partypilot1

I live on 45 acres in Nashville and ‘offset’ the carbon of 140 cars annually. I can’t wait to send the city a bill for this service.

trvsmrtn

It doesn’t help that there are still people out there insisting that climate change isn’t real and misrepresenting the way solar and wind power work.

“Windmills cause cancer!”
”If you put up too many windmills then the wind may stop blowing!”
”The sun went down, I guess we can’t watch TV tonight.”

These are all ridiculous statements made by people in our government.

rickair7777

Plenty of utter ignorance on both sides of that debate.

The real problem with climate science is that NOBODY has any experience with analysis and prediction of the potential for long-term changes caused by man on anything like a planetary scale. We're in uncharted territory, so when people make assertions about what *will* happen in X number of years, it's very easy to show that they don't have any empirical data or any model that's known to be accurate for extrapolation at that scale.

I'm not trying to assert how accurate or not the predictions are, we simply don't know. I'm pointing out why it's so hard to get all of society on board with severe, life-altering austerity in the hopes of averting something which we cannot accurately predict.

For that reason any viable solutions will need to keep human and political realities front and center... basically going to need to allow people to keep their lifestyles and economies while getting rid of excess CO2.

Otherwise a lot of people will just live their lives and take their chances. I'm mostly one of those, because I'm an engineer and the global warming advocates are so emotionally vested in fringe technology and politically infeasible austerity that they're sabotaging their own efforts. Wholesale nuclear power (using safe, standardized modern core designs) is the only conceivable way of getting there by 2050. Added benefit is that if necessary you can build extra nuke plants co-located with industrial scale carbon-capture systems to actually remove carbon from the atmosphere (all proven technology). That may be necessary to reverse the inertia of climate change; it may not be enough to stop putting CO2 in the air. But again we won't know for sure until we get there.

trvsmrtn

My point is that we have people in charge who would rather make outrageous claims like those I mentioned so that they can either pocket money from lobbyists or because they’re ignorant and too lazy to educate themselves. Either way, it does nothing to benefit society, it just creates, wait for it.... more divisiveness.

SonicFlyer

Climate change is real because the climate is dynamic; in a constant state of change. But are humans affecting it, and to what extent? Anyone who says they know for sure is lying. That's the real issue at hand.

Should we seek out greener alternatives? Absolutely. Should we strive to pollute less? Absolutely.

Should we stifle our economy or incur onerous regulations and taxes because we might maybe possibly potentially be changing the climate 1/2 of 1 degree centuries down the road? Hell no.

SonicFlyer

You have to understand, and I think you do, at it's core, radical environmentalism is being used as a vehicle to advance socialism. I'm not talking about reasonable pollution laws that prevent you from ruining your neighbor's land, air, or water.

There is a very subtle ideology at play among the radical environmentalists that humans are a scourge on Mother Earth and that we need less humans; it's practically a eugenics cult.

They want us all to travel nowhere, breed less, eat grass, and revert back to the stone age. Peel it back and that is the real agenda for a lot of that crowd.

trvsmrtn

Again, I agree. I think you’re drastically understating scientist estimates regarding the severity of the increase in global temperatures, but I don’t really feel like looking it up right now.

What is the most conservative approach? To assume that change is needed and start preparing for it. Maybe do that by investing in research on ways to be more “green”. In order to prevent damage to the economy, maybe invest money in businesses that can help us be more energy efficient and invest money in training people who work in coal and oil to work in wind and solar. Someone should actually draft a proposal for that. Maybe they could call it the Green New Deal! Have you read it?

Bozo the pilot

If you're pushing the Green delusional Deal then you're not an airline pilot.

trvsmrtn

I guess I have to start screenshotting my replies if they’re just going to get deleted. I’d love to know the reason that one was deleted.

I guess I’ll just say that if you haven’t bothered to read it, but you think the Green New Deal, a non binding resolution, is going to damage the airline industry, then you’re just ignorant.

rickair7777

Ok, we have delusional on one side, ignorant on the other.

How about some discussion of the actual points and merits, since we as an industry are probably going to be stuck with some form or aspects of GND...


Something about hannity and the brown woman?