Maybe?

And our scientists just got around to noticing last week?

It's relevant vis-a-vis people who complain we're "killing the earth". While it may be true that our actions may be very very bad for innocent flora & fauna around us, and a tragedy for humans, Nature has done the same thing before with other species. As a result, the Earth improved markedly for oxygen-breathing creatures like humans. Yeah, we came along a *lot* later, but if it hadn't happened before we would not be here at all.

AGW maybe (probably) bad for us and our fellow travelers, but indistinguishable long-term from what Nature does on her own. Perhaps 20M years from now some CO2-breathing lizard-plant-person might be writing a paper about the Great CO2 Extinction Event caused by the waste products of a (now extinct) bipedal mammal species right up there with the Great Oxygenation Extinction Event caused by the waste products of cyanobacteria.

Most of the "solutions" advocated for the "inevitable" problems predicted are simply extremely thinly veiled SJW wet dreams that don't do anything to actually help solve the problem or deal with a result.

Right after we get a global agreement to drop CO2 injection to 0, if we mean business, we can start that migration today. I mean, even if we somehow got society to stop burning stuff it'll still take a long time to recover, right? So the seas will continue to rise (despite what HRH Obama once claimed) and temps will still keep going up, so we've got to begin to plan for the inevitable negative consequences for the damage already done.

Governments should start denying building permits for any new structures or infrastructure that is within 70m of current sea level (which is how much sea level would rise if all the ice covering Antarctica, Greenland, and in mountain glaciers around the world were to melt). Government can also stop encouraging people from living in those zones through subsidized flood insurance.

Given that civilization now is doing quite a bit better than civilization was 150 years ago in many aspects, perhaps we could chose the temperature from 10 years ago instead of 150 years ago. Or why not the temperature when civilization started to take off, say about 4000 years ago. Or when "A major technological and cultural transition to modernity began approximately 1500 CE in western Europe, and from this beginning new approaches to science and law spread rapidly around the world." Wouldn't that be just as valid?

At least the person who made the point that 1850 is about the start of the industrial revolution and thus forms the starting point for humans dumping CO2 into the atmosphere made an effort.

Re: single temperature...I'm simply talking about the same temperature used in these discussions--if temperatures have increased 0.02 degrees C every year, whatever the temps used as the basis for that calculation. Stop being intentionally obtuse.

That humans will not be the first species on Earth to devastate the climate to the detriment of other species by overproducing atmospheric gases. Probably won't be the last either.

What is the temperature of the Earth *supposed* to be?

IOW, what is the *ideal* temperature for the planet, and while you're at it, show your work explaining how that particular number was derived.

It seems to me that the AGW folks chose temps circa 1850 or so as the gold standard, at least partly (but to me probably mostly) because that's about when decent measurements and record keeping began. Of course this ignores all temperature variations that preceded that.

They're kind like the Amish, who seem to have decided that technology circa 1850 or so is exactly the level of tech that is allowed. Why not technology circa 0AD--if Jesus didn't need the tech, why should the Amish?

If the AGW folks picked temps from about 15000 years ago, we'd *really* be in the dumper right? I mean, we'd have destroyed all that ice-pack covering swaths of North America, sea level would have risen 100ft, and the temp went up what? Like 8 degrees C? Talk about warming!

None of my comments should be construed to mean I think that humans are not contributing to climate change or that I'm fine with pollution. But this is nothing new, either.

Wikipedia: "The Great Oxygenation Event (GOE), also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, Oxygen Revolution, or Great Oxidation, was the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2) in Earth's atmosphere.[1] Geological, isotopic, and chemical evidence suggest that this major environmental change happened around 2.3 billion years ago (2.3 Ga). Cyanobacteria, which appeared about 200 million years before the GOE,[4] began producing oxygen by photosynthesis. Before the GOE, any free oxygen they produced was chemically captured by dissolved iron or organic matter. The GOE was the point when these oxygen sinks became saturated and could not capture all of the oxygen that was produced by cyanobacterial photosynthesis. After the GOE, the excess free oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere.

Free oxygen is toxic to obligate anaerobic organisms, and the rising concentrations may have wiped out most of the Earth's anaerobic inhabitants at the time. Cyanobacteria were therefore responsible for one of the most significant extinction events in Earth's history."

And it's gone on just fine. Sure a massive global overheating may kill off a lot of flora and fauna, humankind included. But I'm pretty sure the Earth will keep right on trucking and in a few dozen million years will have a whole new set of flora and fauna and perhaps new intelligent species.

Here I thought a guns was designed to fire a bullet at the target the operator points it at. No gun I own has ever killed any animals or people despite firing thousands of rounds, because the only thing I point them at are inanimate (paper, steel) targets.

Prose that could stun a water buffalo. One-dimensional characters that barely pass as cardboard cutouts representing their assigned idiom.

I tired to read Atlas Shrugged about 5 different times and just couldn't. Was given a copy of the audiobook narrated by Edward Herrmann that manage to make it possible to sit through (at least while we drove 18 hours cross-country and 18-hour back!) otherwise I still wouldn't have "read" it.

And that monologue--jeez lady, one or two pages of that would've been sufficient.

"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."

Congressional Budget Office report "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX"

He got that from the suffering of others (I mean, sure Pacquiano suffered some, but he also got about $200M for his efforts)? Through the labor of others? He & Pacquiano didn't "earn it"? Who did Michael Jordan (billionaire) oppress? How about Oprah Winfrey? Who'd she make suffer to get her billions (other than husbands of women devoted to her shows)?

And while you piss and moan about "useless ignorant fucks", they're actually the great equalizer: you should be *hoping* these billionaires have stupid children to whom they leave their money just so that they can piss it all away in a mad bout of consumerism. Tears down the empire (never mind the people the empire employs) and spreads out the wealth quickly, right? And, it gives you someone to point at and ridicule for being a stupid fuck--he had it all given to him and he pissed it all away.

Google is your friend.

"In general, McDonald's franchisees pay about 20 percent in labor costs, according to Richard Adams, a consultant out of San Diego who works with McDonald's operators."

Of course, this varies widely from industry to industry. For example, in hotels (which also have a large number of minimum-wage workers) "...in 2013, labor costs represented 32.3 percent of total revenue".

It's impossible to calculate what raising the cost of labor will do to the cost of the product to consumers, because supply and demand drive that more than anything. You can *assume* that all other production costs remain fixed and that use of labor remains unchanged (however unlikely that is) and that the extra labor costs are passed directly to consumers. But surely everyone realizes how unrealistic those assumptions are.

One thing that is clear, though, is increasing the cost of labor will certainly lead employers to look at ways to reduce labor costs, with technology and automation leading the way. I image that soon we will not need minimum wage workers at McDonalds because we will have self-serve kiosks with touch screens and Siri-like voice ordering sending our orders to a McRobot that assembles all orders with extreme precision (no wrong orders!). One on-site "food engineer" can service the robot, and one "manager" can provide security and resolve the (hopefully) rare complaint about the robotic system. He or she, of course, will not be a minimum wage worker, as servicing the robot will require extensive training.

We already pump our own gas, ring up and bag our own groceries, etc. as technology reduces labor costs.

and he posted at 11:42PM he probably typed that in the nude, so no.

Surely can't be worse service than we get now.