First Quiz – “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster” Reading Guide

Post Reply
johnkarls
Posts: 2034
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

First Quiz – “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster” Reading Guide

Post by johnkarls »

.

***************
A. Our Author

A-1. Is Bill Gates a bona fide celebrity who can focus public attention on pressing problems that face humanity?

A-2. For example, when our 4/10/2021 weekly e-mail announced our focus book for our May 12 meeting, did it traditionally list Amazon’s hard copy and Kindle prices AND availability at local libraries with the lament “OF NOT MUCH HELP WILL BE the Salt Lake COUNTY Library which has 0 of 46 copies available with 122 holds or the Salt Lake CITY Library which has 0 of 6 copies available with 26 holds” – the number of copies for each already being 10 times the normal number for other new books?

A-3. Doesn’t Bill Gates deserve a medal (perhaps even America’s or the U.N.’s highest medal) for focusing public attention on Global Warming (aka Climate Change)?


***************
B. The Reasons For Concern/Action

B-1. Does Bill Gates do a good job of explaining why action should be taken?

B-2. What is the difference between Bill Gates’ “51 Tons” and “16 Tons” which was the title of one of our grandparents’ favorite hit tunes by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955?

*****
B-3-A. Is one of the traditional reasons for concern/action that Global Warming will cause enough melting to raise sea levels?

B-3-B. Are there even websites where you can plug in a location (such as NYC) and see a map that shows flooding related to any rise in the sea level, even several feet, that you want to input?

B-3-C. Have the proponents of this reason for concern/action ever heard of Holland???

B-3-D. For any local area that might be threatened by rises in the sea level, why should the world economy have to bear tremendous costs in order to benefit local areas threatened by sea-level rises???

B-3-E. Taking NYC as an example, isn’t one of the FEW AREAS threatened by sea level rises the Hudson River’s New Jersey riverfront opposite Manhattan with all those fantastic views as a result of which the N.J. riverfront has been populated in recent decades by MULTI-ZILLION-DOLLAR homes so that the wealthy can enjoy those views while living close to their Manhattan offices??? And couldn’t those super-wealthy autocrats easily afford to hire some engineers to build the necessary dykes??? And aren’t we talking about, to a great extent, the same super-wealthy people who have beach homes on New Jersey’s Atlantic Shore where for many decades they have convinced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that their primary training exercise each year should comprise dredging sand that has been washed away so that it can be returned to those lovely sand beaches – free of charge to those super-wealthy beach-home owners???

B-3-F. Doesn’t the attempt to get the world to help the few who insist on living near the sea remind you of the attempts decades ago to have the U.S. Government provide subsidized “flood insurance” for people who insist on living in “flood plains” of rivers, etc., whenever the obvious flooding hazard meant that commercial flood insurance was not available at any price???

*****
B-4-A. Is another reason for concern/action that Global Warming has caused the earth’s “Sixth Extinction”?

B-4-B. Did our 1/13/2016 meeting 5 years ago focus on Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”?

B-4-C. Due to Global Warming, is the earth currently in the middle of its SIXTH extinction in the last 500 million years?

B-4-D. Are as many as 50% of the world’s species becoming extinct and is this extinction caused almost wholly by human activity?

B-4-E. Was Yours Truly struck by Elizabeth Kolbert’s failure to spell out any adverse effects of the extinction?

B-4-F. In the Short Quiz for our 1/13/2016 meeting 5 years ago, did Yours Truly question (Q&A-10 through Q&A-20) whether most medical cures are discovered by ascertaining the natural enemies of the species causing the disease?

B-4-G. Meaning that humanity might itself face extinction if a species that could wipe it out suddenly becomes unchecked due to the extinction of another species that had been keeping in check the fatal-to-human species?

B-4-H. And also meaning that finding a cure for the fatal-to-human species could be lost if medical research can NO LONGER ascertain what species had been keeping in check the fatal-to-human species SO THAT medical research could ascertain what there was about the checking species that kept the fatal-to-human species in check so that a cure can be based on synthesizing the feature of the checking species that kept the fatal-to-human species in check?

