Who should bear the burden of combating climate change?

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar Let's consider your analogy of animals in a forest. In most states, you can go hunting on state land during prescribed hunting seasons, and anything you kill is yours to keep. However, it is very regulated. You can't just kill all the animals you see, and you can't hunt at any time, and you need a licence. If these restrictions were not in place, it is likely that there would be no animals in the forests.

Why shouldn't the same logic apply to the planet's atmosphere? It's a limited resource which needs a somewhat specific set of concentrations in order for life to thrive, and by dumping millions of tons of CO2 into it we can upset that balance, which will result in an ecological disaster.

Taxation might not be nice, but it is necessary and beneficial. For example, most of the major technological and scientific advances that companies claim are theirs, are actually just technologies developed first for military use and government funded science. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they didn't invent any of it. The pentagon has a rule that they can never patent anything they develop specifically for this purpose. Every part of the modern smart phone is military hard ware, the microprocessor is for cruise missiles, GPS is for troop and ocean navigation, Lithium Ion batteries for small portable hardware such as flashlights, and the internet evolved from the APRNet, to send encrypted communications globally.

Electric cars dramatically reduce emissions, depending on region it is a whopping 17-30% decrease. Transportation accounts for almost a third of all CO2, so we are looking at around a 5% total reduction in total mam made CO2 just by transitioning to electric vehicles. This number will of course, go down as electric power plants and infrastructure switches to renewable energy.

John_C_87

Happy_Killbot

First people do not go hunting anymore the farm animals by license. The use of the word hunting is a liberty taken on expression, people realistically do not need to prove that they farm animals under a condition of provable truth by association to criminal conduct,

Not touching the idea of taxation as held in a united state constitutional right which is really what makes it legal to seek Nationally.,

Motor vehicles require highways, roadways, and bridges this is where human climate manipulation has the greatest provable environmental impact in manipulation of temperature. Co2 gas creation is not a provable fact directly in climate manipulation by not account for the direct change in temperature of the environmental temperature. Electric vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles all contribute equally to the necessity of roads for their effectiveness. in moving people.

Just as airplanes and boats share equal issue with radar for their public use of microwaves in cell phones. We are not looking at climate change we are looking at climate manipulations this means human changes to temperatures. Get your facts straight please. Co2 gas becomes a facture when influenced by changes in pressure created by gravity much in the way that air conditioner saturated oils work with R410A or R-22. It is the refrigeration process of compression and expansion which moves the heat around, not the gas itself.

 

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/refrigeration

Happy_Killbot

@John_C_87 Stop the word salad!

Every time I read what you right I feel almost as dumb as you must actually be.

John_C_87

Happy_Killbot said:

@John_C_87 Stop the word salad!

Every time I read what you right I feel almost as dumb as you must actually be.

If dumb, the you must be dumber. The missing information in Co2 ever creating and kind of climate change mechanically is compression. This is well known science fact humans have been using compressed C02 in cooling unites for quite a long time Happy_Killbot. C02 came after rapidly melting ice and salt Were have you been under a rock? 

Happy_Killbot

@John_C_87

John_C_87

@Happy_Killbot ;
No thanks...

Just some facts with your word salad to justify any effort of proof reading.

TKDB

We all bear the burden.

"Who should bear the burden of combating climate change?"

The United States, works towards various ways to help the environment.

But if other countries, are going to run the atmosphere above them into the ground, through their individual industry practices, than the world as a whole, is at the mercy of Humanities own actions.

Happy_Killbot

@John_C_87 Seriously though, everything you say is just painful to read, besides being factually incorrect in literally every way. The only time you say something marginally correct is when you stumble into it by blind chance. As far as I can tell, there is no difference between what you say and just picking random words related to the topic.

Just your first sentence: "First people do not go hunting anymore the farm animals by license."

Besides being completely incoherent and not English wouldn't be right anyways, and I know because I went hunting this year.

The rest is all gibberish, just completely incoherent. If you don't believe me, I challenge you to email this to everyone in your contacts and ask them what it means.  

MichaelElpers

@SnigdhaBhattacharya. You think colonizing mars is an easier feat than stopping/reversing climate change?

John_C_87

completely incoherent is a bit melodramatic First people do not go hunting anymore they farm animals by license. In a realistic sense you believe you went hunting however when push came to shove you would be hard put to prove you actual went hunting. It is symbolic as there are conditions out of your control which have did away with what can be proven as a true hunt. What can be said in reasonable understanding is you had purchased a hunting license.

In basic when an animal is held in area to grow and a payment is made by some-one to harvest the animal it is called farming. You are farming not hunting, that simple. You will always believe what you want, however the understanding is it is overall more practical to describe to people in a modern world you recreationally farm.  Climate Change is a vague innuendo to express a manipulation of temperature made correct? Manipulation suggests in detail the idea of return a change is giving the subtle idea of permeance to any vernation of temperatures. 

John_C_87

@Happy_Killbot ;
Do you own a air-conditioner?

John_C_87

@MichaelElpers ;

Realistically we need to colonize open space before we try to colonize a moon or planet. In that effort we will unlock key's to addressing climate manipulation for it is ourselves who must master the environment we chose to live in.

Happy_Killbot

@John_C_87 I think the venison in my freezer is adequate proof of my exploits.

Farming does not require a licence.

Hunting is hunting, farming is farming. Stop raping the English language with your incoherent retardese.

I have had college courses on thermodynamics, based on what you have attempted to say so far I would say you are about as knowledgeable in this subject area as you are in the subject of basic grammar.

Say anything else incorrect about it and i'm going to block you until you can correctly answer a series of test questions. 

Beckett_the_Democrat

For me personally, I believe that no one person or group should bear all of the work of climate change. Yet, as an international superpower, I believe that the United States should lead the world along with other nations to solve the huge issue of climate change

piloteer

Happy_Killbot said:

@piloteer Nuclear power plants do not necessarily have to rely on fossil fuels for operation, because all of the infrastructure required for maintenance could be replaced with electric equipment.

Agreed, but that would require more subsidies from the government, and therefore from taxpayers. We also must take into account all the giant mining equipment needed to get the uranium needed to power nuclear plants. These all use gas burning engines, and I'm not even sure electric mining equipment is even a thing. But even if it is, it would mean a higher cost to taxpayers for an outdated and dangerous energy source that does need fossil fuels to function.        

ZeusAres42

Beckett_the_Democrat said:

For me personally, I believe that no one person or group should bear all of the work of climate change. Yet, as an international superpower, I believe that the United States should lead the world along with other nations to solve the huge issue of climate change

Lots of other countries are actually already helping with the climate change issue. One of the major nations that decided not to engage in the Paris Agreement was the USA because Donald Trump was afraid of becoming unpopular. He pretty much said as much himself. @Beckett_the_Democrat

With that being said, there are still lots of people in the USA that do take climate change seriously and are trying their best to help.

piloteer

MayCaesar said:

@Happy_Killbot

Atmosphere refers to the entire system, it does not refer to individual points of air close to people's homes, cars, etc. Local pollution, for example, is a very different beast, from global pollution as a whole. Think of it as the difference between you owning your pets at your home, and you trying to place a claim on all animals in a large wild forest.

