The Nonsense of Trudeau's climate change policies

[OftenWrong]

1 hour ago, cougar said:

And are you picking up the plastic?

I had over 30 bags collected last week near a landfill and another 3 bags collected yesterday off the side of a highway.  How many did you collect?

Just keep in mind burying the plastic only makes it invisible, but it is still there, affecting the environment.

My wife and I have switched to those biodegradable plastic bags. We can throw them out in the nearby landfill without worry, they break down in the sun into very small particles. 

[cougar]

2 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

......they break down in the sun into very small particles. 

called microplastics  But once landfilled there will be no sun exposure for them.

Don't worry , I do not do any better - garbage goes into plastic bags and then into the dumpster.  I recycle just about everything, but there is always this little bit of non-organics in the kitchen, bathroom, basement.

What bothers me is that people do not want to clean the environment.  They drive in their pickups or new SUV's by those TH cups, beer cans and McDonalds lunch boxes and never stop to collect them, or the plastic bags caught on the trees nearby!

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by cougar

[Aristides]

4 hours ago, Infidel Dog said:

No I don't. I'm showing you that so far this century the line looks almost level so if you expect your scary 3 degrees per century to begin to endanger the people of the 22nd century that line is going to have to get erect like boingggg...in a hurry to make it happen in the next 80 years..

I'm saying don't hold your breath. Now that you mention it though that's an interesting point. The Line is not linear slanting only up. Why not? If you're right about the CO2 being the only cause for the rise what blocks it and prevents the line from being purely linear slanting upward?

Surely you're not suggesting there could be natural controls? Because if there are why do I need to be so scared I need to give Justin a big back slap for driving up the price of gas and everything else along with it and support a "great reset" of more global control.

The graph you posted shows it is not level. Since 1980 the rate of warming has tripled.

[Infidel Dog]

Maybe if I just keep saying what I actually said you'll stop trying to gaslight me into believing I said something different.

I wasn't talking about the point four of a degree rise between 1980 and the super El Nino of 1998. I was talking about the first 21 years of the 21st century where the line appears to level out. To me that's interesting because if you want to have your scary 3% rise going into the 22nd century something radical is going to have to happen in the next 80 years. Many times more radical than even the sudden burst of .4 of a degree culminating in the 1998 Super El Nino.

[DogOnPorch]

8 hours ago, cougar said:

And are you picking up the plastic?

 

Yes.

[OftenWrong]

11 hours ago, cougar said:

called microplastics  But once landfilled there will be no sun exposure for them.

Don't worry , I do not do any better - garbage goes into plastic bags and then into the dumpster.  I recycle just about everything, but there is always this little bit of non-organics in the kitchen, bathroom, basement.

What bothers me is that people do not want to clean the environment.  They drive in their pickups or new SUV's by those TH cups, beer cans and McDonalds lunch boxes and never stop to collect them, or the plastic bags caught on the trees nearby!

 

I heard that 90% of recycling waste is not used and goes to the landfill anyway. There are not enough facilities to handle the sheer volume of waste. Thus actually useless to separate it out for recycling, when at the recycle facility they just shovel it back over to the big garbage pile. Smoke and mirrors. Complete waste of time.

[Nefarious Banana]

$3,500,000.-  spent on our new dump/recycle facility.  Very expensive to dump there.  No funding to keep it open 12hrs. every day.  It's open 3 days per week.  Town has a spring garbage cleanup by volunteers from the FSR past the new dump.  People drive past the closed/expensive new dump to dump tonnes of garbage on Crown Land.  23 tonnes in the recent cleanup.  The dimwit mayor, and his band of elected council penguins strut their stuff after the cleanup, but not once has anyone of those clowns showed up on the volunteer cleanup day. Not once.  Yet they starve the dump staff to keep the new dump facility open for only 3 days per week.

Found yet another poached elk on the weekend.  The bush is the home to some very creepy types nowadays with the covid bullshit in full swing.  

