Yes runoff your right. 5 is too much. How about 2 degrees. Lol. Natural gas for cars is the way we should have went. It would have had a instant impact but. You could also stop the whole global warming debate by calling this what it is. Pollution. No one would argue that. Al Gore and many others wouldn't have made billions though.

I remember the snowball in the Senate ( or was it the House) chamber as proof global warming didn't exist. LOL. if anybody needs evidence of crazy weather patterns outside of the D.C., NY media markets just take a short trip to New England. We've only had just a few inches of snow ALL SEASON so far in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts and it's almost February! This time of year there usually is at least a foot or more of permanent snow cover for the season. The highs here are in in the 30s and 40s. Monday is going to be 50Fwith rain. Normal temps are single digits, teens and twenties. I know much of this is due to the El Niño but it certainly is amazing.

@Kend, 5 degrees warmer on average would not be perfect for Canada or Russia and especially China. It would be a disaster. Would likely turn large areas of central Asia and North America into a desert. Hydro power, Canada's main source of electricity would be decimated. Coastal cities would be flooded. Large areas of permafrost turned into swamp. Vast migrations of poverty stricken southerners would invade northern countries creating massive social chaos. The only way to stop that would be genocide, mass extermination.

It is true $trillions have been thrown down the sewer on nutty scams ostensibly to avert global warming, but that is all due to the total corruption of our governments.

It would save $trillions in energy costs to replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy. And 100's of $trillions in climate change costs. But the fossil fuel vested interests cannot allow that. So they promote these wacky wind, solar, ethanol, hydrogen, carbon capture, wave & tidal scams to divert capital, manpower & resources away from effective solutions. And greenwash their dirty energy products. And give their bought-and-paid-for politicians opportunity to pretend they are doing something when in fact they are doing nothing, even less than nothing.

I guess some congressmen can just look out their window and make a judgment about global warming. This seems to be how their science works. Cracking jokes and throwing snow balls. Soooo, we need to make our case for global warming during summer. That should throw them off their game. And yes. For them, it is a game.

Wind & solar are a pipe dream. The EROI the energy return on invested is too low to be feasible as a replacement for fossil fuels. That is a physical impossiblility as Big Oil knows very well. Which is why they promote wind & solar.

What you want on the grid is a constant baseload supply matched by a constant demand. Storage of energy peaks is far beyond economical and remains so. When Germany gets these peaks in solar and wind supply, the end result they are too short to spin down the big coal power plants so they continue wasting fuel and supply bottlenecks mean cheap, clean baseload nuclear and hydro must be dumped and/or most of the wind and solar must be exported at a huge loss, often Germany must pay her neighbours to accept the worthless electricity peak. And that is only possible when her neighbours don't also have lots of wind & solar which would also likely be peaking. In fact some of Germany's neighbours are putting disconnects on their grid connection to prevent Germany from dumping these unwanted electricity peaks on them.

Latest on German solar production for 2014 is 34,930 GWh of a total 576,238 Gwh total production, according to the IEA. So that comes out at 6.1% of total electricity production in 2014. And that has major caveats. The grid likes steady, reliable power sources not ones that only occur when the sun happens to be shining.

Germany only produced 6.1% of total electricity production by Solar in 2014. in 2013 Germany's electricity generation was 66% NG & Coal, mostly dirty lignite with some chopped down forests mixed in to greenwash the filthy coal, 15% Nuclear, 4.3% Hydro and a whopping 14% combined Geothermal, Solar, Wind, Tidal. i.e. They still produced more from their "long abandoned" Nuclear than their massively subsidized Solar & Wind.

And now Germany's Solar PV installation rate is now on a steep decline. 7.6 GW in 2012, 3.3 in 2013, 1.9 in 2014. So much for solar energy.

Germany, after 25 yrs of all out effort on wind & solar, has the 2nd highest emissions per kwh generated in Europe. 9X Nuclear France. 5X Nuclear Ontario. And they have the 2nd highest electricity prices in Europe. Double that of nuclear France. And now they are building giant dirt-burning Coal power plants by the dozens. Why aren't they building Wind & Solar instead?

Even little old Ontario achieved 62% nuclear with It's own indigenous CANDU PHWR natural uranium, nuclear. Whereas the biggest economy in the USA, high tech haven, California, after 30 yrs of all out effort on Solar has only achieved 3.5% & 4.4% with Wind of its electricity consumption. Some impressive that is.

But nobody ever says "What France has done is impressive" or "What Ontario has done is impressive".

The world has invested $1586B for 892 TWh of generation total wind & solar in 2014. That's an avg of 102 GW of energy in 2014. Or $1568B/102GW = $15.4 per watt of avg delivered electricity. They could have built easily 3-5X that much energy with Nuclear for the same price.

Except the nuclear lasts 60-100 yrs vs the solar & wind only 10-25 yrs. And the EROI for nuclear well above what is needed for civilization, unlike solar & wind. And Nuclear is 24/7 electricity unlike solar & wind. We need power whether it is sunny or cloudy, north or south, winter or summer, rain or snow or ice, volcanic eruptions, sand storms, tropical or temporate rainforest, Arctic, insect swarms or monsoons.