I do not support either environmental taxes/fines, or subsidies. Depending on the exact amounts we are talking about and who they are given, one may be less harmful than the other, but I would not get behind either.
I would only get behind any kind of tax breaks insofar as I am against taxation in principle.

Electric cars are not nearly as harmless as many think; we only see the surface, which is cars getting charged from stations and rolling around with no emissions, but if you actually go deeper into how the electric energy is produced in the first place, you will see a lot of environmental horrors there. Overall they are probably "cleaner" than burning fossil fuels, but the difference is not as dramatic as you would think.

Why has not all cars become electric yet, you mean? Many reasons, mainly commercial: gas-based cars are easier to produce and sell. One day fossil fuels will probably become obsolete, and you see everything electric making a comeback nowadays. Do not expect the progress to go faster than it does, however: progress cannot be forced, and it takes time.
Hybrids used to be a toy of selected few Hollywood celebrities and environmental activists; nowadays you can buy a hybrid at every used car lot. It will not take long before the same is true for electric cars, and at that point few will want to drive gas-based cars, since it will be economically inefficient.
Cybertruck was just demonstrated recently. This is the future, and it is not the government that made it possible; it is Elon Musk, an extravagant enterpreneur. These are the guys to put hopes in the future in, not the guys in the parliaments around the world.

Fossil fuel energy plants need the most subsidies to function, it would make much more sense to use those subsidies in renewable energy to eventually create an industry that will need far less, or perhaps even no subsidies because individuals can become the owners of their own energy producing systems. If you're against subsidies, you should be supporting renewable energy.     

Your argument on the atmosphere is totally lost on me because the environment does refer to individual points of air close to people's homes, cars, etc, as it does the ground that immediate surround people's homes, cars, etc. All those places are part of the environment and are not individually owned by anybody.  

Happy_Killbot

@piloteer There is nothing in principal that prevents mining and transport equipment from being electric powered rather than fossil fuel powered. There are engineering constraints, such as the energy density of batteries, but these problems should be alleviated as technology advances, until at some point they are more economical than fossil fuel powered vehicles.

As far as subsidies for nuclear goes, the plants mostly don't need them once they have been operational for a few years. It's a lot trickier for nuclear when compared to other plant types, because the capital costs are the bulk of the price. Subsidizing nuclear the way we subsidize other types, where there is a fixed rate per year is silly in my opinion, instead they should receive subsidies that decrease over time to cover initial capital costs, until the plant breaks even at which point the subsidies should go away completely. 

piloteer

Happy_Killbot said:

@piloteer There is nothing in principal that prevents mining and transport equipment from being electric powered rather than fossil fuel powered. There are engineering constraints, such as the energy density of batteries, but these problems should be alleviated as technology advances, until at some point they are more economical than fossil fuel powered vehicles.

As far as subsidies for nuclear goes, the plants mostly don't need them once they have been operational for a few years. It's a lot trickier for nuclear when compared to other plant types, because the capital costs are the bulk of the price. Subsidizing nuclear the way we subsidize other types, where there is a fixed rate per year is silly in my opinion, instead they should receive subsidies that decrease over time to cover initial capital costs, until the plant breaks even at which point the subsidies should go away completely. 

Actually the opposite is true. The older a nuclear power plant becomes, the more money it will need for maintenance. Strangely enough, this is exacerbated by many states new stance of reluctance to allow new nuclear energy plants in their state. Because many states are not allowing new permits for energy companies to build new nuclear power plants, the companies are trying to maintain the old nuclear power plants for as long as they can. Because these older plants are being run for longer than what they were intended to operate for, it costs more to maintain them. 

Understandably there is nothing in principle that prevents mining and transport equipment from being powered electrically, but I'm not sure any large industrial equipment is even available or in the works for production. If such equipment does exist, I'd be willing to bet that it's very expensive. And if it's not actually equipment that is available, it would need to be developed and manufactured and shipped to the nuclear power plants which would make that initial "very expensive" figure become mind bogglingly expensive. Since electricity is considered a matter of national security, if electric mining equipment is something the nuclear industry really wanted to have, they'd probably get it because electricity is in the interest of national security. I feel it's time for the government to stop doling out blank checks to large conglomerate energy companies and spend that money of the development of renewables that are individually owned by the homeowners themselves. We may ALL be living off the grid someday because we could own the means of our own energy production.               

Happy_Killbot

@piloteer I don't know much about the mining industry, but I think it is reasonable that construction equipment will transition to all electric, with older equipment being replaced by newer electric vehicles as they are decommissioned, and a quick google search reveals that indeed several large companies are developing these technologies.

https://www.constructconnect.com/blog/electric-dreams-will-heavy-construction-equipment-go-electric

For nuclear in particular, because enriched uranium is so energy dense, transportation contributes almost nothing to the actual price of the fuel. With fossil fuels and bio diesel, you need a continuous supply of fuel which is what makes it so expensive.

The US isn't constructing new nuclear power plants because the superstitious masses are afraid of them blowing up and releasing radiation, so they stick to coal which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year and releases lots of radiation, something most people are blissfully unaware of. Instead, most new plants are natural gas, which is more economical due to fracking of gas reserves in the north east. The long term costs however, are relatively close and if subsides for fossil fuels were cut and/or a carbon tax was introduced, it could tip the balance in nuclear's favor. At this point older plant's would be replaced with newer more robust ones, which should provide enough power that by the time they are decommissioned, we should have fusion which will effectively make all other forms of power production, including solar and wind, obsolete.

All things considered, I think nuclear is a much better option when you consider that it isn't nuclear vs. renewable, but nuclear and solar vs natural gas, just saying.

John_C_87

Happy_Killbot said:

@John_C_87 I think the venison in my freezer is adequate proof of my exploits.

Farming does not require a licence.

Hunting is hunting, farming is farming. Stop raping the English language with your incoherent retardese.

I have had college courses on thermodynamics, based on what you have attempted to say so far I would say you are about as knowledgeable in this subject area as you are in the subject of basic grammar.

Say anything else incorrect about it and i'm going to block you until you can correctly answer a series of test questions. 

All I am saying is the amount of energy as cold that is moved by rapidly melting ice during cooler month and allowing it to move, drain into open uncontained water ways or pools is far greater than the heat radiation absorbed and held by one large round object moving in an expanded, extremely cold atmosphere.

Green house effect has basic math flaws in that the so-called greenhouse is round, is moving, while held inside an extremely cold environment. the amount of radiant heat, storing of that heat, by a week form of  heat syncing is rather limited by basic geometry and thermal dynamics. This whole premise is that heat is simple stored in the atmosphere after building up is questionable. Co2 has been an inconsistent facture in earth temperatures since its formation.

