It's all over but for the sweating?

[radioranger]

meanwhile all of new England is enjoying a completely ," normal " winter. Until the government either gets off the backs of business or restricts imports of countries with slave labor and no enviromental concerns , we are cooked, plain and simple, tell anybody they cant have an I pad and they will react , better yet tell them each one now costs 400 $ more to pay for the healthcare and retirement of the workers, and see if they'll buy one, we are addicted to cheap stuff because our economy is so bad, we are depending on slave labor, just as the south and North did 150 years ago, buy from slaves and you owe em something, at least their freedom , every body wants people to change their bad habits, just not them, my neighbor hood is full of liberal global warming guys who burn wood, the most polluting way to heat your house except maybe coal.

[Arragonis]

Globalisation made the $150 iPad, and kept inflation down whilst we enjoyed the growth of the mid-90s to the mid-00s.

Before that it sent the manufacture of ICs and other components to Taiwan and Indonesia which is why very little is actually made in the west, although we do still design most of it.

Wood is worse than coal for energy created vs CO2 if that is your worry - which is of course why our stupid government keeps encouraging coal burning power stations to experiment with it.

EDIT - when I say "our stupid government" I mean the stupid one in the UK, I make no judgement on the on in the US.

[guyd]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

Make no mistake, the US could reduce CO2 emissions by converting our electric power generation to nuclear (getting over Fukushima hysteria) and electrifying our mainline freight railroads and Interstate truck lanes.

Can anybody really visualize China (the world's No. 1 emitter) reducing CO2 emissions?

But the enormous reductions some of the AGW crowd was calling for would simply bring about certain economic collapse. Better to chance AGW than the remedies proposed. Possible disaster is better than certain disaster.

In total, china is the highest, butbthe us is the highest per capita
List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Thats because of your defintion of "standard of living". By most standards it is measured as deaths in childbirth, deaths per thousand at ages such as 5, 10 or 20 years, average age at death or perhaps in more developed places the number of people who receive state assistance.

That seems a very strange way to measure standard of living, and one I've never seen used.

EDIT - also income per person, income per household etc.

Now that's getting closer, but absolute income is only part of the equation. What happens to your definition of SofL when income goes up by X, but the prices of important classes of goods go up by 2X, 3X, or more - as for instance land, because there's only a fixed amount? And meanwhile the cost of beads & trinkets goes down...

The idea that industrialisation leads to a lower standard of life is a common myth. For example during the UK industrial revolution (the first one in the world) people who moved from the country to work in the "dark satanic mills" typically lived longer and earned more than those who remained behind.

Earned more, yes, but also spent more because many necessities of life (starting with food) had to be purchased, through a food chain that added costs of transportation & storage, plus profits for any number of middlemen. I'd really have to see some irrefutable evidence of longer (and healthier) urban lives. Certainly it's not at all hard to find evidence of excess urban deaths. Here's a good one from air pollution: Clearing The Air Bradford wasn't even a major city, like London or "Auld Reekie". Then there were things like cholera epidemics caused by contaminated water, deficiency diseases like rickets...

It should also be noted that a substantial share of the migration from country to city was anything but voluntary. From the Highland Clearances & Enclosure Acts down to China's Three Gorges Dam (which forced the displacement of over a million people), governments have long pursued policies of forcing people into cities, where they can be more easily controlled.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by radioranger

...my neighbor hood is full of liberal global warming guys who burn wood, the most polluting way to heat your house except maybe coal.

Sorry, but wood is actually the least polluting way to heat your house, other than solar. It releases no fossil CO2 (ok, maybe a little bit running chainsaws &c), the combustion products are all purely natural, and most ecosystems have evolved to deal with fires.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Sorry, but wood is actually the least polluting way to heat your house, other than solar. It releases no fossil CO2 (ok, maybe a little bit running chainsaws &c), the combustion products are all purely natural, and most ecosystems have evolved to deal with fires.

My postage wasn't clear - more CO2 per unit of heat from wood vs Coal, the latter is more energy dense. Maybe it is better for houses but not for power stations ?

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Earned more, yes, but also spent more because many necessities of life (starting with food) had to be purchased, through a food chain that added costs of transportation & storage, plus profits for any number of middlemen. I'd really have to see some irrefutable evidence of longer (and healthier) urban lives.

I don't have this stat to hand (loaned the book (with sources in it) over Christmas to someone) however I recall from memory that the "Survey of the British Population" (Gregory King, circa 1688) recorded an annual income for a labourer of between £2 and £4 a year for a labourer and farm worker. It (the wage for an unskilled labourer) rose after 1800 so that it was 50% higher by 1850 despite the population growing by 3 times.