B-4-I. Did the attendees of our 1/13/2016 meeting 5 years ago include the University of Utah Radiology Research Professor?

B-4-J. Did the attendees of our 1/13/2016 meeting 5 years ago also include the recently-retired U.S. Air Force Doctor who, inter alia, headed the medical staff at the U.S. Defense Department’s Regional Medical Center at Landstuhl Germany, the first hospital to which wounded American service personnel in the Middle East have been taken since Gulf War I (1990-91)? [And who, like many if not most of our local members, have retired to ski Utah?]

B-4-K. Did both the U/U Radiology Research Professor and the retired U.S. Air Force Doctor immediately inform Yours Truly about what an uninformed idiot he was??? [And presumably still is on many other matters!!!]

B-4-L. Did both of them inform Yours Truly that medical research to find a cure for each new pandemic is virtually always confined to Big Pharma going through their current roster of cures for other diseases to ascertain whether any of them are effective against the new threat?

B-4-M. And, by implication, that there is NO REASON TO LAMENT the loss of 50% of the world’s species in the new SIXTH EXTINCTION?

*****
B-5-A. Is yet a third reason for concern/action that Global Warming will render vast areas of the earth uninhabitable deserts that can no longer support farming, etc.?

B-5-B. Will turning vast areas into uninhabitable deserts cause mass migrations that can NOT be stemmed unless governments are willing to close their borders and watch millions of human beings perish on their doorsteps?

[NB: This bears no relationship to the current crisis on America’s southern border which has little or nothing to do with the areas from which the migrants are coming, having become uninhabitable deserts.]

B-5-C. Is this the reason why Pope Francis, during his first Papal visit to the U.S. in 2015, focused on Global Warming and utterly ignored Christ’s nearly-constant focus on the poor and Christ’s second of TWO COMMANDMENTS for inheriting eternal life (i.e., to love your neighbor as yourself)???

B-5-D. Indeed, did we launch on 6/20/2015 one of our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns to Pope Francis (with a CC to the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which was organizing his visit) to at least mention during the Pope’s trip that UNICEF reports that 23% of U.S. children live in poverty and that no other industrialized country tolerates even half that rate which is TRIPLE THE RATE in Germany, Austria and France AND QUADRUPLE THE RATE in such countries as Denmark, Slovenia, Norway, The Netherlands and Finland???

B-5-E. Within only a matter of hours, were both Pope Francis and the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops bouncing our e-mails???

B-5-F. But getting back to Pope Francis’s seeming obsession with Global Warming, is he a modern-day Cassandra who can foresee the impending doom???

*****
B-6. Are there any other reasons for concern/action traditionally offered by Global Warming activists?


***************
C. Practical Considerations Usually Ignored by Global Warming Activists

C-1. Has Yours Truly begun each of our dozens of meetings on Global Warming during our 15.5 years of existence, with a request for a show of hands by everyone who favors invading militarily any country that refuses to combat global warming – such as China which brings on line a new monster-size coal-fired electric-generation plant every week?

C-2. During those dozens of meetings on Global Warming over our 15.5 years of existence, has there ever been A SINGLE HAND RAISED in response to that question?

C-3. If that is the universal attitude around the world, does that mean solutions to Global Warming (aka Climate Change) are effectively confined to carbon-free energy sources that are cheaper than oil & gas?

C-4. Are China and India the world’s primary carbon polluters?

C-5. Did the Paris Climate Accord IGNORE THE OBVIOUS by requiring the U.S. (and some other economically-advanced countries) to begin restricting their economies and lowering their standards of living in exchange for the promises of China and India to begin restricting their economies in 2030?

C-6. If you believe that China and India will begin restricting their economies in 2030, do you still believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy?

C-7. Was the same problem faced with the predecessor of the Paris Climate Accord -- the Kyoto Protocol of 1997?

C-8. Was the U.S. Chief Negotiator at Kyoto our sitting Vice President Al Gore?

C-9. Before Vice President Gore departed for Kyoto, did the U.S. Senate vote 95-0 that he should NOT agree to anything (A) that would adversely affect the U.S. standard of living, OR (B) THAT WOULD EXEMPT CHINA OR INDIA???

