The GOP cannot continue to ignore this.
Please see below:
Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations Surpass 400 PPM Milestone
Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide surpassed a notable milestone this week.
They reached a daily average above 400 parts per million, reported NOAA, for the first time in human history.
The milestone, hit on May 9, may be symbolic, notes Climate Central, but manmade CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue to rise, bringing greater atmospheric warming and exacerbating the effects of climate change.
Scientists argue we've loaded the "climate dice" in favor of more weather anomalies and extreme heat waves.
Carbon dioxide levels highest in recorded human history
This greenhouse gas traps heat, changes weather patterns, and raises sea levels. Ralph Keeling runs the CO2 monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
He believes efforts to curb emissions have failed and some impacts of climate change are irreversible.
"We're moving into dangerous territory," he said. "So there are lots of threats to human beings in these changes. We don't know exactly how big but it's very unlikely that we're going to get through this without major turmoil."
The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change
Thursday, May 9, 2013
By Coral Davenport
Kerry Emanuel registered as a Republican as soon he turned 18, in 1973. The aspiring scientist was turned off by what he saw as the Left’s blind ideology. “I had friends who denied Pol Pot was killing people in Cambodia,” he says. “I reacted very badly to the triumph of ideology over reason.”
Back then, Emanuel saw the Republican Party as the political fit for a data-driven scientist. Today, the professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is considered one of the United States’ foremost authorities on climate change—particularly on how rising carbon pollution will increase the intensity of hurricanes.
In January 2012, just before South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, the Charleston-based Christian Coalition of America, one of the most influential advocacy groups in conservative politics, flew Emanuel down to meet with the GOP presidential candidates. Perhaps an unlikely prophet of doom where global warming is concerned, the coalition has begun to push Republicans to take action on climate change, out of worry that coming catastrophes could hit the next generation hard, especially the world’s poor.
The meetings didn’t take. “[Newt] Gingrich and [Mitt] Romney understood, … and I think they even believed the evidence and understood the risk,” Emanuel says. “But they were so terrified by the extremists in their party that in the primaries they felt compelled to deny it. Which is not good leadership, good integrity. I got a low impression of them as leaders.”
Throughout the Republican presidential primaries, every candidate but one—former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who was knocked out of the race at the start—questioned, denied, or outright mocked the science of climate change.
Soon after his experience in South Carolina, Emanuel changed his lifelong Republican Party registration to independent.
“The idea that you could look a huge amount of evidence straight in the face and, for purely ideological reasons, deny it, is anathema to me,” he says.
Emanuel predicts that many more voters like him, people who think of themselves as conservative or independent but are turned off by what they see as a willful denial of science and facts, will also abandon the GOP, unless the party comes to an honest reckoning about global warming."
MORE HERE.
But that's where we are: Ideology trumping science. And the greatest amount of ideological denial is within the GOP. As long as they control the House and its legislative role in dealing with climate change, nothing will be done.
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), the new chairman of a critical House subcommittee on the environment, is doubling down on his climate change denial.In an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune this past weekend.
Stewart repeated a litany of climate change denial tropes before insisting that the reason Congress has been unable to pass comprehensive climate legislation is because even Democrats don't believe the science behind anthropogenic global warming:
In 2009, despite having control of the entire elected government, President Obama and the Democrats in Washington chose not to pass climate change legislation. And why not? Because even the majority of Democrats recognize that the science regarding climate change is uncertain, the suggested remedies would likely not work, and would be devastating to working families.
The claim is demonstrably false. A Gallup poll released last week found that 78 percent of Democrats think human activities contribute directly to global warming. Only 39 percent of Republicans said the same.
MORE ANT-SCIENCE DENIAL FROM THE GOP:
APRIL 2011: House Republicans rejected several measures Tuesday that called on Congress to adopt the scientific consensus that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity and that it is a threat to human health.
We’ve known since before the 2010 election that most of the new House Republicans openly deny the science behind climate change. But now it’s officially on the record. So here, for that record, is a list of things Republicans now say they officially don’t believe:
* that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has skyrocketed by about 100 parts per million since 1950.
* that carbon dioxide disrupts the transfer of thermal energy through the atmosphere, trapping it and redirecting it back to Earth (otherwise known as the “greenhouse effect”).
