Does that graph include China's average income or just USA? Either way, of course the top 1% are getting richer really fast, because Cyberspace and the modern globalized 7 billion population has opened fantastically stupendous opportunities.
Today, somebody can produce a software something and billions of people can download it. If they pay $1 that's $billions earned in a few weeks. Everyone is richer as a result, but the 1% inventors and their backers get supersonic rich. It would be very surprising if that wasn't happening.
I have no reason to be upset because poor little me is not getting richer like Larry Ellison and the 1%. I'm happy to buy and use the amazing things they produce. Come to think of it, I'd better go and get one of those swishy Samsung Galaxy Note Snapdragon Cyberspace devices. My old cellphones are obsolete and I should get something BEFORE the old one is turned off as being so old it's no longer worth the company maintaining service for it.
<Have you noticed Lomborg's evolution over the last 10 or so years?> No, I don't know anything about him. But I know about my own evolution over the last 30 years:
1984. CO2? Hmmm, shouldn't be a problem, but if it is, we should introduce a carbon tax with counter-vailing tax cuts on low carbon things such as computers and increased pension payments so that old people can still buy the same amount of petrol if they really want to do so instead of pocketing the bonus cash. My BP Oil boss said "Shhhhh. We don't want that sort of idea being loaded on our product." [or words to that effect]
1986. BP Oil was developing Orimulsion for power stations. I invented CO2 liquefaction from the exhaust of power stations, piping it to below 400 metres or so under the ocean to sit in big puddles on the ocean floor, gradually dissolving. I told a couple of visiting Mitsubishi engineers about my proposal [BP had a technology transfer agreement] They patented it about 3 years later since BP wasn't doing it. But I didn't think CO2 would amount to much. Party on
1988 Developed climate model for 11 year old son's school project showing that climate oscillates due to cloud, snow and plant cover changing reflectivity, rather than the simplistic CO2 photon absorption theory. More plants absorb more CO2 and marine life dumps it at the bottom of the ocean in sediment kilometres deep, which is trundled along to subduction zones where it fuels volcanoes and forms oil deposits in sedimentary layers.
1990s. Not paying much attention to it but thinking there is so much atmosphere and CO2 already being processed that humans aren't going to amount to much. Party on.
Early 21st century. Okay, it's true that human CO2 emissions are really getting going and Peak CO2 is nowhere near in sight. Wharfie corrected my thinking that there was an inflection in Hawaiian CO2 level records likely becoming a peak in a decade or three. But sea level rise is trivially insignificant and temperature rise over hundreds of years almost as trivial. Party on.
Second decade of 21st century. CO2 levels are soaring, coal burning power stations are booming, plants are really happy, crops are surging, temperatures are level, climate models are bung with the actual temperature falling out the bottom of the GIGO model envelopes, Peak People is still quarter of a century away, autocars and other technology continues apace, photovoltaics are becoming competitive with oil burning, Cyberspace has gone from Zygote to Zeitgeist [so roaring around in dirty great Yank Tank SUVs is so last century]. Hawkmoon points out that an ocean iron-seeding trial was highly successful. Ships could carry megatons of iron sulphate as ballast and spread it over the ocean on return trips. If CO2 becomes a problem, we can deal with it then. For now, party on.
But in China they should really clean up their exhaust pipes. London went from hideous death-dealing smogs to a now almost pristine air quality, with no SOX, CO, NOX - sulphuric acid precursors, carbon monoxide poison and nitrogen oxide nasties. Qualcomm's Halo is being tried in London with prospects that London could be the first autocar halo-powered battery swap city.
What? Me Worry?
Mqurice |
