ComradeKayAdams

Didn’t Josh play more efficiently on the road last year? Maybe playing in front of large and rabid home crowds works against him at this early stage of his career. Josh plays with such emotion, so having no fans at all to impress and who pump him up may force Josh to settle down and focus on the cerebral aspects of the position. All this great discussion about Josh’s passing potential, but don’t forget his scrambling ability!! I really hope the additions of Diggs and Moss doesn’t mean Daboll will minimize such a unique game-breaking component to Josh’s game. It’s likely key for the offensive game plan to have him run about 5 times a game, whether improvised or drawn up that way. Here’s my own representation of an ideal workload for Buffalo’s 2020 offense: Allen: 5 rushes, 30 passes Singletary: 15 rushes, 3 receiving targets Moss: 10 rushes, 2 receiving targets Knox: 4 targets Beasley: 6 targets Brown: 7 targets Diggs: 8 targets It’s equally balanced between running and passing, with a lovely pass distribution to keep defenses guessing. This should optimize everyone’s talent and give Josh his best chance for a Pro Bowl nomination.

To be fair, Colin’s argument seems perfectly reasonable for August of 2020. His AFC QB ranking is fine as well, though I would have put Allen at #4 ahead of Big Ben at this point in their careers (or ahead of Tannehill, in the case of the player-voted ranking) and right behind Mahomes, Jackson, and Watson. Mr. Cowherd has never been one to be overly enamored with elite physical skills, but he does at least have some respect for Allen and his potential. I, meanwhile, LOVE Josh Allen so much and my reasons go beyond his ability to throw a football over them mountains. It’s partly the way he treats his teammates, his love for the beautiful citizens of Buffalo, his love for the sport of football, and his work ethic. It’s partly his boyish good looks situated on a total hunk of a man’s body. But what puts him over the top for me is the way he is willing to put his body on the line, like a running back, in order to will the team to victory. I’m thinking back to the watershed Dallas Thanksgiving game and recalling the 4th and 1 QB sneak in the 2nd quarter with the botched handoff. The rest of the players in the NFL were at home watching that game. They noticed that play and probably had it in their heads when voting for Josh at #87. To quote Adam Schein, “that’s MY GUY.”

What a strange turn this thread took… The annoying conservationist in me can’t help but respond! For what it’s worth, the second article features the opinions of one researcher and doesn’t represent the overwhelming consensus from wildlife experts. Same goes for Buffalo716’s rather aggressive declarations of fact. I’m not saying I know these two are wrong. I’m emphasizing their minority stance on the subject. Most ecologists believe that the large majority of the blame for the decline in American bison numbers goes to overhunting from nineteenth century European American settlers. Prior to the Manifest Destiny expansion, it is widely understood that Native Americans had maintained a fairly stable population balance with the American bison they hunted. Also, it was almost definitely a LOT more than tens of thousands of bison that were killed from frontier hunting. It was likely in the tens of millions over multiple nineteenth century decades. Dr. Sierra Stoneberg Holt’s disease theory is probably at least partly true, but also potentially misleading. Tick fever and anthrax had been with American bison species for a long time, but the more likely diseases (Brucellosis?) that decimated the American bison population came from the settlers’ domesticated cattle. Fast forward decades into the westward expansion after the Lewis and Clark expedition, and one could have witnessed firsthand the rapid disruption to ecosystems and the massive reductions in space in which the American bison could roam as a consequence of shortsighted agricultural planning. This ecosystem damage and space confinement is what probably created the ripe conditions for cross-species bovine bacteria and viruses to spread like epidemics. Modern day examples of what I’m talking about: zoonotic coronaviruses (like Covid-19?) more easily transfer as a result of habitat destruction (bats to intermediary species to humans from Chinese deforestation practices?) and then proliferate like wildfire in more confined spaces (say…NYC?). So remember that regardless of the specific reason for the demise of the American bison, we can all still safely blame evil omnivorous humans. Or at least I will. Sorry. I know this wasn’t the point of the thread, but I couldn’t help myself. Yes, we should absolutely keep the name “Buffalo Bills.” Carry on.

My understanding of the situation was that Amazon demanded over $3 billion in combined public funding and incentivized tax breaks from NYS+NYC, with this demand coming from a trillion-dollar company whose CEO is worth about $190 billion… The speculated (i.e. nowhere near guaranteed!) job creation was estimated at between 25,000-40,000 over a 10-year to 20-year period. In typical Amazonian behavior, the pay for most of the jobs was expected to fall well below the cost of living standards of NYC, so that many prospective employees would have faced crazy work commutes and would have also strained the subway system in certain places. There were also gentrification housing market concerns for the surrounding southwest Queens neighborhood where the massive company headquarters was expected to reside.

It technically depends on what B-Man is referring to when he says “Obama’s policies.” There are Obama’s first-100-days Keynesian crisis escape policies (~$800 billion ARRA, Fed Reserve manipulations of interest rates/monetary supply, etc.) which all credible economists agree most definitely helped (but ended up being not nearly enough, in my opinion), and then Obama’s general post-crisis neoliberal economic policies that defined his last 7 years in office. I assume B-Man is referring to the latter, in which case my roundabout answer is “yes, B-Man is correct.” It's widely agreed upon that the Great Recession lasted 6 economic quarters from January 2008-June 2009. We’re using the mainstream definition of a recession here as at least two consecutive quarters with a decline in GDP. Important side notes: Obama should have done WAY more in early 2009. Way tighter regulation of Wall Street, actual criminal prosecutions of bankers, more oversight of the big business bailouts and the real estate industry, bottom-up stimulus support for Americans, and way more federal protections for homeowners. These early missteps, in addition to 7+ years of neoliberalism, are what truncated the recovery even though I give Obama credit for doing the bare minimum to clean up what was largely Bush’s mess and stabilize the economy. These economic shortcomings are what set the stage for the populist political uprising of 2016, which continue today. The Great Recession “recovery” is also an excellent lesson in the shortcomings of popular singular economic metrics like GDP, which do nothing to tell the story of how blacks, Latinos, Millenials, and whites without college degrees have fared overall during the past 12 years. 100% in agreement here, but I have a comparative opinion of Trumponomics that is not so flattering for President Trump, either. I take Obama’s last 12 quarters and Trump’s first 12 quarters when making this economic comparison because that keeps the analysis the furthest removed from the Great Recession and Covid-19. Using standard economic sources (NBER, BEA, BLS), I rate Trump as better on consumer confidence, about the same as Obama with unemployment decline rate and stock market growth rate and net job growth and cost-of-living-adjusted wages/income and GDP (Trump originally over-promised quarterly 5% but never got much above 3%), and worse with import/export trade balance and budget deficits/national debt (but like I said earlier, I don’t get worked up over this one like deficit hawks do). In “defense” of Obama, we’ve seen our fair share of crony capitalism (or rather, socialism?) throughout the tenures of Bush (such as fall 2008 TARP), Trump (such as 2017 TCJA and CARES), Clinton, and most who have been in Congress. I have to look over HEROES again and check out the HEALS Act proposals, but I’m sure there’s egregious pork in them too. Yes, I’m a deeply cynical person! Sure, but then again we already know about the GOP’s cult-like devotion to supply-side economic ideology. And amusingly enough, the one HEALS pandemic remedy McConnell is advocating the hardest for is the corporate coronavirus liability protection (the right call, though, to be clear…but amusing nonetheless). What’s far more interesting to me is how the Democrats are responding in the ongoing HEALS negotiations. Especially the obsequious clown car known as the Progressive Caucus (Bernie, the Squad, Khanna, Porter, Meng, Jayapal, etc.). We’ll see if Pelosi, Schumer, and the Dems are more interested in helping the American people or in playing partisan theatrical roles as Trump contrarians and GOP obstructionists. My central thesis and PPP raison d’etre: America is actually controlled by a one-party corporate oligarchy, with two flavors depending on your tastes for personal/social freedom issues. The oligarchy takes advantage of economic and foreign policy crises to increase their wealth and power. They couldn’t care less if small businesses fail and people lose their homes during this pandemic because then they can buy ‘em all up at discount prices in 2021. We shall see… So far I’ve heard that at least the $1200 stimulus won’t be a point of contention, but that there’s been virtually zero Dem movement on the following: foreclosure/eviction moratorium, fed aid to state and local governments that will otherwise need to cut payroll, a payroll tax that could help workers and small businesses, and Covid-19/general health care relief for the recently unemployed. I don’t think the Democrats have been pushing hard for an approximate $600+ weekly unemployment benefit extension, either. In my non-expert opinion, they should be doing so because it has likely been boosting consumer spending all summer and I bet also keeping many working class families afloat (the first time making living wages for some?!). From a macroeconomic perspective, the value of this extension would far outweigh the enablement of a small percentage of lazy people from going back to work (not to mention the easy political points to be scored with the Dems’ constituencies!). I’m assuming the job applicant to job opening ratio is currently uncomfortably high in most sectors of the economy, although I honestly haven’t seen a full July numbers report on weekly new unemployment claims, furloughs, layoffs, permanent job losses, and new job creation to say so with any certainty. This is among the most serious crises our country has ever faced and one that economists have never quite seen before, so I will continue to preach the importance of both political parties erring on the side of caution and going full Keynesian on historically tried-and-true recession recovery policy. Agreed. This quarterly GDP number can’t really tell us much beyond the fact that an unprecedented nation-wide shutdown of the economy during a historic pandemic caused an unprecedented drop in economic activity. Well…duh. The 2020 Q3 number will be much more meaningful and will give us a much better idea of where exactly the economy may be headed. HEALS might buy us some more time, but my best guess is that the poop hits the economic fan in 2020 Q3. An economic depression could even be declared as early as 2020 Q4, depending on the unemployment rate. Seems like talk of a v-shaped recovery has disappeared? Is reality sadly sinking in for a lot of people? That’s a good historical analogy. In poor Mr. Hoover’s defense, everyone back then had so much less economic data to study and learn from, compared to what we have now. The true prisoners of the modern-day GOP’s economic ideology are its populist coalition of economic nationalists, particularly the sub-$60k median household income Rep voters who have been led to believe that the wealth has been trickling down. The economic libertarians are the ones who control the GOP and will continue to do so after self-aggrandizing faux populist hero, Donald Trump, is gone. There’s no reason for professional and managerial GOP types to question the 40-year-old edifice of an economic philosophy designed to work magnificently for them, so any ideological challenge will have to come from the GOP working class. The problem here is that any and all economic woes will easily be blamed on Covid-19 and/or Joe Biden and/or even Trump’s personal foibles, so we should expect a bare minimum of another 2 presidential election cycles before an internal GOP working class revolt occurs…if ever. More likely, this GOP voting bloc will just skip on over to the Dems, whose own internal working class revolt could begin as early as 2022…um…if ever?? No problem, so long as fully opening up the economy ASAP is not thought of as a panacea for the recession. As Covid-19 goes, so go economic activity levels. Until there’s a vaccine or until herd immunity is somehow reached, we’re stuck with a limited set of solutions: modified partial reopenings in many sectors of the economy, more government-issued economic stimuli, and the usual health and safety practices (social distancing, face masks, hand sanitizers). Economic uncertainty is our new reality for at least the rest of 2020. Unfortunately they’re not lying. Annual rates are the traditional way GDP quarterly reports are given in the US. Misleading? Yes, since the more tangible number is about a 10% total macroeconomic contraction from 2020 Q1 to 2020 Q2. Intentionally misleading? Possibly. Bigger numbers are scarier than smaller numbers and can be used to promote agendas. But there’s no need for us to kid ourselves about the state of the economy: this GDP drop was historically awful. 2020 Q1 dropped at an annual rate of 5%, 2020 Q2 dropped at an annual rate of 33%, and so now we’re in an official recession.

