Thread: The conservative dilemma

Population is growing exponentially. Non-renewable resources are being consumed at rates exceeding their discovery. Pollution is negatively impacting the environment. Civilization is going to crash on the present course.

Liberal response: science + sustainability
Conservative response: denial + belief that science will find an answer + de-funding education


I hope it enrages you to know that despite not believing in climate change you still pay higher insurances rates due to risk assessments based on climate change science.

Originally Posted by Socialist

Population is growing exponentially. Non-renewable resources are being consumed at rates exceeding their discovery. Pollution is negatively impacting the environment. Civilization is going to crash on the present course.

Liberal response: science + sustainability
Conservative response: denial + belief that GOD will find an answer + de-funding education


I hope it enrages you to know that despite not believing in climate change you still pay higher insurances rates due to risk assessments based on climate change science.

Nothing enrages me anymore.

I have accepted the fact that I will get old and die some day.

I have accepted the fact that some day this planet will have shrugged off the infestation known as humankind and will remain spinning around a star in some quiet backwater that we all called home for a time.

I have accepted the fact that when that time comes it won't matter one iota if I called myself a Liberal or a Conservative.

I have accepted the fact that even though I chose not to ski today I did get 2 pairs of skis tuned & waxed and I can now begin work on a new rack for my truck.

It has been a good day. Off to the garage!

Originally Posted by Socialist

Population is growing exponentially. Non-renewable resources are being consumed at rates exceeding their discovery. Pollution is negatively impacting the environment. Civilization is going to crash on the present course.

Liberal response: science + sustainability
Conservative response: denial + belief that science will find an answer + de-funding education


I hope it enrages you to know that despite not believing in climate change you still pay higher insurances rates due to risk assessments based on climate change science.

you misspelled "spending wildly on pet projects that won't solve anything except stuffing their friends' pockets" under liberal response. should probably get your spellchecker checked

how's that "green" ethanol doing?

or the "green" hybrids and their lower MPGs and toxic batteries and increased production pollution?

how about the billions we throw away every year on "green" railroads?

how about the billions in subsidies to electric cars running on "green" coal fired power?

California alone THREW AWAY hundreds of millions on "green" CHP systems that are no longer running 5 years later

the answer: taxpayers are poorer, politicians friends are richer, and nothing has been improved

all of the above that you listed is still doing something...as opposed to the conservative approach of denying that anything is happening, defunding education, and making statements that climate change is good for business as it makes the growing season longer.

Originally Posted by OverTurn

all of the above that you listed is still doing something...as opposed to the conservative approach of denying that anything is happening, defunding education, and making statements that climate change is good for business as it makes the growing season longer.

lol, so i guess doing something counterproductive is good just by virtue of doing something. interesting, and insane, viewpoint

even if the things i listed, and many, many others weren't, in fact, counterproductive, have you ever heard of opportunity cost?

Also:

Globally, the growth rate of the human population has been declining since peaking in 1962 and 1963 at 2.20% per annum. In 2009, the estimated annual growth rate was 1.1%.[3] The CIA World Factbook gives the world annual birthrate, mortality rate, and growth rate as 1.986%, 0.837%, and 1.13% respectively[4] The last one hundred years have seen a rapid increase in population due to medical advances and massive increase in agricultural productivity[5] made possible by the Green Revolution.[6][7][8]

The actual annual growth in the number of humans fell from its peak of 88.0 million in 1989, to a low of 73.9 million in 2003, after which it rose again to 75.2 million in 2006. Since then, annual growth has declined. In 2009, the human population increased by 74.6 million, and it is projected to fall steadily to about 41 million per annum in 2050, at which time the population will have increased to about 9.2 billion.[9] Each region of the globe has seen great reductions in growth rate in recent decades, though growth rates remain above 2% in some countries of the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, and also in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth

What comedy. Conservatives in denial?? Your government is spending 40% more than it takes in and all you want to do is keep spending.

What you ignorant douches don't understand is that the market will respond with the right products and services at the time they are needed. I have been hearing for the last 40 years that we are on the brink of running out of resources, over populating the world into starvation and creating eco armagedon.

Your premise is false. If dummies like you get out of the way, humans will figure out how to make due on this planet indefinately. The only problem will come when you drive America into bankruptcy and leave the worlds future to governments who don't value the environment or human life.

Your thread makes me want to drive my Yukon XL, burn my garbage and have 4 more kids.

Oh by the way .... I DON'T RECYCLE!!!!

Originally Posted by ilikecandy

lol, so i guess doing something counterproductive is good just by virtue of doing something. interesting, and insane, viewpoint

even if the things i listed, and many, many others weren't, in fact, counterproductive, have you ever heard of opportunity cost?

