Green Stories

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
To fight climate change, start with Leonardo DiCaprio's private jet lifestyle


Well, okay. Since some states and cities are promising to live by the Paris agreement anyway, and since Trump’s rejection of that agreement doesn’t mean that Congress is forbidden to act, I have some proposals for legislation that will take climate change seriously indeed.

First, we need to tax the “blue zones.” That is, we need to impose steep taxes on property in coastal areas that will be flooded by the sea-level increases that global warming is supposed to bring. By discouraging people from living or building there now, we’ll save ourselves from big problems in the future. Sure it’ll drive down property values, but those values should go down — they’re values for property that’s going to be flooded anyway, remember?

Second, we need to ban taxpayer-funded air travel to conferences. State legislatures could ban reimbursement for travel outside their states; Congress could require that no federal grant money be spent on air travel to conferences and similar events. A lot of academic conferences would fail, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the planet. And besides, it will encourage the development of Internet-based conference alternatives. A whole new industry might result: Green jobs!

Third, we need to ban private jet travel. At first I thought about just taxing it heavily, but with the planet at stake, that might not be enough. It’s nice that John Travolta can have his own Boeing 707, or that Leonardo DiCaprio can jet around the world speaking against climate change, but the carbon emissions involved set a bad example that outweighs anything he might say. So no more private jets. Bigshots will just have to fly commercial like everyone else, the way they did in the 1950s. (And sorry, Leo, but massive yachts have to go, too). Politicians, too, should have to fly commercial. No more government-funded “executive jets” for them.

Fourth, we need a luxury tax on mansions. Any home more than twice the size of the average American home should be taxed at 25% of its value per year. Celebrities and the rich enjoy great powers of persuasion — but with great power comes great responsibility, and they have a great responsibility to set a good example for the rest of us on climate change!


Obama’s Decisions Doomed The Paris Climate Accord To Failure In The US, Experts Say



Obama joined the Paris accord in 2016, after years of working behind the scenes to craft the non-binding global warming deal, but he did so without submitting it to the Senate.

His signature achievement on global warming, therefore, depended on Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 presidential election and the courts.

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Obama pledged to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The Clean Power Plan was the main compliance tool, but more policies were still needed to meet the pledge based on government and independent projections.

Clinton’s 2016 victory would have ensured the U.S. remained in the Paris Agreement, but any setback in the courts would have made keeping Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions even more difficult to achieve.

“The agreement was always first and foremost a political strategy to perpetuate Obama’s climate agenda for decades despite the policy preferences of future presidents, Congresses, and voters,” Lewis said.



Progressives Put up or Shut Up ...........
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The previous studies had two major flaws: they only focused on an ice sheet computer model and they assumed that the warm ocean water would cause cavities forming in the glacier to melt at the glacier's current melting rate. The problem with the latter assumption is that the water is unable to have as much reach in these tighter cavities, therefore the glacier melts at a slower rate. Hence, lower sea level rises.

The study also noted that increases in the sea level will be slower than the current rate even if ocean temperatures were to increase.

According to Phys.org, the Thwaites Glacier is "nearly as large as the state of Washington," causing alarmists to cite it as a source of disastrously high sea levels. Some research has suggested that sea levels will increase by two feet over the next 200 to 900 years as a result of the melting glacier. Then there's this Rolling Stone article suggesting that the melting of the Thwaites Glacier will cause significant parts of the world to be underwater:

The trouble with Thwaites, which is one of the largest glaciers on the planet, is that it's also what scientists call "a threshold system." That means instead of melting slowly like an ice cube on a summer day, it is more like a house of cards: It's stable until it is pushed too far, then it collapses. When a chunk of ice the size of Pennsylvania falls apart, that's a big problem. It won't happen overnight, but if we don't slow the warming of the planet, it could happen within decades. And its loss will destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice, and that will go too. Seas will rise about 10 feet in many parts of the world; in New York and Boston, because of the way gravity pushes water around the planet, the waters will rise even higher, as much as 13 feet. "West Antarctica could do to the coastlines of the world what Hurricane Sandy did in a few hours to New York City," explains Richard Alley, a geologist at Penn State University and arguably the most respected ice scientist in the world. "Except when the water comes in, it doesn't go away in a few hours – it stays."


http://www.dailywire.com/news/17160/uh-oh-ice-loss-thwaites-glacier-slower-expected-aaron-bandler
 
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