The earth surface is two thirds water, water acts as a protein skimmer removing and creating many gases like Co2. Sea waters temperatures are stable for the most part and it takes a great deal of direct energy to affect the buffering it performs. Salt + Ice create extremely cold water as energy that is moved on such a large scale it has never happened on earth before now. N.E.V.E.R.

“Killbot said: I have had college courses on thermodynamics, based on what you have attempted to say so far I would say you are about as knowledgeable in this subject area as you are in the subject of basic grammar.”

I know that's why I question your over all practical application of basic thermal dynamics. If I can make basic grammar mistakes you can make basic thermodynamics mistakes.

Happy_Killbot

@John_C_87

Congratulations! You have won a free test on climate change and basic thermodynamics! 

All question will be in an open format and should be responded with to the best of your understanding. It will be graded on a 5 point scale, and anything less than a 60% will result in being muted effective immediately. This is not personal, I just don't want to waste my time talking to those who do not provide accurate information in debate.

1. Name all the means by which energy in the form heat can transfer between objects and define each. (.6 pt each, 1 pt def)

2. List all major greenhouse gasses, their approximate concentration in the earth's atmosphere, and contribution to the green house effect. (1 pt for each, at least 5 for full credit )

3. Energy in the form of radiation heats the earth, which in turn radiates heat into the atmosphere and back into space. Does this violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Why or why not? (2 pt correct, 3 pt description)

4. The EPA has mandated that production of Freon be stopped effective at the start of this year. Describe the reason for the Freon ban and the potential effects of Freon on the environment. (2 pt reason 3 pt description)

5. There is a lot of energy in seawater. A clever engineer designs an engine that can take energy from seawater at 290.17 K and power a ship by rejecting heat to the atmosphere at 288.15 K. The next day his boss fires him. Why? (5 pt max)

Please answer these questions before having any other discussions with me. A failure to comply will result in being immediately muted.

John_C_87

I'll stop read you posts any more...…..there is no discussion with you....

RS_master

MayCaesar said:

@Happy_Killbot ;

I take full responsibility for everything I do. It does not mean that I am going to accept any punishment a mob wants to inflict on me, and I will fight back if necessary.

I have never seen a governmental policy that would solve any problem better than the free market does. I keep an open mind, but so far I have had no reason to start believing that any government is capable of it, and politicians need to up their advertisement game to give me one.

There is no "us" here. There is me and you, and the question is: are you going to try to coerce me into playing your tune? If not, then I will go my way and do what I want, if anything at all, about the climate. If yes, then, again, there is no us, there is only a person employing violence to try to get me to do something, and me wanting to be left alone. "Us" arises when our goals and interests align, and they obvious do not in this particular case.


@Nope

I suppose we need to specify what kind of climate change exactly we are talking about. My point was simply that not every possible case of climate change is harmful to humanity, and some can actually be quite beneficial to us. Climate on Earth was quite a bit warmer than now 5,000 years ago, and that is exactly when human civilization started growing and evolving rapidly. Various evidence suggests that, should the Earth revert back to that climate, we would be more comfortable in it. On the other hand, say, climate change leading to thinning of the atmospheric layer and resulting in much stronger cosmic radiation could prove lethal to  

The simplest way to draw the line is... to not draw it at all. Let the market sort this out. This notion of the need for governmental intervention every time there is a semblance of an issue on a large scale, popular over the last ~100 years, perhaps needs to be done away with. Or maybe not. But it is something to consider, at least.


@xlJ_dolphin_473

I am afraid I do not get the joke.


@Happy_Killbot

Subsidies are, in essence, the same thing as taxes, just worded differently.

MayCaesar I am sorry I do not know which joke you are talking about. This debate is about climate change. @xlj_dolphin_473 said something about climate change and you are calling it a joke/unrelated topic. The fault is yours as climate change has no humour as species are dying and soon humans will too.

RS_master

@MayCaesar I also forgot to send you this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVlRompc1yE

RS_master

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMrtLsQbaok sorry wrong link.

Happy_Killbot

@John_C_87 That's what I thought, you don't know anything about climate change or thermodynamics, possibly even anything.

Talking with you is a waste of time.

 You are muted until further notice.

Seriously though, stop the word salad it's just rude and makes you look bad. Simple sentences that are actually coherent are better than elaborate ones that make no sense.

piloteer

@Happy_Killbot

I respectfully disagree. My point of view is that it is renewable energy vs all other forms of energy, including nuclear. I agree that it is an irrational fear that drives states fears of nuclear energy, but that doesn't mean there aren't actually things about the nuclear energy that should dissuade people to want to accept it as a safe and clean form of energy. I do find it heartbreaking to know that those states have instead turned to other egregious forms of energy as an alternative to nuclear energy, but that doesn't nuclear energy should be thought of as a viable form of clean energy. When we consider the byproducts of all forms of energy that uses some form of a fuel source to create energy other than sunlight, nuclear energy has the most dangerous byproduct of all. Nuclear waste must be kept buried and guarded for 100,000 years. Even when the byproduct is from "next generation" reactors and the waste is only radioactive for half the time, that still come out to be 50,000 years. It is the most toxic form of waste that was ever created. I do not agree that nuclear energy should be thought of as a "renewable" source of energy. Energy can be created by households themselves, and the future of energy making would give the control to create energy to individuals. Energy bills should become a thing of the past and we should all live off the grid.               

Happy_Killbot

@piloteer Nuclear waste is not the most radioactive byproduct of energy production. Pound for pound, it's coal ash.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

The reason coal ash isn't controlled the way nuclear waste is, is because it is a "natural" radiation source and therefore not handled by the EPA.

I never said that nuclear is renewable.

There are tons of reasons why nuclear is superior to, and in many ways compliments renewables. In particular, those reasons are:

• Nuclear is by far the safest form of power production in terms of deaths per terrawatt hour
• Nuclear power is more than 55% of the US carbon free power,
  
• Nuclear power does not release a large amount of radiation, but coal, the sun, and space do
  
• Modern nuclear power plants can not explode like an atom bomb
  
• Nuclear Power plant's take up far less space per power production than solar or wind, which can be used for planting trees.
  
• Nuclear Power has the highest up-time of any type of modern plant.
• The US industrial machine is far to large and power intensive to be run solely on roof based solar.

John_C_87

@piloteer ;
In no way is nuclear energy a clean energy. We can start with the natural evolution of Uranium is that it turns to lead. 

John_C_87

@piloteer ;
Some other basic considerations.
The greatest green house gas is not a gas at all it is water vapor.
More men died installing Direct Current power lines in the United state then had die in the Civil War.

MayCaesar

Happy_Killbot said:

@MayCaesar Let's consider your analogy of animals in a forest. In most states, you can go hunting on state land during prescribed hunting seasons, and anything you kill is yours to keep. However, it is very regulated. You can't just kill all the animals you see, and you can't hunt at any time, and you need a licence. If these restrictions were not in place, it is likely that there would be no animals in the forests.

