Senate How long would it take us to colonize another planet?

Pretty close

 

Well, no. The point was to adapt the gravity and atmosphere. That's not colonising; that's terra forming.

 

And if Zod hadn't been sniffing glue while waiting for Clark to grow up, he would've been of rational thinking to decide to terra form an uninhabitable world instead.

 

Maybe the Kryptonians should have not sent Zod and co into a zone that protected them from Krypton's destruction.....

 

You are a terrible person! So we will send you to safety while we, non-terrible people, die in a few hours.

 

I saw no real reason to "touch on" this. The US already reports between 55-100% capture technology using conventional, technologies already in operation. The most advanced plants are the ones using 100%, while the worst case are the ones sitting at the low end. You are over-stating the benefits of your technology here, since unlike an athlete's efforts, you can't really give more than 100%. Especially not when the second law of thermodynamics has something to say about it.

What sort of insane comment is this? You do more violence to history here than the targeting of Timbuktu's manuscripts by Malian radicals. You ignore the huge, and continuing governmental investments in the basic research that has supported the development of biofuels, from the European oil shortages of WWII, through the OPEC crisis, on through to the present. You ignore the whole array of tax incentives and grants that help push many of these companies into profitability. You ignore, for that matter, a $4.7 million grant from the US federal government to the very company you are discussing. No, by your logic, none of these contributions matter at all. Not only did this spring up wholecloth from the singular genius of some entrepreneur, building off and helped by nothing. In your telling, it is completely impossible that the government could do anything like this. Never mind that Fulcrum's process is a technical, proprietary refinement of methods that the US government already tries to help distribute for free to any group that wants to try? That's pretty wildly indefensible.

But let's put that aside. You're still not answering Rogue Number Ten's original point. What he said is that capitalism is insufficient to meet the challenges caused by global warming. You've responded in two ways. First, a pretty sloppy assertion that it is better than a governmental enterprise could handle the problem. That's not the issue. Being better than an alternative while still failing is a failure. Second, you've tried to dredge up some things that "help" along the margins. That's not a comprehensive or even very powerful effect. They are just some things that might help. You aren't making a good case here.

 

Dennis, there's some lovely filth sown here.

 

This is the new Senate? Whew.

 

It's not a matter of "faith in human ingenuity." (And keep in mind that it's "human ingenuity" that resulted in the extraction, refinement, and burning of fossil fuels in the first place.) It's the simple fact that we're not doing enough (considering that carbon emissions are still increasing, it might as well be nothing) too slowly to save ourselves. I don't blame "capitalism" exclusively. Many left-wing ideologies don't really have an inherent "green" component. The USSR was worse than the Western world in terms of its environmental policy, for example. But China, the world's largest producer of carbon emissions, will not decrease those emissions because it would slow their economic growth rate. The same goes for other developing countries. It's the biggest reason cited for the West, especially the United States, not tackling climate change more effectively and aggressively. Never mind that climate change will result in a net economic loss; the more severe the warming, the bigger the loss.

There are many other reasons for my "lack of faith." Countries controlled by their interest in their petroleum and natural gas reserves, such as OPEC, Canada, Norway, and Russia, will not downsize their production until the reserves run out. And that's very bad. The oil from Alberta's tar sands is extracted very inefficiently, meaning more energy is expended than with other methods, but they do it anyway because it's profitable. The United States has a boom in natural gas extraction and that's keeping the price low (though reserves in the country may run out in as little as 15 years at this rate). No one has much incentive in terms of cost to switch away from it, and natural gas-fired power plants in the U.S. may overtake coal-fired power plants soon. While that's "better" in terms of carbon emissions when it's burned, it's not by much.

Blah blah blah I think I've made my point.

 

I wasn't making fun of you. I was being sincere. I'm a pessimist. As far as this debate you're having about which economic system is better suited to save humanity or whatever, I couldn't care less. Unless it becomes profitable to not fish, not use, not drain, not eat, not breathe, I don't see any magical solutions arriving any time soon.

 

That's the first sincere face_sick and face_shame_on_you I've seen.

 

I'm a pioneering man.

 

Following Even, I would like to clarify that I was and am not inspired by particular allegiance to communism so much as the urge to point out the hopeless and extreme distortions in Ender's last post, through which he pretends capitalism is some sort of panacea.