If you want to stop and even reverse global climate change, what are we going to do with all the Scandinavians when their countries get too cold to live in?

Yes, climate change is real...it's been real for hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of years. It will go on long after we're all gone.

The much better arguments to reduce pollution are the health effects. Of course the health effects of poor nutrition due to no jobs due to too much government intervention is also bad, so maybe we want to work diligently and with regard for jobs and the economy. This is where you'll find a lot more agreement...by tempering ambition with reality.

Working diligently is an idea that has had its day, angel.

The machine produces the wealth now. What we have to do is develop institutions which distribute the wealth fairly.

Not sure what you are gettinging at as regards health effects of climate change. Will we all get less colds as it gets warmer? Hope so, the one I've got right now is very irritating.

but but but our smart leaders have said to us that summers will be hotter and winters will be snowless.

I love you and all Angel, but if you're looking for agreement I doubt you'll find it by trying to equate the evils of climate change with the evils of government intervention.

So you're trying to equate the evils of government interventions trying to "fight the evils of climate change" to the evils of... the weather? Seriously? Oh wait, Gore already got a Nobel prize doing that. Nevermind, carry on. ;)

That's also been tried and failed, it's called socialism...

I dunno about that..Denmark is consistently ranked the happiest country in the world.

Then why are they coming to live in USA for if they are so "happy" there?, hot dogs maybe?

No wait, they want to experience inequality!!!

I'm not aware of a large amount of Danes immigrating to the US...but if you can find a source that says so, I'll eat my words.

Go do a google search of 'world's happiest countries', and you will find the top 10 dominated by scandinavian countries, and other such socialist countries.

Oh I need a source, first hand with people I've met doesn't count, well, come to Eugene Oregon you'll meet many and they don't want to go back.

Michigam is not socialist but Detroit is depopulated because machines now make motor cars, workers don't.

It isn't going to change.

It is accelerating.

My brother had a prostrate cancer operation. It was performed by a robot.

When the work of surgeons is being taken over and performed better by machines, no job (save in the service industries - for now) is safe.

The notion that this is different for a capitalist ecomomy than a communist one (I think you meant communist not socialist) is just misconceived.

its a good thing that cancer operating robot was created by people.. produced by not people? i blame whats his name ford. silly people.

Yep. Henry Ford and his production line.

But it has gone so much further.

When I was a boy London had a factory every few streets. Now there are precisely none. And offices? Well there used to be lots of typists. Find me one to-day. Banks, lots of clerks meticulously adding up collumns of figures - now a pc and done in moments. Mines - well look at those humungous machines, rip out thousands of tons with one guy driving. Motorway construction - the machine moves along, virgin land on one side motorway the other (well, that is a bit of an exaggeration but not much). And agriculture. Look at a combine harvester - where are the millions of jobs in agriculture now? Gone. The whole of London used to go down to the Kent hop fields at harvest time. I have some sepia photos of the people. It was a holiday. They picked the hops. To-day I can watch three people with one tractor harvest a hop field in under an hour - hops processed at the end of it.

It is all good news. No one should have to work in a mine and hop picking cuts your hands to ribbons.

But we must find a way to share the wealth. The wage mechanism used up to now will no longer work.

the labour jobs are gone.. the idea now is that we get a job creating the harvester or the massive cat machines in the mines.

this said, i would happily dig for gold or diamonds in canadas north with a spade and a pick and a pan.

Romantic sort of idea, braden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTymtAbaG08

I'm not equating the evils of climate change with the evils of government intervention. I'm saying that if you are concerned about climate change and want to fight it, you will get better results by focusing on the negative health effects of pollution (which have been proven) and by looking for incremental gains so as not to disrupt too many people's lives too much.

I'm also pointing out that the earth is change. Climatically and in every other way, nothing stays the same. To say that humans cause global climate change is factually wrong. To say that humans are accelerating climate change is a hard argument to prove at the ballot box.

A much easier thing to prove at the ballot box is that pollution is bad for health. A much easier thing to create and show is that recycling is relatively easy and can save you money. I basically don't remember a time when I didn't recycle. I don't really remember a time when I didn't look for ways to reduce or reuse items. These things which things which could have a positive impact on human caused climate change and improve individual lives regardless are a lot easier to prove.

If you want things to go your way, make the right arguments and ask for the right sacrifices. The wrong arguments and asking too much is a good way to lose entirely.

7 billion people in the world,

7 billion people in the world,

Over populated is an understatement...

how much pollution does it create to operate a recycling plant in a year? how much pollution is.. avoided(?) through that same plant?

i'm not trying to make a point, or anything, i'm legitimately asking..

I don't think anyone has done the arithmetic on that braden. Indiduals wanted to be able to do something and politicians wanted to be seen to be doing something and the fig leaves have been found to allow us to think something is being done.

But if you ask people to give up their motor car or their air conditioning or the power to run inumerable electical devices (such as the one I'm typing this message on) - the things for which no careful arithmetic would be needed to know that a difference is truly being made - you will find complete indifference on the part of all of us and on the part of the politicians who represent us.

just burn fossil fuels faster. once the machines lose their fuel then there will be plenty of jobs for everyone! probably take a decade or two just to bury the dead... guess not. probably wouldn't be able to refrigerate the dead for that long. the future is probably going to be a very smelly place. i should probably start a skunk farm... kill my nose now.

I'm very confident people have run the #'s on whether building a recycling plant is net-positive for removing pollution and I'm certain it must pass that test or no one would do it.

The bigger issue is making sure that it's used above the threshold capacity to make it profitable -- monetarily and environmentally -- based on the maintenance cost and annoyance to the community. The few facilities I know of that actually process things aren't really located in or around the city. The ones in the cities are just drop off areas where you leave your recyclable material that they won't pick up with the trucks that come to your house. Like paint cans, motor oil, rusted out metal, big pieces of wood, etc

Recycling is stealing from our grandchildren. Nanobot technology will make our garbage dumps the goldmines of the future. Recycling is not cost effective and is just yet another way to institutionalize scavanging and control the poor by taking away their livliehood.

As for Denmark, I went there for 5th grade in 1970 at the American School. I'd just become an American citizen. Unfortunately I hated Denmark and all Danes. They all spoke Danish, and their TV was Danish, and they threw rocks at our embassy, and they were sort of like Communists I guess.

But in retrospect, I like Danes, and they have great amusement parks, and they have legoland. It was just the culture shock that had me confused back in 1970 probably.

People only do business for profit. The government might do things to garnish the goodwill of the fluffing hippies that are running society now, but that is probably the real reason we have recycling centers.

recycling works for the poor. paint your metal products real good. it makes them think that it's really worthless plastic. also works pretty good for out of work plumbers.

People were making this same complaint when the loom was invented in 1785. They claimed the loom, which could replace about 35 textile workers per machine, was about to cause mass unemployment and destroy the economy (textiles employed a lot of people).

Instead, everyone's standard of living increased because they had access to an abundance of cheap, quality cloths. Over time the economy restructured and absorbed the unemployed (and then some).

This is just one of many examples. The point is that productivity increases are not a bad thing.