Why shouldn't the same logic apply to the planet's atmosphere? It's a limited resource which needs a somewhat specific set of concentrations in order for life to thrive, and by dumping millions of tons of CO2 into it we can upset that balance, which will result in an ecological disaster.

Taxation might not be nice, but it is necessary and beneficial. For example, most of the major technological and scientific advances that companies claim are theirs, are actually just technologies developed first for military use and government funded science. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they didn't invent any of it. The pentagon has a rule that they can never patent anything they develop specifically for this purpose. Every part of the modern smart phone is military hard ware, the microprocessor is for cruise missiles, GPS is for troop and ocean navigation, Lithium Ion batteries for small portable hardware such as flashlights, and the internet evolved from the APRNet, to send encrypted communications globally.

Electric cars dramatically reduce emissions, depending on region it is a whopping 17-30% decrease. Transportation accounts for almost a third of all CO2, so we are looking at around a 5% total reduction in total mam made CO2 just by transitioning to electric vehicles. This number will of course, go down as electric power plants and infrastructure switches to renewable energy.

There is plenty of countries in which those regulations do not exist, or do exist, but are not enforced - with forests full of animals. Russia is the most obvious example: you can buy a hunting license for a pack of beer there, yet forests are as populated as ever.
It is very naive to think that government regulations are the only way to solve such problems - or even that they are a way to solve them at all.

Planet's atmosphere cannot be attributed to anyone's property in any meaningful way. Lawyers and philosophers have tried and failed to do so on countless occasions.

Nobody has ever explained why taxation is allegedly necessary, and claims on it being beneficial always run into a wall of obvious governmental incompetence. It is true that the government has heavily invested in some technologies, but there is no reason to believe they would not have appeared on a free market as well - probably much earlier, without effective temporary nationalisation of respective industries.

Emissions is not the only waste coming into the equation. Have you ever studied how solar panels are produced, for example? This "clean" energy devastates entire ecosystems with the chemicals coming into production of those panels. Or how about the methods of production of cars' hybrid batteries? 
CO2 is nothing; it should not even be on the radar in these discussions. It is close to the least harmful pollutant humanity produces - and it even has beneficial properties, such as acceleration of forest regrowth rates. Things that are actually harmful are swept under the rug, because it is impossible to win seats on running against solar panels, for example.

piloteer

MayCaesar said:

Planet's atmosphere cannot be attributed to anyone's property in any meaningful way. Lawyers and philosophers have tried and failed to do so on countless occasions.

Emissions is not the only waste coming into the equation. Have you ever studied how solar panels are produced, for example? This "clean" energy devastates entire ecosystems with the chemicals coming into production of those panels. Or how about the methods of production of cars' hybrid batteries? 
CO2 is nothing; it should not even be on the radar in these discussions. It is close to the least harmful pollutant humanity produces - and it even has beneficial properties, such as acceleration of forest regrowth rates. Things that are actually harmful are swept under the rug, because it is impossible to win seats on running against solar panels, for example.

""'Planet's atmosphere cannot be attributed to anyone's property in any meaningful way. Lawyers and philosophers have tried and failed to do so on countless occasions.""""?!?!?!

I am disappointed in you May. You're better than this type of argumentation. If we are trying to attribute the atmosphere to anyone's property in a meaningful way, why would we expect lawyers and philosophers to be the people to do that? Perhaps we should ask an atmospheric scientist if they can attribute the atmosphere to anyone's property, and I think if we were to ask them, they'd certainly be able to do just that. 

Silicon tetrachloride is the most toxic byproduct from solar panel production, but it can be recycled and reused in other technologies including other solar panels. The use of solar panels can ccounteract any emissions caused by the mining process and it can do so many times over. 

How harmful CO2s are is of no value when it comes to the sheer volume of of it that is being emitted into the atmosphere by humans. The egregious amount alone makes it a terrible atmospheric saboteur.  

piloteer

John_C_87 said:

@piloteer ;
In no way is nuclear energy a clean energy. We can start with the natural evolution of Uranium is that it turns to lead. 

I was not aware of that. Thank you for enlightening me. 

MichaelElpers

@piloteer. We are actually now are creating a technology that can use old nuclear waste.  Can power the world for decades.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/news/2016/09/leslie-dewan-explorer-moments-nuclear-energy

MayCaesar

@piloteer

An atmospheric scientist is not an authority on the legal interpretation of the concept of property. An atmospheric scientist can explain how the atmosphere works, which is a very different thing from its treatment in terms of property rights. Your objection is like saying that engineers constructing planes should be authorities on the inner bureaucratic workings in the Boeing company - their area of expertise has nothing to do with it, and just because they design plane components does not make them experts on everything surrounding planes.

Everything can be recycled in some way, and CO2, in fact, is recycled naturally in the way of increased plant growth. Being able to recycle something is not an issue; it being economically feasible and efficient is.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar I'm not saying that government intervention should be the only method, i'm saying that it has to be part of the solution.

We can not always rely on Laissei -faire capitalism to always do the right thing, especially when the entire climate is at risk and it is in the interests of those profiting from it to continue to do so. On top of this, many of the arguments in support of a market solution do not apply to this situation. In particular:

• Due to the scale required for energy production, it is unlikely that black markets will develop.
• Because energy production is geographically isolated, there is little chance of competition from external powers.
• fossil fuel based power is already subsidized, so switching to renewable subsidies will not increase long term tax rates.
• Capital costs associated with relocating production are significant enough that it would be unnecessary to move production, especially since costs will go down long term because solar in particular is much cheaper anyway.

The environmental impacts associated with solar cells is not from production,  they are mostly silicone and mining and manufacture are not as bad as most other resources. The risk comes from high land usage, which can be offset by lining roofs and other buildings, using batteries, and of course investing in nuclear as 20-30% of all energy production. All of these things provided will reduce CO2 from man made sources.

I don't think that markets would ever be able to replicate many of the advances in science without a mediator, simply because science is almost impossible to commoditize. I mean, unlike with physical objects and services, you can't put rights on information. Once something is discovered, good luck keeping it in one place. On top of this, if the objective of some scientific business is to produce results, then no effective science can be done. When companies do their own R&D it is always, with very few exception trying to produce some results, not just to find out an answer to some question, which is what science is supposed to be.

Why is CO2 bad for the planet?

The answer isn't that it is necessarily bad, CO2 levels were much higher in the past. The problem is the rapid rate of change, which is why we are currently witnessing one of the largest extinction events in earth's history. Evolution needs time to work, and if it happens fast then things die and we have mass extinctions. Climate change is an ecological disaster, and because humans, like it or not, rely on this planets ecology for survival is a huge cause for concern.