[myata]

48 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

I heard that 90% of recycling waste is not used and goes to the landfill anyway. There are not enough facilities to handle the sheer volume of waste. Thus actually useless to separate it out for recycling, when at the recycle facility they just shovel it back over to the big garbage pile. Smoke and mirrors. Complete waste of time.

Well it could be something and perhaps wouldn't be such a complete waste if we built our economies now, in this century around full or maximal sustainability, incorporating 1) the full cost of the sustainable reclaiming and disposal and 2) practices and processes of such in development and marketing of all products, consumer and industrial. But that would be too complicated and to damaging for the eternal growth etc yada so we choose the band-aid instead, stick it on and pretend that it's doing something good. It's not them, it's us.

[dialamah]

On 5/1/2021 at 4:41 PM, Army Guy said:

SO we are blaming climate change for the sea levels that have risen over 7 inchs in the last 150 years OK i get that...

I ran across a video this morning I found pretty interesting.  Maybe you would too.

How Sure Are Climate Scientists: Degrees of Uncertainty

 

[Aristides]

https://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-worlds-glaciers-melting-170935466.html

[GrittyLeftist]

On 4/30/2021 at 11:33 AM, Army Guy said:

The solution must be a Canadian one, as not all nations have the same issues as we do, it must incorporate every sector of our economy, and it must be used to create as much wealth as it can, going green is not cheap, and technology has not yet produced the holy grail to have us move off fossil fuels.  And with the covid reeking havoc on our economy it must also include a economic recovery plan that won't drive us into huge debt loads.

There is always going to be "those guys" , they have been part of the problem ever since man came out of the trees, the solution must take them into account.

Solid points here.  I would probably look to create a few Crown corporations and funnel taxpayer contributions to research and development to them.  That way the taxpayer owns the IP of whatever techs they produce, as opposed to how things work now, where we give money to companies to fund their r&d, then they keep the profits.

[Right To Left]

On 5/1/2021 at 2:07 AM, cougar said:

Without any hesitation I can tell you this can't be true.   Our population globally is still expanding under the pandemic.

At this point I do not recommend genocide; just a complete ban on immigration.

 

First off, just in case, I wasn't intending for my post to sound offensive. But the main advocates of invoking the "too many people" arguments on environment crises, resource and energy shortages etc., comes from the population reduction lobby who don't factor in that some....like the average American, use many times as much energy as the majority of people in the world, including growing capitalist states copying our bad examples like Brazil, India and China. The most recent offenders have been the green capitalists, who starting with Al Gore, have moved governments and media to focus on rising carbon emissions as personal failings, rather than failures of government...especially corporate-controlled government policy. 

As for "Our population globally is still expanding," that is only true globally, in the sense that it takes time for falling birth rates (yes, birth rates are falling everywhere in the world!) And this was happening before 2020 - our year of glorious Covid! 

Even in the US, birth rates are falling! Not quite as bad as Canada's now Japan-like collapse in birth rates, but also below replacement rate of population. And so, to balance bad demographics, our immigration policies are used to steal people from other countries; some of which, like Ukraine, are in a steeper decline also. 

Nevertheless, by the end of this century, the declining birth rates globally will mean that world population will fall, instead of grow, in the next century....if we have a next century! 

One of the reasons why birth rates are in decline in the west and in rapidly industrializing third world nations, is believed to be partly because of pollution and environmental toxins, like the plastic residue - phthalates....which have become ubiquitous all over the planet...especially in the oceans, but found everywhere...even Antarctica! 

So, as of now, the continent of Africa is the only one with a growing population, that is projected to keep growing until the end of the century.

So, as long as we are run by capitalist economics, we will not handle bad demographics very well.... just ask Japan! If we had socialist economies, producing essential and necessary products first, instead of luxuries...especially for the rich who have too much money to spend, then maybe we would be able to deal with all of the crises coming at us in the 21st century. But, as long as we run with fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants capitalism, everything will just keep building until it all blows up at some point in the future!

