TJ, regarding: In the meantime I note that many interesting / novel approaches being taken on all sorts of issues, and some issues seem much like carbon credit construct, out of thin air
Wayyy back in 1984, in my BP Oil NZ job as Technical Services Manager, in downstream marketing. I was delegated various things to come up with solutions for, such as emissions such as lead, benzene, 1 nitropyrene and into the mix came CO2. My boss Nelson Cull and I were discussing things and regarding CO2 I explained that it might or might not be a problem regarding the Greenhouse Effect and therefore Global Warming [Climate Change was not then a fashionable phrase]. If it turned out to not be a problem, no worries. At the time, we were selling fuel oil to heat glasshouses to grow crops - the warmth stopped frost and plants generally need to be warm, and the CO2 is the food for plants that live by chlorophyl. So CO2 is a good thing unless there's too much.
The question is how much is too much. The misguided Earth in the Balance gang mistakenly thinks that Earth was in balance until people came along and messed things up with CO2 emissions from coal, limestone, gas, oil, peat, heavy crudes. In fact Earth was never in balance and has forever been a crystallisation process in which stuff ends up stuck together kind of, more or less. Hence lumps of gold, crystals of quartz, vast deposits of limestone such as the Nullarbor Plains, and dolomites such as the Dolomite mountains. Also vast underground deposits of coal, oil, gas, tars.
Earth had had 8000 ppm of CO2 in the air before the carboniferus era when it started being stripped by plants, which were eaten by insects and everything else and finally fallen to the ocean floor and buried in kilometres of sediment which trundled to subduction zones down where it plunged to fuel volcanic explosions and leaked up to form deposits under impermeable layers.
The atmosphere got down to starvation levels so plants could barely survive and could not where irrigation was poor such as what became desert regions. Unlike humans, plants don't have political systems to avoid tragedy of the commons calamities. So they just kept on taking CO2 right down to below 300 ppm. They need 1000 ppm at least to do well, which reduces the amount of water they need.
Anyway, I explained to my boss Nelson Cull that if CO2 turned out to be a problem the answer was easy = simply tax carbon by $1, $5, $10, $100 per kilogram and cut other taxes by the same amount, and pay dividends to pensioners who could then choose to use their dividend to buy petrol, or keep it and walk, ride a bike, take a bus, or avoid the activity. With a tax cut transport operators would get a LOT of incentive to find ways to avoid the tax such as backhauls, more efficiency, going electric, using biofuels [which I was working on]. Nelson shushed me and I still recall him waving his hands in a shushing way, explaining that we did NOT want taxes on our products. I said that maybe so, but if CO2 is a problem, that's the best solution.
Roll on nearly 40 years and CO2 does STILL not seem to be a problem as the predicted temperature calamity, sea level rise and whatnot have NOT happened. But there have been 40 years of improving crops and lowered irrigation requirements = great news. Sea level has risen in my life about 15cm, and even that is probably not due to CO2 as it's just a continuation of the sea level rise that started fast 10,000 years ago and rose 250 metres or so by 2000 years ago and has slowed ever since though continuing to rise.
But instead of my good solution of taxing fossil carbon by the kilogram emitted, the dopey governments, who always see such problems as looting opportunities and gifts for their friends, came up with the absurd Emissions Trading Scam. The Emissions Trading Scheme is a daft idea which requires vast management and book keeping, politicking, global conferences in exotic locations, crooked calculating, misguided activity and general failure.
The Greenies have come around to my way of thinking but regular humans hate carbon taxes coz their thieving scum governments just loot the taxes and don't give them back to the taxpayers = just another burden on everyone.
Meanwhile, CO2 remains more of a good thing with crops booming and irrigation down, deserts being reclaimed by plants while ice is not melting, sea level isn't rising and temperatures are not rising. We have real problems such as nuclear war obliteration, incoming asteroids which cause instant sea level rise of metres or 10s of metres or even 100s of metres in 1 second. 20 cm in a hundred years can be ignored. We have humanized H5N1 as a 70% mortality risk, which would make the trivial covid outbreak a relative nothing.
The covid19 catastrophe resulted probably from Wuhan lab fiddling with sars, to invent viruses and vaccines. Maybe it was an accidental release, or maybe a deliberate deployment. If we ask "Who benefits?" we get an idea. If we follow the money, we get ideas.
Firemen have been known to set fires because of course they love fires. People gravitate towards things they like. Inventors of viruses, must be curious about how they would go in the real world. Maybe just a little test would be worth while to see.
I've always been suspicious of computer virus software defenders = buy our product to stop viruses infecting your computer. Why would anyone invent viruses, malware and whatnot. Obviously some such viruses might give access to bank accounts or whatnot. But most viruses seemed to be produced by people just for fun or to be malicious. It seemed to me that antivirus companies badly needed there to be a continuous flow of new viruses for them to fight. So of c ourse it's not surprising that they got what they needed.
Does the USA military industrial complex need a continuous flow of bad guys and evil doers to fight? Yes they do. Imagine if everyone just happily got along like regular people do. I don't keep the peace with my neighbours by arming myself against them. We co-operate and enjoy each others' presence, with mutual benefits.
The USA started the Ukraine war and the Ukrainians were keen to go along with the Yanks who supplied loot which was laundered back to Hunter for sex, drugs and cash flow, and to the Big Guy = Joe10%, not to mention all the other politicians on the take in Ukraine. Lindsay Graham and John McCain went there to stir up war and get the fighting revved up more. Victoria Nuland was delegated to get the coup going and succeeded in that murderous episode which started the whole tragic situation.
Mqurice |