One problem in particular, is ocean acidification. This is a problem, because hard-shelled plankton need higher pH levels to form the shells they need for protection. When they die in mass, or simply can't reproduce, this sucks oxygen out of the air so they can decay, further releasing CO2 exasperating the problem. With the death of plankton, marine life that relies on them for food dies and this further releases CO2 exasperating the problem. CO2 is a green house gas, which means that it reflects thermal radiation back to the earth, raising temperatures which puts H2O into the atmosphere, further exasperating the problem because H2O is a greenhouse gas. Much of this water will evaporate from ice and surface freshwater, causing large areas of land to become deserts, decreasing the earth's albedo further exasperating the problem. Marine life supports land life in various ways, primarily as the primary producer of O2 and as a food source for some terrestrial life, including humans.

All that extra water and heat in the earth's atmosphere results in more frequent, more violent storms that results in billions of dollars increased costs and losses to business. As I have stated before, these storms are fundamentally unpredictable. If you are such a fan of the free market, I ask you what is the market solution to storms that could be avoided if we all just stopped being dumb and thinking it's somehow not a problem?

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

I have yet to see any government contribute to solving any problem in a way that a free market cannot / does not. I am open to be surprised, but so far the surprises are non-existent in this regard.
As for laizzes-faire capitalism, it is not something to "rely" on in the first place. It is a system in which people interact in ways that benefit all parties involved in consensual ways. If enough people on a free market decide that something needs to be done about the climate change, they will come up with a solution, perhaps somewhat resembling a large scale governmental action, but with an essential difference: it is completely voluntary. And in a voluntary system, the only people bearing the burden of anything are those willing to do so.

Discoveries are not supposed to be kept in one place in the first place, and "intellectual rights" and other similar things do nothing but stifle the scientific and technological progress.
To produce significant technological results, you need to advance science, which is why private companies constantly invest in various scientific endeavors, and often have their own scientific groups openly collaborating with universities and research labs around the world. And all of this is done without involving the ugly tenure track system that the government intervention tends to produce, where people end up stuck in one place for 15-20 years, overwhelmed by bureaucracy and losing research opportunities.

Earth has known a lot of rapid climate change events, and the ecosystem has always adapted to them splendidly. Humans are more adaptable than any other living organism in the history of the planet, so it would take something outstanding to seriously threaten us, and humanity is not capable of doing anything of the sort as of now. Maybe it will be 1,000 years from now, but I doubt it.

We cannot "all just stop being dumb"; we are humans. If you choose to involve the government, then you are just transfer the decision-making from a large number of dumb humans to a small number of dumb humans at the center of the government, which is hardly an improvement.
You are also asking the wrong question. The market is not supposed to "solve" anything, it is merely a framework for peaceful human cooperation. It is up to the people to categorise the problems facing them and decide how to address them. How can they do it? Well, what many enterpreneurs do, donating heavily to reforestation efforts, for example, can be quite effective. People can also initiate crowdfunding campaigns, as they often do. There are plenty of ways to deal with the problems facing humanity, and you are welcome to play your own part in this process. Just keep your hands out of other people's pockets, and I will only commend your efforts.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar "I have yet to see any government contribute to solving any problem in a way that a free market cannot / does not."
- Private companies do not collect taxes.

When private companies fund research, it is almost always to their benefit, rather than everyone's benefit. When the government produces something, anyone can get that information and use it for technological development if they want, there are no intellectual right involved. Speaking of which, another answer to your question above:
-establish and protect copyrights and intellectual property.

If a private company makes a discovery, they have no motivation whatsoever to tell anyone what it is. In fact, doing so could give their competition an edge so not only do they have no reason, they have reason not to. Thus scientific progress advances very slow. This is probably why the US has a history of science denial. 

"Earth has known a lot of rapid climate change events, and the ecosystem has always adapted to them splendidly."

Tell that to the dinosaurs. Come on, you can do better than this.

"The market is not supposed to "solve" anything, it is merely a framework for peaceful human cooperation." 

Merely cooperating is not good enough, we have to do more than just cooperate if the human race is to survive. If markets don't solve anything, then they have no purpose in the scheme of progress, which I think I have made a reasonable argument they have no real interest in anyways. Climate change is a problem that effects everyone, so mere cooperation isn't good enough. Sometimes hard decisions have to be made, and free markets just can't handle those kinds of decisions.

"There are plenty of ways to deal with the problems facing humanity, and you are welcome to play your own part in this process. Just keep your hands out of other people's pockets, and I will only commend your efforts."

What about all the future people who have our hands firmly in their pockets? The problem here is that there are way more people at stake here then just us. If you don't adequately benefit those people, then what do you suppose they will do for you when they do exist?

By taking a neutral or negative stance against climate change, you are effectively telling all these people to get F***ed, because your actions, or lack thereof hurt them. If there is a fire spreading, would you sit back and say "let's let the markets take care of it"? No, you would take an active role in stopping the fire because this isn't peace, this is f***ing war, you have to go into full damage control mode or suffer the consequences. Climate change is like that.

MayCaesar

Is that why there are so many things labelled as "confidential" by the government and only allowed to use by people with special clearance? Private companies, unlike the government, are actually incentivised to share information in order to pursue mutual projects, that put them ahead of their competitors. The government has every incentive to keep as many secrets as possible, and there is no pressure from the competitors on it to do otherwise.

Dinosaurs have not adapted to the changes, but the ecosystem has. I have not made any error in my statement.

First, there is no "we", second, the survival of human race has never been in question, and the third, yes, merely cooperating is good enough. It certainly beats having a bunch of people extorting resources out of others with threat of violence.
When someone starts talking about "hard decisions" on a large scale, we generally get death camps and wars. I think I am fine with soft decisions instead.

You do not owe anything to other people, and you certainly do not owe anything to those who have not even been born yet. You are repeating after anti-abortion folks, treating the "future life" as something that should be taken into consideration right now; this is a ridiculously illogical position.

Lack of actions cannot hurt anyone. Actions can, and I do not do anything special that puts anyone's life in jeopardy. Talk to anyone who has interacted with me, and all will say that I have always given them more than asked in return - it is not a self-praise, it is just a fact. The only people who judge me differently are extremists of all kinds who do not care about giving value to others and want to just infinitely take, for whatever utopia they are planning to build.
I practice what I preach and put interests of those I am interacting with above mine. Always. No exceptions. And one of the parts of it is respecting the fact that not everyone is like me, has the same values and wants the same outcome. If people want a different outcome, I can always discuss it in friendly terms - and often even make some concessions. But once force or threat of force becomes involved, all bets are off.

Happy_Killbot

MayCaesar said:

Is that why there are so many things labelled as "confidential" by the government and only allowed to use by people with special clearance? Private companies, unlike the government, are actually incentivised to share information in order to pursue mutual projects, that put them ahead of their competitors. The government has every incentive to keep as many secrets as possible, and there is no pressure from the competitors on it to do otherwise.

This is an argument from ignorance. First off, classified material is that which has to do with national security, and has little or nothing to do with scientific advancements made by government funded research. It covers things which would have a negative impact on the government's ability to do the things it has to do. You can submit a formal requisition for any of this information if it is not publicly available, even the things that do have national interests in mind.