Yes, the hallmark of a healthy economy is a large, strong middle class like what was seen during the few decades after WW2. These types of economies score well on economic happiness metrics and provide the government with the highest tax revenue needed to pay down big debts. So they represent the approximate end goals of domestic economic public policies. Federal debt is nothing more than a malleable means to reach these more optimal end goals. There are no apparent target numbers like total debt-to-GDP ratios that we should strive for during different economic situations. As long as we increase national debt during economic downturns, then I’m happy. If we’re not doing some combo of cutting taxes or injecting economic stimulus during recessions, then we’re not trying hard enough to get out of them. Balanced budgets (last done under Bill Clinton in 2000) and zero national debt (last done under Andrew Jackson in 1835) can be goals between recessions, but they don’t appear to matter all that much in American macroeconomics. Seems counterintuitive, but that’s because we tend to incorrectly think of federal government debt as perfectly analogous to personal household debt. It’s unclear how much automation will replace human labor after the pandemic, but I don’t think it will be too bad yet and this opinion has more to do with current technology limitations than anything else. The AI revolution is coming, so it’s never too early to start thinking about what our displaced work force can do instead: public works projects, taking up Hillary’s and Joe’s idea of learning to code, arts and crafts, creating online memes, space force cadets, etc… Old sectors of the economy have always been replaced by new technology all throughout capitalism’s history (horse-drawn carriages with cars, Blockbuster with Netflix, etc.), but never at the level of what AI would do. If the transition happens too quickly for the economy to accommodate, then we’ll need government to intervene. But as you know, a nation’s strength isn’t solely dependent on the size of its military budget. It’s also a matter of HOW and WHERE the military budget is spent, global military force positioning/logistics, war strategy, battle tactics, training/command execution, foreign policy toward allies and enemies, economic strength, internal stability with regards to social and political unrest, and so on... I’m not sure if our military leaders could ever delineate for the American taxpayers a military budget size threshold at which they’d feel confidently safe from Chinese aggression. There will always be an argument to be made for more. The latest proposed US military budget is $740 billion, but let’s use the 2018 numbers for the sake of international comparisons. The entire global defense budget was $1.8 trillion in 2018, with the US leading the way at $650 billion and China in second at $250 billion. This seems…excessive. For starters, I would personally propose cutting about 25% of that annual budget (note: this is much greater than the 10% that Senator Sanders meekly proposed this year and that was unanimously rejected), which would still have us outspending China by a 2-to-1 ratio. Budget cuts would then force our military leaders and politicians to streamline our post-Cold War military, focusing more on high-tech capabilities and less on soldier deployments, while discontinuing the subsidization of other countries’ defense programs. I cannot imagine any realistic scenario where Chinese military aggression would ever play itself out on the world stage without them sustaining devastating multilateral military and economic damage. And I don’t see a physical invasion of our own country at all likely within the next two generations. Remember that our citizens have the second amendment! Modern warfare with the US will either be done purely economically, by cyber security intrusions, or with “accidental” biological weapon releases, but not with big metal machines and bombs and boots on the ground except in very desperately nihilistic scenarios. Some of these grand national defense spending proposals we hear about simply reek of Chinese fearmongering for the sole benefit of the military-industrial complex and the usual neocon suspects. I would argue that we could simultaneously increase our international strength while substantially reducing military costs by establishing a new “Swiss Doctrine” foreign policy ethos centered on strong border defense, non-interventionism (not the same as isolationism!), and last-resort multilateral military offensive engagements. I know I’m speaking a bit too generally, of course, because international relationships and military strategy and ethics are rarely this simplistic. But y’all get my idea, I hope? And finally, I want to quickly note the non-military implications of a potential military budget escalation with China. Foolishly doing so would only replicate the Roman Empire’s classic mistakes, spreading financial investments and other vested interests out too far and wide while decaying internally from the outward diversion of resources. Why not use some of that money to invest in our own citizens and reduce social unrest? Education and health care are two big example investments for me, as you know. Reduced military expenditures would not kill domestic tech jobs, either, but would rather simply free up military company contractors for more socially beneficial ventures such as commercial space tech, commercial electronics, or any of my many fantastic Green New Deal public works project recommendations!

Hi RochesterRob, I’ll try to address every debt-related concern in your second paragraph. When it comes to government stimulus and federal debt, I don’t think the fork in the road is in the year 2020. Nor SHOULD a fork be presented in 2020. Because we are now in an obvious period of very high unemployment and disturbingly low inflation, the potential benefits of directly injecting capital into the weak market FAR outweigh any economic anxieties caused by an absence of a sound federal austerity policy. Let’s examine the situation with some numbers! Yay! The current ratio of total national debt to annual federal tax revenue is about 11 to 1, or about 1.3 if you substitute US GDP into the denominator. Adding an aggressive and very major stimulus package like, say, $2 trillion of strictly bottom-up economic stimulus through the remainder of 2020 (so that would be 5 more monthly $1200 stimulus checks to every living American…even children) would push the ratio higher to something like 12 to 1, or 1.4 when using a GDP measure. Now a rule of thumb for a typical country is to not exceed a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 0.8 so to prevent stalling of economic growth. The US, though, is nothing like most countries because our fiat currency enjoys a privileged status as an international reserve standard. Our government is in no imminent danger of defaulting (if ever, technically, if you’re willing to ignore inflationary effects from printing money out of thin air in order to make payments). The ratio was 1.1 early this year without issue. We once had a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 1.2 around WW2 without issue, and our underlying national economic standing during this Covid-19 apocalypse is way more secure now than it was back then (besides…the rest of the world’s governments are all currently in the same boat, so who’s in danger of defaulting on whom anyway??). Our economy is simply too massive and too comparably stable on the international arena for these 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 ratios to trigger an economic meltdown. We’ve seen no signs of panic in the collective psychology of global investors and speculators as we’ve advanced from 1.1 through 1.3. Now a rapid jump to 2.0+? MAYBE… But not from these relatively incremental and perfectly justified increases toward 1.4 during a universally understood health crisis. The size (and duration) of the national debt really only matters to the extent that people begin to lose confidence in our government’s ability to pay back that debt or lose confidence in the strength of the US dollar. That COULD very well happen, however, at some unknown theoretical debt limit in the abstractly near future. So yes, federal debt DOES ultimately still matter. The signs and consequences of runaway national debt would be unreasonably high interest rates, hyperinflation spirals, mass hysteria, human sacrifice, dogs living together with cats, etc. So by all means, let’s try to force our Congress and our President to propose a long-term plan for debt reduction as soon as Covid-19 dwindles. The mere existence of a well-articulated proposal would be enough to allay market fears and keep interest rates low and stable. And for the unconvinced deficit hawks still worried about the debt right this very minute…then let’s begin cutting the budget immediately and start with national defense!! Or begin raising annual revenue by eliminating tax loopholes for the top 1%, accompanied with thorough IRS oversight!! Finally! Hurray! If continued government stimulus at the level of tens of trillions of dollars becomes necessary to stave off societal collapse, then we’ll know that something else is terribly and fundamentally wrong with our economy…either that or the pandemic has morphed into something beyond the 1918 Spanish Flu and toward fourteenth century Black Death territory. As long as we’re still using capitalist economic systems in the future, people will still have to care about work incentivization and paying taxes, regardless of the particular federal budgetary policy employed (Austrian, cyclical Keynesian, MMT, etc.). The basic laws of economics won’t go away. No, people definitely won’t lead and produce at nearly ideal levels if everyone gets the same. But I also don’t think the end game to running large federal budget deficits is going to be communism! The true problem with this Monopoly game we’ve been playing is that the players who took the early lead began changing the game’s rules to amplify their financial power. These same players also surreptitiously stole from the bank whenever the elected banker took her bathroom breaks. Some of the badly losing players now want to flip the board over and play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead. I denounce such temper tantrums, but I can’t blame ‘em for feeling that way either. Just keeping it real! That’s how REALKayAdams rolls.

