Saturday, August 04, 2012

The socialist conspiracy strikes again!

James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says that climate change is real, is here, is worse than expected.
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
Well, there's only one conclusion to draw from this piece: Those pesky Bolshies are at it again! Obviously, the international Red conspirators paid Comrade Hansen to lies his ass off about global warming. Why? Well, because...because....

Because they're evil and they want to ruin our way of life. That's why.

Y'see, if we really wanted to do something about emissions, we would accelerate the switch to electric cars like the (mostly) (well, sort-of-mostly) made-in-America Tesla Model S, glowingly reviewed here. This vehicle, in its top-end variant, has a range of 300 miles. From what I've read, 500 miles is do-able within the near future -- and a quick-charging station could "top off" your battery while you have lunch.

The Tesla costs a lot, but prices will come down as production increases. Alas, the switch to electric cars faces a couple of daunting problems...

1. Business will hesitate to create a nationwide system of charging station until lots of electric vehicles are on the road. Meanwhile, consumers will hesitate to buy the vehicles until the charging system is in place.

2. Our present power grid probably can't handle millions and millions of new electric vehicles, especially if everyone tries to charge up during certain times of the day (such as the mornings).

The obvious solution: Government should offer incentives to create charging stations across the country. Government should also build more power plants and strengthen our grid. Finally, government should do what it can to make our power supply as clean and green as possible. Such a program would necessarily employ many people, thereby solving the recession.

See? Socialism!

Better we should all fry.

6 comments:

Alessandro Machi said...

Capitalism, "as long as you fry before me, I'm ok with that, and pass the barbecue sauce, you're looking tasty and crunchy".

Commander Zaius said...

Government should also build more power plants and strengthen our grid.

I completely agree with the post but things get complicated with the power plants. Coal, or even oil burning power plants add carbon to the atmosphere while nuke plants send the average liberal rightfully into spasms. To be honest I am still on poop lists of several environmental blogs for suggesting that despite the horrible accident in Japan some sort of nuke power will have to be used to cover the gap wind and solar cannot.

Wind and solar are big parts of the answer but do not work well in urban areas despite wishful thinking. The grid definitely has to be strengthened if not outright rebuilt but that still does not answer how to practically transfer electrical power generated at wind and solar farms in areas such as the prairie and desert.

Joseph Cannon said...

BB: My point, which I should have made clearer in the body of my article, is that every promising scheme I've ever seen for clean energy always applied to power plants, not car engines. With existing tech, you can use wind, solar, nukes to get juice to a power socket in your house. Building a solar car would be trickier. So it's best to build a long-range electric car that plugs into a power outlet in your garage.

Hydrogen fuel cells may one day power vehicles. (Or maybe not. You'll get lots of argument on that score.) But it seems far more likely that hydrogen will first be used in municipal power plants.

So it seems to me that the electric car is the future. Over time, the power grid can be "greenified." On a more immediate basis, it seems like a good idea to create a network of charging stations and to invest more heavily in the kind of R&D that will bring battery range up to 600 miles or so. Road trip!

b said...

Arguing on the basis of 6 decades is ridiculous. These propagandists often try to confuse 'climate change' (which has always occurred - There used to be ice fairs on the Thames.) with 'industrially-caused climate change' (which may not exist - especially since the causes of the climate change that has always occurred are unknown - funny how these scientist-PR guys 'forget' about hidden variables).

Pushing climate change (son of 'global warming') makes money for the people who make money out of NASA.

Of course the climate is changing. That obvious observation is being rammed down our throats to encourage or force us all to change our behaviour as best benefits big business.

My fucking rubbish is only collected once a fortnight nowadays. It used to be collected once a week. Half the things I used to be able to throw in the ordinary bin, I now have to take to the public authorities at my own expense, so they can sell it cheap, or give it away, to private businesses. I have to sort it out, so that this type of rubbish goes into a bin for this company, and that type goes into a bin for that company. Talk about social reproduction being part of social production. It's like the theses in Marx's Grundrisse being proved true ever more clearly.

Look at paper - I'm supposed to 'recycle' all of that, so as to assist the fuckers who send me junk mail.

In Ireland, if you burn anything in your garden, you're committing the offence of 'anti-social behaviour'. You're supposed to pay to hand it to someone else - even if they then burn it. How clear can this get?

Meanwhile I'm supposed to buy bags to take stuff away from supermarkets (sold as 'bags for life' or 'green bags'), but nobody in politics or on the TV or in the corridors of science dares criticise supermarket companies for the massive waste that is involved in the supermarket system (quite aside from the deterioration of food quality).

Funnily enough, I'm also encouraged to 'self-checkout' in supermarkets.

There's a pattern here - corporate cost-cutting, and getting customers to do work they used to pay retailers to do.

But no, let's ignore all that and concentrate our ire on people who 'deny' the truth of propaganda, as if we are all teleguided by big business propaganda outfits run by right-wing billionaires (as if there are any other kind of billionaires), and as if we are denying simple obvious facts such as that rain is wet or trees are blossoming earlier than they did a few generations ago.

Sure, the 'opposition' to the 'climate change' propaganda is manipulated. Same with the 911 'truth movement', and pretty much anything else.

When the shit hits the fan, it won't be because of climate change.

I've just read a document by big interests in the insurance sector (CRO Forum) which discusses massive continent-wide or intercontinental electricity blackouts triggered by 'space weather'. (The CRO Forum brings together Chief Risk Officers of global insurance companies.)

2013 is time from some sunspots too.

But don't blame the trigger.

b 'the socialist contrarian'

Anonymous said...

@ b , the ecclectic "socialist"
->
http://archive.org/details/Davidharvey-newClass01ReadingMarxsCapital908-2

(It's never too late)

Anonymous said...

WHY DID YOU LET THE PREVIOUS 9/11 TRUTH COMMENT GET POSTED WHEN YOU BLOCK SO MANY OTHERS???

WHY???