C-10. Did Vice President Gore DEFY THE U.S. SENATE by doing both???

C-11. Is that probably the reason why President Bill Clinton NEVER SUBMITTED TO THE U.S. SENATE FOR RATIFICATION AS REQUIRED BY THE CONSTITUTION the Kyoto Protocol???


***************
D. Some Observations About Bill Gates’ Perspective

D-1. Have the only two energy sources that have historically been cheaper than oil & gas, been either hydroelectric or nuclear?

D-2. Has hydroelectric NEVER constituted much of a threat to oil & gas because the world only has a finite number of rivers and a finite number of places where they can be dammed to create reservoirs?

D-3. Has nuclear ALWAYS constituted an economic threat to oil & gas that could only be thwarted by preying on the public’s fears of nuclear?

[This quiz is already too long to focus on “China Syndrome” – a 1979 Hollywood blockbuster featuring Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas – and contrast it with the nearly-impeccable safety record of the nuclear industry marred significantly only by human idiocy at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi.]

D-4. And have solar and wind power, for example, always required massive governmental subsidies or mandates in order to exist?

D-5. BTW, as we have studied many times in the past, are electric vehicles STILL A DISASTER from a global-warming viewpoint because their existence has prevented the RETIREMENT FROM THE NATION’S ELECTRIC GRID OF COAL-BURNING ELECTRIC-GENERATION PLANTS in the same amount as the electricity used by the electric cars?

D-6. And BTW, couldn’t California do more for combatting global warming (than even the entire country outlawing many if not most of the nation’s cars, trucks & buses) by simply requiring all of those cargo ships in California ports to shut down their engines which are kept running for on-board electricity and requiring them to accept electricity from the on-shore grid instead?

D-7. And BTW wouldn’t such action by California be a proverbial “god send” for all of those poor people who have to breathe all of that ship pollution in the areas next to those ports where property values are in the toilet because only the poor can afford to sacrifice their lungs to live there?

D-8. But back to Bill Gates – even though he is a “Johnny Come Lately” to the Global Warming imbroglio, hasn’t he become an unabashed proponent of nuclear energy?

D-9. And curiously, hasn’t Bill Gates become a proponent of uranium-fission rather than thorium-fission which has so many advantages over uranium-fission (and no disadvantages) such as being incapable of producing an explosion and such as the world’s incredible supply of cheap thorium (e.g. virtually all of India’s “sand” beaches comprise thorium, a child’s pailful of which is sufficient to provide all of a human being’s energy requirements for an entire lifetime!!!)???!!!

D-10. Nonetheless, is Bill Gates an “honest broker” in presenting all of the known possible energy sources and what each would need to be the “winner” or, at least in one or more energy-usage areas, a “winner”?

D-11. In doing so, is Bill Gates handicapped by his background in computer technology? After all, in making obsolete the gigantic costs of so many human jobs (e.g., clerks, accountants – even junior scientists who used to crank out all those numbers in scientific studies), isn’t he oblivious to costs the way the rest of us have to toil so much over budgeting our resources?

D-12. Indeed, doesn’t Bill Gates in “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster” recommend the U.S. adopt a “carbon tax” on such things as oil & gas?

D-13. Putting aside the issue of whether a “carbon tax” would comprise a subsidy for non-carbon fuels or, instead, a long-warranted accounting for the ecological costs of carbon fuels, doesn’t this proposal (A) IGNORE WHETHER OTHER COUNTRIES will impose comparable levels of carbon taxes in order to inflict equivalent damage on their economies and standards of living, and (B) IGNORE THE INCREDIBLE REGRESSIVENESS of carbon taxes which would constitute a heavy blow to the budgets of poor people while being hardly noticed by the wealthy?

D-14. BTW, wasn’t it for precisely these reasons that Congress rejected the carbon-tax proposal made by President Obama upon entering office?


***************
EXTRA-CREDIT Q = Do the foregoing 56 questions set a record for one of our so-called Short Quizzes?

Post Reply

Return to “Participant Comments – “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” by Bill Gates – May 12”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest