Saturday, January 9, 2016

"I’m an Oregon rancher"

"Here’s what you don’t understand about the Bundy standoff. The Obama administration has pushed our livelihood to the brink." (excerpts)
Most days, I’m up before the sun rises. I spend my mornings tending to my horses, dogs and livestock. In the winter, when it’s bitter cold, I’m outside with my cattle, making sure their water isn’t frozen and that they’re properly fed. In the summer, I often work 15-hour days, cultivating my crops and tending to the animals. In the afternoons, I’m in my office, reaching out to customers and handling the ranch’s business side. Over the course of a given day, I act as a vet, a mechanic, an agronomist and accountant.
I love the work, but it’s grueling. As a rancher, I’m always one bad year away from financial disaster. Every purchase I make — from new cows ($2,000 each) to a new piece of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — is a major investment. And my ranch operates on very slim margins, so I have to be savvy to make ends meet.
Money isn’t the only challenge. Raising cattle requires a lot of land, much more than most ranchers can afford to own outright. I lease about a third of the space I use from private owners. But most ranchers aren’t so lucky. The federal government controls a huge amount of land in the west (more than 50 percent in some states, like Oregon), and many ranchers must lease that space to create a sustainable operation.
Utilizing federal land requires ranchers to follow an unfair, complicated and constantly evolving set of rules. For example, a federal government agency might decide that it wants to limit the number of days a rancher can graze their cattle to protect a certain endangered plant or animal species, or they might unilaterally decide that ranchers can’t use as much water as they need because of a fight over water rights. Or they might take over land that once belonged to the state or private individuals, imposing an entirely new set of restrictions.
I saw this play out firsthand when the federal government considered listing the sage grouse, a chicken-like bird, as endangered. That regulation would have shrunk the amount of land where ranchers could graze cattle, putting many out of business and decimating the industry. To avoid this, ranchers like myself and local officials spent months meeting with federal officials looking for compromise. We ultimately found middle ground. But we already have an enormous workload in our daily lives. The pressure of having to drop everything to lobby against a rule (which happens more often than you’d think) is a tremendous burden.
Most of the time, those regulations are written by people with no agriculture experience, and little understanding of what it takes to produce our nation’s food.
Ranching is a billion-dollar industry in Oregon. Overall, agriculture accounts for 15 percent of the state’s economic activity and 12 percent of the state’s employment. The income of a local farm generates double the money for the local economy as a supermarket’s income in the same area, according to the London-based New Economics Foundation.
The siege on our industry has only increased under the Obama administration. Officials are effectively regulating us out of business by enforcing a string of unprecedented environmental restrictions. In Malhuer county (next to Harney county, where the current standoff is taking place), the Obama administration is considering a measure that will turn 2.5 million acres of federal land into a “national monument,” a move that would severely restrict grazing. These restrictions would cause a huge economic downturn for those communities.
These decisions are being made by people who are four to five generations removed from food production. The rule-makers don’t quite understand our industry, and are being spurred on by extreme environmentalist groups asking for unreasonable policy changes.

59 comments:

chickelit said...

These decisions are being made by people who are four to five generations removed from food production. The rule-makers don’t quite understand our industry, and are being spurred on by extreme environmentalist groups asking for unreasonable policy changes.

The decisions are being made by well-paid vegan-friendly office workers in DC who don't understand why people don't just get with the pogram and move to DC where life is more civilized. To them, places like Oregon are where they tie people to fence posts and leave them to die. Plus they have guns!

ricpic said...

OT -- Well, since we're talking about the West.....just saw The Revenant. I think it's a flat out masterpiece.

Strongly urge you disregard the mixed reviews and go see for yourself.

edutcher said...

Old line from an old Glenn Ford Western with a similar plot line:

You can push good men just so far and then they won't be pushed any farther.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I suspect people have a way of blaming on Obama things that were already a long time in the making. When a demand for cheap, fuck-the-environment meat incentivizes factory-farming and mass slaughterhouses with conditions revolting enough to make Upton Sinclair wrench and heave, then those entities are going to put huge downward price pressures on the small ranchers at the bottom of the chain. They're the ones who must ultimately pay that price.

