8 thoughts on “The Apocalypse Primary”

  1. In US, politically it probably not a good move to be anti- Green New Deal. Or reps run on making America great again or keeping it great, and let the dems kill themselves with with the Green New Deal nonsense. Or more active support for Green New Deal will result in larger election defeat.

    But for other countries which don’t have just two major parties, running on being anti-Green New Deal, or promising to oppose all spending and policy related to “global warming” should a good way to get voted into office.
    It should work particularly well in some parts of France.
    The Green New Deal is obviously a loser for dems, but it could winner for killing the global warming movement.

  2. When the economy is humming and you’re not in a war, it’s difficult to find “issues” to run on. AGW, giving money away to people who will vote for you and gun control are pretty much what the left has right now until the next big political thing comes along. Which is why just as the electioneering starts, Trump should announce the building of a number of “safe” advanced design reactors as possible future prototypes.

    1. But that would be cruel. ^_^

      I’ve on occasion discussed climate policy with Australians, many of whom are convinced they need to do radical things to slash their emissions. From 2002 to 2012 China added an Australia’s worth of CO2 emissions every seven months, and India will soon do the same. If Australian’s adopted a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, or even all drowned themselves in the ocean, the drop in emissions and change in temperatures a century hence wouldn’t be detectable anywhere else, even with the most sophisticated thermometers we can build.

      The same applies to measures that California or Illinois takes. China’s emissions are already passing the US and EU combined. And after China comes India, and after India comes Africa.

      Wind power won’t help because Asia and Africa have almost no significant wind compared to the north Atlantic, northern Europe, coastal New England, and a central section of the US. The ROI on a Siemens wind turbine off Scandinavia is about ten times higher than it would be in most other populated parts of the world. Something that’s barely competitive here will not be remotely comparative with coal or oil over there, and I’ll bet their miners work for a whole lot less than ours do.

      So one thing I’d ask all these wacko candidates is this:

      What you are suggesting, as radical as it sounds, still won’t fix the problem. If we go even further and kill everyone under age 30, to limit our future population, and everyone over 40, because they caused this problem, and everyone in between just to be thorough, it still won’t fix the problem, because most of the problem is overseas. So as a candidate, would you get behind a massive nuclear first strike that wipes out us, Russian, China, India, Europe, Africa, and most of humanity, or are you going to twiddle your thumbs and let the planet get destroyed? We’re all dead either way, but at least the nuclear option might let some other species survive.

      And then I’d sit back to see if they moved the Overton window off a cliff, with Democrats and progressives openly discussing mass genocide and nuclear Armageddon like it was an acceptable policy option, all to make sure that a century from now Akron doesn’t get as warm as Cincinnati.

      I guess another lesson is that if you make your constituents stupid, you’ll one day have to campaign on stupidity.

      1. China has been cleaning up with natural gas and renewables. Simply because in their main cities you can breathe without getting lung cancer and asthma. But yes they will remain highly dependent on coal for decades. It is just that it will be moved outside of major urban centers. China is making huge investments in HVDC for example.

  3. California shut down their nuclear reactors. There is no way they can eliminate carbon emissions.

    The future in California will be natural gas power plants together with solar generation. Expensive.

    Also any prospects for fracking in California proper are highly unlike because of the water requirements and NIMBYism.

    1. Solar is expensive. Natural gas not so much.

      There are a lot of different fracking technologies. Some of the newest ones don’t use any water at all.

      If CA landowners were permitted to decide whether or not to allow fracking on their own property, a lot of them would do as many have done already in other states – sign on the bottom line and start cashing those royalty checks.

  4. Things have never been better for humanity but somehow people are gullible enough to fall for the scam that says we are all going to die and the world is going to end in five, ten, twelve, or a hundred years. People who think they are superior to other humans, like the sciency crowd and many atheists, act with devote religiosity on the subject. They may be sentient but they are not self aware.

    Reality has a way of breaking down these religious movements as doom never comes as predicted and eventually people question the belief that uses these predictions of doom to manipulate the flock. Before this happens though, we can expect efforts to censor and control academia, traditional media, and the internet to get more totalitarian.

    If Democrats win, they will use government’s iron fist and if they lose, they will use a corporate iron fist. Lots of iron fisting without consent.

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