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Teens strike for climate action at State House
By adamg on Fri, 03/15/2019 - 11:28pm
Greg Cook joined several hundred people at the State House today for the Youth Climate Strike.
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OK, I'll humor them
and actually tell them why the Green New Deal as proposed by AOC and Ed Markey is a load of nonsense.
1. Air travel will not be eliminated.
It costs less to fly to middle of nowhere Iowa or Colorado or Alberta than it does to maintain a passenger rail network capable of getting you there in anything resembling the same amount of time. Yeah, the high speed rail in Europe and Japan and China is nice, but it works there because the population density supports it. America in the Northeast Corridor is less dense than those places, and America away from the East Coast is a veritable desert. The carbon footprint of an occasional airplane flight to a place like Idaho Falls is less than the cost of building our and running the train to get you there. Moreso when the planes are mostly full, but the trains are going to be mostly empty.
2. There are over 100 million structures in this country.
Assuming it takes a trained person four hours to do an energy audit on each one, that's 400 million man-hours.
Even at our magical "living wage" of $15 an hour (yeah, good luck getting someone to do that work for $15 an hour), that's $6B just to do the energy audits. And if you want to get it done in 5 years (so you can use the other five to go all out and mobilize for war to refurbish them all), then you'll need to hire and train 40,000 energy auditors to do it. That's not counting support staff, equipment maintenance, etc. That is to say, it's science fiction.
3. Electric cars are a joke.
Let's recognize that even in Liberal Massachusetts, most of our electricity comes from burning hydrocarbons. Even more when Pilgrim shuts down. My electric rate is about 23 c / kW-hr. A Tesla with an 85 kW-hr battery that gets you 250 miles of range by going from 100pct SoC to 20pct SoC and charges at 95% efficiency will cost about $17 to charge up. My 12 year old Chevy just went 365 miles on a fill-up that cost $31, meaning those same 250 miles would have cost me $21 in gasoline.
Since we're talking about energy here, and most of our electric comes from burning hydrocarbons, we're comparing apples to apples when we compare the emissions from a car that burned $21 of gasoline versus consumed $17 of electricity that was derived from burning hydrocarbons. Thus it is valid to say that the difference between the carbon dioxide emissions is roughly equal to the difference in dollar costs of buying the fuel at a gas station where it has to be transported etc vs buying it over electrical wires which have to be maintained/replaced.
So the magic electric car is about 20% more efficient (maybe) at the cost of costing over twice as much, having less range, not being field-refuelable from a jerry-can in case of emergency, and oh by the way Elon Musk can't actually build them in any kind of volume.
And Comrade Markey wants to mandate nothing but electric cars in ten years?
4. My absolute favorite: free government money for people unwilling to work. Not a Republican smear, not a clownish parody, not anything other than the contents of the FAQ they put out to go along with the bill.
So yeah: if kids want to vote for non-physical nonsense that far removed from reality, then not only should we not lower the voting age to 16, we should raise it to however old a person is before they've worked a job and owned at least one piece of property or held a loan that they signed up for as an adult. Because being out in the world is what dissuades you from believing in the pie-in-the-sky horseshit like the Green New Deal instead of crying and bawling that the mean adults won't give you your unicorn, even though you've been an awful good boy/girl/whatever.
Oh you're just jealous
that AOC was dancing on a roof. Ha. Roasted you.
I'd pay to see Ed Markey dancing on a rooftop
It'd probably be the first dollar he's earned that didn't come from government funds.
That's your kink
We don't need to hear more about this or your Lindsay Graham fantasies.
Why? Are you some sort of homophobe?
?
Classic...
...right wing bot projection right there, "Roman".
New Universal Hub thread features?
The ability to mute and hide certain comments/posts would be a great feature.
Folks do the absolutely most on this site, haha
The Compleat Idiot
Using far more words than necessary to demonstrate the acuity of his title.
Roman and TrophyWife 4 Eva
I'm beginning to wonder if they are the same person given the verbose oversharing.
I quite like TrophyWifeLinda
I figured it was a persona/shtick similar to Branden Miller's Joanne the Scammer.
So you don't even want to try
do you just propose we do nothing?