If you want a food industry that's willing to do whatever damage to the environment that a Republican could ever wish for, try fishing. So many completely unregulated operations on the high seas, from netting all sorts of by-catch to raking the ocean floor. These fisherman want money for today, and lack the foresight to see what's wrong with reducing fish stocks by greater than 90%. What do they care? It's not like they're the ones who will get stuck eating nothing but jellyfish in 30 years. Nope, that's their kids' problem. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Who cares!

The natives here had an ethic to consider the impact of each of their actions on the next seven generations. Republicans can't even bother with the next two or three. Except when it comes to money. A nation of concrete and lifeless oceans - but immense wealth! That's the point of life. Meat as cheap as you want it, never eat a fucking vegetable - and proclaim the mere concept of "an environment" as a fairy tale! But hey - $0.99 hamburgers at the drive-through!

As Babylon sought to unite the world in language, Republican Babylonians build a ziggurat to money. Only profits have rights. People, animals, the land... no such luck.

chickelit said...

What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down

bagoh20 said...

Ritmo, a man cannot live on hallucinogenics alone. Stop now and have a sandwich.

Chip Ahoy said...

Why not blame Obama?

Did we not suffer 8 years of Bush being blamed for everything?

Yes we did. Here's your horseshit handed right back to you

Not interested in your partisan defense. Obama cannot keep his freaks in control and neither can the Republican party. See IRS for example, see BATF, see EPA, see OPM, see all unionized Federal employees who vote Democrat by a very large margin, and this is crucial, fundamentally at odds with American taxpayers the American public. At odds with American public. This is what your craptastic Party and president cannot control.

Even if he wanted to.

All this stinking ass party has is a criminal, who everyone I know supports as you do now, and a straight up socialist with as much economic insight as I did at age two. Good luck with your malevolent criminal enterprise. I'll add, the greatest gun salespeople on Earth. Take a bow.

I blame him for the absolute power that corrupts absolutely, all the people surrounding him supporting his idiotic and exceedingly mean-spirited administration. I blame you and everyone else for indulging his narcissism instead of mocking it. Your caterwauling sounds like my stuffed animal at that age two when I knew more than Bernie does now, that squeals when I stomped on it, just to hear it squeal.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Chip's political rhetoric is about as punchy, succinct, malign and ignorant as Hitler's. Which reminds me - did you ever take art classes in Vienna? Oh well. Der Fuehrer himself was as crappy a politician as he was obscure (but detailed!) an artist. But boy, did he have convictions! And enemies! No shortage of those. And long, hateful, meandering diatribes!

Maybe you've been to similarly cosmopolitan places and found them to be as wretched. I often hear Republicans these days complain about Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, etc., etc., etc. All while complaining about Mexicans in the same breath. A kinder, gentler sort of deja vu all over again, it seems.

Life in Colorado must be one's saving grace when it comes to assuming that every other environment must be similarly vast, healthy and unspoiled. But that's ok. I hear millions of very healthy children had a similar outdoors experience in Bavaria in the late 1930s.

Address the issues - (factory farming downwardly depressing small farmers' recompense) or just go ahead and burn some government offices and smash the windows of some minority businesses, already, Chippelgruber.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Jim Morrison did have a much better way of putting it, didn't he?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Anyone who claims a superior grasp of economics by denying the concept of externalities is a socially retarded fuckface.

If you need that diagrammed out for you in the form of 3-dimensional models made of construction paper, let me know.

Rabel said...

If you're going to go Godwin, you might as well go all the way says Ritmo.

Don't let him bother you Chip. He's had his chaps in a wad about ranchers ever since he first saw Brokeback Mountain and realized that he was supposed to wear jeans underneath.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Cattle ranching does not take more energy nor damage the environment. Modern methods are state of the art science and conserve land, feed and energy. State of the art means dumbass Ritmo would not understand. So go munch on some lawn grass you maroon.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Godwin emailed me earlier today. He says it's ok to:

1. Be a very detailed but not incredibly successful artist, and
2. Be prone to writing hateful profanity and insult-laden manifestoes directed at one's (many political) enemies, and
3. Constantly stoke the supposed power of the (right) people as the sole source of one's political legitimacy, and
4. Hate communists and leftists as enemies of civilization, and
5. Have strange hang-ups about one's own sexuality, and
6. Never take responsibility for any political shortcoming, always turning it around back onto your opponents, AND

NOT be Hitler.

