Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Climate Change

It's been a while since I've posted here. I think I have another active blog somewhere where this might be better suited, but all I know is that Facebook isn't enough.

First, the video:

Meet the Press on NBC via MotherJones.com - 13 minutes worth watching

Next, my tirade: (and I can cite sources on any of my claims if you really want to push me on it; it'll just take me a while to find the citations)

I won't call Marsha Blackburn a complete idiot, because she's talking about dollars-in-the-pockets-now stuff. She knows (some of) her voters. A long-term cost-benefit analysis, though, will tell you that reducing carbon at whatever economic cost now is going to be better than the entire planet being dead in 50 years. Major props to David Gregory for arguing with her that there IS scientific consensus about climate change. Now to Bill Nye. Yay for calling her out on the absurd notion that the increased percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is insignificant. And I'm also impressed that his head didn't actually explode a couple of times. One thing Nye and Gregory failed to call her out on was the idea that increased carbon will improve agriculture yields. This may true in small areas for short periods of time, but in aggregate, increased carbon will kill far more plants as their proteins denature entirely, AND increased carbon changes areas that were once fertile into deserts, meaning that not only do the farms have to move but so do huge populations of people. This will cause even more political instability (due to famine, plague, war, and, yes, conquest), which will be more expensive for the U.S. to mitigate as we expand our military and our private contractors to make sure that we control the ever-dwindling resources on an ever-sprawling, sucking, and consuming population.