* that the absorption of this heat has caused the Earth’s oceans to get warmer by about .302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969. When water gets warmer, it expands, resulting in rising sea levels.
* that the warming of the Earth has also has caused glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets to melt.
* that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are each losing mass at an accelerating rate. Together, they’ve lost a combined average of 475 gigatonnes a year. And that rate of loss is accelerating by about 36.3 gigatonnes every year. That water ends up in the Earth’s oceans.
* that glaciers are also retreating across Asia, threatening the water supply there and resulting in massive water runoffs and extreme flooding. In Bhutan, 66 glaciers have decreased by 8.1 percent over the last 30 years. The Himalayan glacier Chhota Shigri Glacier, in India, has lost 12 percent of its mass in just the last 13 years.
* that the addition of this water to the oceans has caused the rate of global sea rise to double in the last decade, to about 3.4 millimeters per year (as opposed to about 1.8 millimeters for the last century).
* that the warming of the planet increases the likelihood and frequency of extreme weather events — including hurricanes and intense rainfall — by raising ocean temperatures and adding energy to the Earth’s atmosphere. Since 1975, the destructive power of tropical cyclones — their duration and maximum wind speed — has increased by 70 percent. that the atmosphere is getting much, much warmer.
2010 is now tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record — ever. The 20 warmest years on record have occurred since 1981. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 12 years.
The denial of these and other facts supporting the scientific consensus that climate change is real is not merely ideological; it’s political.
Republicans are trying to block new regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency that would limit greenhouse gas emissions, on the grounds that those rules would hurt the GOP’s corporate patrons.
42 comments:
The SOLUTION? The SOLUTION please.
Nuclear
Wind
Hydro
Wood
Solar
A return to the PRIMATIVE
What?
More regulation
Increased costs
Candle power
Horse and buggy
Whatever our ultimate course it will exact its pound of pain.
Move on to the solution. It will no doubt be a political one.
The New Ice Age that I kept hearing about in college (1968-1972) didn't materialize. Instead, we got the New Heat Age.
Just sayin'.
I must say that the 1960's winters here were enough to make a lot of people, including me, to wonder if a New Ice Age were looming. It wasn't. Apparently.
AOW, isn't it possible that science has advanced a tremendous amount in 53 years, and that scientists can and do measure more accurately what is happening since 1960?
The science is overwhelming in this case and yet the GOP leadership is mired in ideology that denies what is happening in front of their noses.
The GOP is the same party that denies that evolution is settled science--another ideological position that is utterly preposterous.
The reason for these anti-science positions?
To appeal to their fundamentalist base.
Shaw,
isn't it possible that science has advanced a tremendous amount in 53 years, and that scientists can and do measure more accurately what is happening since 1960?
Possibly, yes.
But there are scientists who dispute the information about climate change, aren't there?
I admit that I don't focus on this matter of climate change.
Forty years ago....there were those that thought we could pollute our planet as much as we wanted... and there would be no consequences; the earth would just 'heal' itself. "And the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. It wasn't safe to swim in lakes, the fish were not fit to eat, species died out. We effected a change.
To deny that man does NOT have the potential to affect the environment is ridiculous. Just take a short, small look at Newton's Laws of Motion.
1. First law: An object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by a force. An object in motion remains in motion, and at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force. [2][3]
2. Second law: The acceleration of a body is directly proportional to, and in the same direction as, the net force acting on the body, and inversely proportional to its mass. Thus, F = ma, where F is the net force acting on the object, m is the mass of the object and a is the acceleration of the object.
3. Third law: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to that of the first body.
This has been accepted science for centuries.
We know the finite nature of the planet..... we know the forces we are exerting on it. It is Illogical to assume that there is NOT a change taking place.
Conversely, we know that WE CAN CHANGE ......
course, if Pat Robertson would only pray really really hard.... it will all just go away.
Your assertion is scientifically unfounded. The climate change debate is polluted with junk science, unscientific advocates like Reverend Al Gore of the International Church of Gaia, and bald-faced propagandists.
Even the good, scientifically sound data is conflicting.
Having said that, of course the climate is changing, it always is. The 20th century saw a small rise, and it may have leveled off in the past ten years.
