Summary: people are irrational and make stupid decisions. The government knows better. Typical Time Magazine.
"Our emissions are boiling the planet, and most of our energy use is unnecessary."
What's "unnecessary"? Energy drives modern technology, from your desk to your home to your doctor's office. Sure, if you don't care about quality of life, then energy use is unnecessary.
And while most scientists think our emissions are going to cause an increase in mean global temperatures over the next few centuries, "boiling the planet" is a long way off.
That's just one example out of a dozen. Is Time an editorial magazine, or is it supposed to be some sort of objective journalism?
That's not entirely a rhetorical question, I honestly don't follow dead tree media and never got into it much as a kid.
What's "unnecessary"? Energy drives modern technology, from your desk to your home to your doctor's office. Sure, if you don't care about quality of life, then energy use is unnecessary.
Really? This is your complaint? By 'unnecessary,' we can reasonably presume that the author means 'needlessly inefficient.' That much is evident to any sincere reader of the article who cares enough about the pursuit of knowledge to abide by the principle of charity: Put the best face on the argument before you refute it, otherwise you are not contributing.
The straw-man argument, "Sure, if you don't care about quality of life, then energy use is unnecessary," is wholly beside the point.
And while most scientists think our emissions are going to cause an increase in mean global temperatures over the next few centuries, "boiling the planet" is a long way off.
Again, this cannot be a serious complaint. The phrase 'boiling the planet' is clearly a metaphor. A surface reading would be that we're just raising the temperature of the planet to an unhealthy extreme. A more nuanced reading reveals that the author means that we are raising the temperature of the planet to such a high temperature that we are going to cause irreversible change, such as when one boils food and finds that no amount of refrigeration will bring it back to it's former state. More simply, we are doing something analogous to sterilizing the planet, though to a lesser degree, in that many species may ultimately be made extinct.
That's not entirely a rhetorical question, I honestly don't follow dead tree media and never got into it much as a kid.
This is evident from the shallowness of your misguided critique. More practice at reading, dead-tree media or otherwise, might have made you a skillful enough reader to have been able to follow the plot here.
There is no need attack the language as activist, which you do even in this post.
The goal of the green movement, at its heart, is greater efficiency in all walks of life. I think we all agree that efficiency is good.
So why does word choice matter if motivates us to become more efficient?
Except that it's not about efficiency. It's often about a suggested lifestyle. (Hint - efficiency doesn't imply minimal.)
And, the "efficiency" arguments are often false and or irrational. (Nuclear power anyone?)
Yes please. You can build the plant in my backyard, I'll donate the land.
Well, even that's wrong. If there was no need at all, then it wouldn't be done that way.
I do this stuff for movies I watch all the time: "Well, Morpheus didn't know any better about the humans-as-batteries, and didn't understand how computing power might be a more reasonable use," and "Equilibrium might be set farther in the future than it seems to be, which would explain how things could have gone this far." When you have to fix up what a columnist really meant, I think that's a sign that something is wrong, and I agree with the your parent poster that this columnist either doesn't understand what he's talking about or is writing for effect without regard to accuracy.
Oh really?
> A more nuanced reading reveals that the author means that we are raising the temperature of the planet to such a high temperature that we are going to cause irreversible change, such as when one boils food and finds that no amount of refrigeration will bring it back to it's former state.
Then the author is babbling. None of the science-based estimates suggest anything like that.
If the author really thinks "sterilizing", "boiling" wasn't a metaphor but scare-mongering.
> More simply, we are doing something analogous to sterilizing the planet, though to a lesser degree, in that many species may ultimately be made extinct.
No, we're not.
In other news - the sky is not falling.
Saul Griffith via Long Now lays out a nice engineer's estimation of factor 7-9x required drop in personal energy use; mostly through deprival: we become vegetarians, travel little, etc. Let's hope that's unnecessary.
http://fora.tv/2009/01/16/Saul_Griffith_Climate_Change_Recal...
This means making sure that no air can get in or out, right? How does this affect air quality?
Second, your stupid summary is not supported by the text of the article.
people [sic] are irrational and make stupid decisions.
There is some truth to this if we take the best possible reading. Research continually shows that people do make decisions that are not supported by rational thinking. Bubbles arise in very simple trading games, even when there is an objective maximum to the item traded that falls well below the traded value, for example. There are countless other examples and a rich and growing literature on the subject. Thus, your first statement seems actually to be true, even if it was offered with sarcastic disdain.
The government knows better.
Again, neither your sarcastic disdain nor your parroting of a right-wing canard make this statement any less true as it pertains to this article. Given that the percentage of people making a given choice can be skewed by how the choice is offered, it seems a reasonable course of action to make the offer in such a way as to achieve the desired result. The decreased withholding example from the article is a brilliant case in point. The government really does know better which way to implement a tax cut in order to increase spending.
Typical Time Magazine.
At some point in your life you're going to have to start addressing the substance of arguments offered rather than considering the source. Maligning Time serves no purpose relevant to the discussion of whether or not the propositions offered in the article correspond to reality. It serves only to rehearse your own biases.
This is a forum for grown-ups. If you can't comport yourself in a manner appropriate to your peers, please remain silent.
Or, to put it in terms more fitting Digg or Reddit: Lurk Moar!
Anyone who has followed Time Magazine at all knows that this is typical of its writing.
Or to put it in hacker news terms, flag the article (it's about politics and doesn't belong here) and move on.
> Again, neither your sarcastic disdain nor your parroting of a right-wing canard make this statement any less true as it pertains to this article.
Hmm. Did govt know best during the Bush years?
Do you really want to argue that general skepticism towards govt is wrong? If it isn't, do you really want to argue that it's a "right-wing canard"?
Hint: saying that someone is "right-wing" or taking a right-wing position isn't actually a cogent argument. The folks who care about the lables either already agree or strongly disagree. The undecided don't care about the labels or the tribes. (Clue: "destroy Bush" was only the goal of leftwing fanboys.)
Connect those, and you get a way to manipulate humans into doing nonstupid things.
Should you do that? That's a question ethics, and maybe politics.
Can you? That's a question for science, and the answer seems to be yes.