I believe it’s only 18 straight weeks of 1 million+ new unemployment claims, not 19…so…yay? The old weekly record before the pandemic began, by the way, was 700,000 in 1982. The total of first-time unemployment claims that have been made since March is now over 52 million. Some of that number have returned to work, of course, but the total US working population is about 155 million if that helps put things in perspective. These next 30 days are absolutely critical to the US economy. Unemployment benefits are running out, eviction/foreclosure deadlines are approaching, and school reopening/closing plans are being finalized. I hope Congress and Trump realize the historic gravity of the situation. A payroll tax is a viable supply-side booster, but our economy is driven mostly by consumer spending. Payroll taxes don’t immediately help the people who are not on payrolls. And who’s to say the tax cuts will equate to increased rehiring at the rate we want? Especially given the fact that the pandemic is still a thing? This is a totally unprecedented economic downturn, so I’d just play it safe and do both a payroll tax cut and another round of stimulus checks. Even if all businesses everywhere were allowed to resume fully normal operations, the economic demand is not going to return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. Financial confidence issues aside, a majority of Americans are still worried about catching the virus out in public. While reopening businesses wherever possible and whenever possible and however possible is important, government economic stimulus throughout the fall is a necessary reality.

I’m more than happy to keep the focus of the discussion here on the Uyghurs and China, so I will refrain from a long and tired essay on the ethical and strategic failures of post-WW 2 US foreign policy. It’s slightly relevant to this topic, however, because our international reputation affects how we can go about solving the Uyghur genocide problem. Look at the list of the 50+ countries who have defended China on Xinjiang and on Hong Kong. Notice how they tend to fall into 2 groups: African countries that stand to benefit economically from good Chinese relations, and then countries with reason to hate the US because of our 75 years of foreign policy blunders and bullying. With the latter group, we have inadvertently strengthened China’s global power by pushing many of these countries over to our enemy’s side as a consequence of our long history of organized coups, draconian sanctions, economically motivated wars, drone/bomb collateral damage, etc... Also note that I’ve never made an absurd moral equivalence argument between the deliberate Chinese genocide of Uyghurs and US foreign policy mistakes. Even so, from time to time our international enemies do love to point out our own internal history of Native American genocide and African American slavery. Quite an unfair argument since all those responsible have been dead for a long time, but the greater point here is that (recent or old) track records of human rights abuses matter and that they taint future international relationships. Ok, now a quick pivot back to China and the Uyghurs… My hope is that Europe, the rest of the industrialized West, Brazil, India, Japan, South Korea, and all of the other democratic countries in the world would join the US in multilateral trade negotiations. These countries I just listed form a huge percentage of the total global GDP, so that is an overwhelming amount of economic leverage right there. “Incentivized” multilateral trade negotiations do NOT mean free bags of bribery cash courtesy of the American taxpayers. I’m referring to complex, mutually beneficial trade deals involving many countries besides the US and China. And no, I do not want to resurrect the TPP. I’m as outspoken as one can get against TPP, NAFTA, most of USMCA, and globalism’s failures in general. I’ll ask again for the message board community: what are the viable alternatives? If anyone wants to suggest military action, then walk us through how that would play out on the international arena. The pandemic’s attack on the global economy has the world’s leaders sufficiently on edge right now, so one or two missteps could easily trigger World War 3. No, I don’t think I’m being entirely hyperbolic. Yes, that’s a slightly less diplomatic but equally valid way of saying the same thing: multilateral economic pressure on China is our best bet in saving the Uyghurs. Your idea of mass international protests a la Tibet is excellent, since that would publicly humiliate China and scare them with threats of worldwide boycotts of their (craptacular) products.

Ah good catch, thanks! It did kinda feel like I was forgetting something important. Let me update the solar drawbacks list a bit more for @plenzmd1: 1-9. (…) 10. Energy availability restrictions (obviously less effective on cloudy days and at night, but not an issue with suitable battery storage). 11. Energy storage limitations (lots of promising research is being done with lithium-ion batteries to improve capacity/power rating/lifespan/round-trip efficiency and especially to drop their costs down, but I also like the future potential of saltwater batteries and supercapacitors). 12. Transmission line losses (only relevant to remote desert solar arrays, but it’s not a unique problem to solar and not a super major one…maybe high-temp superconductor tech can help). Regarding the brevity tip: in my defense, I was replying to a whopping 9 different posts in my most recent superpost. My personal motivations for being here are more related to debating, persuading, informing, and learning rather than displaying wit, but I can strive to cut down on extraneous material in future posts. By the way, everyone should know that they can delete quoted post content, so this could drastically cut down on posted reply lengths whenever I am quoted. I think your skepticism is fine and healthy. I just wish you’d also reserve some skepticism for your own skepticism, that’s all. Especially with your sources of climate science information (I'll do the same). 1. I’ve been fighting you so vehemently because I’m trying to understand your point of view on a topic I find important. You appear to be blaming the community of professional climate scientists for inaccurate and sometimes outrageous claims that were instead likely made by random nutty climate alarmists, politicians, and essentially non-professional climatologists. I’m not currently aware of any geoscientist who predicted the Earth would warm 4-5 degrees Celsius between 1995 and 2020. 2. That El Nino-related 0.5 degree Celsius change in one year was a REGIONAL effect over a large part of the Pacific Ocean. I’m referring to GLOBAL mean surface temperatures. Dating back to the late nineteenth century, we haven’t recorded a 1-year change in global mean temperature beyond about 0.2 degrees. I do like the fact that you identified a benchmark by which you will consider MMGW. Unfortunately, I was hoping it would be in the ballpark of 0.25 degrees over the next decade and not an 8-10 degree Dansgaard-Oeschger Ice Age swing… 3. I see this Joanne Nova blogger is making a couple logical fallacies on her front page that we’ve already covered in this thread. It’s also worth noting that she has no professional Earth science training and yet appears to be running a small business as an international climate skeptic. 4. Yes, the sea level rise measuring variance is 4 mm. I’ve stated that the measured rise has been 85 mm over the past 25 years. So that means the actual rise is somewhere between 8.1 cm and 8.9 cm. I also don’t believe there is a grand scientific conspiracy afoot here. I think it’s more likely that you (and I, and other laypeople) simply don’t understand the technical nuances of their laser-based precision measurements. If we truly want to get to the bottom of this, we should start by contacting the involved scientists and instrumentation engineers directly with technical questions. 5. I hadn’t heard of this pre-2010 data-scrubbing controversy. I’m vaguely familiar with the 2009 Climategate controversy, but I believe those involved scientists were eventually exonerated. We can at least agree on a couple points in your last paragraph. Humans definitely need to begin thinking seriously about how to transition to living life in a warmer Earth. And yes, there are many politicians on the left who prioritize their own power way more than the well-being of Earth. Thank you for your last two posts. We don’t see eye to eye on this topic, but they have helped me understand the opposing argument a little better. Hopefully your side will prove my side wrong within the next few years. Yah, I figured you deducted points for me being such an openly devout social democrat. It’s sadly true that I bought into the Bernie hype both in 2016 and in 2020. Even up until the March 15 debate, I still clung to the hope that Bernie was serious about winning. But where else was someone of my political persuasion to go?! At least I had Liz Warren pegged as a political fraud years ago. I much preferred Tulsi in 2020, but Bernie had all the campaign momentum. I should have jumped ship as soon as his Russiagating and “Donald Trump is the worst and most dangerous president in modern US history” rhetoric began (what about Bush 43, Bernie??). Oh well, live and learn. Numerical lists help me organize my thoughts while I type. I think they’re also a bit easier to read on phones and other small screens when looking at long paragraphs of info. I only have 2 conditioners and 3 brushes. Well-kempt, silky-smooth hair is a critical part of my bodily feng shui. It helps me keep all of my amazing political and football ideas balanced in my head! It was unintentional. Any silly sort of “Boomers versus Millenials” rivalry is inconsequential to the point I was making, which is that we need to think about pollution as two completely separate categories. The first is the traditional pollution we all clearly recognize as bad because even relatively small amounts cause easily identifiable and relatively immediate damage (lead or mercury in water, arsenic or cesium-137 in food, sulfur oxides or CFC aerosols in air, etc.). The second are the collective greenhouse gases responsible for over 30 degrees Celsius of warming at the Earth’s surface. They are the far more controversial type of pollution for all the obvious reasons: they are completely natural and necessary at still very large levels, their alterations have delayed effects that are almost imperceptible to an ordinary human’s life, and their interactions with Earth’s ecosystems are way more complex. The “pompous ass Millenial” remark is my long overdue cue to officially retire from this thread. I’ve written plenty here, so people can make use of the info and my opinions as they so choose.