Here's an interesting fact to cast upon this sea of propaganda and conjecture:
Since 2000, The US has lowered its carbon emissions more that European countries that are signatories to kyoto.
The free market is continually finding ways to be more energy efficient because it keeps more money in the pockets of producers.
Throwing trillions at corrupt global organization and paying guilt money to underdeveloped countries in a foolish attempt to turn down the earth's temperature would be the equivalent of sacrificing virgins to the volcano gods.
Carbon output is skyrocketing in the developing world, particularly China and India. Someone one must go over there and demand they get back to their grinding misery and dung fires.
Bjorn Lomborg has a much more reasoned approach, which is to focus our resources on adapting to climate changes.
"But there are scientists who dispute the information about climate change, aren't there?"
They are a minority.
"Scientists change their minds on the basis of the evidence, and a consensus emerges over time. Not only do scientists stop arguing, they also start relying on each other's work. All science depends on that which precedes it, and when one scientist builds on the work of another, he acknowledges the work of others through citations. The work that forms the foundation of climate change science is cited with great frequency by many other scientists, demonstrating that the theory is widely accepted - and relied upon.
In the scientific field of climate studies – which is informed by many different disciplines – the consensus is demonstrated by the number of scientists who have stopped arguing about what is causing climate change – and that’s nearly all of them. A survey of all peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject 'global climate change' published between 1993 and 2003 shows that not a single paper rejected the consensus position that global warming is man caused. 75% of the papers agreed with the consensus position while 25% made no comment either way, focusing on methods or paleoclimate analysis (Oreskes 2004).
Several subsequent studies confirm that “...the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes”. (Doran 2009). In other words, more than 95% of scientists working in the disciplines contributing to studies of our climate, accept that climate change is almost certainly being caused by human activities.
We should also consider official scientific bodies and what they think about climate change. There are no national or major scientific institutions anywhere in the world that dispute the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Not one.
"In the field of climate science, the consensus is unequivocal: human activities are causing climate change."
SF -- "The free market is continually finding ways to be more energy efficient because it keeps more money in the pockets of producers."
Energy efficiency means you need less energy to accomplish the same thing. Please explain how efficiency keeps more money in producers pockets when money only enters their pockets when they sell energy, not save it?
Bjorn Lomborg is not a climatologist, he's a writer.
"In the chapter on climate change in his 2001 book A Skeptical Environmentalist he states; "This chapter accepts the reality of man-made global warming but questions the way in which future scenarios have been arrived at and finds that forecasts of climate change of 6 degrees by the end of the century are not plausible."
Lomborg claims to have consistently supported the position that global warming exists, but cost–benefit analyses, as calculated by the Copenhagen Consensus ranked climate mitigation initiatives low on a list of international development initiatives when first done in 2004.
In a 2010 interview with the New Statesman, Lomborg summarized his position on climate change: "Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world."
No scientist I read has said it is the end of the world, either.
SF: "Even the good, scientifically sound data is conflicting."
Can you link to that data, please?
AOW, I forgot to include this in my comment to you and to link to the article.
97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.
SOURCE
Sorry. It's Saturday and the phone and doorbell has not stopped ringing!
"HAVE!"
Usually I consider it bad form to include a self-authored link in a comment box. This time, I make an exception because the subject is too important to ignore, and the content offers a worthy synopsis of the data - even for laypersons: Climate Change Deniers and Boiled Frogs:
" For most folks, the climate change crisis is vague and impalpable. You cannot see it, touch it, or watch it happen on cable news. It lacks the immediate drama of a hurricane or tsunami. Climate change may not be noticed for a decade or even within a lifetime. Yet, it exists today as a set of observations and data points that are too arcane and abstract for many people to grasp. But make no mistake: Global climate change is here … a dark cloud hanging over the lives of our grandchildren and future generations. Despite the preponderance of data, there are skeptics, doubters, and boiled frogs. ..."
What motivates the deniers? The fossil fuel industry is hell-bent on protecting their filthy franchises.
There are politicians - mostly within the ranks of the GOP - who have their hands the pockets of the fossil fuel industry.
There are voters who self-identify along lines and will mimic the talking points of their mentors - even when those talking points fly in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
There are people who simply cannot accept what may be tantamount to the greatest atrocity in the history of the world - in the same way there are people who cannot stand the sight of blood.