And I agree.

And I'm sure Chip (n' Dale) and even Rabel would agree.

But what I want to know is where they differ.

You see, I'd like to know how Chip's ravings are different from those of the Head Leader of the Pure People. You know, the one who also hated communists and everyone else whom he thought somehow got in his way, and the way of "his" people.

But right now, the many similarities are jarring.

The question is, what would Chip do with power. Sure, his ravings reek of the haughty, entitled impotence of a simple nationalistic veteran with one testicle. And they don't do much evil from that vantage point.

But what if he got the POWER that he thinks is being so abused by his enemies, those Bolshevik Democrats?

That's the important question to ask.

Easy to criticize, hard to propose.

Thank you.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Oh, speaking of AJ Lynch (I mean Godwin)...

I'm Full of Soup said...

Better question is what would Ritmo do if he had a brain?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Better question is what would Ritmo do if he had a brain?

I dunno. Maybe ask better questions than those asked by a guy who idolizes a fat Nazi kid from South Park and puts him into his avatar for years?

(BTW, that wasn't a Godwin. Eric Cartman is indeed portrayed as a Nazi [or their leader] repeatedly in the South Park series).

chickelit said...

Jim Morrison did have a much better way of putting it, didn't he?

Morrison was an erotic politician. Word play was foreplay. I've seen you do this. You should do it more often.

chickelit said...

If you need that diagrammed out for you in the form of 3-dimensional models made of construction paper, let me know.

See, this is where I draw the line. You're mocking the medium and not the message. There's something fundamentally dishonest about doing that. It's like Titus mocking the whole chirbit medium instead of the chirbit content. It begs the question: So what do you do, sir?

chickelit said...

I clicked on the South Park link but got distracted watching a Hitler speech with English subtitles. I'd never really heard Herr Hitler speak before. What I learned was that he trilled his R's like an Italian. Not the proper uvular trill at all.

virgil xenophon said...

I WILL agree with Ritmo about depletion of fishing stocks world-wide, however. Now that's a REAL environmental disaster in the making! Would that the AGW/"Climate change" crowd spend their time on something much more REAL and IMMEDIATE as the overfishing problem..

Methadras said...

Rhythm and Balls said...

I suspect people have a way of blaming on Obama things that were already a long time in the making. When a demand for cheap, fuck-the-environment meat incentivizes factory-farming and mass slaughterhouses with conditions revolting enough to make Upton Sinclair wrench and heave, then those entities are going to put huge downward price pressures on the small ranchers at the bottom of the chain. They're the ones who must ultimately pay that price.

If you want a food industry that's willing to do whatever damage to the environment that a Republican could ever wish for, try fishing. So many completely unregulated operations on the high seas, from netting all sorts of by-catch to raking the ocean floor. These fisherman want money for today, and lack the foresight to see what's wrong with reducing fish stocks by greater than 90%. What do they care? It's not like they're the ones who will get stuck eating nothing but jellyfish in 30 years. Nope, that's their kids' problem. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Who cares!

The natives here had an ethic to consider the impact of each of their actions on the next seven generations. Republicans can't even bother with the next two or three. Except when it comes to money. A nation of concrete and lifeless oceans - but immense wealth! That's the point of life. Meat as cheap as you want it, never eat a fucking vegetable - and proclaim the mere concept of "an environment" as a fairy tale! But hey - $0.99 hamburgers at the drive-through!

As Babylon sought to unite the world in language, Republican Babylonians build a ziggurat to money. Only profits have rights. People, animals, the land... no such luck.


I'm really trying to care here. I'm straining to care right now.... UNHHHHHH.... UNHHHHHH!!! OMG, I'm almost caring.... Almost there... Almost... Almost.... Awww, my caring got away. I can't care now. Gonna have to try caring later.