On offense: Allen, Diggs, and Dawkins all have respectable chances. Moss will likely steal too many of Singletary's carries and red zone opportunities needed to generate Pro Bowl numbers. On defense: White is the only obvious one. Hyde, Poyer, and Edmunds all have good chances too. Hughes and Milano are dark horse candidates. Oliver has the physical talent to make it. I really like Vernon Butler in this defense, so I'll offer him as my super sleeper Pro Bowl surprise pick. On special teams: I'm going to throw in Bass as my wild crazy fun pick...IF he makes the roster.

Incentivized multilateral trade negotiations, followed by multilateral sanctions as a last resort. Is anyone offering a better solution? I’m seeing the problem more through anthropological lenses. China likes money just as the West likes money. Also, China does not have a monopoly on predilections for using brute force to solve problems or to gain economic benefit. See: American post-WW2 foreign policy in the Cold War and in the War on Terror. While the UN is definitely a flawed organization, America’s own track record on unilateral international problem solving is not exactly impeccable.

Why only half-convinced?! You see, this is why y’all are so distrustful of government. You haven’t elected ME yet to solve your problems. “I have a plan for that.” – Liz Warren, 2020. “I have a PPP post for that.” – RealKayAdams, 2020. Unfortunately there’s no Holy Grail of energy. Not even nuclear fusion. All energy sources have benefits and drawbacks. Our energy solution for the future will involve some differently weighted combination of multiple sources. I personally think solar energy should and will be a major component of our overall future energy solution. I enjoy numerical lists, so I’ll list solar’s drawbacks here and put in parentheses why I’m generally not worried for each: 1. Low power density (I don’t think the math will ever work out for solar being a sole energy source, but it’s not an issue to me because we should expect to supplement solar with other renewable energy sources…including my favorite high power density source that I’ve already mentioned in earlier posts…nuclear fission). 2. Low solar energy conversion efficiency (there’s an 85% thermodynamic limit and current solar tech is at about 20%, but that number will keep going up as scientists and engineers play around with different materials, processing methods, and clever nanotech designs). 3. Resource mining concerns for rare earth metals (this is my only big concern with solar, and Chinese foreign relations complicate matters because China currently mines 95% of the world’s supply. Rare earth metals aren’t actually “rare.” They’re just harder to mine because they tend to be more diffuse in the ground compared to most veins of more conventional metals. I cautiously support increased worldwide ore mining so long as the mining and processing techniques are done in environmentally ethical ways…so I’m looking for sufficient government oversight here). 4. Material and production costs (this has been going down naturally, especially following the pandemic’s recent obliteration of the global transportation economy, and it should continue going down as worldwide mineral resource mines for solar energy open up while government subsidization/taxation policies change). 5. Fossil fuel consumption during entire solar panel product life cycle (it’s an issue now, but won’t be one later as renewable energy becomes more ubiquitous). 6. Large land/space requirements (I’ve seen lots of creative “Tetris-like” ideas for product stacking, urban placement, and desert placement). 7. Effects on flora like desert plants (not much of a problem if placed intelligently and responsibly, and I’ve also seen creative ways they can be placed to minimize desert habitat impact). 8. Effects on fauna like birds (the mirrors-and-towers solar thermal collector designs are bad, but the much more common photovoltaics are not. There are clever ways to deter certain birds in the desert from crashing into large panel arrays, but overall I can think of MANY more man-made things that are dangerous to flight-based wildlife…one being man-made global warming and the ways it disturbs migration patterns, for example). 9. Waste disposal (a perfectly manageable problem if we have active recycling programs for panels after their approximate 25-year life cycle). I figure solar panels powering homes and buildings would be the easiest item to check off on Biden’s list. I’m not optimistic on electric cars, solar cars, or solar/electric hybrid vehicles within the next 10 or so years. This sentiment has more to do with American transportation market behavioral habits and less to do with the potential of the technology. I’ll address your concerns in the order presented: 1. Which professional climatologists are you thinking of who made 4-5 degree Celsius predictions in 1995?? Predicting 4-5 degree increases within 25 years would require an absolute worst-case perfect storm (no pun intended) of multiple simultaneous positive climate feedback loop sources to trigger. All the reputable climatologists I’m familiar with (James Hansen types) have been very reasonably accurate with their models and with their early 21st century predictions, dating back to the late 80’s and early 90’s. 2. A 0.55 degree Celsius change is definitely NOT a typical Earth occurrence within a 25-year period and especially not within a single year. You would need something like unusually strong volcanic activity to initiate such a change. You might be thinking of LOCAL mean surface temperatures? I’m referring to GLOBAL mean surface temperatures. 3. Going back in time 750+ years beyond the start of the Industrial Age only reinforces my argument. What global mean surface temperature data are you looking at where you don’t see the obvious aberrant temperature climb beginning around 1900? The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were notably more tame in comparison, and those two had their biggest rapid temperature deviations due to specific volcanic eruptions. If you wanted to go back even further in time like 20,000 years or so, the warming and cooling data follows what you’d expect from cyclical changes in the Earth’s axial tilt. 4. Sea rise is measured with a combination of satellite laser altimeters and tide stations. Very large numbers of measurements are taken and averaged out, but I don’t know the technical details behind how the exact equipment calibrations and calculations are done. You’re better off e-mailing someone from NASA to get a good answer. Maybe also look into LIGO in Louisiana or check out the 2012 Gran Sasso FTL neutrino anomaly controversy to see how laser-based precision measurements are done. By the way, 3.5 inches of sea rise isn’t trivial. Humans who live and work intimately along coastlines will notice that. 5. Any climate data can be available to the public as soon as it has been published in a peer-reviewed scientific paper. More often than not, though, you’ll have to do a bit of extra work beyond internet searches to find it. You may have to subscribe to scientific journals or directly e-mail scientists. I don’t know how freely computational model code will be given out, however. 6. Your last sentence concerns me. Would full data disclosure be enough? Because it doesn’t really sound like climate scientists could do anything to gain your trust. Can you identify for yourself a set of new data or facts that would cause you to reverse your stance on MMGW (in case you were wondering, yes I do have my own list of evidence I need to see in order to reverse my opinion on MMGW)? Do you also harbor similar skepticism for fossil fuel CEO’s or for scientists, think thanks, and politicians directly funded by the fossil fuel industry? What is your degree of skepticism for other scientists, engineers, doctors, surgeons, dentists, lawyers, mechanics, etc…anyone else with specialized expertise? Correct, there is no such thing as steady-state weather and the same goes for ice sheet sizes during any interglacial period between ice ages and greenhouse Earths. If you were to look at a plot of ice sheet size versus time, you’ll see a bunch of higher frequency peak-to-peak squiggly lines showing the seasonal variation, with these lines following a lower frequency peak-to-peak trend as you zoom out to look at the larger timeline picture. This lower frequency trend is the climate variation that we care about. It’s always varying naturally, too. So why then all the modern-day fuss, you ask? Two reasons: 1. A process of elimination for explaining the magnitude and speed of the recent climate-based ice sheet shrinkage. Ice ages mostly follow the Milankovitch cycles that dictate the Earth’s orbit around the sun (eccentricity, axis tilt, axis precession). These changes happen gradually, with a few acceleratory exceptions like large meteorite strikes, supervolcanic activity, or quirky positive climate feedback loops at the beginnings and ends of ice age cycles. These quirky feedback loops include large ice/snow solar reflection alterations and unique features of plate tectonic positioning that affect ocean currents and therefore atmospheric winds (i.e. weather). All of this can be ruled out (for the most part!!) for the recent climate data we see. So can solar activity variation and Earth-Moon or Earth-Jupiter orbital dynamics variations. So can any major sudden shifts in greenhouse gas concentrations specifically due to large plant population changes, animal population changes, or microorganism behavior that were not human-induced. That just leaves us with human behavior as realistically the last and by far the best explanation. And because increased human behavior during the Agricultural Revolution and especially during the Industrial Revolution match up well with the increases to greenhouse gas concentrations, it makes logical sense that the ice sheet size reductions do too. 2. As humans of the Industrial Age, our cities and our agriculture have grown accustomed to a relatively specific climate stage. So ANY major and sudden changes to large climate factors like ice sheet sizes, whether they happen naturally or anthropogenically, will be highly problematic and are something to avoid if we have the ability to do so. But isn’t there also money to be had in DENYING man-made climate change? If you’re alarmed with the influence that Big Solar and Big Wind and Big Geothermal might have on government, why not also the influence that Big Oil and Big Natural Gas and Big Coal are having? The Boomer-driven environmental movement of the late 60’s-70’s was excellent. As a Millenial, I give you all a well-deserved “thank you!” for your activism. But regular water and air pollution form a class of environmental issues completely distinct from greenhouse gas pollution. Agreed. That’s why healthy international relations are critical to the management of environmental issues. I’m including our enemies along with our allies. The US contributes about 15% of global carbon emissions. China contributes almost double that. This is a major reason why I’m a proponent of internationally coupled cap-and-trade systems for the “big” emitters, like power plants and certain material manufacturing industries. I interpreted the article to mean the prolonged heat wave preceded the fires. You can still easily measure atmospheric temperatures separate from the extra heat coming directly from the wildfires. Any argument flirting with “weather equals climate” reasoning can get tricky. I don’t know exactly how they calculated the given probabilities that this was due to global warming, but the numbers don’t seem outlandish given the unusual duration and magnitude of the heat wave. Regardless of the cause, the result is definitely not good for further global warming. The Siberian permafrost is an especially critical piece to climate stability. I’ll go ahead and take a general guess as to how they did it. They’re probably using historical records of daily high temperatures at a bunch of different Siberian weather stations. They’re probably setting the early 20th century data as the baseline data and the early 21st century data as the MMGW-affected data. Then they probably took a bunch of different reputable climate computational models (probably several dozens), ran simulations, and compared the simulations to the actual observed Siberian weather station data. They then probably discarded any poor-performing models, kept the well-performing models, and performed a bunch of fancy statistical analyses on the total results to come up with that mysterious probability ratio of 600. I THINK this is generally how they do heat wave studies, but remember that I am a layperson and not a climatologist, so take this explanation with a grain of salt.