And there are some people who are simply dumbshit jackasses, as there have always been.
One would think the root "conserve" in the word "conservative" would mean something!
Although the article is now 4 years old, the data tells a compelling story. Please have a look.
Shaw: 97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.
They are incompetent or lying. I don't believe that, but there are some who do... and they say their reasons have nothing to do with partisan politics.
OCTOPUS: Usually I consider it bad form to include a self-authored link in a comment box.
I guess that's fine for people whose blogs get lots of traffic. Mine does not. Including a link is a way to get some hits. Or I guess I could just call it quits and give up. Perhaps I should. I can't even get my own followers to visit me any more (including Octopus, who I doubt has been to my blog in YEARS). Anyway, given the importance of this issue, here is a link to the posts on my blog that have to do with Global Climate Change.
This is the one where I explain why the scientists used to say there would be global cooling.
@ Jerry: "Energy efficiency means you need less energy to accomplish the same thing. Please explain how efficiency keeps more money in producers pockets when money only enters their pockets when they sell energy, not save it?"
I was talking about consumers of energy who use it to produce other things.
Shaw: Links to data that disagrees with your preferred tunnel-vision? Are you serious.
There's a newfangled contraption out there called google, and you can look up all kinds of stuff with it.
Global cooling (again) is one possibility some are talking about.
The Earth's biosphere is very complex, no one understands completely how it work. Any scientist that speaks with metaphysical certainty is a crackpot.
I know that Lomborg is not a scientist. Neither is Reverend Al Gore.
The validity of Lomborg's ideas on how to economically cope with global changes, which he accepts are happening, are not contingent upon him being a scientist.
He's very sensible. The ones to watch out for are the ones who tell you fairy tales about how if we just sprinkle enough rich country money and fairy dust around, we can lower the earth's temperature.
Dervish Sanders.
The reason why I consider it bad form to include a self-authored link: All too often bloggers abuse the opportunity to engage in self-promotion (aka “blog whoring”) when they should leave self-interest outside before entering a comment room. On very rare occasions, an exception is warranted.
FYI: “Life comes before blogging.” If your weblog receives no hits, consider yourself fortunate. There are golfers in my neighborhood who have no pretense of ever winning a PGA, boaters who have no expectations of taking home an Americas Cup, and photographers who will never make the pages of National Geographic. Whatever your bliss, do it for sun or fun; but doing it for an audience, for adulation, for hits – not worth it, my friend.
china and india have about 800 new coal fired electrical generators planned for the next decade. they'll be sending us a lot more than cheap clothes and electronics.
Octopus, I thought it was bad form to "blog whore" with a link and NOT address the topic at hand. If you have a post on your blog that address the topic at hand, then what's the problem? We (blog commenters) often link to articles from news sites and those being paid for the opinions on the news... do we not? I do not see linking to your own blog as that different (if your post address the topic being discussed).
Anyway I don't blog for "adulation"... but getting hits is kind of the point of blogging. Otherwise we'd be writing in journals instead of posting on the web for others to see. But, seeing as you don't want hits I'll stay away from your blog in the future (I'm a considerate fellow).
SF,
Yes, global warming is complicated, but it is also a fact.
Smart-ass comments don't add to understanding.
This post's title reflects the anti-science ethos of the GOP and one of the articles shows that even when the leaders of the GOP have an understanding that global warming is real, they are so terrified of their base that they choose ideology over science.
That is what THIS post is about.
I've heard and read from more than one GOP politician that global warming is a hoax.
That is bullpuckey and the longer the GOP hangs onto that lie the more people will distance themselves from the anti-science political party.
This is an excellent site for more clear-headed information, and it elucidates the data without any snarky, wise-ass partisan sniping at those with whom you disagree.
Al Gore has been correct all along, and way ahead of the dimwits who keep denying reality.
When I say the GOP is anti-science, I base that statement on what has come out of the party leadership on this subject, and that is to DENY, DENY, and DENY.
