pollute more. In fact, it is mathematically impossible to buy more things without polluting more.
  8. Great. By your logic Canada gets a pass on the oil sands too because it gets 50% of its electricity from hydro dams.
  9. The two track approach is total nonsense and would only lead to a wealth transfer from poor in rich countries to the rich in poor countries without any significant reduction in global emissions. The reason is simple: when relocation is possible it will always be cheaper to relocate production to countries with no emission limits than to actually reduce emissions.Bottom line: If the problem is not serious enough to require that developing countries accept limits then it is not serious enough to require that developed countries limit their emissions.
  10. That is why the alternatives that can compete with the fossil fuel sources much be developed before they can be mandated. So far we have none that are cheap enough. There is no plausible way to implement any 'market based' mechanisms because as soon as someone gets hurt by the 'market' there will be calls for governments to address the 'market failures'. The poster boy for the irrationality of the 'market based' mechanisms for CO2 control is the Redcar Steelworks in Britian. The Indian company that owns it has decided that it makes more 'market sense' to close the mill and simply sell its carbon quotas rather than to employ Britains. To supply the steel the company plans to open a new plant in India which will then qualify for credits under the 'market based' clean development mechanism.Market-based carbon control mechanisms are an oxymoron. The only rational response is to develop alternatives that can compete in a market free of government attempts to rig it.
  11. There is no evidence that the Chinese government really wants to limit its emissions. In fact, I am not convinced they even believe that AGW is problem that requires action today. If they did they would be acting on CO2 emissions even without an international agreement because it would be in their self-interest to do so as the worlds biggest emitter.
  12. The Chinese government "wants" companies to comply with China's obligations under the WTO to protect copyright. How many listen?You also need to remember that it is a lot easier to hide GHGs emissions than hide copyright abuse so one would expect cheating on emissions to be much worse than the current cheating on copyright.
  13. Not with the existing Kyoto CDM - this is a seperate issue. There are two options on the table:1) Sign an agreement where only democratic societies would be held to their promises because they are the only societies with systems open to public scrunity that allow honest verification of emissions. 2) Have no agreement. It really does not make a difference if China agreed to some watered down version of inspections because we are not dealing with a few missle sites. We are dealing with a huge number of industrial sources that already flout laws on copyright and pollution. There is no reason to believe that they would adher to CO2 emission regulations even if the government wanted them to.
  14. It really depends on who pays the monitors. If the monitors for projects paid for by Canadian companies were working for the Auditor General's department in Canada then I would have some confidence. However, that is not the way it works. The monitors work for the UN which is not accountable to anyone and prone to corruption. There is no reason to believe they would not be bribable or more worried about giving opponents ammunition to shut the entire system down. Which is why I say we forget about international treaties with binding targets and let each country proceed with a policy that makes economic sense to them.Edited: Here is an example of the integrity I have come to expect from UN officials.
  15. The most rational option which is rejected by alarmists everywhere: invest in alternative energy sources while being realistic about how much can be done in a short period of time. What most people miss is it really does not make a difference what the science says because economics says we will need to expand our use of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. The most renewable technologies can do is slow the increase.
  16. 1) The flaws with kyoto CDM are not the monitoring system. The entire concept of buying credits for hypothetical emission reductions is flawed and cannot be fixed because the incentive for fraud is too great (i.e. the buyers have an incentive to promote fraud because it reduces the prices, the sellers have an incentive to promote fraud because they make money, the monitors have an incentive to ignore fraud since exposing it would likey cost them their jobs).2) The dispute with the Chinese was over emissions intensity promises that they made. The US wanted to be able enter China to verify its emission claims. To be effective this would require a level of openness that the paranoid communist regime could never tolerate. I suspect the call for openness was a delberate ploy by the US to undermine China's credibility.
  17. Evolution is about who can live long enough to reproduce and ensure their offspring survive. In human society culture and technology play a significant role in making those determinations.
  18. Today, human evolution is dominated by culture - not biology. i.e. if you want to understand which individuals will propagate their genes you have to look at the culture in which they live. Looking at the biology is not enough.
  19. The number of eggs produced is much less relevant than the number of babies born. I have not seen evidence that difference races with the same income levels will have different amount of children.
  20. I believe such differences are cultural - not genetic. The poor in virtually every society adopt an r-strategy. When people become rich they move to a k-strategy.
  21. This guy was already voting with the republicans so the move does not change the outcome of any legislation.
  22. Many of the claims of the catastrophic AGW types are suspect. The anthropogenic origin of the CO2 in the air is not one of them. Here is a good reference on CO2 origins: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
  23. You missed the posts earlier where I stated that my "system" for discussion of a diety include possibility of alternate planes/universes that we could not perceive. Not all science can proceed based on mathematical analyses. Biology is a science where math outside of statistical analyses has little role in developing theories. You can't use the lack of math as a basis to reject a hypothesis. I am not claiming a deity can be proven to exist. I am saying the existence of a deity could be inferred by developing testable hypotheses based on the presumption that one does exist. This is a valid scientific approach that is used all of the time.
  24. It depends entirely on where one draws the boundaries of the natural world. As I mentioned above scientists have no problem postulating multiple universes suspended in 5 dimensional space as part of the 'natural world'. It does not take much to extend the natural world to include overlapping universes that intersect in the minds of intelligent beings. The question becomes how does one design experiments to determine if the hypothesis has merit. Again - it depends on how one frames the question. If one says 'god did it' and stop looking for answers then you are right. But if one simply presents the deity as a hypothesis which has some useful predictive power (e.g. people that believe in a deity are more likely to overcome psychological issues) then it is just as scientific as a biochemical hypothesis.
  25. So do you believe that wealthier people should be allowed to have better cars, bigger houses, more food, more clothes, etc? If you answer is yes then why should wealthier people be expected to pollute no more than average?
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