Methadras said...

virgil xenophon said...

I WILL agree with Ritmo about depletion of fishing stocks world-wide, however. Now that's a REAL environmental disaster in the making! Would that the AGW/"Climate change" crowd spend their time on something much more REAL and IMMEDIATE as the overfishing problem..


Then they would be shutting down the japs and the chinks. The two absolute worst offenders ever.

Methadras said...

Rabel said...

If you're going to go Godwin, you might as well go all the way says Ritmo.

Don't let him bother you Chip. He's had his chaps in a wad about ranchers ever since he first saw Brokeback Mountain and realized that he was supposed to wear jeans underneath.


Oh, I thought he was made cause it wasn't called Bareback Mountain. Go figure.

virgil xenophon said...

I WILL agree with Ritmo about depletion of fishing stocks world-wide, however. Now that's a REAL environmental disaster in the making! Would that the AGW/"Climate change" crowd spend their time on something much more REAL and IMMEDIATE as the overfishing problem..

virgil xenophon said...

How'd THAT happen?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

See, this is where I draw the line.

From the 8:02 PM post:

"Here's your horseshit..."

"All this stinking ass party has is a criminal, who everyone I know supports as you do now, and a straight up socialist with as much economic insight as I did at age two. Good luck with your malevolent criminal enterprise."

"I blame you..."

"Your caterwauling sounds like my stuffed animal at that age two when I knew more than Bernie does now, that squeals when I stomped on it, just to hear it squeal."

Cluttering his own message with more insults than medium (content) than you can read through is ok, though. Very honest.

What I do is at least try to have something to say at the end of the day, once all the insults are done.

I try to leave with something other than just blind hatred. (Borne of arrogance).

But I guess sniffing too much construction paper glue makes it hard to focus.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Then they would be shutting down the japs and the chinks. The two absolute worst offenders ever.

Who's "THEY"? Those nations you sneer at with epithets are actually sovereign nations. Do you actually know how the world works? It's not a damn Lego set or Stratego board game. There are consequences to war and good luck proposing how to go to war against a nation of a billion plus people. Not all of us have imaginations snappy enough to pretend that other countries will bow down to us by snapping our fingers.

You should join the military, if you think it's such an invincible institution. That will clear your head of this nonsense really quick, I imagine. No offense to sensible (conservative) Republicans and actual veterans but why do so many Republicans have to be such chickenhawks?

chickelit said...

Notice how Obama goes after the livelihoods of rural white people? First it was coal country; now it's ranchers. I'd say that the family farm is next, unless you're feeding at the Pigford trough.

chickelit said...

You're not getting the message Ritmo: You attacked Chip's talent, not his politics. He's putting his art out here on a daily basis. We know absolutely nothing about what you do or what your talents are besides insults.

virgil xenophon said...

Methadras@10:04/

Oh, and totally agree w. Methadras re the fishing...and yes, my Give-a-shit meter is still pegged @ ZERO re the caring bit concerning Ritmos larger concerns..

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Would that the AGW/"Climate change" crowd spend their time on something much more REAL and IMMEDIATE as the overfishing problem..

They're related (carbonic acid-bleached corals can't be good) but I think there's more despair over the way nations have forever skirted maritime fishing treaties. So that's led to more, er, "direct action". GREENPEACE tactics, etc. Less science is involved with it so it's less "controversial" and requires less effort in terms of political messaging. It's probably not hard to do something about domestically (although tell that to North Atlantic cod fishermen) whereas the international cooperation necessary for it gets less attention abroad, I'd guess.

Probably the best thing consumers can do is to go with MSC-approved stocks. It strengthens the market for sustainable operations.

Methadras said...

Rhythm and Balls said...

Then they would be shutting down the japs and the chinks. The two absolute worst offenders ever.

Who's "THEY"? Those nations you sneer at with epithets are actually sovereign nations. Do you actually know how the world works? It's not a damn Lego set or Stratego board game. There are consequences to war and good luck proposing how to go to war against a nation of a billion plus people. Not all of us have imaginations snappy enough to pretend that other countries will bow down to us by snapping our fingers.

