ruraljuror

I think their current objective is primarily attracting investors, and staying relevant and in the news is one of the ways they're clearly trying to bring those investors to the table. In the Twitter era, every PR piece they get published somewhere increases the odds ever so slightly that they catch Oprah on the right day.

That makes sense. Being too small for the biggest crowd in attendance in 25 years is a double-edged sword, I guess. It's like the old joke about the place that's so crowded nobody goes there anymore. I have heard it was a mess down there, though I think a lot of the food issues were more COVID capacity related than actual capacity. But you're definitely right in your post above that the way the square footage is subdivided has kept a lot of the giant trade shows from coming to town, from what I've heard at least.

Nashville hosted this convention last year, unless I'm confusing denominations. https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/largest-sbc-gathering-in-25-years-spurred-by-first-time-messengers-geographical-proximity-to-nashville/ I'm not in the convention hosting business, but in the early years after our new convention center opened, the excuse typically tossed around for missing out on huge conventions was almost always pinned on lack of hotel capacity (which they've been working to correct since) as opposed to convention hall square footage.

I agree as well. Keep the Rays nickname for shorthand but change the formal team name to the Nashville Billy Rays to add the local spice.

Fair enough, but I think you've got it backwards in your thinking that no on-site employees is a feature when in reality it's a bug. Whatever benefits are gained by not having employees onsite from minimizing the extra commotion and not adding to the parking needs are completely eclipsed by the lack of accountability on the property. In a normal hotel, if there are guests causing significant disturbances, you can call the front desk and have the matter addressed by a representative of the hotel in a relatively short amount of time. Should the problem persist, the hotel can eject the guest, and if law enforcement intervention is required at that point, the police have a lot more latitude to act when they're dealing with a trespassing infraction called in by an agent of the property itself instead of a noise complaint from a neighbor as in Nash_12Souths's example above. In this way, AirBnB and STR owners benefit directly by offloading their onsite accountability requirements to the city payroll instead of their own. Of course you're right that noise and bad neighbors are facts of life when you live in a city. In fact, we're all probably bad neighbors to somebody else - in my case I'm the bad neighbor for regularly letting my grass grow too long, but to me the bad neighbor is the lady who can't help herself from making passive aggressive comments about it. This is the nature of living in a society with people who have different and often conflicting goals and priorities. But it's one thing to have differences or even disputes with neighbors, with whom we have a mutual benefit in finding some kind of way to peacefully coexist, and its a very different thing to have disputes with a revolving door of strangers who have absolutely no skin in the game whatsoever and can blow through town like a tornado with no repercussions for anything just as long as their behavior stays on the right side of jail. This is one of the main justifications for treating short term and long term rentals differently as long term renters can't run away from anti-social behavior in the way that rowdy weekenders can. Still, as you noted, some property owners very likely would and/or do prefer living adjacent to an STR instead of another homeowner or long term renter explicitly to avoid the possibility of having neighbors with any vested interest in what you're doing on your property - in my case, whether or not the grass is regularly mowed. But in most of the neighborhoods that have gotten to experience the rise of the AirBnB wave first hand, the vast majority of those residents have come to the conclusion that placing some limits on STRs is in their and/or the neighborhood's best interest, which is why these rules and limitations started getting enacted in the fist place. Seems reasonable to me.

A strawman argument is when you weakly state some aspect of your opponents position in order to bat it down. Maybe the term you're looking for is red herring? Or maybe I'm missing the point - you tell me. In either case, even if I accept everything you've said here as true, I still don't think you're making a very compelling argument. For one, it seems like you're now limiting the distinction between hotel and STR to the presence of maids, concierges, and bell hops. Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and/or you rethink for a second whether or not maids are involved in STRs, I have personally been to more than a couple hotels over the last decade that had neither concierges nor bellhops, so your ability to split that hair is moot right out of the gate. Further, you say that "It doesn't matter" how long the stay is, 'a group of people sleeping and coming and going' in a place is what unifies the rental properties category, whether it's for 1 night or 1 year. Ignoring for a moment that hotels also meet the definition for this category, I think you could benefit from reflecting on how you opened that sentence and ask yourself 'It doesn't matter to whom'? Clearly the answer is that it doesn't matter to you, but it's equally clear that there are a lot of people who disagree with your assessment, and those peoples' opinions on these matters are just as valid as yours, right? Same goes for the opening to your closing paragraph in the quoted post - "None of those complaints are a valid reason to not allow STR." Once again, according to whom? As I see it, the obvious reasons to distinguish owner occupied STRs from non-owner occupied STRs are that having owners on site who have to also deal with the parking and noise issues their property is creating - not to mention having to interact with their unhappy neighbors who are being affected - can very directly help to keep those issues in check. At the very least, the neighbors can find some comfort in knowing the owners are suffering even worse than they are when terrible guests come around. That seems like a much more valid reason to draw the line based on whether or not the property is owner occupied than whether or not 'they have bellhops' but maybe that's just me.