I propose that
somewhere between on the one hand mandating that every man, woman, and child purchase an F-150, modify it to roll coal, and proceed to do so at every traffic light and on the other hand predicating our tax code, legal system, and economic policy on the assumption that unicorns will be cheap and plentiful by the end of the next decade, we could do things like:
1. Refraining from trying to get nuclear power plants shut down because feelings
2. Refraining from getting natural gas pipelines and marine terminals shutdown because feelings
3. Refraining from taking out car lanes and reducing speed limits, thereby increasing commute times and consequent emissions from vehicles idling in traffic,...because feelings
4. Refraining from screaming bloody murder when Trump raises tariffs on Chinese imports with the stated objective of stemming the flow of manufacturing jobs from here where we have somewhat robust emissions and dumping laws and outsourcing them to places where they don't mind if the rivers catch fire so long as they make a buck...and refrain from allowing our policy to be dictated by zealots who think a factory gone over here and built over there is a net reduction in emissions and pollution.
5. To go along with the last one...refraining from making environmental laws and regulations and having the CLF file lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit to kill any manufacturing that might want to pop up over here...because feelings.
Basically...I propose that the American Left adopt the George Costanza strategy. Try that for twenty or thirty years and see if the country is in better shape economically and environmentally. Then talk to me about a magic future fueled by unicorn turds.
A picture is worth a thousand words
Do you ever tell the truth?
You have just completely misrepresented the Green New Deal. All you do is lie and dogwhistle. You're so full of shit it's coming out your ears.
Wow, Roman
I love that you see this group of engaged, inspiring young people demanding bold action on a pressing issue...and your response is a cynical, myopic rant. Not only are you willfully ignorant and disingenuous, you have the gall to be condescending about it. Had you been in Houston in 1962, you'd have been the self-satisfied psuedointellectual "humoring" JFK about going to the moon.
Wow nothing.
They are demanding impossible action to solve a fake problem. Action that if taken at face value will turn this country in Maduro's Venezuela, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Kim II's North Korea, and Stalin's Ukraine all rolled into one.
The kids don't know what they're talking about, but they lack for nothing in terms of self-assured zeal. And no one does anyone any favors by refraining from calling out the bullshit they're yoking themselves to.
I notice that no one actually countered anything I said up top. They just call me names, say I'm heartless for pointing out that unicorns don't exist, and trot out pictures of cute kids and tell me I'm literally ending these kids' futures...by pointing out that unicorns don't exist and that their standard-bearers in the United States Congress are selling the snakeoil to end all snakeoils.
No one countered because your four points were B.S.
Likely, no one's countered your "facts" because what you said was a series of intentionally dishonest strawmen and misleading information. Here's a link to the actual proposal: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729033/Green-New-Deal-FINAL.pdf
1. Show me where it calls for air travel to be eliminated. I searched for any mention of it. None. Also, when you chose to compare the Northeast Corridor to Europe for train travel, you chose poorly. The NE corridor is one of the densest populated regions in the world, and crying out for a well funded rail system. Even now the poorly underfunded AMTRAK is 1000 times better than flying to NYC from Boston. Here's some data on population density of the US vs. Europe. Notice how the NE corridor is denser than Germany and France. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hifamb4LTgQooDBYj/worth-remembering-when...
2. To paraphrase: "There's a lot of energy-inefficient buildings in this country, therefore we shouldn't look at any of them." What?
3. "Electric cars are a joke." Uh, this is just a silly statement. Even assuming no improvement to our current mix of fossil fuels and renewable in our powergrid, electric cars have 25% less carbon emissions than gas cars. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/370723-critics-have-it-wr... But the whole point of the Green New Deal is to increase the use of renewables so that 25% reduction in emissions should increase enormously over time. Finally, do you really think the United States can't produce electric cars because Tesla is struggling with scale?!! So yeah, not a joke.
4. I assume you're talking about UBI (universal basic income), but I can't find anything in the proposal addressing that. For the record, I would support a UBI.
Stop lying. Green New Deal is full of crazy.
https://slate.com/business/2019/02/green-new-deal-...
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=57...
Page 1: "guarantee...economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work"
As in, UBI: taxing people who work and giving it to drug addicts and man-children who don't want to. Economic security is not a right the government hands you, it is a responsibility for you to secure for yourself.
Page 4: "Simply put, we don’t need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like
using fossil fuels for energy needs); we also need to start doing new things
(like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy
efficient)."
Yeah. That's just a few keystrokes short of demanding unicorns. Hugo Chavez would smile.
Page 5: "Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle
manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-
speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create
affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every
combustion-engine vehicle"
See above. If an electric car saves me $4 a week at today's oil prices, and even $40 a week at double today's oil prices or with completely zero-emission electric generation, it's still a net gain in carbon footprint over the life of the car because the electric car costs more than 20k more than the gas powered car, if we assume market cost is a good approximation to net carbon footprint for making things out of steel or aluminum and all the nasty chemicals that need to be mined and refined to make a battery.