[Right To Left]

On 5/1/2021 at 7:19 PM, Army Guy said:

This is the reason why this will never end, the left is always right, and the right is always wrong. you claim all the sources given to you so far, are disingenuous by self proclaimed experts, funded by big oil.  And yet your side is also made claims by so called experts that are funded by other industries that are making trillions on taking advantage of the climate scare and are pouring bils into making the climate change narrative sound that we need to take immediate action... the faster the better so they can stuff their pockets as well. It is a two edge sword. 

You know very well that there are more than two sides here! Not every issue....likely most issues, don't fit within the continually shrinking liberal vs conservative Overton window. 

* on that; I am with the "extreme" environmentalists who demand that total lifecycle carbon footprints be accounted for with ALL energy systems, and proposed "clean" energy "solutions." So, yes the green tech alternatives like windmills, solar panels, lithium batteries etc., all come with high initial toxic effects on the environment because they are relying on rare earth minerals we've been hearing so much about in the news lately. 

I can't accept "science" that has become less and less credible over time, like the correlations with sunspot activity and "Maunder Minimum," which used to be tossed up all the time to explain climate change, but whose explanatory power recedes as temps keep warming during years when sunspot activity is very low!

Simple fact is that these may have been plausible explanations in 1900, when CO2 levels were still below 300 ppm. But with latest readings at Manua Loa hitting 420 (albeit we are at about the annual carbon maximum), explanations that worked during times when there was much less GHG's in the atmosphere are no longer sufficient. Even worse, the full affects of our 400+ world will not fully be realized for centuries....even if CO2 increases stopped right now! Based on past times of global warming, when the Arctic Ice Cap melted and even most of the Antarctic except for the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, have not been fully felt by the Earth's climate cycles........yet!

Quote

So the worlds ocean levels are rising, according to your graph it's only 3 mm a year,  so what is the danger point here, 1 foot 2 feet, what ? How long is it going to take to get to the critical point ? in 50 years, 100 years, 200 years what ?

The rate of sea level rise itself is accelerating. That should put those 3 mm numbers.....wherever you got them from, don't account for an exponential increase, nor does it tell us which ocean is being measured. Because sea levels vary around the world, and so does their rise and fall! 

New study finds sea level rise accelerating

Edited May 3, 2021 by Right To Left

[Michael Hardner]

49 minutes ago, Right To Left said:

You know very well that there are more than two sides here!

Sure but if you are arguing with people who are saying Climate Change is fake you are arguing with fringe elements and not the right people.

The question is what can be done effectively and how ?

As such the OP is about political posturing and greenwashing, and the Liberals' attempt to repeat their grandstanding climate failures of the 1990s.  Pick your dance partners more wisely and you might get somewhere, rather than playing whack-a-mole with people who think moles are fake news.

[cougar]

12 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

I heard that 90% of recycling waste is not used and goes to the landfill anyway. There are not enough facilities to handle the sheer volume of waste. Thus actually useless to separate it out for recycling, when at the recycle facility they just shovel it back over to the big garbage pile. Smoke and mirrors. Complete waste of time.

This is what I hear too, however at a landfill I supervise, no loads of plastics are brought in to be landfilled.

As we know, most of the regular garbage contains a huge amount of plastics.  Once those large garbage bags get ripped by the excavator , depending on winds, there can be a good amount of light stuff going up and into the neighboring forests.  Then birds - crows and eagles , grab what they can, despite the best of efforts to keep them away.  Those birds are able to grab even larger plastic containers and fly away with them, eventually dropping them down some place out of reach!

And of course you have the leachate - the landfill fluids that are supposedly cleaned, but you never know how good your underground liners are and if they will keep all of the mess inside.

At the end of the day, we have growing mountains of toxic garbage accumulated all over the world, forests destroyed, water regulating mechanisms destroyed, wildlife populations on the decline, available healthy land producing food and oxygen going down in size by the day.