Like most human conflicts, this is ultimately about natural resources. The Xinjiang region has a lot of them that the Chinese economy badly needs. The Uyghurs are culturally very different from the Han Chinese and have been flirting with separatist movements for decades. China is doing everything they can get away with in order to make sure Xinjiang doesn’t break off into an independent country. They’ve tried mass migration of Han Chinese into the province. They’ve tried free speech suppression. Now they’re trying “re-education” camps. The CCP clearly feels that they cannot afford to lose control of Xinjiang’s natural resources. The solution? The international community needs to make it economically more favorable for China to stop this genocidal behavior rather than to let it continue in secret. Biden and Trump both could be doing a lot more to talk about this issue in public. It better be raised during one of the three scheduled presidential debates.

Imagine the amazing gameday chant at New Era: “Steeelllaaa!!!!!” It’s not beyond the realm of possibilities. PETA already went after the Packers a couple decades ago. For those who don’t already know, their franchise name honors a canned meat company that agreed to sponsor Lambeau’s team back in 1919. Needless to say, PETA’s protests didn’t work. But the culture of 2020 is very different than it was back around 2000. So why not go after a team whose namesake gained his reputation by helping to slaughter a species to near extinction? The American bison population, after all, dropped from 50+ million at the time of the Louisiana Purchase to less than a thousand by 1900. Well…as a proud PETA member but also an outspoken critic of their marketing department, I have to say that it would be incredibly pointless and would only generate more bad publicity and animosity toward our cause. We already have a lot on our plate at the moment (um bad choice of words?) and much bigger fish to fry (ooh there I go again!) regarding animal rights ethics. Besides, animal rights lobbyists don’t have nearly the same national clout that other SJW groups have. Vegetarians and vegans probably make up about 5% of the total American population, with most of that number not even watching football or knowing of the Bills’ existence. I see others have already mentioned this stuff, but I’ll reiterate anyway: Native Americans don’t seem to be remotely bothered by this alleged Bills name controversy, either. That’s partly because Cody was a super popular American and a major advocate for Native American civil rights. But most don’t even know the team history or Buffalo Bill Cody’s history for that matter. The Bills name also pays homage to the popular 1946-49 AAFC franchise more so than to Buffalo Bill Cody, kind of in the same way that the red/white/blue team colors since 1962 pay homage to the old 1920’s NFL team. For these reasons alone, the name and the colors of the Buffalo franchise should NEVER change. Now the Red$%^** name is an entirely different situation. It’s a couple orders of magnitude more offensive to Native Americans than Buffalo Bill Cody. The team founder, George Preston Marshall, was also one of the most outspoken bigots in pro sports history. So that doesn’t help…

A couple random thoughts on the presidential election: 1. Trump is doomed: It’s possible that we still have systemic errors in the polling data. Anything’s possible in 2020. But I believe the systemic errors from 2016, which mostly consisted of the underreporting of working-class whites, were corrected by the 2018 mid-terms. I believe Trump’s reelection problems are real and that his reelection campaign team would be wise to take the polling numbers very seriously. The current percentage point gap is large enough to overshadow Biden’s weaknesses with voter enthusiasm and voter economic trust. A silver lining for Trump is that he still has 2.5 months to work on getting everything under control. He’ll be largely judged on that first debate performance on September 29, on the pandemic status in October, and on the directly related economic status in October. In 1988, even Dukakis was somehow leading HW Bush by 17 percentage points at about 3.5 months before that election. So why my Trump reelection negativity? Well…Covid-19 issues are not likely going away this fall (see: nation-wide school re-opening concerns despite the Trump administration’s “bullying”), the foreclosure/eviction crisis could easily pull down the economy as early as next month, and Trump appears to be inherently (read: psychologically) incapable of acknowledging the magnitude of either. The polls are reflecting this emerging sentiment among centrist moderates and independents. 2. Sleepy Joe is sleepy: I may have been completely wrong to doubt Biden’s lazy campaign strategy. I badly underestimated his national appeal and the emotional nostalgia he evokes, blinded probably by my own longstanding biases against him for policy reasons. The once-in-a-century pandemic has entirely changed the 2020 campaign dynamics. A strong campaign ground game and constant public appearances don’t appear to matter. Neither does the party convention that traditionally launches and energizes a presidential campaign for the home stretch. Optimizing Latino, black, and Millenial turnout isn’t essential either. Biden’s mission is to focus on the retired white demographic in swing states who are scared of Covid-19, avoid sundowning for 3 night debates, let MSNBC and CNN continue handling his entire marketing campaign, sit back, relax, maybe take a long nap each day, and watch the opponent melt down with his complete lack of human empathy and his Kudlow-nomics dogmatism. Joe and Kamala would make a perfect ticket with a semi-witty campaign slogan of “sleeping our way to the top!” Ba dum tss. Yeeesh you really have it out for the Bernie people, no? Polling data from the Democratic presidential primaries showed a massive ideological divide within the party between young voters (for the pro-Bernie progressive left wing) and old voters (for the pro-Biden neolib centrist wing), with the split falling somewhere around age 45. This divide is too obvious to ignore. The age demographics bluntly favor the progressive revolutionaries over time. If Biden and his VP choice either lose in November or can’t fix America’s economy within the next 4-8 years, you better believe the Bernie fanatics will be emboldened. And those “bums” are a cantankerous bunch, as we’ve seen this summer. The Dudes will likely NOT abide. EXACTLY. Trump should be attacking Joe Biden like he is Hillary 2.0. The whole corrupt/establishment/neolib/neocon shtick would be much more effective and accurate than whatever he’s doing now. He’s using the playbook that was supposed to be reserved for Bernie and then mixing in miscellaneous cultural topics like falling statues instead of properly addressing the pandemic and the economy, two issues that actually concern most Americans. One might say Trump has adopted a SJW-heavy playbook akin to Hillary’s in 2016 instead of using his own 2016 populist playbook. Trump should be aiming for independent swing voters, not reinforcing his base which is already enthusiastic for November. And yes, no one outside far-right fearmongering Fox News circles actually believes “Joe Biden will be the most progressive candidate since FDR,” as Bernie himself absurdly claimed (what about LBJ?). Most far-leftists, moderates, and independents understand that Biden will govern more or less like Obama. If Obama was considered far-left to someone, then fine I guess. Biden doesn’t need to worry about the “radical left” Bernie people in November anymore. They’re sticking with Biden at approximately the 85% level I predicted earlier. The latest poll I saw had them at 87% in support of Joe, with 4% defecting to Trump.