As for "renewable energy" having more than a snowball's chance in hell of replacing electricity generated by burning hydrocarbons, take a look at this one:
My goodness
Your intellectual laziness is only slightly outpaced by your inability to interpret primary sources.
Fuck along now.
Ah, the instant resort to name-calling
Sigh. You didn't refute a single point I made. And your conflation of carbon footprint with the current sale price for electric cars is simply hogwash. http://www.driveelectricmn.org/mit-study-electric-vehicles-are-cheaper-a...
Here's the pull quote if you can't be bothered to read a few paragraphs
I see that the UBI and all those other quotes comes from a FAQ which isn't explicit or implicit in the bill and was withdrawn because it didn't have the support of people like Markey, although again, I support a UBI. Even the FAQs aspirational goal is to make aircraft obsolete, not "eliminate aircraft" by fiat. There's a big difference, but you know that, you're literate.
Oh, and you called me a liar, but didn't point to a single lie (because I didn't lie.)
So...
Wow
You seem to think projecting your willful ignorance into an open forum constitutes an argument. It does not. Confusingly, you also seem to expect that your lazy hyperbole and disregard of scientific consensus demands the respect and consideration of a counter. It does not.
Interesting...
Your comments have already been challenged and refuted, and you redirected every time, spewed a ton of hot air and pseudo-intellectual drivel, so I won't waste a post on that. What jumped out to me in your post was your call for disenfranchisement. So if someone is content to not own property, wants to live debt (loan) free, and is perfectly happy renting the place in which they dwell, they should be denied the right to vote? And people say disenfranchisement isn't part of the right's agenda...
Sure
If you read it that way.
If you add "chooses not to work" to that list, then you'd be hard pressed to convince me that such a person has gained enough life experience to vote well. Age used to be a very good proxy for having accrued enough wisdom through experience to cast at least a semi-intelligent vote that was more likely than not to refrain from shooting society in the foot intentionally.
Now with a generation of basement dwellers demanding free everything without understanding the negative externalities of "free everything", maybe not so much. And it adding to their number with a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds who likely don't have jobs and nearly all of whom still do live with their parents is bad policy. But the Dems do it for the simple cynical reason that they can influence younger people far easier than older people. Implications for the rest of society be damned.
Yes, I read it that way...
...because it's what you wrote. If you want people to read things the you say you mean them, then write it so there's no question as to what you're getting at. Personally, while I'd still think it's a pretty abhorrent perspective on your fellow citizens, I'd respect your take on voting a lot more if you'd just come out and say you don't think certain people, who normally have a constitutional right to vote, should not be allowed to.
As for the tired, fist-shaking, "get off my lawn" rationalization for hating on young people who you think all want something for nothing, work another angle. What's been left for them as far as a bright future goes is a cesspool. And as for Universal Basic Income, you have it wrong (based on what you saw in the Green New Deal). That's not UBI. Listen to Joe Rogan's interview with Andrew Yang. He breaks it down in a way that turns what you think it is on its head. Oh, and Andrew Yang isn't a socialist or a radical. He's an entrepreneur and a capitalist. He also just so happens to be running on the Democratic ticket for president, so you might need to shower afterwards, judging on where you usually lean.
I listened to the Andrew Yang interview
on Rogan and elsewhere. I think he has it completely backwards.
Raising minimum wages and paying people money for sucking down oxygen will incentivize sloth in the individual and the misapplication of resources in society, and it will further incentivize outright outsourcing by American companies to jurisdictions with lower labor costs and it will incentivize "backdoor outsourcing" whereby American companies keeping jobs here will be unable to compete with foreign corporations whose labor costs are lower.
Heard Pete Buttigieg on Fox News (surprise!) this afternoon. He was prattling on about how minimum wages hikes are necessary in the age of automation. He's also got it backwards. Automation may have taken some American jobs, but when I go to China and see mile after mile of manufacturing districts the likes of which we haven't seen in this country in decades, it's just comical to me for these guys to be telling me it's automation that's eroding our ability to make things for ourselves when it's clear that the manufacturing work that used to be done by people here is now being done by people there.
Policies that directly (min wage, strict environmental regs, etc) or indirectly (UBI) encourage more of that capital and jobs flight from this country are fundamentally flawed. Now, I'll take at face value what these guys say is their motivation for passing these laws, and conclude that they're flawed not because they're stupid or evil but because they're predicating their policy positions on faulty information (namely, "it's all automation").