Seems to me your definition misses the key bit about the public ownership of the means of production/distribution, which seems pretty crucial.

I understand your point about the ease of converting housing stock to STR use, but I'm just not sure that it really has any relevance here. I have been in plenty of houses that have been converted to offices or shops or studios without changing anything but the furniture. Hell, I could convert my house into a home invasion SWAT team training site or an urban warfare Airsoft course without even having to take the pictures off the walls - in fact they'd add to the realism! The ease of conversion between uses for a structure has no bearing on whether or not that structure should be permitted in a given location. Just because my house could easily serve as a non-owner occupied office, doesn't mean that the city must permit me to do so anymore than the city must permit me to run a strip club with a suburban theme there (don't worry, the poles aren't permanently installed). All I'm doing is applying the same logic and rules to hotels. If Embassy Suites isn't allowed to operate a satellite campus at the house next door, then why should any other entity be permitted to do so? Seems like you're argument really just boils down to your opposition to zoning laws in general. I think this is the crux of our different perspectives. I certainly understand the appeal of the idealized individualism and freedom-maximizing binary outlook, although I do think examples like the SWAT and/or Airsoft facility (or worse) next door should at the very least give you pause. As I've repeatedly said, however, laws can be changed, and zoning lines/rules often do - not to mention special purpose exceptions. If you and others who share your beliefs can amass enough support, it is entirely within your power to make the kinds of changes you wish to see (with regard to zoning, at least). And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of zoning rules that I don't always agree with (height limitations in certain areas come immediately to mind, which I'm confident we at Urban Planet have influenced to some degree through our relentless collective advocacy on the matter), but the rules as they currently stand are the best efforts of those that came before us to compromise and fairly arbitrate the complex issues that arise when a bunch of different people with different agendas and 'beliefs' try to coexist in close proximity in a functioning society. Could the system be improved? Of course, it's never been perfect and has always been a work in progress, so if you've got a compelling argument about any specific, actionable change you'd like to promote, I'm all ears. But if you're just trying to advocate against zoning in general, you're going to have to explain with some pretty compelling evidence how the potential benefits outweigh the risk that a honky tonk, or pig farm, or a commercial helipad sprout up next door without just adding a bunch of other new rules to address all the pitfalls we can dream up a la carte.

The nature of the buildings themselves? I have a really hard time believing that you've never seen a house that's been converted into a law office, yoga studio, art gallery, coffee shop, bar, restaurant, tattoo parlor, salon...the list goes on. In fact, we happen to have a fairly famous 'row' of music studios and publishing houses that you may have heard of. It should be self-evident that the actual use of a structure affects its value and where it fits in the marketplace far more than a label like 'houses' - which not everyone would define to include a tall skinny triplex like the hypothetical we're discussing here to begin with, btw. To illustrate, if a developer buys an apartment building and decides to convert to condo sales instead of rentals, that puts upward price pressure on the local apartment rental market because of decrease in supply, and downward price pressure on the condo/home sale market because of the increase in supply. It doesn't matter whether you call them apartments or condos (and in fact some markets use these terms interchangeably), what matters is how the space is used and how it affects markets accordingly. If a single family home is torn down and replaced by a tall, skinny triplex with three units that are then put on the market for sale, for example, the net effect is downward price pressure on the condo/home sale market because of a net increase in supply. Simple enough. If those triplex units are rented out on a long-term basis, on the other hand, then the net effect is upward price pressure on the condo/home sale market because of decreased supply (from the torn down house), and downward price pressure on the rental market because of new units coming online. Taken one step further, if those triplex units are rented out on a short-term-basis, then the net effect is upward price pressure on the home/condo sales market because of decrease in supply, and downward price pressure in the hotel/short term rental markets. Astonishing no one, these market dynamics are exactly what we're seeing in our local markets - it's like an econ 101 case study that we're all watching play out in real time. To be clear, however, I don't think that the affordable housing issues are even the primary factor driving AirBnB backlash and regulation. Noise, parking, and 'changing the character of the neighborhood' have been the chief complaints in the neighborhood meetings I've attended on these matters, and the main issue tends to center on non-owner occupied properties. It's one thing if your neighbor cuts hair out of their kitchen to make some extra money, or produces music from their home studio, or uses their garage to store inventory for their start up, etc. It's a very different thing however if your neighbor moves away and turns their old house into a full-time commercial salon, or recording studio, or a warehouse with big trucks regularly loading and unloading deliveries in the driveway. Similarly, it's reasonable for people who have purchased homes in areas not zoned for hotel use to expect that the house next door won't be converted into a de facto hotel with no owner or even an operator onsite. Allowing non-owner occupied AirBnBs in the first place, even with neighborhood caps, is a gift to AirBnB by enabling investors to operate a hotel business model in places where doing so under another name would be strictly prohibited. As painstakingly noted above, what you call the structure is irrelevant, and if investors want to invest in a hotel business, there are ample other opportunities for them to do so in places where hotels are already allowed to go, and if there are enough people that want to remove those hotel restrictions or redraw the boundaries of where hotels (or salons, studios, warehouses, etc.) are allowed to conduct business, that's what elections are for.

