Posts by dante999

BBC: What YOU spent on our lawyers in Secret Climate 28 debacle

Re: Surprising....how?

What's missing in your discussion is the rate of climate change now compared to previous climate changes. No scientist is claiming that we can 'reverse' climate change but we can take steps to bring it back to its natural rate of change.

The pivotal question in this discussion is: What has changed between the previous climate changes and the present? The answer is human population explosion and burning of fossil fuel. This has resulted in level of CO2, a greenhouse gas, far greater than Mother Nature can absorb and convert to more benign forms, i.e. in plants and rocks.

Your suggestion that we continue on our merry path is exactly what we must not do. We know the danger and the risk, and we know how to positively influence the solution. Why wouldn't we want to do other than for self interest of those that dislike the solutions simply because it negatively impact on their current business model, i.e. their profits.

We have not yet invented a way to bring back time. We can't go back to per-industrial era and try a different approach to generate energy. The time to act is now, and we already late! Debating if the impact of humans on current climate change is 1% or 20% or 100% is a futile debate. It's all about managing risks. We have sufficient evidence that human activities has an impact on the current rapid rate of climate change. What we should be discussing is: what are we going to do about it? The rest is just time wasting of gross and criminal proportion.

Ancient Mars: Covered with life, oceans, clouds, and imagination

I love the dig to 'born again believers' (i.e. "That is of course, if you accept planetary evolution and aren't a "Young Mars" believer") that insist our universe is a mere 6400 years old, plus or minus few years, and based on the Text containing all knowledge.

Although these images are pure speculations, nevertheless they are based on information we have about our solar system and our planet, therefore they contain details with a degree of probability and not purely science fiction.

Delay climate mitigation, escalate the costs: study

Clearly helps being an Anonymous Coward since, without a shred of evidence, you are able to dismiss all issues related to climate change. Fortunately the rest of humanity understands the concern and, hopefully, will not dismiss this most vital of decisions (I can't think of any more important decision facing humans than the survival of our future generations) and will follow Australian lead and start implementing price on carbon to gradually shift energy production for carbon-intense to renewable ... but this is of no cocern to you, so please resume your hibernation.

Re: In order to pass the Bridge of Eternal Peril, you must first answer this question...

Sorry, please go back to basic compound interest calculations. Inflation rates over the past 20 years has been in the range of 3%. Between 2012 and 2020 there are, let me see, 8 years ... at a compound interest rate of 3% I don't think I'll increase my $20 of today by a factor of 5. It won't even double ... it will be a mere $25.34. Last time I looked, $100 is about 4 times $25, i.e. if we act today it will cost 4 times less then if we wait another 8 years. I hope your investment strategy is considerably better then your ability to calculate ...

Re: everyone-for-themselves model

I agree, anarchy has always delivered better outcome than governments, look at these examples .... ok, so I can't think of a single example but take my word for it, it's better!!! Just imagine, everybody doing their bit in their own selfish way to mitigate climate change, wouldn't that be a fantastic example of CHAOS???

Feeling poor? WHO took all your money? NOT capitalist bastards?

Tim starts his article with “lies, damned lies and statistics” and, although he did not lie, he didn’t tell the “whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

The undisputed fact is that since the mid 80s, depending where you live, the income of about 75% of the population in industrialized countries has barely kept pace with inflation. By contrast, the top 25% has seen its wealth increase well above inflation. To make things worse, the top 2% has tripled its wealth over the past 30 years. Any number of reports, official documents, scholarly research etc. will confirm this. I suggest Hacker & Pierson “Winner-take-all politics” as essential reading for anyone interested knowing the reasons for the widening wealth gap between the top 2% versus the other 98%. Suffice to say that Reaganism, the disastrous ‘trickle down economy’ concepts and greater reliance on non-progressive consumption taxes have sawn the seed of this cycle that, unless reversed, will see the collapse of current western capitalism. This form of capitalism has seen Senior Management pay explosion, even when firms they manage go to the wall (US Treasury figures reports that in 1978 the average pay of CEO was 26.5 times that of average wages, in 2011 the ratio was 209.4 times! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/ceo-pay-worker-pay_n_1471685.html).

Governments have caught up on the idea that the average person is gullible and hence have promised tax cut for all and increased services in order to be re-elected. This has resulted in ever-growing national debts which will see economies fail when the lenders, both internal and external, will demand their capital back. In the end it will always be the gullible public that will pay through unemployment, lack of services and lower standard of living.

It never ceases to surprise me how easy it is to fool people. Lowering income taxes benefits ONLY the wealthy because the flip side is an increase in consumption taxes which applies equally to all irrespective of income. Progressive countries have understood this and they apply progressive taxation even to traffic fines (http://www.poliisi.fi/poliisi/lp/home.nsf/pages/F3BCD1C2A09C374FC225759900338B68?opendocument).

Tim appears to advocate, but not in so many words, the typical Right Wing response to government debts, i.e. cut government spending! A more equitable approach is to return to pre-Reaganism tax rates where marginal tax rates of 70%+ was the norm. This would achieve 3 good outcomes: 1. it would put an end to ever growing CEO pays, 2. it would reduce government debts worldwide, and 3. re-establish some form of equity within the community.

I would like Tim to tackle these issues and tell us why they wouldn’t work.

Australian Prime Minister: Mayan calendar 'true'

A Clever Leader

Julia has such a wonderful sense of humour and timing that only fools wouldn't appreciate.

In case those outside Australia don't get it, the man that wants to take her job (and that uninformed and lazy Australian voters may vote for) had predicted that the introduction of a "price on carbon" would be extremely disastrous for Australia. The legislation came into effect on 1 July 2012 and nothing has happened, and all the negative predictions came to a big fat naught (probably equal to Abbott's IQ!)

Well done Julia, we all need a laugh and relax a bit.