I'm not saying counter-productiveness is good just because it's doing something...there's no way of knowing before hand what the consequences of doing something will be. After you know you can adapt and change what your next set of moves will be.

Originally Posted by Downbound Train

What comedy. Conservatives in denial?? Your government is spending 40% more than it takes in and all you want to do is keep spending.

What you ignorant douches don't understand is that the market will respond with the right products and services at the time they are needed. I have been hearing for the last 40 years that we are on the brink of running out of resources, over populating the world into starvation and creating eco armagedon.

Your premise is false. If dummies like you get out of the way, humans will figure out how to make due on this planet indefinately. The only problem will come when you drive America into bankruptcy and leave the worlds future to governments who don't value the environment or human life.

Your thread makes me want to drive my Yukon XL, burn my garbage and have 4 more kids.

Oh by the way .... I DON'T RECYCLE!!!!

thats okay, (non-market based) recycling hurts the environment

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...1672891013193#

Originally Posted by Downbound Train

What you ignorant douches don't understand is that the market will respond with the right products and services at the time they are needed.

You seem to be under the mass delusion that you or any other entity in this country operates in a free market. Energy is unbelievably regulated and controlled. The winners were picked a long time ago and there are significant barriers to entry. This is not a result of Democrats or Liberals alone as I'm sure you know the free market principals you love to espouse are given little more than lip service by the vast majority of conservatives and republicans.

Energy really isn't a political issue, we suck at it, we suck at every part of process from out of the ground to the microwave dinner.

The solutions are out there and nobody's getting a choice on being involved, I'm sorry but you shackled your horse to the same god damn cart as everyone else.

Ask yourself why you have never heard of a Polywell or Joule Technologies or Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, etc. etc. the free market isn't doing shit for these guys who have actual possible solutions rather its good old Barry money that's keeping them afloat.

Originally Posted by ArmadaBC

You seem to be under the mass delusion that you or any other entity in this country operates in a free market. Energy is unbelievably regulated and controlled. The winners were picked a long time ago and there are significant barriers to entry. This is not a result of Democrats or Liberals alone as I'm sure you know the free market principals you love to espouse are given little more than lip service by the vast majority of conservatives and republicans.

Energy really isn't a political issue, we suck at it, we suck at every part of process from out of the ground to the microwave dinner.

The solutions are out there and nobody's getting a choice on being involved, I'm sorry but you shackled your horse to the same god damn cart as everyone else.

Ask yourself why you have never heard of a Polywell or Joule Technologies or Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, etc. etc. the free market isn't doing shit for these guys who have actual possible solutions rather its good old Barry money that's keeping them afloat.

Well, I have to admit.........OF COURSE I know energy is unbelievably regulated. Why else do you think it's so fucked up?

If you want to survive as a spiecies, you'll get your government out of the way of energy producers (and everyone else for that matter)

Originally Posted by ilikecandy

thats okay, (non-market based) recycling hurts the environment

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...1672891013193#

That's why I don't recycle. If recycling made sense, the market would do it. Unlike the leftie sheep, I actually looked into the FACTS of recycling. Massive and expensive make-work program. Nothing more. Makes even less sense than ethanol.

That video is awesome. Seen it before. Wonder what the lefties here have to say about it.....The land fill part is the best.

Unfortunately, there is a big difference between what what liberals think and what they actually do.

I dont see many of them bicycling to work.

Originally Posted by Cono Este

Unfortunately, there is a big difference between what what liberals think and what they actually do.

I dont see many of them bicycling to work.

aHEM

hahaha

Originally Posted by Downbound Train

What you ignorant douches don't understand is
that the market will respond with the right products and services at the time they are needed. I have been hearing for the last 40 years that we are on the brink of running out of resources, over populating the world into starvation and creating eco armagedon

When has this ever been true?

Conservatives love to think this but it really has never been the case that everyone can just be as greedy as they like and the market will solve all problems.

Iceland is a harsh environment that does not regenerate quickly. It is very easy to overgraze a pasture and the population will crash, resulting in starvation of the people depending on a stable sheep popluation. This happened frequently, until icelanders decided to work together to agree to not raise too many sheep at once. In the ideal capitalist society, the shepherds would just raise as many sheep as they possibly can because that means more wealth for the individual shepherd, but it means much more instability and people starving much more frequently.

There are countless examples throughout history where people did not act to produce (and therefore consume) as much as they possibly could out of consideration toward stabilizing their production. Those that didn't, suffered and died.

Modern republicans reject this and it will lead to a crash, just like it always has with the resources of the past. Except instead of a localized crash where you can just hike to the next town over where they did not overgraze their sheep, our markets are global and there are no neighboring planets to travel to when our resources crash.