ha. That's still not what socialism means.

None of this makes sense to me. If an Single Family Home is replaced by 3 tall skinnies that are all intended to be used as AirBNBs, then we haven't really increased the housing stock - all we've done is essentially increased the 'hotel' stock. If that's the case (and/or the goal) then why not just allow a 3 story hotel on that lot instead of 3 tall skinnies - then we'd get even more hotel stock out of the deal and greater ROI as well. Potentially even better yet from an ROI standpoint, why not build a 3 story Honky Tonk there or a 3 story strip club, or a shooting range, or maybe we should go down instead of up and dig out a limestone quarry on the lot instead? Maybe we could even bury toxic waste in the pit after we've extracted all the value for an ROI sweetener on top. Where does it end? Property rights are not absolute for obvious reasons.

Good points good post all around.

What metrics are leading you to believe that the US economy is in worse shape over the last year + than in 2019 and 2020? Seems to me just about all the numbers would indicate the opposite is true. GDP for example grew by over 5% in 2021, which is more than twice the rate it grew in 2019. In 2020, the GDP actually shrank by more than 3%. Further, unemployment rates were sky high in 2020 for obvious reasons as well, but you may be surprised to learn that the US unemployment rate in March of 2019 was 3.8% which is exactly where it is today. I certainly share your hopes that neither the Nashville nor the US economy will be declining in the future, but regardless of what happens in the future, seems to me that the data about the last couple of years is pretty clear.

Our transit issues are a better example of the cost of patience in this case I think

I agree about the interesting massing. This building is actually kind of fun to see heading over the connector away from downtown if you think of the flat, color block exterior as a modernist painting or an attempt at an optical illusion. It can actually look quite attractive on a sunny day with the matte of the building contrasting with the sheen of the perforated metal bridge siding.

If someone had told me that we were going to lose Henry half way through the season but that we still make the playoffs and lose in the divisional round, I would've been incredibly impressed and probably would've assumed that Julio must've been putting some major points on the board, but then if you told me that Julio didn't even see the end zone until the last game of the season, I would've figured that Tannehill must've really stepped up and logged some truly incredible numbers, but then if you told me his passing tds fell by about a third from last season while his interceptions increased by a factor of about 3, I would've guessed that the core role players must've really upped their game to the next level with consistent improvement and gelling team chemistry, but then if you told me we actually set an NFL record for the number of different guys that had to suit up because of endless injuries, well, then suddenly winning the conference seems less surprising/exciting and more straight up dumbfounding/awe-inspiring. That's the kind of season I think I would've been really excited to get to watch play out.

Is this satire or a serious question?

So you've heard about another potential relocation/expansion that is hard to explain? What're the odds?!?! Who knows, indeed.