In fact, just to take this a step further to demonstrate your fallacious argument, the US government actually uses private companies to hide secrets! To understand this, consider the US defense industry. You can get the information from the government on plasma sputtering used to make microchips, but you can not get technical plans for any of the fighter planes, submarines, tanks, etc. because these plans are privately owned. You can not petition a private company for the information, thus it is secret and safe. This is why many companies like Lockheed-Martin and General Dynamics hire people who have and maintain security clearance, even though they are not working in a government job.

Dinosaurs have not adapted to the changes, but the ecosystem has. I have not made any error in my statement.

The dinosaurs are all dead. They were killed by an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago. The holocene extinction, which is an ongoing is caused primarily by human activities, and has included the deaths of all major mega fauna, the loss of biodiversity world wide, and now climate change brought about by the release of CO2 from burning of fossil fuels. It's the same thing, but in this case we are the comet.

First, there is no "we", second, the survival of human race has never been in question, and the third, yes, merely cooperating is good enough. It certainly beats having a bunch of people extorting resources out of others with threat of violence.
When someone starts talking about "hard decisions" on a large scale, we generally get death camps and wars. I think I am fine with soft decisions instead.

There is a we, humans are not isolated islands to themselves. In fact, isolation is the surest way to make oneself go insane. When one person or private organization makes decisions that effect everyone, that is a we. This is where the anarchist views break down, when one person does something that effects everyone, are we all just supposed to tolerate that? No, if someone lights a  fire they should be held responsible lest they start more fires. That way things don't fall apart and overall freedom can be maximized. I disagree, it is when individuals are not held responsible for their actions that death camps and wars occur, or when justice is over served. There is stable middle ground here.

You do not owe anything to other people, and you certainly do not owe anything to those who have not even been born yet. You are repeating after anti-abortion folks, treating the "future life" as something that should be taken into consideration right now; this is a ridiculously illogical position.

I can't think of a single reason this should be considered ridiculous, in fact you might even say that producing life is the sole purpose of life, one that emerges from the natural interplay of the way organisms do what they do. If we don't take them into consideration, they don't exists and we might as well as live out a solipsistic existence.

Lack of actions cannot hurt anyone. Actions can, and I do not do anything special that puts anyone's life in jeopardy. Talk to anyone who has interacted with me, and all will say that I have always given them more than asked in return - it is not a self-praise, it is just a fact. The only people who judge me differently are extremists of all kinds who do not care about giving value to others and want to just infinitely take, for whatever utopia they are planning to build.
I practice what I preach and put interests of those I am interacting with above mine. Always. No exceptions. And one of the parts of it is respecting the fact that not everyone is like me, has the same values and wants the same outcome. If people want a different outcome, I can always discuss it in friendly terms - and often even make some concessions. But once force or threat of force becomes involved, all bets are off.

Lack of action CAN hurt people, and I have already demonstrated ways that can happen. If a fire starts and is moving toward population centers, lack of action can hurt people. If you sit in one place and do nothing, eventually you will die of starvation and dehydration, lack of action can hurt people, this is just a fact.

In this case, the number of people who do not care about climate change is only about half in the US, people who do are not a radical minority, it's about half of everyone. The things we are asking for are not that extreme anyways, I would even go as far as to say that a lot of your political views are rather extreme, advocating for no taxes and 100% private ownership is much to far and I don't think it would lead to a stable society.

You claim to put the interests of others above your own, yet you do not care about future people who have no voice and rely on you for everything, including existence. You can not have a discussion with them anymore than you can have a peaceful discussion with the weather, which is the enemy you choose should you do nothing about climate change. You can not have peaceful discussion with extinct species, or with species about to go extinct by your inaction. 

Your concerns about the threat of force is hypocritical anyways, because as has been pointed out repeatedly, you are already being forced to pay for fossil fuel subsidies, and one of the things I am advocating for is the removal of said subsidies. At the very least, you should agree that these ought to be removed, if for nothing but consistency in your argument.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Do not be so naive. A lot of information on nuclear physics pertinent to the development of the atomic bomb was hidden from everyone but a small selected group of scientists, which easily set the field back by several decades (you can read Feynman's accounts on how deep that rabbit hole went). The Internet also would likely have appeared a couple decades sooner, had the development not been covered by military secrets.
The government is not your friend, no matter how much you want it to be, and, just like any other entity, is interested first and foremost in promoting its own interests, that only loosely connect with yours. And whether you agree with it or not, you cannot deny the fact that the government just as much (if not more) hides valuable information from others, as private organisations.

Dinosaurs did not have any technology to adapt quickly to the changes. We do.

I am not promoting isolation; quite the opposite. "Anarchist views" break down only if you replace individual responsibility with collective one, and that is precisely what you are advocating for.

The purpose of your life is what you make it to be. If you decide that it is reproduction, then good for you - but it does not apply to everyone.

Lack of action does not hurt people. If you do not extinguish fire, then the fire is what hurts people, not you sitting doing nothing.
No taxes advocacy and 100% private ownership can only be seen extreme if you have been sold the idea that the government is absolutely necessary. It is much like atheism is seen as extreme by many religious folks: it all depends on the box you have put your mind in.
People who have initiated bloody revolution in Russia in 1917 did not care about my future either; they put their utopian goals above my interests. Such is life: you live today and care for those who live today, and those who will live later will care for those who live later. Why would it be any other way? Are you going to shed tears over some advanced alien civilisation that will exist a few billion years from now, that will go extinct due to a black hole flying into their home system?
Of course subsidies should be removed. If that is all you are proposing, then all the power to you.

piloteer

MayCaesar said:

@piloteer

An atmospheric scientist is not an authority on the legal interpretation of the concept of property. An atmospheric scientist can explain how the atmosphere works, which is a very different thing from its treatment in terms of property rights. Your objection is like saying that engineers constructing planes should be authorities on the inner bureaucratic workings in the Boeing company - their area of expertise has nothing to do with it, and just because they design plane components does not make them experts on everything surrounding planes.

Everything can be recycled in some way, and CO2, in fact, is recycled naturally in the way of increased plant growth. Being able to recycle something is not an issue; it being economically feasible and efficient is.

If the water table is found to be tainted by chemicals or waste that can be traced back to your property, then the EPA can fine you, condemn your property and even send you to prison if you're found to be the culprit. If an abundance of trash, foul odors that can be smelled outside your property, or an infestation of pests that threaten your neighbours dwellings or the natural fauna that surrounds your property, the EPA can also take action. If clean energy becomes readily available and is sold at a comparable rate as traditional energy, and your property is found to emit CO2s at an unacceptable rate, the EPA should also be allowed to take action. Environmental scientists as well as atmospheric scientists can be a legal authority of the concept of property, and they can take legal action.