You should join the military, if you think it's such an invincible institution. That will clear your head of this nonsense really quick, I imagine. No offense to sensible (conservative) Republicans and actual veterans but why do so many Republicans have to be such chickenhawks?


The they is the envirokooks that you support and the ones that hate America and I was adding to Virgil's thought. OMG, I had no idea the Japs and the Chinks were actually sovereign nations. Gosh golly gee willickers, whatever will the fuck I do if you hadn't been here to point that out.

You are especially shrill today. WTF!!! Missed your colonic appointment today or what?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Oh, and totally agree w. Methadras re the fishing...and yes, my Give-a-shit meter is still pegged @ ZERO re the caring bit concerning Ritmos larger concerns..

Well it's good to know that you're so special to think that only the things you personally care about are worth anyone else's cares.

Guess what, no one cares about what you personally care about either, then. See how that works?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Ok. Envirokooks like "Virgil Xenophon", then?

You are especially shrill today.

It bothers me when people who have no experience in something act shrill about it themselves. It bothers me when people say, just get Japan and China to do what we want. What do you know about Japan or China?

It bothers me when people who think foreign policy is a waste of time pretend that these things happen as easily as you seem to assume they do.

You seem to only have a stomach for the problems that have easy answers, and prefer to pretend away the problems that (more usually) are not as simple to solve.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

You're not getting the message Ritmo: You attacked Chip's talent, not his politics.

Oh. So that's what you call it?

I think I attacked both, actually. Come to think of it, I did attack his political style (not necessarily the same as his politics) and had a little fun with his medium choice - and maybe artistic style. That's not the same thing as attacking his talent. He has talent, sure - and he has a very intricate application of it. Kind of like entomology. It has to do I suppose with a nitpicky focus on abstruse details. He does that both with his art and with his social stylings. Maybe it leads to more stress on his part, I suppose. He seems like an incredibly frustrated person.

But I can relate. When I get involved in something so intricate that it makes it harder to see the point or the larger picture, I get persnickety also. Isn't that how things go? When you spend hours at a thousand piece jigsaw, it can be maddening, and makes you wonder why you didn't spend the time doing something to show for it instead.

He's putting his art out here on a daily basis.

That's his own choice. No one's forcing him to do that.

We know absolutely nothing about what you do or what your talents are besides insults.

Oh, that's not true. I think you know more than a few of them. ;-)

Rabel said...

"But what if he [Chip] got the POWER that he thinks is being so abused by his enemies, those Bolshevik Democrats?"

I could roll with that. The food would be a lot better - there would be a lot of jalapenos - but the mandatory arts and crafts classes could get a little annoying after a while.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Chip for Head Chef of America!

He would probably poison my food, but that's ok. I can cook and source for myself anyway. ;-)

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Then they would be shutting down the japs and the chinks. The two absolute worst offenders ever.

Indeed. The Japs and the Chinese still hunt whales for crying out loud. I don't hear much fuss from Gloria Steinam about that.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/21/australia.japan

oops -

Ritmo - your attacks on Chip are very disappointing.

What do you know about the Japanese whale murderers?

I heard that their plans to scrap Whale Hunting - total lie.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

That's from 2007. I'm getting warmer Loopholes and lies.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Turns out the Japanese are liars. They continue to hunt Whales and call it "research".

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Research!

rcocean said...

Your caterwauling sounds like my stuffed animal at that age two when I knew more than Bernie does now, that squeals when I stomped on it, just to hear it squeal.

Ha.

I'm Full of Soup said...

On a flight in the last year, I read a great article about the enviro facts of cattle raising. It was in an airline magazine and I can't find it. The writer admitted up front he was a tree hugger and wanted to write a devastating story about how it is ruining our country. But he met with many people who worked in the industry and found they are also tree huggers plus they are smart, creative people with, in many cases, advanced science degrees. The writer gave the reader the facts and I was impressed by that and by the incredible knowledge in both science and economics of the people he interviewed.

The bottom line is raising cattle and eating meat does not have a negative impact on our world.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

What the Japanese are doing is atrocious and abominable. We must do what we can to find a way to stop them.