GE Healthcare? Once the news breaks, so can Smeagol's silence, right? https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/ge-to-break-up-into-3-companies-focusing-on-aviation-healthcare-and-energy.html

Regardless what you think about the value of GDP as a metric, you're still not addressing the growth rates. As an olive branch, I will grant you that Texas per capita GDP growth has improved over the last 5 years at about 3% slower than Massachusetts - down from about 4% slower than Massachusetts over the last two decades, so the growth rate gap is narrowing. That said, it's not as though Texas is catching up, it's just losing ground less slowly than it was earlier in the millennium. You are right, however, that this analysis could be impacted if cost of living in Massachusetts were climbing significantly faster than in Texas, but I'm curious what makes you think that's the case. Do you believe the population growth that you're touting as a measure of success is bringing costs down somehow? Correct me if I'm missing something, but the law of supply and demand would seem to indicate otherwise, which may be the reason you're having trouble finding the numbers you're looking for. I know cost of living in Nashville has been pretty steep of late at least and we're much closer to the TX than the MA tract. I'll also note that you're correct that I totally missed your joke in the previous post, which is my bad, but I do still think you're missing the larger point with your mechanic and igloo comparisons, and the source of the confusion again seems to be supply and demand. A mechanic can charge more for fixing your car in the middle of a city than they can charge for fixing a similar car out in the boondocks because there are lots of customers in the city and transporting their cars out to the boondocks costs time and money for which the city mechanic is able to charge a premium. The market dictates the value, not the mechanic. In your igloo example, however, I would argue (and the market would agree) that the value created by the relocated work force as you describe it did indeed cause Texas to contribute less to the economy unless they're selling more units as a result. By selling their product for less, they should be able to move more product and net additional revenue, otherwise the relocation was a bad business decision. If Igloo lowers its price and is unable to move any additional units to make up for the reduced revenue, however, then you are correct that Texas would then in fact be contributing less to the US economy. Even if they move the exact same number of units pre and post relocation, the lower prices (with no additional sales) indicate that the market values the product less after than before the move, which is then fairly reflected in GDP. I'm genuinely curious, does that argument still seem absurd to you after having read this explanation?

If your claims are that the population of Texas is growing faster than the population of Massachusetts and that the cost of living in Texas is lower than the cost of living in Massachusetts, I've got no disputes with those assertions whatsoever. I'd also like to point out that there's a lot that I like about Texas, so I hope you're not taking this personally. That said, nothing that you wrote in your post above addresses the fact that the per capita GDP of Massachusetts has been growing at a faster rate than the per capita GDP of Texas for the last 20 years. You're also going to be hard pressed to find any economists that will argue that population growth and cost of living are better indicators of a state's "fortunes" than per capita GDP (see India with tons of population growth and a very low cost of living as one example to support this point). I do, however, think you make an interesting point by bringing cost of living into the equation with regard to per capita GDP, but I think you're missing a crucial part of the analysis. The greater amount of money spent on cost of living in Massachusetts doesn't happen in a vacuum and it doesn't just disappear - that money is reinvested back into the state and the people who live there. Just for a few examples, I did a quick google search about state rankings in terms of education, healthcare outcomes, and poverty: According to the first sources that popped up (so correct me if you can find better data of course) but it looks like Massachusetts is ranked 1st in education, 2nd in healthcare outcomes, and 10th in poverty. Texas, on the other hand, is ranked 34th in education, 42nd in healthcare outcomes, and 41st in poverty. I would argue that Massachusetts is getting a pretty good ROI on the cost of living and that having a better educated, healthier, and less financially strained population is what's driving Massachusetts' faster per capita GDP growth relative to Texas, but even if you look at Massachusetts' public spending as nothing but an anchor that isn't driving growth, then it's even more impressive that Massachusetts is able to achieve a faster per capita GDP growth rate despite the larger cost of living. I also wanted to point out that what you've written here about NYC vs Houston teachers/cab drivers, etc. is a fundamental misunderstanding of how per capita GDP works, just as an FYI. Per capita GDP doesn't indicate that teachers or cabbies in one area are doing more work or producing more value than teachers or cabbies in another area - it means that there's so much value being created in one area relative to another that when said value is divided across the entire population that there's a notable difference. The work of teachers and cab drivers and other professions that are more consistent across areas with different cost of living actually reduce per capita GDP discrepancies to make them more consistent, whereas the other professions with less consistency across areas with different costs of living are what's driving those discrepancies apart.