There is no doubt that pure capitalism 'works'. The problem is capitalism 'working' means natural cycles of boom and bust, just like the sheep population in iceland used to boom and bust before the people at the time decided that was a shitty way to live and changed their ways.

The problem is that with globalized markets and resources like oil, the boom and bust cycles take so long that it allows selfish shortsighted people to forget what it means to conserve for the sake of smoothing out the busts.

So pretty soon all the people sucking off the government teat are going to realize they are killing the golden goose and spontaneously decide not to take advantage of the system? Cool, why don't you just hold your breath and wait for it to happen?

You should really learn how a free market is supposed to work before you talk about it. Who has property rights to the grazing land for instance?

Originally Posted by ilikecandy

how's that "green" ethanol doing?

Ethanol sucks. I would love to see one of those GOP candidates laying groundwork in the churches and tea parties of Iowa put their money where their mouth is and tell Iowa they aren't getting any more corn/ethanol subsidies.

This centrist lefty is going to ride his bike to work and leave you kooks to your microcosm of poisoned politics.

Originally Posted by Cono Este

Unfortunately, there is a big difference between what what liberals think and what they actually do.

I dont see many of them bicycling to work.

Yes because clearly the problem is liberals that don't ride their bikes to work or conservatives that burn leaves on the wrong Friday. Give me a fucking break....

Originally Posted by Downbound Train

That's why I don't recycle. If recycling made sense, the market would do it. Unlike the leftie sheep, I actually looked into the FACTS of recycling. Massive and expensive make-work program. Nothing more. Makes even less sense than ethanol.

That video is awesome. Seen it before. Wonder what the lefties here have to say about it.....The land fill part is the best.

Your missing the fucking point, it doesn't matter what lefties or righties think, it doesn't fucking matter who's to blame or what fuck stain politicians and parties are going to lose or gain. Where talking about the basic functions of modern humanity.

Where talking about how the fuck you make food when every single part of the process requires massive amounts of fossil fuels in a world in which particular fossil fuels are getting pretty fucking tough to get out of the ground. Now extend this problem to 10,000 other areas and now your at the tip of the iceberg.

We need an evolution in the way humanity works and last time I checked that shit doesn't happen overnight. If liberals want to do it so they can jerk off to baby owl porn great, if conservatives want to do it so they can make ungodly sums of money that's great too.

Its not up for discussion, the way we use resources will change whether we like it or not however now we have the luxury of choosing how things will go down. We have the luxury of coming in for a rough but relatively easy landing but we need to start now and we need to do this in away that is smart and reasonable.

Clock is ticking best not waste in on trying to figure out which political group uses more lube when they stick it up your ass.

Originally Posted by Downbound Train

Wonder what the lefties here have to say about it.....

I liked it better when those two just conjured.

Originally Posted by Powow

When has this ever been true?

Conservatives love to think this but it really has never been the case that everyone can just be as greedy as they like and the market will solve all problems.

Iceland is a harsh environment that does not regenerate quickly. It is very easy to overgraze a pasture and the population will crash, resulting in starvation of the people depending on a stable sheep popluation. This happened frequently, until icelanders decided to work together to agree to not raise too many sheep at once. In the ideal capitalist society, the shepherds would just raise as many sheep as they possibly can because that means more wealth for the individual shepherd, but it means much more instability and people starving much more frequently.

There are countless examples throughout history where people did not act to produce (and therefore consume) as much as they possibly could out of consideration toward stabilizing their production. Those that didn't, suffered and died.

Modern republicans reject this and it will lead to a crash, just like it always has with the resources of the past. Except instead of a localized crash where you can just hike to the next town over where they did not overgraze their sheep, our markets are global and there are no neighboring planets to travel to when our resources crash.

There is no doubt that pure capitalism 'works'. The problem is capitalism 'working' means natural cycles of boom and bust, just like the sheep population in iceland used to boom and bust before the people at the time decided that was a shitty way to live and changed their ways.

The problem is that with globalized markets and resources like oil, the boom and bust cycles take so long that it allows selfish shortsighted people to forget what it means to conserve for the sake of smoothing out the busts.

Free market does not equal greed. Did the Icelandic government make them raise sheep the smartest way? I don't know but it sure seems that if I wanted to make a living raising sheep I would figure out on my own that if I over grazed my land that I would no longer be able to make my living raising sheep. My own "greedy" self interest would tell me to limit my grazing.

Using oil as an example, as the supply goes down, the cost goes up, motivating the consumer to reduce consumption and look for alternatives. As the cost goes up, oil companies become more motivated to develop new technologies to find more, harder to get oil. This process doesn't happen over night. It will take decades for oil to become impractical as the fuel that drives our economy. By that time, some other technology will rise to take its place. The timing will be determined by the market for energy. There may be some bumps in the road. There always is. But the technology will be there when it's needed. It always has been and there is no reason to doubt that it always will be. There's lots of coal, natural gas, geothermal, solar, tidal, energy out there. We will harness all of it when the time comes.