Sorry for Godwining the thread or being too harsh on Chip. Sometimes I'm just not sure what to do with all that hostility he directs at me.

George Carlin used to have a bit called "Free Floating Hostility". But that was funny and he was a guy who often had a point to make.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

If you are so angry, kill yourselves! Save the earth. You first, leftists.

It's about sustainability. Without the earth being preserved in the state in which we evolved, we die or greatly disrupt our own quality of life. Why does acknowledging that fact make some on the right so angry?

virgil xenophon said...

@Ritmo/

What you say is correct as a general proposition, but that statement doesn't mean much insofar as specific guidelines are concerned. During the existence of Homo Sapiens the Earth has both been much colder and much warmer than today (relatively speaking) and actually has shown remarkable climate stability. Increased CO2 (which is a product of increasing temps, NOT a driver of them, (which ice/mud core records demonstrate) is beneficial to plant and crop growth as well as old forest growth--North Africa is currently greening places it hasn't for hundreds of years due to increased CO--(It should be noted that xtra CO2 is pumped into Greenhouses to increase plant/flower growth.) So overall, warmer is better. Most deaths world-wide occur in cold weather.

Besides, just what IS the "normal"/"ideal" temp/Co2 balance for the Earth? Does anyone actually know? Further can ANY series of measurements actually measure the avg temp of the planet on any given day given the variation in site locations, differing methods of measuring/monitoring and calibration errors, etc. And this is all with the BEST of intentions among all involved, let alone those with ideological axes to grind (such as those "warmists" busily going back to alter actual temps downward in the recent past and "renorm" them to make the present trends look warmer) Thus I have grave doubts about spending trillions of scarce taxpayer dollars to fight a "problem" that may or not exist and which in any event would be better spent once we see how actual trends are playing out in efforts to adjust to them rather that "stop" computer projections which as of this date have don't match actual direct measurements over a period of some 19 yrs and fail to predict the past when fed the requisite data.

I'll pass..

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I don't believe anyone "knows" what a "normal/ideal" temp/CO2 balance is. But I think it's prudent to do what we can to sustain it at the state it's been in since the agricultural revolution. In temporal terms, that would be the last 10,000 years.

The existence of Homo sapiens, OTOH, encompasses a range of the last several hundred thousand years. Even modern anatomical humans (MAH) are dated back to roughly a hundred thousand years or so, give or take a few tens of thousands of years.

That's much longer than the agricultural revolution. And a time during which we lived for the most part as small clans of hunter-gatherers.

CO2 increase and temperature increase are part of a positive feedback loop. Increased CO2 warms the planet, which allows for the release of more frozen methane and other greenhouse gases. It is not simply unidirectional either way. In general, a positive feedback loop is not something that can be easily contained - making perturbation of it a risky proposition.

Mankind - in the broadest sense of all Homo species over the last several hundred thousand years - has adapted to many sorts of environmental scenarios.

But now things are different. We have a population of several billion that has conquered all continents and built an impressive global civilization based primarily along its waterways and other sea-level altitudes - all predicated on our reliance on agriculture --- which is, again, a relatively modern innovation. Why would we assume that the climates of the last ten thousand years of agriculture as we know it shouldn't be the closest approximation we have for a norm worth preserving?

Finally, it's a statement of elementary botany that plants eat CO2. However, I was not aware that a low-CO2 dearth of plant life was a problem we'd been grappling with overcoming all this time. Neither will increasing the CO2 increase plant populations. Their limiting factor is available space, not insufficient CO2. And changing the climate to turn our fertile ecosystems into the swamps and deserts that prevail at higher temps is a bigger threat to agriculture than an alleged lack of CO2 ever was.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Call me crazy, but I'd guess that what's even scarcer than taxpayer dollars is... arable land.

My proposition is that it's harder and more important to maintain arable land than it is maintain a low tax base.

I also question and lead toward rejecting the tautology that carbon-neutral or carbon-negative policies or incentives will destroy the economy.

Watch as Elon Musk's company (and related enterprises) becomes the fastest growing automobile make over the next 5 - 10 years.