Your statement piqued my interest, so I did a little calculating using data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis: Between 2000 and 2019, the per capita GDP of Texas grew from $47,664 to $61,682 which represents 29% growth. Over the same time period, the per capita GDP of Massachusetts grew from $56, 519 to $75,258, which represents 33% growth. In this light, not only is Massachusetts' per capita GDP 22% higher than the per capita GDP of Texas, it's also been growing at about a 4% faster clip over the last couple of decades. Tennessee went from a per capita GDP of $40, 877 to $48,440 for a growth rate of about 19%, for anyone that's curious.

What I'm trying to convey with these examples is that there are some major problems with some of your proposed changes to the legal system. In the previous example with the river pollutants, you specifically removed causation and damages as elements that are necessary to move forward with a lawsuit, and my example with the cheeseburgers here is intended to highlight that there are unintended consequences to allowing viable legal claims based solely on an unwanted substance crossing a property line (whether that unwanted substance is noxious factory pollution, C02, skyscraper light, or burning cheeseburger particles). According to your framework as I understood it, all a plaintiff has to prove in order to have a viable legal claim is that the defendant put some unwanted substance into the air/water and now that substance is on the plaintiff's property. The issues of causation (proving whether it was actually the defendant's unwanted substance that ended up on the plaintiff's property or somebody else's unwanted substance) and damages (what definable harm resulted from the unwanted substance entering the plaintiff's property) were not necessary. Therefore, if my neighbor sometimes grills burgers and there are grilled-burger particles on my property, then I've got a viable suit against my neighbor. That's a problem, because if there are no grounds to dismiss these suits for failure to make a cognizable legal claim, then there's nothing to stop a one neighbor from bankrupting another based on any number of pretexts, whether it's burger smoke, a flood light, or noisy dog, etc. The real key to this discussion, however, is your statement that I bolded above, which I'll quote here as well: "So it's not like I'm re-defining the entire legal system with what I'm describing." You may not be re-defining the entire legal system, but you are attempting to redefine some of parts of it, and there's no good way for me (or anyone else you're discussing this stuff with) to know (or keep track of for that matter) which parts of the current system you're intending to keep and which parts you're eliminating. More importantly still, however, is the realpolitik Pandora's box that you're opening here. Let's assume for a moment that you've conceived in your own mind a far better legal/economic/political system that creates a perfectly free market exactly as you've defined it. What happens next? What do you do with that perfectly conceived system? How could you ever bring this perfectly conceived system from your mind to the real world? Even if you became the leader of a vast group of successful political candidates who share your general ideologies and were swept into office across the US with veto and filibuster-proof majorities at every level of government, can you imagine, even then, how much disagreement there would be about which parts of the current legal system are getting redefined and which are not? In every system of government, disagreements are common and compromises must be made, even in one-party states. Unless you and you alone get to make these decisions as some kind of god emperor, the free market as you've defined it will never exist. So what are we talking about then? In effect, you have crafted a whole system of beliefs that can never really be put to the test and can therefore never really be challenged, but to what end? It's certainly an interesting thought exercise which I've enjoyed, but it seems like you're taking it a lot farther than that. You're defining justice to exclude passive investors. I've explained at length why I think that passive investors should not be liable for corporate actions - you may not agree with my rationale but there's no point in pretending like I haven't made that clear. You've previously stated that electromagnetic radiation crossing property lines is a viable cause of action. Now it seems you want to grandfather in preexisting light sources as some form of easement (I guess this is one of the aspects of the current legal system you're going to keep?) but even that framing doesn't help your argument much. As I know you're aware from your participation here on UP, there are new skyscrapers going up every day, therefore new sources of light that could potentially "directly affect" anyone in a several mile radius. From a practical standpoint, however, I'm way less worried about the skyscraper light class action suits than I am about the nuisance neighbor. In your final example, you state your belief that "It's your problem" if you get into astronomy and want to use your telescope in the back yard, but not everyone is going to agree with you, right? There are likely to be some astronomy buffs out there who want to make it their neighbor's problem instead, and if electromagnetic radiation like floodlights crossing property lines is a viable cause of action, then what's to stop them from filing a new suit every single night? They may get literally nothing in damages, but if they're rich enough relative to their neighbors, then what could stop them from effectively blacking out their neighborhood on a nightly basis if they wanted to? Inquiring minds want to know. To be clear, I'm genuinely curious what kind of solutions you have in mind to these issues I raise. That's what makes your thought experiment interesting to parse through as an outsider who obviously wasn't involved in designing the system as you've conceived it. That said, it seems like you have a knee-jerk reaction to any problems I see with 'your system' that causes you to reject my objection out of hand before you've really considered it. It would seem to me that the beauty of making up a whole legal and political system in your head is that it's easy to make adjustments and correct mistakes to it without having to jump through any of the procedural hoops or make the compromises that would be required if you took these ideas out of the abstract and into reality. What's the downside? Just food for thought.