And Germany has to destroy historic towns in order to make way for their enormous lignite strip mines. Large sections of land raped by giant draglines. Makes Fukushima look like a bad rainy day.

Wind & Solar are really just bait-and-switch scams which are promoted by fossil fuel interests to greenwash their dirty energy and prevent a switch to the only energy source capable of replacing them, namely nuclear energy.

Corporate America is leading the way to 100% Renewables because they understand that renewable energy means harvesting free, abundant, infinite, clean, nurturing supplies and qualities without the deadly costly risks of fossilized dinosaurs. So, real business leaders understand that harvesting free renewable energy will slash operating costs continuously enough to boost profits and other positive outcomes through the roof. Now our cash-driven GOP US Congress needs to follow the private sector to help the American family to harvest free energy also. Our human cash system counts thte most critcial flows for life and happiness the least....and the least critical stones and walls the most, the most deadly force the most.....so human cashflow floods of a dead energy industry crush life on earth. America and our world can not afford to crush life. The cash-driven 1% have families also...but are acting to crush and destroy their own families, their own children's futures, their own private future stupidly. We can change the course of history upward....so all hands on deck!

As bad as the drinking water situation in Flint is, the same business first approach fouled the Flint River in the first place and it still flows into Lake Huron. This is why it is crazy when all these conservative republicans complain about too much regulation. There is not enough regulation to protect our environment.

As Paul Krugman has stated many times, economics does not have the type of experiment that one has in Chemistry, Physics or Biology, where one adjusts a factor by a little or much and examines the result.

Nevertheless, we have had many periods of policies that are radically different from other times. We can evaluate the results of these different conditions.

It is interesting to note that periods of lo employment are low productivity periods and low receipts of state, local and federal taxes leading to an increase in debt or a decrease in in services necessary to a "well regulated society".

Other periods of policies with "pay as you go" high marginal taxes on those individuals with excess incomes beyond the necessities of life, health and the requirements of a good society, are periods of higher productivity, higher rates of tax receipts and better welfare for society in general.

We must learn from thees "natural" experiments and not ignore them.

Robert Reich's analysis of the democratic candidates is another form of "natural" experiment. I would add that the polyglot of candidates on the conservative political side follows the same type of logic. Their idea is that being protected by mother and father when a child, leading to a sense of security and love and confidence in the future is nice but it is not conducive to solving the problems of today or the problems that might occur in the future. The candidates of the GOP seem to think they can go back to their childhood for the mythical security and peace of their childhood. One cannot do that. We must be adults, looking forward to the opportunities and challenges of the future.

That is why I am in favor of Robert Reich's analysis. Lets's go with Bernie.

Allow me to repeat a thing I submitted earlier too: - - - Hillary’s “experience” has included much practice “INside the boxes” such as those of Wall-Streetism and of foreign-policy bureaucracies. Bernie seems handy “OUTside the boxes”. … This is among the issues: “INside” or “OUTside”? - {I tend “OUT”, although I’m aware that America has in-our-past performed best when proceeding “incrementally”, - which involves attention to the Smart things “INside” and building-further on Them.}

Great posts, everyone! Love reading all your comments.

Instant-RunOff, you and I didn’t get off to such a great start fighting over nuclear power, to have or not to have. But after reading posts you’ve since written on various other issues, it seems to me that we agree on many more things than we conflict on. And that’s the funny thing about blogging…

W1ders, I certainly don’t begrudge you wondering out loud about the necessity of taking our country & democracy back via violent revolution. I pray with all my heart we don’t go down that road because (1) in the long run, violence solves nothing; (2) It’s a battle we’re bound to lose, as we’d be enormously out-gunned; and (3) we haven’t exhausted all our other options yet.

Non-violent revolutions tend to have better, more lasting impacts. Remember how Ghandi defeated the British Empire, without shedding a drop of his or anyone else’s blood? There are other ways of fighting back that not only are less destructive, but also more effective; like for example, when it comes time to cast our votes, kicking all those fascist goons out of the House & Senate, and electing Bernie Sanders for president! If we can do that much, the sky’s the limit. Without bloodshed.

I keep reminding myself and those around me that if our votes didn't matter, the oligarchs would not have gone to such trouble finding, inventing & legislating ways to suppress them.

We don’t have to live like this forever. But it won’t change unless we get up off our butts and make it change. Electing Bernie is a good place to start, along with electing the kinds of public servants that would comprise a functional Congress... the latter of which we’ve not had for a very, very long time.

You're right c-gull, they couldn't be rich if someone else wasn't poor. Mainly us, working people, those who work for them, who work so hard to make THEM rich (IOW, they stole OUR wealth, the product of our labor).
Snyder and whoever else must be held to account for the Flint disaster by the democracy and should go to jail.

I foresee a bright future for Governor Snyder. He has demonstrated his ability to duck responsibility, deny involvement and be indifferent to the wellbeing of the public in the quest for the dollar. Once retired from his governorship, he will do well in a corporate environment.