There is no reason for We, The People to play the role of lobbyists for mature industries in the voting booth. That's the lobbyists' job.

bagoh20 said...

When the planet was warmer there was more life - not less, more species and diversity - not less, more vegetation - not less, less desert - not more. Much of the desert on earth is in cold areas. Warmer, in the range that's realistic here, does not translate to desert, but vitality. Desert is a lack of water, and in this range it is as likely from cold as heat.

CO2 levels are of more concern to me because current levels, unlike temperatures, are unusual for the period of human evolution. Still, that may well be self-regulating, and it's doubtful it's moving temperatures much. As to human sources, they will not be controlled by politics or the U.N. corruption regimes. Technology will reduce them, or not. The question is how much is stolen, and how damage will be done under the pretense of "doing something". There are sensible things to be doing just in case: more research with open minded-hypotheses would be a start, but the gravy train has already taken a short cut around that to the cash, so we will do stupid things instead that will enrich a few at the expense of the many. It's a modern version of robber barons on a global scale.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

When the planet was warmer there was more life - not less, more species and diversity - not less, more vegetation - not less, less desert - not more.

We are currently undergoing the sixth mass extinction in earth's history and there is not really much disagreement that it is a human-caused phenomenon. What's more (as if that weren't concerning enough) what AGW is primarily concerned about here is whether we are increasing or decreasing arable land and increasing or decreasing the viability of the civilization we've built at the water's edges close to sea-level and the coasts - where something like 90% of humanity will live.

That's a problem, Bags. Talk about uprooting infrastructure and major industries. A fossil fuel company's quarterly earnings report is not the only thing at stake.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

BTW, that blog post had a comment about how California's central valley would flood if current glacial melting stays on the track we've put it.

In the meantime, how many more years of drought will it take before you begin to believe that an unalterable deleterious climate trend has taken its toll on your state?

Or is that one more of those "unknowable" things?

Just curious.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Still, that may well be self-regulating...

Actually, it may well not be, as a positive-feedback loop seems to be the prevailing observation. I could be wrong, but that's my understanding as far as I remember.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

...more research with open minded-hypotheses would be a start...

"open-minded" = no evidence is good enough.

I have yet to run across a skeptic who is willing to define for me what sort of evidence it would take for them to accept that AGW is true or at least likely enough to act urgently upon. You are being sensible here in at least hedging your bets on precautionary measures. But I still have yet to find one who would do such a thing. There's evidence and then there's enough evidence, and I still can't find a skeptic who will say what kind of evidence or how much of it would be enough for them to give up the good fight against the consensus. It's analogous to a proponent of any other scientific theory saying that what they hold to be true can't be falsifiable - which would make them guilty of practicing an ideology or a religion in place of science.

I'll tell you what would make AGW falsifiable for me: Seeing the majority of glacial mass end their long-term melting trend or better yet starting to even rebuild in the face of continued CO2 increases. Seeing the same happen for the permanently packed ice. Ocean temps that start to decrease again or a reversal, rather than mere cessation of a an averaged 20-year warming trend by significant measurements. Somehow going back to pre-industrial climate scenarios.

Name me a skeptic who's willing to name the evidence it would take for him to change his own personal opposition and I'll at least admit he's being honest and true to the scientific method.

But they usually seem to not want to do that.

It's a funny thing, psychology and human behavior. People will do all sorts of reckless things until the consequences affect them personally. And then sometimes, they'll still persist.

A funny thing.

chickelit said...

Summer arctic ice has increased in mass and extent for the past two years link

I'm pretty sure Obama predicted this would happen when he enacted climate change therapy.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Oh boy. British tabloids fixated on Al Gore. And just when the thread was in danger of being taken seriously.

link

Methadras said...

From Godwin to AGW. The circles spiral faster when they get tighter.

bagoh20 said...

"I have yet to run across a skeptic who is willing to define for me what sort of evidence it would take for them to accept that AGW is true or at least likely enough to act urgently upon."

How about the models that the whole thing is based on start predicting something even close to actual observation. Would you think you understand women by observing a model Like Ru Paul?