Reply To: Wealth of Nations, and Economics of Abundance

[Brian H]

Duke Leto wrote: Re: 2-5 mil net for the distribution compantes. Metering isn’t free. And there are still the transformers on the poles to be looked after. And you yourself said that the there was a potential deflationary danger. Fat lot of good FF does us in the US in short the term if it sets off a debt default crisis.

Re: AGW, again I misspoke. My answers to the two questions I asked ought to have been no and yes.

What you are describing is a global climate, more particularly an Arctic climate, that is subject sudden changes from a highly iced cap to a lightly iced one in a matter of decades every few millennia.

So where are the black Polar Bears? The majority of polar bears are living on the Canadian and Alaskan coastlines now, and that population is not living on the pack ice and therefore has a considerable selection pressure for dark pelts to conserve albido heat absorption and not stick out like a sore thumb during the land based summers. If, as your theory necessitates, the Arctic vacillates between larglely Ice Bound and largely Ice Free conditions, ice pack Polar Bears must go extinct on the caps every few thousand years for a few thousand years before being recolonized from the continents once the pack ice is able to support them again.

But if this were the case, they would not BE Polar Bears. They would be Arctic Circle Bears with dark pelts mostly adapted to life on land. Some would live on the ice cap and thrive there when the opportunity arose, but they would not be specifically adapted to a year round on-ice environment. There would not be time to make the full adaptation every cycle.

P.S. I clearly do not think you are a cretin, or I would not be wasting my breath arguing with you. I think you’re an intelligent person who thinks he’s smarter than the scientific consensus. A rarer, but altogether different species from the workaday idiot.

Actually, the whole Polar Bear meme is bogus. Gore’s misinformation was based on 4 deaths in accidents. Historically, Polar Bears have higher populations in warm periods; they are not pure seal eaters, and find even more food when there is more to be had. That was prior to humans with guns, of course. If they face extinction, it will be hot lead that does it, not hot air.