Here is what the GOP supported as a party in his 2012 platform at it convention in Tampa:
Energy and environment
It seems as though the GOP has backed off from its pledge to address climate change and wean the country off of fossil fuels as espoused in its 2008 platform and promoted by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and his running mate Sarah Palin as they campaigned against Barack Obama. The 2008 document mentioned cutting greenhouse gases, reducing the demand for fossil fuels, and awarding millions of dollars to scientists who find ways to solve climate change challenges, but the 2012 platform excises nearly all of that verbiage. Instead, it trumpets the need to further develop domestic fossil fuel sources, opposes carbon cap and trade schemes, and calls on Congress to limit the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gasses as pollutants—an authority recently upheld by a US federal appeals court.
The 2012 platform also ditches language from the 2008 stance that indicated a role for tax payers in funding the development of alternative energy sources. Instead, the 2012 platform emphasizes a "market-based approach for renewable energy sources."
Senator Inhofe and Governor Perry of Texas have called global warming a hoax.
Rush Limbaugh: "There is no science in global warming." What science there is, he said, "is not settled. Beside that, we all know that it's a hoax now."
"On a chilly day in March, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, stood outside the Capitol, calling for more global warming and denouncing efforts to set a price on carbon as 'recycled liberal policy that raises taxes and kills jobs.' "
"Also last month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, insisted on removing the word 'climate' from a resolution celebrating International Women's Day."
"A growing trove of scholarly studies and interviews with former Republican politicians and leaders of the denial camp show a concerted public relations campaign to cast doubt on climate science.
That campaign is funded by fossil-fuel interests, nursed by a network of think tanks and amplified by conservative media.
The think tanks rely on a tiny cadre of scientists who dispute mainstream climate science; some also questioned the science of tobacco, acid rain and ozone depletion."
Whatever makes you feel good...
Muddying science
The number of climate scientists runs to the tens of thousands worldwide, working across fields from chemistry to oceanography.
UC San Diego science historian Naomi Oreskes, whose 2010 book "Merchants of Doubt" with historian Erik Conway traced climate denial's origins to the tobacco industry's efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to muddy the science on smoking, said raising doubt about science has proved extremely effective.
"You don't actually have to lie, you just have to ask questions," Oreskes said. "The problem is the questions actually have answers. Scientists have actually answered them. So by posing the question, it gives the public the impression that these questions have not been answered, even though in fact they really have."
Deniers appropriate the scientific principle of skepticism, "which is why it's so clever and also so diabolical," Oreskes said. "It takes the strength of science, which is being open-minded and asking questions, and uses it against science. It's a jujitsu move. You take your opponent's strength and you turn it against them."
Although the climate-change denial campaign has been funded by fossil fuel interests, it is driven as much by ideology as by money, political scientists said.
"If it were money only, it would be so much easier to deal with," said Theda Skocpol, a Harvard University political scientist. "Everybody on the left thinks it's only money and it's only Exxon. If it were, you could strike a bargain. It's definitely ideology, along with the usual kind of industrial lobbying against any regulations or taxes that affect their sector."
Carbon pollution is the result of a market failure to incorporate environmental costs in the price of fossil fuels. Such failures are known as negative externalities and the "tragedy of the commons," in which individuals acting in self-interest deplete a communal resource, in this case the atmosphere and oceans, to the detriment of society.
Because controlling carbon pollution requires the kind of government action that free-market conservatives abhor, "they dispute the (scientific) premise that leads to those implications," Oreskes said.
"Whatever makes you feel good?"
That sounds like some sense has finally gotten through to you.
The evidence IS overwhelming.
Evangelicals' role
Evangelicals also are prone to climate change denial, said William Reilly, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under former President George H.W. Bush.
Reilly said an evangelical leader warned him not to talk "in terms of the scientific consensus and mainstream science, because those guys, they're the ones that support stem cell research, they're the big proponents of Darwinism, and they oppose any kind of creationism."
GOP politicians, Reilly added, have told him of a "strong suspicion among evangelicals" that climate policy is giving powers to humans "that really belong to God." To reach evangelicals, Reilly said, those who urge action on climate change should adopt "a vocabulary of stewardship and care of the Earth that is consonant with biblical understanding."
While Ebell labeled those pushing for action on climate change as alarmists, he raised unsubstantiated alarms about the cost of switching to renewable energy and ignored the cost of rising seas, droughts, diminished farm production and other consequences of a hotter planet.
"We're talking about trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of economic damage done on the basis of a theory that has been exploded," Ebell said.
Well, one thing we don't seem interested in doing is answering Rational Nation's question.