I'm pretty sure guys like Andrew Yang and his ilk really do think we've achieved post-scarcity economics and really do think we live in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek future. Everything I've seen with my own eyes over my thirty-plus years on this planet, living in the Soviet Union, growing up in America in the 90s, and in my reading and in my travels, in my experience working as an engineer, leads me to conclude firmly that we are not living in the Star Trek future. So policies tailored to that false reality are flawed, plain and simple. Policies tailored to ease the advancement of those flawed policies are foolish by extension. Lowering the voting age is one such policy.
How about a Youth Protest for college change?
Why not walk out of all the high schools and protest how the rich and shameless scammed the system and screwed you and your fellow middle class students out of the seats you deserved? I wonder how many candidates for president knew or participated in this scam to cheat and scam the system.
Don't know where you've been,
Don't know where you've been, grandpa, but gen Z has also done that. and protested against racism. I mean, I know this is a disingenuous case of whattaboutism, but legitimately, these kids have shown remarkable moral and intellectual focus and hit all the boxes they talk about.
The kids are alright. sucks their futures are so bleak.
actually
Romaine, what you are seeing is a bubbling up of the immense non-rational part of existence, ya know the human heart, (here represented by youth who have hope); it's actually the same stuff that got your Retard Father Darth Trump elected. Only, in this case, it is coming from the ingenuousness and openness of youth, not the rancid perversities of your spoiled demographic. This is the stuff that wins elections and makes change, and it always has--it always will--as long as people walk the earth. Get out of the fucking way you moral cripple and let these kids save the planet for you
It's Saturday afternoon. Time to feed the trolls!
The great accomplishment of human civilization has been the willful repression of emotion in favor of reason.
Emotion makes you want to have ice cream for breakfast every day. Reason makes you eat a healthy diet.
Emotion makes you want to drink and smoke and fuck and listen to loud music all night long. Reason makes you control yourself for the benefit of your future self.
Emotion makes you want to have government ban all the icky things in life. Reason makes you see that nearly all of that icky stuff does more good than bad, you just don't notice the good because you're used to it being there. You're used to the lights coming on when you flick a switch, you're used to the grocery stores being stocked with fresh fruit year round, with meat and vegetables and grains and guilty snacks flown and trucked in from the country and the world over, every day of the year. You're used to the petroleum-derived products that keep you warm during the winter, cool during the summer, and free of diseases that kill millions in the undeveloped world every year.
Emotion makes you want magic. Reason makes you see that there is no magic, there is no free stuff, and there is no zero-impact way of life. Man shapes his environment, always has, always will. That's good. Makes it possible to procreate and live into the future. Ban hydrocarbons and we'll be back to the 18th century: famines, plagues, short life expectancy, high infant mortality, almost no leisure time for all but the very wealthy. No video games or movies or trolling on the internet, no girls who code or woke struggle sessions, just toil and misery and struggle for survival in a life that's nasty, brutish and short. Like in Venezuela.
Oh, I see
You can't tell form from substance, so you pretend you are rational and think that's the same as being rational.
Transparent, really.
So its Saturday afternoon and you don't have visitation this weekend?
Old man yells at iCloud
Besides my unwavering solidarity, these kids also get points for LOGGING OFF THE INTERNET AND GOING OUTSIDE.
Go get 'em, youngsters!
It's inspiring to see these yoots standing up and demanding change. Doesn't get more "civics education" than this.
Actually, this is civics on
Actually, this is civics on the cheap.
Let's see them get involved in a ballot measure campaign. A years long process that entails many hours of volunteer work. And then maybe the AG doesn't certify it. Or it gets certified and doesn't pass. Or it passes and is ignored by the leg.
I see your "actually" & raise you one "actually"
All of those things you mentioned are great ways for youth civics engagement...in tandem with this demonstration, too.
Quoth Cardi B: "I can get 'em both / I don't wanna choose."
This march on the State House is, for one, an exercise in their civil liberties (I think other states had similar demonstrations, too). This sure beats complaining about stuff and/or fighting with internet strangers on U-Hub.
I joined a march/walkout with some Madison Park students that went through the Bolling Building not too long ago. I didn't know what was going on but it looked exciting and I was curious.
I asked the students what they were march for/demonstrating against. It was the investigation of a Madison Park executive director (https://www.wgbh.org/news/2017/12/08/local-news/madison-park-high-school...).
The only thing vaguely resembling a walkout in my days as a Boston student was being marked "constructively present" and attending the Patriots championship celebration at Government Center.
ACTUALLY, I'm walking that back: when the W*stboro B*ptist Church threatened to hold a rally outside of Boston Latin School there was a peaceful counter-protest organized (and those WBC cowards didn't even show!).
Strangely enough, these demonstrations are reminding my younger self of what is possible.