The Amazon rainforest is now giving of more CO2s than it takes in because of deforestation and forest fires. If you're trying to argue that a runaway greenhouse effect is actually good for the environment, you have a lot of dots to connect before coming to that conclusion, and if you actually tried to connect those dots, you'd quickly find it is an erroneous argument. Can you actually prove that hyper plant growth is actually good for the environment? Environmental scientists can easily point out how that adversely effects our sources of clean water because plant growth on the side of fresh water lakes and rivers are slowly being overgrown which decreases the amount of water on the surface. If your argument about hyper plant growth due to CO2 emission actually was balanced out by the extra plant growth world wide, you'd have a valid point, but CO2 emissions are continuously rising and the extra plant growth you speak of is not actually able to counteract the sheer volume of CO2s that are emitted by human kind every year.         

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar

MayCaesar said:

@Happy_Killbot

Do not be so naive. A lot of information on nuclear physics pertinent to the development of the atomic bomb was hidden from everyone but a small selected group of scientists, which easily set the field back by several decades (you can read Feynman's accounts on how deep that rabbit hole went). The Internet also would likely have appeared a couple decades sooner, had the development not been covered by military secrets.
The government is not your friend, no matter how much you want it to be, and, just like any other entity, is interested first and foremost in promoting its own interests, that only loosely connect with yours. And whether you agree with it or not, you cannot deny the fact that the government just as much (if not more) hides valuable information from others, as private organisations.

But it likely would have appered much latter than it actually did if we left it solely up to private industry to do so. The nuclear secrets were considered national security risk, which is why they had to be kept under wraps.

Consider this: if we were to have made such things public knowledge as development of nuclear bombs, do you think any of us would still be here?

I doubt it because that is something that absolutely should be regulated. We can't just have anyone building and selling nukes, now can we?

Dinosaurs did not have any technology to adapt quickly to the changes. We do.

Neither  most plankton, coral, fish, birds, any type of plant or fungus, bacteria, and of course people living in 3rd world countries. Their lives are at risk, and this in turn will effect our lives in the long term.

I am not promoting isolation; quite the opposite. "Anarchist views" break down only if you replace individual responsibility with collective one, and that is precisely what you are advocating for.

What about when individuals don't want to take responsibility and that effects the collective? In this situation, it is completely justified to have collective responsibility, because everyone is contributing to the problem.

Lack of action does not hurt people. If you do not extinguish fire, then the fire is what hurts people, not you sitting doing nothing.

In the context of climate change, this is a moot point because people are actively pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, so it would be the same as if someone had lit the fire deliberately. Everyone is taking action to promote climate change, so unless these actions are brought to a halt, climate change will continue and life will suck, if it survives.

No taxes advocacy and 100% private ownership can only be seen extreme if you have been sold the idea that the government is absolutely necessary. It is much like atheism is seen as extreme by many religious folks: it all depends on the box you have put your mind in.
People who have initiated bloody revolution in Russia in 1917 did not care about my future either; they put their utopian goals above my interests. Such is life: you live today and care for those who live today, and those who will live later will care for those who live later. Why would it be any other way? Are you going to shed tears over some advanced alien civilisation that will exist a few billion years from now, that will go extinct due to a black hole flying into their home system?
Of course subsidies should be removed. If that is all you are proposing, then all the power to you.

No state without a functioning government has ever been seen to be both stable and successful, what evidence do you have that a government isn't required?

Seems like your question about caring for the future vs caring about the here and now answers itself. You care about tomorrow so you don't do dumb things today. Unless you are a psychopath, it is perfectly natural to think about the future and make long term goals and plans. If something that I am doing today, or could choose to do today is what is going to cause the black hole to kill all the aliens, then yes I should take action to prevent that if possible. The problem with this is that I can't know for sure what if anything those actions will be, but I can for example, predict that if I get drunk and try to drive there is a good chance I could kill myself or someone else, thus I should not drink and drive. If I do somehow end up drunk behind the wheel ( i know this isn't plausible, just go with it) then I should take action to minimize the damage or try actively to not kill anyone or wreck.

The free market is fine in times of piece, but it is not adequate when we are about to or have already stepped across the line, which we have effectively done with climate change. All of the species that have gone extinct in the past year, many of which we will never even know existed, are never coming back. As much as you would like to think everything is fine and dandy, it's not.

piloteer

MichaelElpers said:

@piloteer. We are actually now are creating a technology that can use old nuclear waste.  Can power the world for decades.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/news/2016/09/leslie-dewan-explorer-moments-nuclear-energy

The plutonium needed to fuel these next generation reactors are not ready for use in reactors yet. An extra step is needed which burns off impurities in the plutonium before it can be used. This process can be expensive and will get passed onto the consumers. Furthermore, shipping the plutonium to the new reactors is very hazardous to the environment and the public because highly radioactive material can be a target for terrorists and accidents can happen during shipping which would not only be a disaster, it'd be a radioactive disaster. Next generation reactors are not all there cracked up to be. Japan tried using them and they couldn't actually get the cost of nuclear energy to come down at an appreciable rate. Relying on nuclear energy will do nothing to give the consumers the power to create their own energy the way renewables promise to.   

Happy_Killbot

@piloteer Most commercial reactors use transuranic elements by breading U-238 into plutonium -239. To extract the plutonium, you either separate it chemically, since plutonium has different properties than uranium. The plutonium then doesn't need to be shipped, it is put back into the reactor to continue the fission process, if it is removed at all.

When spent fuel is recycled, the non-spent uranium and transuranic elements are recovered, and can be reused in any reactor.

As for the other products, they still produce waste heat as they decay into other elements, eventually reaching stable ones. If you extract neutron source isotopes, you can actually use that as a neutron source for less viable nuclear fuels, such as thorium, which due to it's extremely low cross section for absorption requires tremendous amounts of neutrons to achieve criticality (the point at which neutron production equals neutron loss )

While it is true that nuclear doesn't give people a personal source of power, most people consume more energy in a day than what hit's their roof, and the initial investment may not be worth the cost of installing solar panels anyways.

Go ahead and do the math on your own home, and give me an honest answer if you can actually do this. I will provide an example of my own home.

First, figure out the area of the sun ward side of your roof. Next, compare that area to a map of annual solar radiation for your area. Then multiply by solar panel efficiency, about 18%. You may need to factor in if this is per day or per year to get the correct units. This site is an excellent resource should you decide to use it.

Area of sunny side of my roof = 87 m2, and receives 3.7 KWh/m2/day * 18% = 57.94 KWh/day 

https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html

Then subtract your daily/annual power consumption from this value. If it is positive, great! you are producing power and can send it back to the grid with the proper equipment.

57.94 KWh/day - 33.14 KWh/day ( I averaged everything per year) = 24.8 KWh/day

Multiply this number by the average cost of power in your area. You will now have to linearly extrapolate this value until the expected end of the solar panel's life.

 $0.17/KWh (Based on my electric bills) x 24.8 KWh/day = $4.21 /day
The cost of installing solar panels is about $19,140 before rebates.
https://news.energysage.com/are-solar-panels-worth-the-investment-in-new-york/

If this value exceeds the cost of purchasing, installing, and maintaining the equipment, it is economically viable and is probably worth the risk as an investment.