What do we do?
Why isn't a hint of a long term energy policy in place?
We'll continue to listening to the energy companies house organs convince us that the science isn't 100% conclusive so we do nothing.
Well not exactly nothing. The Keystone is being built and we will transport some of the dirtiest energy extant. I believe that's what Silverfiddle calls a "free market" (LMAO)™ solution. Silver, you forgot to mention George Soros.
Yes, adapt to the change. Make sure the wealthy among us are not unduly put out, make sure the poor bear the brunt, make sure the wealthy profit. Good Christian solution, Silver.
What shocks me most is how vehemently the evangelicals are dead set against even accepting the possibility of a problem. Reactionary tools as far as I'm concerned.
But Rational Nation, as Silver informs us, we've solved the problem.
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the power to change what I can, AND THE WISDOM to KNOW the DIFFERENCE."
Les Carpenter (RN) asked all the right questions.
Nobody answered him, as Ducky duly noted, because NOBODY COULD.
There ARE no RATIONAL SOLUTIONS to this problem IF, indeed the Problem exists, which I seriously doubt.
ACCEPT the THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE.
If we DIE, we DIE. So what?
In a hundred years nobody will give a good God damn anyway, so why spoil what's left of your life fretting and fuming?
We're ALL going to die one day anyway no matter what.
In the meantime LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE-- and for CHRIST'S SAKE -- be HAPPY.
How incredibly ARROGANT to imagine that mankind has the power to halt hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, the changing of the tides, and the CLIMATE!
At one time people thought it was arrogant to say that man could fly, or that man could travel,to the moon. What we think is impossible now may be common place in the future.
Don't humans try to fight and control naturally occurring forest fires? Don't humans build dams to hold back flood waters? And don't humans develop warning systems for tornadoes and hurricanes so that lives are saved?
Throwing up our hands and saying we can do nothing about man-made green-house gases is what is arrogant IMO.
As Jerry Critter said, if we have the brains and the technology to go to the moon and beyond, we can do something about this as well.
Can someone here explain this chart?
Not snark on my part. I'm unclear as to what this chart is tracking!
AOW,
THIS may help as an explanation.
AOW!
The chart you referenced shows the variation of sea ice during the year. Each line on the figure is a different year. The dip in the curves is caused by some of the sea ice melting during the warmer months.
Jerry,
Wouldn't it be normal for the ice to melt some in the summer?
Shaw,
I'll read the link later. No time right now.
AOW,
Yes, some of the ice melts in the summer. That is what the chart shows. It also shows that as you progress from 2005 to 2012 the amount of ice melting during the summer increases. (The line for 2012 is significantly below the line for 2005 in the summer months.) One explanation for the increased melting is hotter summers.
See if you can find a critical phrase, FT.
“Using capitalistic decision rules, the answer to what should be done today to prevent such [vastly destructive eco-logical] problems is very clear.... However large the negative effects fifty to one hundred years from now might be, their current discounted net present value [to the corporation] is [practically] zero. If the current value of the future negative consequences is zero, then nothing should be spent today to prevent those distant problemsfrom emerging. But [even] if the negative effects are very large fifty to one hundred years from now, by then itwill be too late to do anything to make the situation better since anything done at that time could only improvethe situation another fifty to one hundred years into the future. So being good capitalists, those who live in thefuture, no matter how bad their problems are, will also decide to do nothing. Eventually a generation will arrivewho cannot survive in the earth’s altered environment, but by then it will be too late for them to do anything to prevent their own extinction.”
--- Lester Thurow
Not all decisions should be financially based...unless you put a dollar value on life, ease of living,and the general welfare, something corporations do not care about and do nothing about.
Unfortunately we find ourselves in a period when finance is the sole driver.
Finance also appears to be the soul deliver.
Jerry, everything is financial in the final analysis is it not? Think in terms of your household and what would be the ramifications of financial mismanagement. Or...
think of the financial mismanagement of the last fifty three years or so of the finances of the USA.
Everything may have a financial component in the final analysis, but it is certainly not the only consideration by a long shot.
Final analysis infers other considerations have taken place as well, does it not? Isn't it prudent to understand cost associated with the issue? I mean since the sun will one day "burn out" the human race is destined to extinction.
The cost benefit relationship is a very valid consideration.
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