Food? Look at the leaps in production per acre we have made over the past few decades. No reason to expect that to stop any time soon. When we figure out how to economically de-salinate water.......

By the way. No one says all these markets should be 100% unregulated. just incase you want to go down that road.

Originally Posted by Downbound Train

What comedy.

humans will figure out how to make due on this planet indefinately.

If you're so smart, why can't you figure out the difference between 'do' and 'due, you doo-doo head? Leaving out for now the much thornier problem of 'indefinately.' With such simple things beyond your grasp, you want to be in charge of figuring out all questions great and small?

The least you could due (doo doo) is get a sense of irony.

Originally Posted by ms ann thrope

If you're so smart, why can't you figure out the difference between 'do' and 'due, you doo-doo head? Leaving out for now the much thornier problem of 'indefinately.' With such simple things beyond your grasp, you want to be in charge of figuring out all questions great and small?

The least you could due (doo doo) is get a sense of irony.

Those who can't due, teach. Thanks for the spelling lesson teach.

Originally Posted by Downbound Train

What comedy. Conservatives in denial?? Your government is spending 40% more than it takes in and all you want to do is keep spending.

What you ignorant douches don't understand is that the market will respond with the right products and services at the time they are needed. I have been hearing for the last 40 years that we are on the brink of running out of resources, over populating the world into starvation and creating eco armagedon.

Your premise is false. If dummies like you get out of the way, humans will figure out how to make due on this planet indefinately. The only problem will come when you drive America into bankruptcy and leave the worlds future to governments who don't value the environment or human life.

Your thread makes me want to drive my Yukon XL, burn my garbage and have 4 more kids.

Oh by the way .... I DON'T RECYCLE!!!!

And yet ANOTHER load of complete horse shit from DBT. He wants to de-fund education and still expects that humanity is going to magically solve all the problems we face at just the right time in order to save the day. Its just like the ignorant right wingnuts that thought that evil Obama was hindering the stop of the Gulf Oil spill and some scientist out there had the solution but was just stopped by red-tape. And of course "GOD" has put enough fossil fuels on the planet to last the human race FOREVER. DBT maybe you should go back and take some intro to science classes you ignorant twit.

Originally Posted by Socialist

Population is growing exponentially. Non-renewable resources are being consumed at rates exceeding their discovery. Pollution is negatively impacting the environment. Civilization is going to crash on the present course.

Liberal response: science + sustainability
Conservative response: denial + belief that science will find an answer + de-funding education


I hope it enrages you to know that despite not believing in climate change you still pay higher insurances rates due to risk assessments based on climate change science.

well, yes as we just delayed it so far. another worldwide great depression is still coming as most every country in the world has put its past 40 years on the countrys credit card(or treasury). we will see if the world goes back to free enterprise or embraces european socialism then.

however, your conservative response is wrong.

now, its been reported that even if the US went all out on renwables, it wouldnt make a dent on oil and coal for 30 years because it would take 50 years to convert the US energy distribution system and wind+solar+ethanol are big losers in energy effenciency and arre not feasible unless taxpayers fund them thru higher taxes.

luckily - oil, gas and coal are not running out for 50 years and they could solve the problem. imagine how less a problem the mid-east crisis would be now if mccain-palin were in the white house.

wish a green energy reality all you wish, its not coming soon.

on education, some facts:
- washington DC per pupil expenditure is 3rd highest in the nation while their sat and act rankings are dead last in the nation –
- since 1980 gov spending on education has doubled and test scores have been flat –
- head start is 45 years old but tests no difference between first graders who go thru head start and those who do not –

those home schoolers and chartered schools routinely blow away their [public school students in test results. i am quite sure if you provide public eduacation with real competition and a alternative for their students; those public schools will show improvement.

let's look at the results:
1. liberalization of education = lower test scores.
2. liberalization of walls street = corruption and greed.
3. liberalization of mortgages = housing crisis.

that dr savage may just be right, liberalism doesnt give good results.

Indeed! We have at least enough oil to last us three years! By then I'm sure oil prices will have stabilized and we won't regret tapping ourselves dry when oil was least expensive

And i cant remember any problems recently with oil drilling in the US

I have no idea what you are talking about in regards to efficiency. Please elaborate

Originally Posted by SkiCougar

imagine how less a problem the mid-east crisis would be now if mccain-palin were in the white house.

The whole US military would already be engaged in a full scale war in the Middle East after McCain's disastrous invasion of Iran?

Thus a few planes and missiles to enforce a no fly zone over Libya would hardly make a dent?