In this case, it will take 12 years, 5 months,  17 days just to break even.

John_C_87

Kind of getting away form who is to pay for erratic climate variables....

MayCaesar

@piloteer ;

And in North Korea, if you are found not to clean the Great Leader's portrait a few times a day, you go to jail. Does not make the North Korean government an authority on legal issues.

When you have a property dispute with someone, do you go to an environmental scientist to represent you, or to a lawyer? As a scientist myself, let me just say that we are the last people you want to ask for advice on legal issues. Most of us (including me) are so entrenched in our little scientific fields, we have very little idea of what goes beyond them. We also tend to be quite manipulative individuals, wanting to control everything manually and generally having fairly derogatory attitude towards common folks - if you let us decide what property belongs to whom, you are opening a large can of worms, my friend.

I am not sure if regrowth of forests rebalances the CO2 emissions; this is what basic physics would suggest, and I have not seen any evidence of this not being the case, but we know too little about the details of these effects to be able to make a clear conclusion here. Keep in mind that these effects are not immediate and take time, possibly one far exceeding our average life expectancy.

@Happy_Killbot ;

Building nuclear weapons is extremely difficult even by totalitarian governments; do you expect someone to assemble a nuke on their kitchen? North Korea has been sold essentially all the information it needs to create nukes, yet they did not have anything of substance constructed until around a decade ago, and they can actually utilise the resources of the entire country for this single purpose.

Nuclear energy is the most promising type of energy nowadays, yet we are still cavemen with regards to being able to use it, because a lot of information is still confidential, information that scientists like me have obtained. How is this different from a private company hiding the products of its scientific research from the public? The only difference is that the government has more means of doing so; a private company cannot throw in jail everyone who managed to obtain some of its information on a free market.

Collective is a meaningless term in this context; collective is just a bunch of individuals. You have responsibility between each individual, so individuals who feel that you are infringing on their rights are free to file lawsuits against you. But a collective as a whole cannot do so; the government can, but it only represents the collective in a very indirect way.

Everyone is free to take action to counteract climate change. Why do you assume that people only are interested in contributing to it? And for that matter, if that is what people are actually interested in, then who is to say that they should not do it? If nobody wants to combat climate change but a small minority of people, then sorry, but you are on your own here. Life will suck? Maybe yes, maybe no, but I do not see why you should be the one deciding it for others, or anyone else for that matter.

When I think about tomorrow, I do so in the context of my life. I do not want to sound heartless, but concerns of, say, a random starving kid in Africa are of much less importance to me, than concerns of, say, my colleagues at work. And I certainly care very little for the lives of, say, people who will be born 100 years after I die. I do not see why anyone would think differently. Why care about something that does not intersect with your life in any way? It is like caring about unicorns or ghosts: waste of time.

Free market is an idea of voluntary cooperation between people. If you believe that there are times when people should be forced to do something against their will for the sake of some utopia you want to build, then you are the one who has stepped across the line - the line of basic human decency. To me, the vague possibility of dying to climate change is preferable to the cold certainty of being ruled by a bunch of authoritarians. Been there, done that.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar This is just to nitpick here, but the reason forests control CO2 is not by converting it into O2, it is because wood is primarily composed of carbon which is obtained from the air. Thus if you burn the wood, the co2 is released back into the air. This is something that can happen in human lifetimes, as planting trees is one of the easiest ways to sequester CO2. If we are cutting them all down or letting the burn however, this doesn't matter much.

Building nuclear weapons is not that difficult. In fact, building a dumb nuke is cheaper than building a smart missile. The expensive part is obtaining and enriching the uranium. Technically, all you need to do is get enough fissile material in one place to make it go critical. In the case of U-235 this is about 5 kilograms. That's it. Put 5 kilograms of U-235 in one place it will go critical.

Protection of nuclear secrets is a big deal, it still stands that this is not the kind of thing that should be on the free market, or else we would have a disaster on our hands the second someone decides to end it all.

The purpose of the government is to maintain order between it's citizens, which it does through collection of taxes. When anyone starts doing things that interfere with the rights and liberties of another, the government steps in and stops it. In the case of climate change, the CO2 released into the atmosphere will ruin the fisherman's queries, the farmer's crops, and cost everyone billions of dollars in damage from stronger more frequent storms. Producing CO2 at industrial scales is bad for the planet, so everyone should do everything they can to lower CO2 emissions, and this should be enforced by the government at a minimum.

If one person came to your house and S*** on your porch, they would go to jail. if everyone S*** on everyone's porch, some more than others who should be blamed?

Some people care about the future and future people because they are not psychopaths or solipsistic a** holes, and actually want good things for humanity. If you don't care about humanity, mentally you are a criminal.

I'm definitely not saying that there shouldn't be a free market, what I am saying is that sometimes the free market oversteps individual rights, an obvious example is slavery. People should be forced against their will to not own or sell slaves. That's not Utopian, it's just a basic fact of life that if their is no restriction then someone will do it. So in the case of climate change, it is like slavery because it effects everyone negatively.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

There is a basic balance consideration: in the equilibrium, the rate of "consumption" of CO2 by the forest, and the rate of its release through forest fires, death of trees and so on, are equal - and this equilibrium can take a long time to be achieved, due to how fundamentally unstable the local parts of the system are.

Regarding nuclear weapons, this is just incorrect. The actual problem, the one which all countries trying to develop them get stuck on the longest, is not how to enrich Uranium, and not even how to put it together in a bomb; it is how to make sure that that bomb does not go off on its own, and yet can do so upon activating the trigger system. The trigger system has to work in a very precise way, with an initial controlled explosion initiated with great time precision - and that is why only selected few countries have managed to weaponize nuclear energy.
The physics is all well known by now. It is the details of implementation that take decades to work out, even with all schematics present. The fantasy of random guy on a kitchen assembling a hydrogen bomb and detonating it happens only in Hollywood movies.

The government in the US actually did not tax citizens' income (there were very minor taxes collected from other sources though) at the dawn of its existence, and up until around a century ago the taxation was either non-existent or negligibly low. Taxation is not at all how the government was supposed to function when the Founding Fathers laid down its foundation. The purpose of the government was to protect individual liberties, and it was not until Wilson's authoritarian takeover that the philosophy changed from "the government exists to protect people's freedoms" to "the government exists to assure favorable outcome for people".
The original idea was this: people go about their business, and when conflicts between them arise, the government steps in and resolves them. It was not to "save the planet" or anything by compelling all citizens to do something.

My house? They would not go to jail, but be fined for harming my property.

Good. Feel free to mentally prosecute me then!

Free market by definition does not overstep individual rights, as it works purely through people's voluntary consent. Slavery is certainly not a part of the free market, unless you are talking about "voluntary slavery" such as contractual indentured servitude.