But people get distracted by conservatives, liberals and their petty scams intended to divert our attention from the actual problems.

Edited May 4, 2021 by cougar

[cougar]

21 hours ago, Infidel Dog said:

I wasn't talking about the point four of a degree rise between 1980 and the super El Nino of 1998. I was talking about the first 21 years of the 21st century where the line appears to level out.

What WE are talking about is that your claim of "negligible temperature rise" is based on false assumptions , because you chose to exclude much of the relevant data.  Good you are not an crimes investigator - you were going to lock up all the innocent guys.  Lets leave it at that.

[Infidel Dog]

OK, let's try it one more time and see if you hear it this time. I think this is about the fifth time I've said it. I was talking about the specific 23 years from the 1998 Super El Nino to the present. Any rise between those two specific end points is negligible. I'm fully aware of the sudden temperature rise up to said Super El Nino of 98 that happened before that.

My point is always about do we need to be afraid of this prophecy of catastrophe the 'never  let a crisis go to waste crowd' would like to advantage if they can convince us the end is coming. 

Hey, here's something interesting about that I just saw today. The UAH satellite temperature data for April just came out. The line keeps dropping. The global temperature dropped again and is now below the mean average.

-0.05. If this continues for much longer you're going to start hearing about "the Pause" again. If you still don't understand what I'm talking about yet you will if that happens because it won't just be me saying it.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Infidel Dog

[Infidel Dog]

Oh wait...I guess they are already starting to talk about a "new pause."

Apparently this one is just 6 years so far. I think the last one was 19.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/03/the-new-pause-lengthens-by-two-months-to-6-years/

We need a super La Nina like 98's super El Nino. 

[Right To Left]

21 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Sure but if you are arguing with people who are saying Climate Change is fake you are arguing with fringe elements and not the right people.

The question is what can be done effectively and how ?

As such the OP is about political posturing and greenwashing, and the Liberals' attempt to repeat their grandstanding climate failures of the 1990s.  Pick your dance partners more wisely and you might get somewhere, rather than playing whack-a-mole with people who think moles are fake news.

And who said I'm arguing with people who say climate change is fake? That's who you are arguing with! I barely give deniers any attention unless they come at me these days. Because if they can't see the evidence of shrinking natural habitats, species extinctions, and ocean die-offs, they can't be reasoned with anyway..... at least not until their houses are on fire! 

* years ago, our most popular and common fish - cod and salmon are almost unaffordable and extremely rare today. What more evidence do we need, than dwindling numbers of the fish that were so abundant 500 years ago, that John Cabot thought his ship was running aground when they crashed into a large, dense school of cod fish! 

Evidence is available all around us today, unless we are deliberately looking away and pretending it doesn't exist.

Now, as for your objections to my take on the climate issue, it's because you good liberal woke greenies who think we can save the environment and save capitalism at the same time. That's a more difficult argument to present, since both sides with money in the debate don't want it up for consideration...for obvious reasons!  And this green tech and green innovation story of solving global warming I believe, is the most dangerous fantasy today...not the deniers! Because the fantasy you and other good liberals share, will just waste precious time and resources polluting the planet with the residues of extracting rare earth minerals for all of these nice, new, clean, green devices!

More than 100 years ago now, the Austrian philosopher - Rudolph Steiner, stated that  It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism…

Those words have never been more true than they are today! Now that we have a political/economic system that rewards and elevates the most sociopathic, reckless and shortsighted people in society!

Too many people (you included) think they got all the answers....whether the subject is covid or climate change or foreign wars (take your pick). 

My politics started radically shifting 20 years ago after I became aware that climate change was real and also that there was no way to resolve climate destruction with an economic system that cannot function unless it can keep growing and expanding continuously. 

So, I've got a lot of moles to whack, because I realized right from the start, that I was on a side that is marginalized and unfunded by corporate and political benefactors. For supporting evidence of our dismal future prospects, I have a few mostly retired scientists and analysts, who paid the price for refusing to be bought off by corporate interests. 