https://twitter.com/MickJagger/status/1443554633906020359?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1443554633906020359|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Fmick-jagger-charlotte-bar-beaver_n_61572c89e4b05025423291be

You've cast doubt directly on the conflicts of interest and financial and professional motivations of climate researches. How is that not questioning methodology? You think their methodology was sound but they flipped the bias switch before stating the conclusions derived from said methodology? That seems like a pretty fine hair to split. To your latter point, we've already discussed that the US (or even the UN) can't control the emissions of all of the countries on Earth, but we can clean up our own house first and potentially define a sustainable path forward. It's fine if you don't agree with that strategy, but there's no reason to pretend like you're not aware of the goal or the constraints in meeting that goal. Governments all over the world already disallow many forms of energy generation. For a couple examples that run the spectrum, burning certain types of trash is pretty commonly forbidden, not to mention home-use nuclear reactors. Hell, windmills are outlawed in plenty of places. Your point here doesn't register. I'm also a little taken aback for a staunch anti-authoritarian to rely on consumer energy choice in the UK as your best example of green tyranny. It's not particularly compelling to me to say the least. How far down on the list of authoritarian abuses that occur daily around the world would you put this example? Would it make the top 100? I'm genuinely curious. Sure, I have accepted that the earth will likely still be habitable for some humans at "max C02" - the question is how many humans will the earth be able to sustain, what quality of life those humans will have, whether any semblance of civilization will remain intact, and how much suffering and death will occur as humanity seeks equilibrium with its new environment. I'm confident you understand this distinction, so I'm not sure what the confusion is here. There are a lot of resources available to you to explain the science surrounding these issues. The climate scientists who have studied this stuff throughout their careers have addressed all of your questions and concerns many, many times, and have taken the trouble to write down their answers in books/papers/videos/reports/articles/podcasts/blog posts/memes - pretty much whatever form of media your prefer to consume. If you'd like to do more research, I'd be happy to point you to some resources that might be helpful, but I don't think I'm going to be able to condense all of these ideas into a few paragraphs that will change your mind if you're unwilling to put the time in yourself. You make multiple conclusions in this paragraph for which you have no support. Let me turn the tables around for you so you can see it more clearly: There is likely to be a far greater destruction of wealth from climate change than from any climate abatement policies. I'll also note that transitioning to green technologies enables the creation of wealth to a far greater degree than any climate apocalypse opportunism. How much wealth do you think is destroyed by extreme weather events and climate migration already? The tab is racking up as we speak. I'll also note that reducing negative climate impacts that result from humans changing the chemical composition of our environment is not the same thing as "controlling the climate" just as an aside, and I think it's also worth noting that maximizing wealth is not a goal on equal moral footing with minimizing human suffering. That made me a little sad. Do you think this is a realistic plan? If not, why waste time bringing it up? Humans with brains resembling modern people were only around for about the last 3.5% of the Pleistocene. I'm also curious about exactly how many humans were around back then? - just as one measure of how many people the earth at that point was able to sustain. More importantly, human civilization as we know it didn't come around until well after the Pleistocene, so, once again, this whole line of logic appears to be entirely irrelevant to this discussion, so you're going to have to connect the dots for me if there's a cogent point to be made here. Our civilization is optimized to operate within certain environmental conditions representing the conditions during which that civilization was organized and began to flourish. What's the value in discussing environmental conditions that occurred before that civilization existed? We don't know what our agricultural system will look like in ancient atmospheric and soil conditions, because there was no agriculture in those conditions. We can, however, use science and the best available data to forecast how our agricultural systems will fare in those conditions, and it doesn't look particularly promising for us. I'm not sure how else to drive this point home more clearly. We don't really "know" much of anything, but the flaw in your logic is believing said uncertainty then means that both "helping" and "hurting" outcomes are therefore similarly likely. Just about all the evidence points in the direction that more C02 is hurting us. Your dispute with that evidence and those analyzing it in no way means that whether or not C02 is hurting or helping the world are equally supported premises. Far from it. The argument that poverty is humanity's natural state is an argument most commonly used in defense of capitalism and free markets, actually, if that colors your perspective. To flesh out the idea, imagine a baby that is born in the woods and then immediately abandoned. Doesn't get much more impoverished than that. