Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
The biggest problem with the climate change industry (NGOs, IPCC, etc) is the actions they're taking have hurt the environment in many other ways. Obviously the earth's climate is continually changing, whether that's caused by humanity, and whether that's a bad thing anyway are both still up for debate.
But hasty actions by politicians eager to be seen "doing something" to fix the problem have done more environmental harm than good. One example of that is the deforestation of parts of Indonesia to produce palm oil for biofuels. This is deforestation that would never have happened under a pure market economy, because the business case for doing it depends on getting EU carbon credit money.
Article discussing from Yale:
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_cos..._forests/2112/
I don't think anyone can credibly believe that destroying an acre of diverse primary rainforest to plant monoculture crops is a good thing, even if it is replacing fossil fuels. |
Biofuels are stupid, stupid, stupid. The degradation of farmlands is every bit as scary as the worst case scenarios for climate change and it requires too much land and resources to be considered viable at a societal level.
Also, mad props to Photon for representing the scientific method. It's something that takes years to even begin to understand, and explaining it to anyone who doesn't at least have a BASc is pretty much impossible.