Well, as far as the impact of the extremely wealthy, on our politics, I would simply point to this Obama-friendly blog, which has been spun off from the Washington Post, also Obama friendly.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/barach-obama-tech-ceos-nsa-104881.html?hp=l1 - a few other items on billionaires, greens (reds) and politics. The Koch's appear to be amateurs, but why should I trust them either? http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/03/02/rich-donors-press-democrats-climate-change/hzqwCqUh4CPz5Voz3abiSL/story.html http://www.worth.com/index.php/component/content/article/4-live/926-top-10-billionaires-saving-the-planet http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2013/03/20130326-075201.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/18/tom-steyer-2014-elections_n_4809013.html http://www.mensjournal.com/expert-advice/americas-billionaire-environmentalists-20140210/george-soros Here are your rulers and the Master's funders, and may they rule you well. On wood gathering in the third world,by folks who have no other means of cooking food, the magic word is deforestation. Often, the 1.7 billion people who need wood to cook, also do what the people of the Medieval Warm Period, just before the Little Ice Age, did. It was called assarting, and was the expansion of croplands into forests, and burn the wood for fuel, and plant crops for subsistence agriculture. This does diminish forests and wildlife, just like Georgia Pacific does when it does clear cutting, on old growth forests. GP does it with technology, Third world folks do it with any means at hand. Occasionally, GP plants saplings and the regular folks are too busy taking care of their kids to accomplish this. None the less many hands make short work, and if the quality of life was improved for these folk, then there is less need for wood from forests. If we want less impact on land by agriculture, then we can look to the technology of greenhouses, which do not consume lots and lots of land. But this is a different topic. -----Original Message----- From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, Mar 21, 2014 11:32 am Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:16 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: Tackling thing technically will save lots or preaching, in emails, and public speaking. For example, if you cook all your food by wood-gathering, you are more likely to disrupt the forests by your gatherings. If you have access to cheap solar, wind, and maybe natural gas lines, then the urge for gathering wood and chopping trees three times a day diminishes. On the other hand if you want Bobby Bureaucrat to run your life, even if his laws don't actively change whatever you wish to achieve (air quality?), then you're good with that. Looking over the last 20 years, government, rather then being a beneficial force, now appears, worldwide, to be a malign force. If you are wanting results that please you, then perhaps, despite their promises and guarantees, the politicians and the billionaires that own them, have failed mightily. Feel free to disagree with this observation. What observation? Forest gathering? Bobby Bureaucrat? Evil government on every level? Green conspiracy of the rich billionaires? I don't know if I'd call these points arguments. They are more black and white cartoons from Hannity, Fox, Limbaugh etc. I can't see what you want as you are aware that there is long term need for sustainable energy + you praise romantically "sky, forest, oceans etc." and yet you checkmate yourself because this would be playing into the hand of the green-marxist government conspiracy theory. Ok, it's easy to call everybody names and defend nothing really, with such position. But I do not see "technical observations", a solid position to argue from, or where you're going with this. PGC -----Original Message----- From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 10:32 am Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:55 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: Very well, go ahead and power it all down. Shut off the cars, kill the lights, take a bike. Are you suggesting that we continue to burn filthy coal, or horrible uranium, while we try to goose up solar and wind to replace it?!! Why that will take decades and the catastrophe is already upon us. The heating of the atmosphere and the degradation of the lands and seas, cannot wait (your guys tell us). Or what are they really saying, put into motion in real life? It comes down to a culture of complaint from the green-reds, rather than actual workable solutions. I want technical solutions, but then, I am in the minority, as you indicate, and your side (and it is your side) wants people controlled and dominated (impoverished) and I see myself as someone who'd rather help people, liberate them, rather that 'manage' them. If I was one of the people who decided things, what would you do? You are one of the people who decides things. Energy costs are on the rise, no matter our political outlooks. You can decide to take a risk to try and mitigate this, which is complex and not as easy as listing your political preferences and intolerance. You talk "I'm in minority", which does not make sense because the majority of the world is not taking steps to make energy and environment more sustainable. You are in the majority, talking/chatting and not doing. Even if you feel you're in the minority: do something. You talk "liberating people"... then do it and save us the sermon. You talk "anti-state" but you advocate inaction. So basically the right for us to live in the effects of our trash/wasteful behavior, complaining about powerful interests, that through your inaction and ideological fox chanting extend their range by just another person. You talk "technical solutions" and you hope for some revolution among engineers. Good luck with that, but why judge people with a more nuanced and differentiated approach to the problems you state, who will not hope/wait for instructions or engineer revolution and start to plan and invest in transition means to mitigating energy's rising costs? The question has long shifted from your black and white "yes-no" to the grey complexities of real life with "how" on local, personal, and global levels. If you don't see this, then why keep preaching your political stance? Just be as wasteful as you can for as long as you can, before somebody shows up and says: "Business as usual will keep costs rising and poverty increasing, which we can't sustain long term; this behavior is stupid." Join fossil fuel lobby or something. Well paid job and you'll be more effective there than on this list, regarding this set of problems. PGC No it doesn't have to... it's not because it can't currently replace everything that it can't replace part of it... and it does thanks you're not the one who decide things. -----Original Message----- From: Quentin Anciaux <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 9:36 am Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating 2014-03-20 14:34 GMT+01:00 <[email protected]>: Please remember, solar, to remediate, must replace all nat gas, all coal, all uranium, all petro that all cities and cars. No it doesn't have to... it's not because it can't currently replace everything that it can't replace part of it... and it does thanks you're not the one who decide things. Quentin There are wonderful looking projects that have been proposed for 50 years, that for technical reasons, cannot achieve much, other than getting cheers from admirers in the media. I love it too, but it must do the rugged, robust, work, of replacement of the dirty-to be any good at all. It cannot simply be artist work on paper and splashed to the tech heads. My point: propaganda doesn't feed empty stomachs. If that solar farm described in SciAm had been realised it would have been carried out by a democratically elected government, not a dictatorship -----Original Message----- From: LizR <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, Mar 19, 2014 6:10 pm Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating On 20 March 2014 07:10, <[email protected]> wrote: Here's an article that informs me, if nobody else, how complicated the climate thing is. http://phys.org/news/2014-03-goldilocks-principle-hypothesis-earth-habitability.html Beyond that I agree with John on his estimate of cutting the standard of living down, to fit the ideal "environmental foot print." Improving the standard of living with better energy technology will sustain the billions and flourish the ecosystem-if done right. Technology is the answer, sans, government rule of the public. Dictatorships, even well-meaning ones, are horrible. Use Mao's approach to agricultural production during the Great Leap Forward from 1958-62, as a prime example. If that solar farm described in SciAm had been realised it would have been carried out by a democratically elected government, not a dictatorship. Part of the point of having a government is to provide things that no individual or profit-based organisation would wish to do, such as building motorways, communications networks, hospitals, schools, power plants, rail networks, and other infrastructure. This would apply to some clean power schemes that are too large for a private investor, which applies to (some) tidal, wind, hydro, solar, nuclear etc. I can't imagine many private companies would have been building nuclear power plants off their own bat in the 1950s. So we need government to do stuff above the level that private enterprise can manage. Dictatorship is simply government done wrong. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. 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