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by noting that 'We always look for ways to make life easier and raise the standard of living" - I've got no problem with that assertion - but that doesn't change the fact that we are all born with no guarantee of wealth or access to resources of any sort. Can you give me an example of a government that only protects people from violence? And I'm sure you're aware that the straw man you're spinning here by conflating "active" government with North Korean tyranny is ridiculous to put it kindly. This is trolling, and you're better than that. It seems like you're being deliberately dense again. If you want to have a rational discussion, I'm clearly onboard, but obviously this is a gross mischaracterization of the situation. The climate has and will continue to change for reasons unrelated to humans. That's a given and has nothing to do with changes to the climate specifically causes by humans. Seems to me that you take issue with the predictions in part (A) because you fear part (B) and think that an acceptance of (A) will lead to (B). I think we probably could have both saved ourselves a lot of typing if we were clear about that upfront. It's not a point of faith - it's the overwhelming consensus of the people with the best data who have made studying these issues their lives' work. I would love nothing more than for a research group to be able to show that all the other scientists are wrong and that we could triple our C02 emissions with no negative impacts to the habitability of earth for humanity. Next best would be for a research group to conclusively prove that the impact of humans on atmospheric composition is negligible. This would be earth shatteringly good news and would undoubtedly lead a huge windfall of cash for the researchers. If the best science and research came to an overwhelming consensus on these points, my perspective on these issues would turn on a dime. Only one of is wrapping our arguments in ideology and faith, here, and it's not me. Or.... I'm not sure that you're saying anything new here that you haven't said before, though correct me if there's a new point in here that's worth addressing. I will note that you have written the word religion several times in just these few short paragraphs, and in the neighborhood of 30 times on this page alone. I understand your desire to characterize these issues in terms of religion and politics because of that (A) to (B) association that scares you (as noted above), but, again, what we have here is a physics problem, and you can't contextualize your way around that one in order to argue on more favorable terrain. I'm not trying to *stop* China at all. In fact, stopping China's C02 emissions would not solve the problem on its own, so I'm not sure why you think that's the only appropriate place to start. Further, as others have already pointed out to you, part of the reason for China's outsized pollution output are the fact that China is producing a disproportionate amount of goods for the rest of the world to consume, the blame for which obviously shouldn't be placed exclusively on China's shoulders. If anything, the greater culpability should fall on the demand side of the equation, not the supply side, right? More generally, while I understand that it's comforting to view the world in black and white, doing so doesn't remove the complexities of the underlying issues, it just enables the person with a binary perspective to feel more confident and assured in their position, untenable or otherwise. But what good is being confident if you not only have to ignore (or worse) proactively attempt to refute the best available evidence and analysis in order to pretend that the problem doesn't exist, because to admit that the problem is real would reveal the shortcomings of the political ideology that's clearly become a big part of your identity and a source of comfort? For me, the fact that I don't yet know what the best solution to the climate crisis will be does not require that I reject the possibility that the problem exists outright. I'm not even positive that there is or will be viable solution, or even if it's a good idea to think of this problem in terms of 'a solution' as opposed to a long list of actions that may or may not be taken and may or may not help (e.g. vaping, and nicorette, and patches are all means of attempting to quit smoking, but smoking fewer cigarettes a day is also certainly an option for decreasing the harm caused by smoking, and none of these potential actions address the underlying nicotine addiction or the potential lung damage that's already occurred). Pretending the problem doesn't exist, however, is just a head-in-the-sand mentality that gets us nowhere. I have hope for technological solutions, and I have hope that there will be unknown negative feedback cycles that could bail us out, and I have hope that the science and resulting predictions are wrong. But hope in these instances isn't much better than just keeping your fingers crossed, so what I like to do to be proactive is to limit my own personal contribution to the problem, support leaders and businesses that acknowledge the problem as well, as well as occasionally trying to painstakingly lead a few strangers on the internet toward the light in the meantime. Amen.