[Infidel Dog]

The whole premise of anybody thinking "Climate Change" is fake is deceptive crap until you define what you mean by Climate Change. Climate changes. I've never heard anybody anywhere deny that.

Most people are less worried about an apocalypse of nice weather than the average warminista wants to believe. Once you go there, to the prophecy of doom, it's the warmers who are fringe. Extinction Rebellion who were going to try to shut down a bridge in Vancouver because they've been told they're saving the world are what's fringe.

 

[Right To Left]

18 minutes ago, Infidel Dog said:

The whole premise of anybody thinking "Climate Change" is fake is deceptive crap until you define what you mean by Climate Change. Climate changes. I've never heard anybody anywhere deny that.

Most people are less worried about an apocalypse of nice weather than the average warminista wants to believe. Once you go there, to the prophecy of doom, it's the warmers who are fringe. Extinction Rebellion who were going to try to shut down a bridge in Vancouver because they've been told they're saving the world are what's fringe.

 

Okay Mr. Lomborg, you can't fool anyone anymore with your "climate is always changing" storyline. Fact remains that regardless of excuses based on recent past climate conditions, we haven't had atmospheric CO2 levels anywhere near the present 420 ppm since before the Pleistocene started 2.5 million years ago. So it's a brand new world, since earth's climate hasn't adapted to the recent carbonizing of the atmosphere we've done, let alone adapt to what we end up with 50 or 100 years from now!  And how many times in the past has Not Being Worried been the greatest problem and the cause of a society's breakdown and collapse?

[Infidel Dog]

Well, thanks for the Lomborg compliment but inadequate information is a  bigger lie than no information so let's hear the rest of the "Climate Change" story:

Quote

Over the 4.5 billion years of Earth history there have been five big ice-house epochs where cold conditions have dominated.

BIG cold snap

The most extreme example was around 700-800 million years ago when the Earth was totally covered by ice, the so-called “snowball earth”.  Volcanic eruptions probably released the planet from this particular predicament by ejecting vast quantities of CO2 which warmed the atmosphere.  Despite these dramatic deep freeze episodes, for 85% of geological time the Earth has been warmer than it is right now and with much higher levels of carbon dioxide.  For example, 70 million years ago CO2 was eight times higher than now and shortly before that it was twelve times higher.  Only 15% of Earth history has seen cold ice-house conditions.  So the last 2 – 3 million years has been much colder than “average” for planet Earth.  During this time there have been several fluctuations into and out of cold conditions called glacials that have typically lasted 100,000 years.  The interspersing warmer periods are called interglacials and these have usually lasted about 10,000 years.  The cold period of the last 2 million years is popularly known as the Ice Age and more technically termed the Pleistocene.

Dinosaurs: mean but warm

The Ice Age itself has been subject to warmer and colder times.  The last really cold snap ended about 10,000 years ago.  Modern human existence has developed entirely in this warmer interglacial period over the last 10,000 years but technically we are still living in an “Ice Age” period, merely a warm bit of it, called the Holocene interglacial.  Until the 1970’s this warm period was expected to be nearing its end, being about 10,000 years since the last glacial ended, and global cooling was the concern in many climate books of the time e.g. Nigel Calder: “The Weather Machine and the Threat of Ice” BBC 1974.
Orbital cycles are one of the possible causes of regular long-term swings in global climate. The orbit of the Earth wobbles and stretches which affects seasons and energy receipt from the sun. These wobbles occur regularly over 100,000 years. Orbital cycles are the “pace-makers” for temperature change and could be argued to trigger change when other factors coincide with it (like location of continents over polar regions, volcanic eruptions, etc).

https://rgsweather.com/2013/03/28/who-killed-spring-2013-suspect-6-climate-change/

During the time of the dinosaurs CO2 was about 4 times higher than today. So this idea carbon dioxide levels a quarter of that will destroy all life on earth is a lot of hooey. 

