No, it’s not like going on a diet:
Even when people aren’t directly invoking the carbon diet in their language, they often echo its principles by suggesting that everyone needs to cut back. But it falls apart—and starts to seem downright sinister—when you look at its priorities. Most of the world does not need a carbon diet. Three-quarters of the global population uses just 10 percent of the world’s energy, 1 billion people lack access to electricity, and 3 billion cook their food over dung, wood, and charcoal, leading to millions of early deaths. These people are energy starved—and they need a feast, not a diet.
These people are essentially advocating mass murder.
These people are essentially advocating mass murder.
It’s the Left. That’s their bailiwick. Progress can be had if only we’d commit to culling ourselves into perfection.
The new Left yes. Social progress is acceptable but economic backwardness is mandatory.
Back when the Communists were around they advocated electrification in backwards nations. Now it is all about celebrating the backwardness of such nations and trying to regress the rest of the world into the same state.
Pathetic.
“These people are essentially advocating mass murder.”
For many of them, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Especially for those among them who view Homo sapiens sapiens as an affront and a scourge that needs to be eradicated to allow Mother Gaia to survive.
The diet is just a way for members of the congregation to feel good about themselves and to serve as ritual sacrifice. The diet has little if any effect on the factors they claim drive global warming.
Anyone else notice the recent appropriation of mainstream religion for global warming alarmism?
Well, I pointed this out on andthentheresphysics a little while ago: Mitigation is either (a) a feel-good piece of fluff in Europe and the US, spend trillions of dollars, and change CO2 very little – as most CO2 going forward is going to be from developing countries like China, India and eventually Africa. Or (b) [politically really unlikely, fortunately] will somehow force those developing countries to develop more slowly under the constraint of only renewable technology, thereby dooming literally billions of people to remaining in dire poverty and dying young.
Shouldn’t all the ones who invoke the precautionary principle be losing a little sleep over that? But they don’t: I found no one at ATTP willing to even consider the possibility that this might be true. Bjorn Lomborg’s economists are paid shills, their economists are sure this is no problem…
I think there are mitigation strategies that make economic sense. I am also of the opinion that it is a bad idea to burn carbon based fuels. But the basis I have for that is totally different from the global warming creed. There is plenty of evidence around that aromatics are a cause for cancer and that carbon monoxide increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. So I only think the carbon burning needs to be removed from population centers. Not everywhere.
In the long run electric cars and nuclear power could displace a lot of the carbon fuel burning. However replacing that with burning wood is not progress rather the opposite of it.
Yeah – some things they call “mitigation” are probably good ideas anyhow. And I agree that eventually most of this will happen on its own: If you save a lot of money with clean fracking, soon China will be using clean fracking instead of coal because it’s cheaper. If renewables continue to go down in price, somewhere mid-century they will _actually_ (as opposed to bad analyses that miss all the reasons that make it hard to use renewables to generate base power) be cheaper than fossil fuels, and mitigation will just happen because it’s cheaper.
But none of that is the same as trying to get poor countries to do things that make power more expensive for their poorest people. That either won’t happen – most likely – or it will kill them.
carbon monoxide increases the risk of cardiovascular disease
Wut?
You can find it if you search for it. Examples:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19720933
We found evidence of an association between short-term exposure to ambient CO and risk of CVD hospitalizations, even at levels well below current US health-based regulatory standards. This evidence indicates that exposure to current CO levels may still pose a public health threat, particularly for persons with CVD.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7801074
The results indicate that CO exposure increases the risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.
There is evidence it hardens arteries for example. So it causes cardiovascular disease. Of course carbon monoxide emissions can be reduced with catalytic converters.
A lot of the aromatics like benzene are a known cancer cause.
Carbon dioxide is perfectly harmless though.
So, you changed the subject to carbon monoxide? And you expect us to take this seriously?
By this time you should know perfectly well that I never believed in anthropogenic global warming.