Thanks, 3rdnlng (I guess that means I have 5 or 6 readers, not 4 or 5). I’m always appreciative of constructive negative feedback that challenges my ideas. I should clarify my carbon tax idea from previous posts. I shouldn’t have described it as a traditional sin tax (or Pigouvian tax, to be more accurate) because the revenue collected would be almost inconsequential to me. The main goal is to rapidly decrease gasoline consumption behavior and rapidly increase renewable tech innovation. The extent to which these two things are happening in real time, in accordance with greenhouse gas emissions standards set by the scientific community, is what I’d use to determine the efficacy of the taxes. It seems horribly impractical to rely on estimated calculations of marginal social costs of carbon pollution into the future in order to establish carbon taxation levels in the present, especially when you also need to factor in effects that the tax levels would have on the present overall economy. I probably wouldn’t even bother setting aside generated carbon tax revenue solely for future environmental damage reparations. I’ll cover ACA, M4A, and all big-government concerns in the Trump Economy thread. So you can read and comment later as you feel is necessary. I recommend sitting down for that one and making sure your blood pressure is at a healthy level before proceeding. Just so you know, I consider myself a pragmatist and not an ideologue. So if y’all can convince me that government intervention is not the best solution for any particular issue I take up, then I will quickly discard that pro-government idea. My default position, believe it or not, is to require as little government involvement in our lives as necessary. It’s that tiny little detail of what’s considered “necessary,” however, that apparently separates me from most on this message board. Seems like we’re overdue for a lovely demand-side economics conversation! My laundry list of programs consists of 4 beyond a strict constitutionalist Republican’s tolerance levels: health care, education, public housing options, and public works projects. Because there’s nothing truly novel about these ideas, the good news is that we have plenty of data (historical and current, national and international) to examine the successes, the pitfalls, and the funding. See my above comments to 3rdnlng on environmental Pigouvian taxes. Spoiler alert: no, you won’t agree with my economic thoughts. Not initially… Are we at “different ends of the political spectrum?” I guess so. We have huge differences on a few key (expensive) issues for sure, but I was also known to multiple campaign Bernie Bros as a secret right-wing canvassing saboteur. You have no idea how much grief I took for my moderate stances on immigration, second amendment, PC culture, protectionism, nuclear energy, Russiagate, Trump impeachment, etc… We share the same concerns about government waste and corruption. We both theoretically want to keep government as small and efficient as possible and keep politicians as accountable to the people as possible. I know we both agree that waste and corruption are present in our military, but we both also don’t want to abandon the idea altogether of a publicly funded military. You see where I am going… Yup, I hear Joe Biden is calling for zero power plant carbon emissions by 2035 and zero net greenhouse gas emissions for the entire economy by 2050. These are okay goals, but I don’t see how they can be done without nuclear energy, which will anger many environmental leftists if that’s what Joe is proposing. And if that’s the case, then the impetus to build these generation 3+ nuclear plants should have begun years ago in order to realistically make these deadlines…like during the Obama regime. We also know Joe is still big on fracking (a huge methane polluter, among other pollutants) as a “bridge” energy source because those companies fund his campaign and because he badly wants to win Pennsylvania. This is the same strategy that Obama and Hillary Clinton used. I guess Joe Biden can say anything he wants on climate change solutions because none of it is legally binding. Obama used lots of nice and beautiful pro-environment words too for 8 full years, the first 2 during which he had the support of both the House and the Senate. Obama’s record on lifting the crude oil export ban in 2015, increasing domestic oil production by 80%, and on leading the domestic natural gas drilling boom told a different story…a story of environmental equivocation that masked the Establishment’s foreign policy agenda under the guise of “energy independence.” I doubt Joe will operate any differently than Obama on climate change because he has hinted at this numerous times in the past and because they share the same energy corporate benefactors. I know, I know…jobs jobs jobs. But there are jobs in renewable energy too. Some politicians are just not as serious about climate change as others. Then again, Joe’s opponent is climate change hoaxer, Donald Trump. I give up. Oh gosh I could list a lot more than one, but some people here get angry at my post lengths. So if I choose just one, it will be the big one: global land/surface mean temperatures (+0.55 deg. Celsius) and sea level (+85 mm) continuing to rise in lockstep with carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration (+55 ppm) from 1995 to now, in accordance with theoretical greenhouse gas canon (data source: NASA). We could get pedantic and quibble over the exact numbers that various scientists predicted in 1995, but the data trends from the past 25 years are obvious and more so when you zoom out to a timeline beginning just before the Industrial Age. Similar data trends from the past 25 years hold for a bunch of other important stuff, like ocean acidification and ice sheet sizes. Yes, technically this is true. Our overall carbon emissions have improved over the past 15 years or so. This is almost entirely due to natural gas replacing coal. The problems are the following: the decrease isn’t happening fast enough here in the US, overall worldwide carbon emissions have been increasing by a lot more, and fracking has now led to lots of methane released into the atmosphere which is much worse than carbon dioxide.

Woah someone read my post!! Thanks, KRC! The basic premise is that financial hits from gas taxes on a destitute person’s individual budget will be offset by benefits from other various GND programs, including health care benefits and public transportation options. But there are a lot of moving policy parts in such grand legislative proposals, many of which may end up not being synchronized, so that some citizens may experience incidental financial hardship during the country’s renewable energy transition process. That is why I’d strongly support temporary “fuel stamp” eligibility programs or gas tax reimbursements or circumstantially dependent transportation subsidizations through employer applications. Since we already tax people for driving cars in the form of gasoline excise taxes, this is not uncharted policy territory. There’s nothing unethical about (reasonably imposed) fuel taxes, either. Taxing forms of transportation that pollute is obviously not the same as taxing breaths of air or directly taxing public water consumption or anything crazy like that. All environmental taxes aim to curb bad behavior and incentivize good behavior. Gas taxes would aim to expedite renewable tech innovation while also helping to pay for greenhouse gas damages, which ultimately our government will be financially responsible for fixing in the years ahead. Next Saturday morning, I can post a thorough explanation of my taxation and budgetary proposals in the Trump Economy thread. By this point, however, you probably know my politics and can guess where the conversation is heading. I’m most closely aligned with Tulsi Gabbard on policy issues (about 90%...with that other 10% including her decision to endorse Joe Biden and sell out to the Democratic Party establishment…sigh). As you can also tell by now, I prefer responding with detailed lengthy (long-winded?) paragraphs instead of a few short sentence sound bites. Otherwise, I find that online political discussions tend to break down from simple misunderstandings that then quickly entice mudslinging from opportunistic internet trolls. Think of Real, Green, and Skeptical more like Freud’s ego, superego, and id and less like Moe, Larry, and Curly. The true psychological concern is why I spend so much time composing political thoughts on an obscure internet football message board, knowing that maybe only 4 or 5 people read them…hmmm…

I was vaguely familiar with Michael Shellenberger beforehand as a bigly pro-nuclear environmentalist. It looks like he really has it out for climate change fearmonger lefties, with which to some extent I agree. But he also has a new book to sell and seems to have identified a sizable combined niche market of engaged climate change skeptics and rebel environmentalists. Telling people that everything is actually okay and that they hardly have to change anything about their habits is always a strong marketing ploy. Scanning the link and looking through the table of contents of his new book, “Apocalypse Never”… 1. Here’s what we likely agree on: merits of nuclear energy, wind energy limitations, biofuel disdain, doubts on achieving international carbon neutrality via non-nuclear renewable energies alone. 2. Where we may agree on some points but disagree on others: bans on plastic straws/bags and general policies toward plastics, practical implementations of a solar energy infrastructure, green policy successes of various European countries since 1970’s, lab-grown meat’s effect on climate. 3. A VERY hard sell, but I’ll listen to his argument: insufficient solar energy tech advancements, warmer climate not making natural disasters worse, overrated importance of Amazon rainforest and broad deforestation/reforestation/soil carbon sequestration issues, non-issue of Malthusian population growth versus food supply. 4. Just…no: non-causal role of humans in Holocene extinctions (?!?!?!), everything he says related to the factory farming subject (increased industrial agriculture preventing zoonotic pandemics, vegetarianism reducing individual carbon footprints by only less than 4%, global land use for meat having shrunk by size of Alaska...this is an archetypal anti-vegan argument being made here with very common examples of statistical cherry-picking, logical sleights of hand, and language gymnastics used to fit the agenda). Ok well technically we’re both against free-range grass-fed meat, but I’m approaching that one also from ethical grounds while he’s making the purely environmental argument. Has anyone here read this book? I won’t financially support someone as stridently pro-factory farming as this guy, but I’m willing to read his book this summer if I stumble upon a free online PDF version somewhere. As I’ve ranted about here in the past, my first immediate thought is that these “OMG only X number of months left until Kevin Costner’s Water World dystopia!!!” claims are neither accurate nor persuasive. My next immediate thought, however, is that something is probably getting lost in translation between the original sources (IEA, Jim Hansen) and these online conservative editorials. If I were magically in control of the entire MMGW communication pipeline, I’d focus strictly on reporting the current status of all the climate data benchmarks and climate tipping points*, along with both the estimated max and min time limits based on whichever specific “doomsday” climate model** calculations were used. It’s not quite as sexy and captivating as some of these climate alarmism headlines, but I think people appreciate and are more receptive to scientific honesty. * A side note on what I mean by climate tipping points: remember that these are the positive climate feedback loop sources we talked about earlier that would lead to accelerated planetary warming and irreversibilities on the order of civilization timespans. Off the top of my head, some of these include the East and West Antarctic ice sheets, the Greenland ice sheet, the Amazon rainforest, the North American boreal forests, and the Siberian permafrost. Early signs of the degradation of the polar ice sheets, for example, show that the advancement through these “points-of-no-return” markers has unfortunately been underway this century. ** Side notes on what I mean by “doomsday” climate models: they come in many wonderful computational flavors. The degrees of freedom include limits on allowed mean global temperature increases since the beginning of the Industrial Age, different levels of international efforts toward greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and probabilities that countries will meet these standards in the future. Some models go by greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations instead of global mean temperatures. The 1.5 degrees Celsius limit models are the more ideal ones, but also the least practical to be met. I think I’ve seen deadlines for 1.5 degree models that range approximately between the year 2030 with moderate emissions reduction efforts and 2050 with major reduction efforts. The 2 degrees Celsius limit models are much more realistic to stay under by 2100, but they’re also likely to trigger too many of those tipping points to certain extents, as well as lead to intolerable devastation of our global food supplies (examples: drastic disturbances to pollinating insect migration patterns, greater scope of desertification coverage, greater frequency of droughts, larger ocean hypoxic dead zones) and various collapses of ecosystems (such as 90+% of the coral reefs worldwide due to ocean acidification). No one wants to touch those 3, 4, or 5 degree models for good reason. We’ve already blown past the 1 degree limit.