But go ahead and believe this claim of how a coming warmageddon is " the greatest problem and the cause of a society's breakdown and collapse" if that's what makes you happy. Just don't tell the rest of us we have to because you do. 

Myself I'm more worried about the type of person that wants to exploit the worry they're creating with deceptive clips of info meant to frighten people.

But yeah, I get it - "The sky is falling. A piece of it fell on your head,' right?

Edited May 4, 2021 by Infidel Dog

[blackbird]

Rex Murphy put it well in the National Post:

"Yet so it appears. The governor of the state of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, has decreed for the good of the world environment that Enbridge Line-5, which passes through her state on its way to Ontario, will be closed.

The mind rebels. It is so difficult to understand.

For do not all the books of the law which govern the darkness of pipelines have but one target, and the commandments which govern them apply to one province alone.   

 Thou shall not build a new pipeline in the land of Alberta. Neither under the ground, nor on the ground above, nor on rails. It is forbidden.

And thou shalt not support the ones that are already there, for it is a wholesome thing to condemn them, and ye will receive many carbon credits and a new bicycle if ye do.

For has it not been written in The Book of Greta: “Out of the hydrocarbons of Fort McMurray will come a great darkness, and out of the oil of Alberta alone, issues all pestilence and dread, and a great threat to the hummingbirds?

Elizabeth of Sannich, visitor of cities, goddess of travel agents, whose air miles are as numerous as sands upon the beach, has given warning in like words: “The oil of the peoples of Alberta must layeth in the ground forever. Cursed be those who detect it. Cursed be those that buy it. And let anathema fall and darken the generations on all who would say otherwise. For they are shills. Let there be no Alberta pipelines lest ye perish.”

Here endeth the lesson.

The threat that by May 12, Gov. Whitmer will shut down Line 5 to Ontario, is so beautiful an issue it should be hanging in an art gallery.

For what have we to look at? We have two leaders, Greener than shamrocks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Gov. Whitmer, who see themselves plucked by the goddess of destiny herself, as human ambulances rushing to save the Earth from global warming. Who colour their dreams with visions of every oil and gas project in the world evaporating, and a flood of solar panels and a wilderness of windmills covering the planet.

Every solemn word from the mouth of Gov. Whitmer echoes with perfection the rhetoric and environmental concerns of PM Trudeau, and his iron-bound conviction that global warming is the approach of Armageddon. He and she are twins on this topic. You could not place the tiniest film of gold leaf, a single hair, between her deepest urgings on climate change and those of Mr. Trudeau.  "

Rex Murphy: How's Trudeau going to get out of this Line 5 pickle and keep oil flowing? (msn.com)

[cannuck]

On 5/4/2021 at 1:04 PM, Right To Left said:

A

* years ago, our most popular and common fish - cod and salmon are almost unaffordable and extremely rare today. What more evidence do we need, than dwindling numbers of the fish that were so abundant 500 years ago, that John Cabot thought his ship was running aground when they crashed into a large, dense school of cod fish! 

Evidence is available all around us today, unless we are deliberately looking away and pretending it doesn't exist.

You start off with a good observation (ocean die-off) then without bother to learn what the is and why, get onto the looney left bandwagon of atmospheric issues in abstract and attacking geopolitical/economic boogiemen.

First of all, the oceans are THE largest sink for carbon (di-oxide) - and the majority of our atmospheric problems are due to oceanic die-off of plankton - that is the very apex of the food chain - and the primary site for carbon fixation (far ahead of forests).  We don't have so much an atmospheric carbon emissions problem, we have an oceanic kill off of the plankton that not only absorbs the vast majority of CO2, but ultimately feeds the rest of the species.

Now, we keep neglecting the REAL problem and it crosses all political and diplomatic lines:  population.  We are up shit creek without a paddle because nobody (except China) has ever had the sense to stop runaway population growth.   ALL of the oceanic damage (largely caused by the garbage we throw into it) and all other environmental damage is directly proportional to population x prosperity.  Overfishing, soil and water damage also same, same.