The attractiveness of the city vs rural life can be seen all over the world - 19th century Britain, 19th and 20th century USA, 20th Century Japan and even 1980s on China.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Certainly it's not at all hard to find evidence of excess urban deaths. Here's a good one from air pollution: Clearing The Air Bradford wasn't even a major city, like London or "Auld Reekie". Then there were things like cholera epidemics caused by contaminated water, deficiency diseases like rickets...

Actually Bradford was a major city in the industrial revolution in the UK - most cities were, including the one I am originally from - Preston on the other side of the Pennines. My dad came from Leigh and can recall counting over 90 chimneys from mills and factories in the town from a hill near his home when he was a child (early 1950s).

There are 2 now I think, both preserved as historical monuments.

Our cities and towns had, like most up until this period, grown chaotically and organically. We didn't have the "grid" organisation that governments in Europe and the US liked (so they could march troops quickly in to deal with "trouble") - streets grew with the ground layout and topology.

For example in each town there is a "gate" linked with the activity close by - in Preston a "Friargate" linked to the local church, "Fishergate" for catches landed at the local port and so on. Even "Auld Reekie" has such "gates".

We cleaned the air here only after WW2 by banning coal burning for house heating in cities - the "Clean Air Act". The poor infrstructure of the rest of our cities - drains, water etc. is something we live with today. We have good water supplies, good drains and reasonable flood defences - even with the recent events here.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

It should also be noted that a substantial share of the migration from country to city was anything but voluntary. From the Highland Clearances & Enclosure Acts down to China's Three Gorges Dam (which forced the displacement of over a million people),

Agreed in part - the migration is partly forced due to enclosure etc. but also voluntary - I would not like to work out the proportions, I suspect they will vary from scenario to scenario.

However this suggests otherwise :

The economist Pietra Rivoli writes, 'As generations of mill girls and seamstresses from Europe, America and Asia are bound together by this common sweatshop experience — controlled, exploited, overworked, and underpaid — they are bound together too by one absolute certainty, shared across both oceans and centuries: this beats the hell out of life on the farm.'

Originally Posted by jamesqf

governments have long pursued policies of forcing people into cities, where they can be more easily controlled.

Not agreed - that is bordering on a conspiracy theory. Google "Peterloo" for a worked example.

[Arragonis]

BTW Happy New Year

[radioranger]

If wood is so clean how come you can smell the fires all over the place,and it makes anybody with the slightest asthma cough . Gas is the only good answer, that and passive solar as far as i can see. every house should have a water tank in the attic for free or nearly hot water most of a good six months a year, wood is not neutral Co2 it's taking the Dino Co from cars it used to grow then you're releasing it again, just not as efficient .

[guyd]

The idea that wood is co2 neutral is that the co2 was locked into the wood 'recently' and is released again - the co2 in gas / coal was locked in a long time ago, and is now being released - thus increasing the current levels of co2

wood fires dont make anyone I know cough - if they have a modern wood burning stove not an open fire. I heat my whole house (1722 5 bedroom water mill) from a single 20kw rated wood burner - thats not efficient???

I have no gas here, so I dont have any choice, but thats another story.

[NeilBlanchard]

This winter is colder than last year, but not by much. Around here, the ponds and lakes are not even frozen over yet; let alone thick enough to walk or skate on. One hundred years ago we harvested ice by this time, and some years there were two harvests.

The carbon in the wood was pulled from the air during the time the tree grew; and therefore burning wood does not change the long term level of carbon dioxide in the air. Coal on the other hand is carbon that has been sequestered underground for millions and millions of years; so burning coal or any fossil fuel increases the level of carbon dioxide in the air.

It's not a question of coal or wood being dirty or clean - it how they affect the long term level of carbon dioxide in the air that matters.

The Arctic ice is not freezing nearly enough to make up for the melting. The volume of ice is decreasing exponentially and the area of ice is decreasing linearly over time. We are seeing feedback loops more quickly than even the most pessimistic models predicted. Greenland is already 5F warmer than it was. 125,000 years ago, after a change in the earth's orbit, Greenland gained 7F and HALF of its ice melted; raising the ocean level around the world by an average of TEN FEET. The current warming is just getting started - there is about a 40-50 year lag, so the carbon dioxide that was added to the air in the 1960's is causing today's warming. Warmer water cannot hold as much carbon dioxide, so we will begin to see and increase from this feedback loop, too.