Oh, and I think this was posted in another U-Hub story but there is a hearing on Monday regarding civics education in Boston. This is copy & pasted from Councilor At-Large Annissa Essaibi-George's email newsletter:
Monday, March 18th at 2pm: Hearing Regarding Civics Education in Boston Public Schools (Sponsored by Councilor Garrison)
Marches do nothing.
Marches do nothing.
Commenting on the internet does nothing
If you don't think that marches accomplish anything...then don't go to them? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Marches do nothing"...
...says the one not doing them, or anything else.
Now that's a credible statement.
Wisdom of a half century past
(No subject)
What the....
Most important facts?
Finest scientists?
This proves they bussed in sped students.... or students with a wicked sense of humor and the "finest" acting ability. I couldn't say any of that crap with a straight face even if I was doing a comedy sketch.
City kids still win
Imagine being a grown-ass adult and mocking special education students and minors marching at the State House...on the internet.
The Cronus-eating-his-children angst is strong with this one. Maybe this confronts you with your aging self & your own mortality... it's not these kids's fault so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All this! On a fairly nice Saturday. Seriously, it's a little crisp but the weather is so nice!
Alexa, play "Get Off The Internet" by Le Tigre.
Go away troll
I hear they are casting for Idiocracy II. You and other climate deniers are naturals for this!
Otherwise, just go to fucking hell before you create hell on earth for these kids. Seriously. Fuck off.
I have read
I have read the most important facts from the finest scientists. I am right.
The finest behavioral scientists
would likely remind you that getting your jollies off by mocking children says more about YOU than it does about these young protestors, Creep Coddah.
And here I was thinking that those storms from a few years ago washed all the trash from Cape Cod.
Very classy and well said.
Very classy and well said.
Overdressed for Global Warming?
The young lady in the woolen hat and blizzard coat is slightly overdressed for
Global Warming.I almost forgot, it's been rebranded as Climate Change.• “North Pole could be ice-free in 2008” – M.Serreze (New Scientist 2008)
• “Gore: Polar ice cap may disappear by summer 2014” (USAToday 2009)
• “Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within 4 years” (Guardian 2012)
• “Say Goodbye to Arctic Ice” (Live Science 2013)
• The End of Snow (New York Times 2012)
• 1960s: 5000 polar bears. 2019: 25,000+ polar bears, too numerous to count
It's cute to see these kids protesting toward an empty State House (don't they know it's Friday?) but the adults who have made billions in personal profits with climate hysteria should be investigated.
Imagine being mad at teenagers
for wanting to breathe clean air and help the environment.
If you don't think climate change/global warming are real concerns...then don't go to demonstrations like this? Seems pretty simple. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And while you probably meant to be condescending calling this "cute"...you come off as creepy.
Do everyone and yourself a favor and stay away from high school bathrooms, mmmkay buddy?
P.S. FUCK XII. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Got anything after 2012?
No?
You can go to hell, too.
Fishy says this teenage girl is overdressed
because he'd probably prefer that she had less clothing on.
YA FRIGGIN CREEPER.
these comments
seem to have taken quite a turn... political argument with good points on both sides turns into accusations of pedophilia? what's up with you people?
Question
...are you new here, and unfamiliar with the cast of characters?
"My feelings are more important than yours"
Me expressing my opinion that O-FISH-L is a creep is...wait for it...
an exercise in my right to freedom of speech.
But, please, by all means continue to be disproportionately emotionally affected by my posts.
It just makes my posts more popular and visible. :)
EDIT: Hey, BostonSchoolTeacher...where do you teach? Do you work for Boston Public Schools (must be why you picked any anonymous handle?)?
While I commend you on your apparent career choice...maybe there are more constructive things you could be doing? Like, I dunno...making lesson plans or something?
You're so overdone you must
You're so overdone you must be a parody account.
Aww, MattyC
You want some attention from me sooo badly, huh? Uh oh! Somebody is super sensitive to rejection!
By all means, don't stop imitating my post style and hounding my replies on here...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
And thank you for helping boost my visbility/popularity on here. :)
I'm impervious to ad hominem internet attacks, little buddy. The opinions of internet strangers don't matter much to me.
Why do they matter so much to you?
Disingenuous, race-baiting idiot
It's cute to see a grown-ass man sitting on his well-grown ass, doing absolutely nothing for the betterment of anything but to preserve his own narrow privilege, clinging to a worldview that is crumbling in the face of reality, posting fact-free taunts at anyone who tries to make anything better for anyone who isn't a straight white Catholic dude right out of his own little narrow inbred cabbage patch. By which I mean that it isn't cute at all, it's revolting and contemptible and built on lies and bigotry, as is everything you do.