Look at our response?  Gee, let's stop driving hydrocarbon cars and let's use public funds around the planet to subsidize the hell out of producing electric cars - to not only do more of the same thing, but to do it with THE most polluting power system available (lithium ion batteries) that are FAR more damaging than combustion engine emissions - that all could have easily been absorbed by a healthier ocean.  And we are doing diddly squat about the oceans (largely because they are outside of government boundaries).  See, I could care less which partisan "ism" one chooses, they have ALL screwed up 100% when it comes to environmental protection - and chasing the hydrocarbon boogieman is just more gesturing.

[Right To Left]

2 minutes ago, cannuck said:

You start off with a good observation (ocean die-off) then without bother to learn what the is and why, get onto the looney left bandwagon of atmospheric issues in abstract and attacking geopolitical/economic boogiemen.

First of all, the oceans are THE largest sink for carbon (di-oxide) - and the majority of our atmospheric problems are due to oceanic die-off of plankton - that is the very apex of the food chain - and the primary site for carbon fixation (far ahead of forests).  We don't have so much an atmospheric carbon emissions problem, we have an oceanic kill off of the plankton that not only absorbs the vast majority of CO2, but ultimately feeds the rest of the species.

You mind explaining why die-offs of plankton are more of a problem now than they were...say 70 years ago even, when marine biologists tell us there was almost twice as much life in the oceans as there is today?

Phytoplankton Population Drops 40 Percent Since 1950

The higher ocean temperatures rise, the less oxygen they hold, and that's why cold, northern ocean water is green with a heavy density of algae...and the fish and marine mammals that are further up the ocean food pyramid. While the clear, tropical waters of the Caribbean and other tropical oceans are clear precisely because they are comparative food deserts. That's during normal times, and we don't live in normal times anymore! 

What's happening in the world's oceans today is increasing acidification accompanies rising water temperatures. There are other factors causing ocean die-offs...especially the buildup of plastic residues (phthalates) in the oceans along with our soils and water supplies. 

*that could raise other questions like whether the rise in toxic chemicals and plastic residues in our bodies is connected with growing evidence that both male and female fertility rates are declining. Instead of worrying that overpopulation is going to kill us all, maybe the truth is that we are already in a large population die-off all over the world because declining birth rates and populations getting sicker and more unhealthy over time because of new diseases that are making the threat of contagious diseases a real threat that is 

And let's not forget that other carbon sinks, like forests, including the Amazon Valley may have past the threshold where they no longer pull more carbon out of the atmosphere than they emit: 

Climate change: Amazon may be turning from friend to foe

 

Quote

Now, we keep neglecting the REAL problem and it crosses all political and diplomatic lines:  population.  We are up shit creek without a paddle because nobody (except China) has ever had the sense to stop runaway population growth. 

According to OECD numbers, the top 1% emit as much carbon into the atmosphere as the lower 50% of the world's population! Now that should tell you that population in and of itself is not the prime driver for rising carbon emissions. 

I thought I already posted this at least once before!

Richest 1%'s emissions twice that of poorest 50%: analysis

Quote

Look at our response?  Gee, let's stop driving hydrocarbon cars and let's use public funds around the planet to subsidize the hell out of producing electric cars - to not only do more of the same thing, but to do it with THE most polluting power system available (lithium ion batteries) that are FAR more damaging than combustion engine emissions - that all could have easily been absorbed by a healthier ocean.  And we are doing diddly squat about the oceans (largely because they are outside of government boundaries).  See, I could care less which partisan "ism" one chooses, they have ALL screwed up 100% when it comes to environmental protection - and chasing the hydrocarbon boogieman is just more gesturing.

If you didn't know about, most real environmentalists see electric cars as greenwashing and not much more! Cars aren't needed in cities like New York, London or Paris, where population densities are high and mass transit is a much more sensible solution than putting battery-powered cars on the roads...since asphalt and concrete roads in and of themselves are high sources of carbon emissions!