neosapiens’s Recent Comments

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  There is another possible reason for the President's approach: in the short run he's stuck with dealing with the senators we have, and he's afraid that a more aggressive approach will just make them dig their heels in so deeply that nothing legislative will be able to be accomplished. We're talking about an exclusive club of people with vast egos, parochial viewpoints, little accountability, where each and every one of them has veto power over legislative action because of the 60-vote requirement to close debate. In the absence of a major groundswell of public anger, the President may not have many options.On Is Bill McKibben right to be angry with Obama? posted 4 days, 8 hours ago 35 Responses

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  What's desperately needed is a sustained national dialog where the denier talking points are thoroughly demolished and the facts presented in a way that will shake people up, touch their hearts, and get them really, really angry. Once the self-serving lies are thoroughly exposed and there's nowhere to hide, lawmakers will be more amenable to serving the needs of the people who voted for them instead of the big-money corporate interests that have been gumming up the works. This is something where the president could choose to lead, or at least to support a sustained a vigorous campaign to inform the public. Until the president stands up and leads, every effort to address the nation's most urgent problems will continue to be hijacked in the senate and used to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to line the pockets of well-heeled contributors to a few key senators.On Is Bill McKibben right to be angry with Obama? posted 4 days, 9 hours ago 35 Responses

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  The CO2 fertilization fallacy has been studied and debunked. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/co_2-fertilization/ On a small scale, as long as there is enough nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, abundant water and protection from disease and insects, plants do temporarily enjoy faster growth from higher CO2 levels. If we stopped emitting CO2 and did our level best to cultivate plant growth, it would still take centuries for the damage we've already done to be reversed. But we're emitting CO2 at rates that are far above what the natural world can process, and we're defoliating the planet at a rapid pace instead of fostering plant growth. And the CO2 is acidifying the oceans and tipping conditions back to what they were the last time there was a vast die-off of sea life. High levels of CO2 are not harmless. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-acid-ocean-the-other-problem-with-cosub2sub-emission/On Is "we're going to burn the coal anyway" an argument for carbon sequestration? posted 5 days, 22 hours ago 40 Responses

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  Bob, that's just a rehash of old propaganda. The rebalancing of CO2 levels is something that will take eons. In the meantime, the precarious industrial agriculture system that is feeding 7 billion people will break down if we let climate be destabilized by excess CO2. If we care about human suffering, we'll do something about CO2. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/On Is "we're going to burn the coal anyway" an argument for carbon sequestration? posted 1 week ago 40 Responses

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  The fact that the coal-burning utilities haven't exactly been eagerly pouring billions of their own money into carbon sequestration research suggests that they don't believe their own propaganda and that the whole argument about sequestration is a delaying tactic. If sequestration was such a fantastic idea, they would have already perfected it, rather than holding out for federal money to do the research.On Is "we're going to burn the coal anyway" an argument for carbon sequestration? posted 1 week, 1 day ago 40 Responses