Woah it’s been kinda quiet here the past month…fine, I’ll talk to myself. Don’t mind me! << TLDR Summary: hybrid carbon pricing legislation is totally where it’s at. Carbon taxes for small emitters at state/local level, cap-and-trade permit markets for big ones at national/international level, happiness for all. >> Skeptical Kay Adams: “Hey, Kay! Everyone at PPP has been absolutely DYING to hear your thoughts on carbon pricing legislation. So you gonna talk about it or what?!” Green Kay Adams: “Oh wow! Oh gosh, Kay…and here I was thinking maybe nobody cared about the global warming topic anymore. Well sure, let’s begin!” 1. The Debate: Economists haven’t reached an agreement yet as to which of the two types of carbon pricing systems is best, but right now carbon taxation methods seem to be winning the international popularity contest ahead of emissions trading schemes (i.e. cap-and-trade). There are also hybrid systems of the two that haven’t really been studied too rigorously. These ones happen to be what interest me the most. 2. My Proposal: a hybrid carbon pricing system that features carbon taxes at the state level for small emitters (like cars) and carbon cap-and-trade at the national level for large emitters (like the concrete industry). I would also remove all applied fossil fuel subsidies and consider renewable energy subsidies as needed during the energy transition process. While nationalizing the entire energy industry seems to be a popular option for a small handful of eco-socialists, I feel that the private market is more than capable of efficiently handling everything provided it has these government-imposed corrections for carbon negative externalities. 3. Brief Overview of Benefits: my proposal is primarily a cap-and-trade one, so it still maintains the most salient features of these plans that make it popular with environment-first minded people. Namely, it’s easy to have scientists set the appropriate limits for the major polluters at the supply level and then have the private market determine the price at the demand level. It’s also easier to couple cap-and-trade systems with other countries, since man-made global warming (MMGW) is fundamentally a global problem and since we have to account for companies wanting to set up shop in other countries where it could be cheaper to pollute. Cap-and-trade is also the best system for dealing with the dreaded “green paradox,” where industries are inclined to ramp up their pollution early in anticipation of beating increased restrictions over time. Unfortunately cap-and-trade permit markets can also be volatile, and I think it’s a really good idea to minimize market instability specifically throughout the transportation and food sectors of the American economy. So that is why I prefer keeping a simple carbon dioxide (and methane too!) tax at the state level for automobiles and meat/dairy products and such, since localized economic oversight may be our safest bet for securing overall stability. 4. Addressing Drawbacks: the #1 problem is going to be the high level of political cooperation required, not just within the US but also between other countries. My best response to that is to say we should increase MMGW awareness among voters, get back into the Paris Agreement, and carefully set up government oversight committees to referee the cap-and-trade permit market and the allocation of emissions permits. Another major concern is how any economic shocks from the energy transition process will affect the most economically vulnerable citizens (i.e. the working class). Aside from careful monitoring of carbon pricing legislation, I’d say that it is imperative that this legislation be carried out in parallel with other Green New Deal (GND) components that can financially help the working people, such as enhanced social welfare programs and urban infrastructure renovations that make public transportation more accessible. A final warning I should mention is that a lot of our accumulated knowledge of carbon pricing implementations come from European countries, which clearly don’t have the diffuse transportation layout demands that we have here (Canada may be our closest analogue, although their population is mostly concentrated close to their southern border with us). Our smartest options for countering any uniquely American economic shocks will be to undergo major civic infrastructure upgrades (including high-speed rails?), have job retraining programs for former fossil fuel workers, and expand emergency supplies of the DOE’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the duration of the energy transition process. Skeptical Kay Adams: “I don’t know, Kay. Still seems like a lot of effort to address a problem we don’t even know is real.” Green Kay Adams: “Kay, first address point #2 from the MMGW science section of my/our previous post. Also, please provide scientific papers or article reviews from dissenting scientific opinions on MMGW.” Skeptical Kay Adams: “Are you getting cheeky with me, Kay? I’m not too comfortable with you playing economic God, either. Look at you…intruding into our private markets, capriciously choosing energy industry winners and losers like this...deplorable.” Green Kay Adams: “You disappoint me, Kay. In my/our previous post, please recall point #3 from the problems section with finding MMGW solutions. Also, please feel free to take up any specific economic concerns with any of your favorite qualified professional economists. Greenhouse gas emissions are negative externalities that MUST and CAN be addressed.” Skeptical Kay Adams: “But how are you going to PAY for your Green New Deal utopia, Kay? Tax us all to death?!” Green Kay Adams: “Settle down, Kay. That’s another debate entirely which I will take up in the Trump Economy thread at some point soon. Until we meet again, old friend!” Skeptical Kay Adams: “Wait! Wait! Kay, come back. Can you also respond to the three posts above?” Green Kay Adams: “Sure, why not, Kay? I have nothing better to do with my life this morning. But not before I post a delightful meme commemorating our wonderful discussion.”

Sounds like you’re more of a “Jeffersonian environmentalist” while I’m more of a “Hamiltonian environmentalist.” These are terms I’ve coined just now, so I don’t think anyone else talks like this… What I mean is that I’m more likely to look at environmental problems from a top-down centralized authoritarian perspective, while you may look at solving them from a voluntary point of view at the individual or local community level first. Am I describing your point of view correctly? I’ll just continue on like I am… So I think that grassroots problem-solving is effective for many areas of civic society, especially when it comes to political parties. However, many (most?) environmental problems are time-sensitive and involve highly complex interrelationships between localities. From a historical case perspective (I’m thinking of the 1970’s and onward), I think these sets of problems just respond much better and faster to federally enforced solutions. I’d also argue that many of my environmental solutions revolve around the reallocation of financial resources and don’t necessarily lead to increases in costs for the individual. Sounds like verbal environmentalist subterfuge??? Oh dear…I’ll try to explain myself better in the global warming thread… On the subject of GMO’s: I’m cautiously supportive of them. Of course we need to be mindful of the myriad ways GMO foods could adversely affect the human body, the human digestive tract, the surrounding flora and fauna, and the general environment at large. And despite being the extremely pro-first amendment person that I am, I do demand full compulsory commercial disclosure of all GMO foods on their packaging. But looking at it also from a practical perspective, GMO foods have dramatically increased yields to feed much more of the world population while reducing pesticide use. When you think about it, the entirety of the collective human food supply (flora AND fauna) has been dramatically modified through selective breeding anyway since the beginning of the agricultural age about 10,000 years ago. All of the ancient versions of our foods look so much different than the modern ones, with this natural evolutionary process occurring even without the specific influence of people in white lab coats. Surprisingly, I had never heard of Deep Space 9 until now. I’m adding it to my growing list of PPP personal recommendations on my desk which, oddly enough, I see includes a related written memo: “alien propulsion technology: Deranged Rhino: GW hoax thread.” If you like John Carpenter movies, I also recommend “The Thing” (1982). Normally I’m not big into horror films, but this one is easily the best I’ve ever seen. And speaking of Antarctic ice…I need to check up on the global warming thread today. BUT…I haven’t forgotten my main purpose here: the good people demand a trenchant attack on neoliberalism and on the continuing decay of the American Dream under Trump’s economy. In due time, I shall happily oblige!

I don’t understand the point of entertaining such hypotheticals as whether or not Trump loses and refuses to leave office?? It’s a weird theory that people like Bill Maher have been peddling for years now. Why not stick to complaining about stuff that Trump has actually done wrong? There’s plenty of that to work with without conjuring up nonsensical crisis situations. The answer, by the way, is that Trump will leave office if he loses. In the unusual case that he doesn’t voluntarily leave, his national approval will fall to single digit percentages and the US military will forcefully remove him from office. Give Trump supporters some credit. They do genuinely care about law and order, the Constitution, the democratic process, and the peaceful transition of power in the spirit of George Washington. I would consider Tulsi far-left. Her domestic economic agenda is similar to that of AOC and Bernie. If Tulsi comes across as centrist, it’s because she often pushes back on a lot of the SJW leftist rhetoric and hasn’t fallen in line on political partisan issues like backing Hillary in 2016, Russiagate, and Trump’s impeachment. She’s also willing to engage in cordial discourse with right-wing media figures, which seems to be a major no-no these days if you want to call yourself a Democrat. You’re parroting a 9-months-old baseless accusation from everyone’s favorite sociopathic warmonger-in-a-matronly-pantsuit. Accusing a military veteran of treason without evidence should normally be considered pretty despicable behavior. Tulsi is the most articulate voice on dovish foreign policy that the left has seen since Dennis Kucinich. She speaks very precisely on matters like the military-industrial complex (MIC), regime-change imperialism, entangled international alliances, putting American soldiers in harm’s way, attracting foreign policy blowback domestically as well as abroad, bankrupting the US with an overextended military, and jeopardizing our country’s moral standing in the world. Let’s all stop falling for Hillary’s and the mainstream media’s agenda! The same argument holds in the case of Jill Stein, except there we have Hillary also unfairly denigrating third parties and their supporters…ugh. You’re falling into a logical fallacy where you equate aligned policies with aligned motives. Let’s first review the agendas of the international players, shall we?? I’m dramatically oversimplifying things to keep this post short (i.e. not mentioning Israel)…but we have 3 main players here: 1. Putin: Russia’s economy is a bit lopsided and overly dependent on its gas and oil exports into Europe. This is why they are so heavily invested in Middle Eastern affairs, particularly with pipelines that run through Syria. Putin needs to protect this market at all costs in order to maintain power and relevance. This is Russia’s major weakness that the US can easily exploit (and did so under Bush and Obama). There are also murmurings of Putinian dreams for a unified Slavic white ethnostate a la USSR, but this smells more like neocon neo-McCarthyite propaganda than practical reality to me. 2. Tulsi: I outlined her motives above. She shares a lot of foreign policy overlap with Trump, though they differ greatly on the MIC budget, Venezuela, Yemen, and Iran. They’re also both way too into the anti-Islamic terrorism drone wars for my tastes, but I digress… 3. Establishment: this includes the Bush/McCain/Romney losers on the right and the Obama/Clinton/Biden/Pelosi/Schumer losers on the left. They love war and they love making money off of war. They love sending the working class abroad to fight for their wars. They love Iraqi oil. They love mineral resources and drugs in Afghanistan. They love overthrowing foreign governments in favor of capitalist puppet regimes. They love NATO and the War on Terror because promoting fear of Islam, Iranians, and anything Russian is good business for their war profiteering endeavors. They also love Kamala Harris and Susan Rice as Biden’s VP choices because they know either of the two will happily continue the warmongering industry. Ok, so as you can probably see if you buy my argument above, Tulsi’s foreign policy for America would have involved staying out of Russia’s way while Biden’s foreign policy (as was that of almost every other 2020 Democratic presidential candidate) is the opposite. This is why Putin naturally liked Tulsi the most. It had nothing to do with Tulsi being a secret Russian asset. I’ve also noticed that there’s an overly simplistic foreign policy dichotomy emerging where Trump = pro-Russia and Biden = pro-China. If that were the case, I’d personally much prefer taking my chances aligning with Russia since China is the much greater economic (and military) enemy in the long run, while Russia is currently the other major nuclear superpower so…yeah you don’t want misunderstandings and escalated situations with Putin.

Wait, you sure you wanna be ideologically associated with me in any way? Remember I’m the forum’s resident Green New Deal chica… I like your optimism for the U.S. economy, and in many ways I can understand it. Normally I’m not big into braggadocious American exceptionalism talk, but the evidence is strongly in favor of our country being the best in terms of work ethic (per capita GDP, longstanding Protestant work ethic reputation, etc.) and ingenuity (Silicon Valley, scientific research output, Hollywood, music industry, etc.). So I’m very bullish on the American people. It’s also true that all the other economic players around the world each have their own set of massive internal issues, including China and the EU. What I’m very bearish on, however, are practically all of our country’s institutions of power as well as the partisan bickering that makes it difficult for us to solve even the simplest of problems, like funding a police department. This stuff will hinder the U.S. from becoming the best economic version of itself. We do share the same long-term economic vision that is centered on extreme high-tech. Future economic superpowers will be those who can take advantage of space. Martian and lunar colonies are the eventual goals, but more immediately we can focus on fully automated space mining of our moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, and the 200+ moons of the other planets in our solar system. This would blow away China’s monopoly of rare earth metals, for example. Typical luddites fixate on all the big technological challenges or on difficult psychological questions that come with humans in space for extended periods of time. I see America’s historically optimistic disposition as uniquely suited to tackle these issues. I think government has a necessary role to play in expanding into outer space, even if it’s more of a pure funding role while private companies like SpaceX compete for these funds and manage the operations (rendering entities like NASA obsolete). I also like your helium comment. This is such an underrated and rare natural resource (its weight and chemical inertness allow it to easily and quite literally vanish into thin air). There could be huge unknown reservoirs of it on Mars, too. Thank you for the Brainstorm recommendation. I tend to find old movies more entertaining than new ones. Here’s a recommendation of mine that I believe is very relevant to the thread topic: John Carpenter’s “They Live” (1988), a cinematic MASTERPIECE starring the LEGENDARY film actor, Rowdy Roddy Piper. “I have come to chew bubblegum and kick a$$…and I’m all out of bubblegum.” So Shakespearian!! At this point, does anyone NOT believe the virus will be lingering with us throughout the summer and fall? The smart and safe solution is to stay focused on navigating out of the current economic crisis. Pass some combination of legislation for continued small business payroll protection, temporary M4A (not just for Covid-19) to protect the unemployed, rent/mortgage/student loan/credit card deferments, and at bare minimum another round of stimulus checks of at least $1200. Deficit hawks had most of the past two decades to challenge Bush, Obama, and Trump on this subject. They failed horribly. Prioritize this issue next year. It’s an important issue, but not the most important in 2020. MS-DOS? Was that an earlier version of the infamous Central American crime gang? So let’s think about those 50% who make more with unemployment benefits than by returning to work. Are some of them lazy government freeloaders ready to take advantage of a technicality? Maybe. I see this laziness trope come up a lot in political news commentary. But what about their motivation to secure employment-based health care in the midst of a pandemic for themselves and their families? What about their desire to secure a job or get their old job back before losing a game of economic musical chairs? What about their urge to return to a sense of normalcy and to restore a sense of purpose in their daily lives? A large portion of the recently unemployed are relatively low-wage service industry workers who may be afraid of getting the virus by going back to work and passing it along to loved ones in high-risk health categories. Many families also can’t afford day care, so the parents may need to prioritize staying at home with their kids right now. Some may even be using the extra time off to develop new work skills instead of catching up on all their favorite TV shows. And of course, many are still honestly looking but can’t find employment or anything that meets their reasonable criteria (hours, location, etc.). We shouldn’t automatically attribute the worst motives to such a large percentage of our fellow Americans. I personally can’t partake in callously ridiculing other people as lazy for not willingly toiling at often unfulfilling dead-end jobs, with often grossly substandard pay, in potentially unsafe and germ-friendly working conditions. Actually, I can’t think of a more damning indictment of modern America’s particular form of capitalism than the imagery of professional/managerial class types, with the benefit of being able to work from home during this Covid-19 pandemic, chastising front-line essential worker types about not getting back to work for their financial wheel-spinning crumbs (ooooh my inner Marxist is showing! I forgot I’m on PPP. I should cover up…). Wait so do the Larry Kudlows of the administration give President Trump the bad economic news too? Or is that it? Everything looks good right now and nothing looks bad? Are the large weekly numbers of new unemployment claims that keep rolling in merely mirages? What about those surveys taken that show many small businesses never coming back? Or recent reports of all the states and cities facing budgetary crises due to lost tax revenue from the Covid-19 shutdown? I could go on like this. Larry only lists recovery statistics that don’t really tell us much of anything this early in time, aside from the fact that economic activity immediately jumped following an unprecedented pandemic shutdown. And then Larry magically projects these trends all the way into next year, blithely ignoring any of the many other future economic factors in play. Maybe this was just a 1-minute highlight clip that left out a full and more balanced economic report, but Larry does have a reputation for over-the-top supply-side positivity bias and a major blind spot for how working-class consumption impacts macroeconomic activity. If Trump wants to surround himself with “yes” men unwilling to provide full information needed to make smart decisions, well then I guess it’s his own legacy and re-election at stake. If I was at that table, I would not have allowed Trump to get complacent with the gravity of the economic situation. If I was in the room, I would have also pressed Mr. Kudlow on why they won’t reveal the names of the small businesses receiving PPP loans. Or why the American people aren’t allowed any transparency in how big businesses from the CARES Act are maintaining payroll (Boeing?!) and becoming eligible for future bailout rounds. Or what Larry means by more deregulation as a key solution, which in his world would include a rollback of everything Wall Street was supposed to have learned from the Great Recession.

Of the 346 Hall of Fame members, only 4 have made it in primarily for their special teams play: Lou Groza, Jan Stenerud, Morten Anderson, and Ray Guy. 3 kickers and 1 punter. No returners and no gunners. There are 26 head coaches and 26 contributors who were elected not for their play on the field. Is it then reasonable to so willfully exclude special teamers from Hall of Fame conversations? Excluding all of those players who regularly made significant impacts on the outcomes of every game played? Steve Tasker was the greatest gunner in NFL history. He singlehandedly decided multiple important games and heavily influenced many more on one of the best dynasties the AFC/AFL had ever seen. It doesn’t even matter if the NFL were to completely ban special teams beginning today. You can’t tell the full story of the professional game without including the absolute greatest of the great talents on what was at least once considered a full third of the game. I assume the HOF Seniors Committee will rectify this sorry mistake soon enough. By the way, I don’t understand all the passionate hate here for broadcasters like Tasker (or Beth Mowins for that matter, whose uniquely husky voice I find quite appropriate for the medium)?? Focus on the game, people!

Yes, one of those other 31 teams will almost definitely pick Bass up as soon as he’s released. The best-case scenario for the Bills would be to have both kickers perform really well throughout preseason, followed by a Hauschka trade for a late-round 2021 pick. Bass is the physically superior talent with a longer career ahead. By all accounts, he has the mental fortitude to handle the pressure of the position and the work ethic to quickly learn the wind nuances at New Era Field. The Vedvik versus Bojorquez battle is also interesting. Vedvik seems to have a stronger leg and offers more versatility as a kicker/kickoff specialist.