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Although this study finds China a modest gainer in
agriculture under business as usual warming (increase in agricultural capacity by about 7 percent with carbon fertilization),
the estimate turns to a loss (7 percent reduction in agricultural capacity) if carbon fertilization effects
do not materialize or are offset by excluded damages. For India, prospective losses are massive (as large as about
40 percent in the absence of carbon fertilization).

http://www.iie.com/publications/briefs/cline4037.pdf

China can add a lot and still be way behind in terms of green energy sources given the amount of coal they burn and the manner in which they burn it.

I'm not sure how many more times I am going to have to address the comment about war with China. Scare tactics about global warming coupled with the reality that developing nations cannot be expected to abandon cheaper energy sources simply means demonetization of the energy market, and ultimately policy that will damage developing nations. It's not something I made up out of a hat.

.... Since what i said was a belief that the left isn't even a thing.

http://beta.local.yahoo.com/news-home-vandalized-given-back-woman.html

All too common....

Background and Procedural Facts:
So, when the bank forecloses, they often give you an incentive to leave and just get out so they don't have to go through the longer disputed foreclosure process. It's called "Cash for Keys." Or, they just boot you out sooner or later.

Usually, when you leave the house and let the bank know, they come around and winterize the place so the pipes don't burst, etc, etc. It's part of a duty to mitigate damages so they can sell the house at sheriff's sale and apply the money they get there towards paying off the loan balance. In some states, you can have what's called a "deficiency judgment" against you if you owe more on the loan than the house brought in at Sheriff's sale. Note: in Ohio, they have deficiency judgments, but the bank has a 2 year SOL to come after you for them. So, it's really important that the bank take care of the house when you let them know you're leaving it, and they're required to....

They didn't here. The place went to hell, and all of it was foreseeable. Thieves and drug addicts hung around, ruined the place and stole nearly everything, pipes, and pretty much whatever. 

To review, bank was taking house, did nothing to safeguard or winterize it, and screwed up so badly that they just let her have what was left of the place. It's now uninhabitable from the bank's neglect. Her life is turned upside down, and nobody's gonna do much of anything.

Argument:
This is really why we need something that actually modifies mortgages in a meaningful way that keeps people in these houses. First, on average these places were simply never worth what they were purchased for to begin with. Second, foreclosure leaves a bunch of vacant houses going to hell and ruining property values for everyone in the area. Third, speaking of vacant, these places aren't doing anyone any good sitting empty (separate and aside from the second argument), we've got a bunch of people who need a place to live and empty houses.... Fourth, who fixes this gutted house, or does it stay gutted and blighted? Fifth, it just looks like neither the bank nor this woman, as owner, are going to get anything out of this; it's become a zero sum game. Sixth, let's look at it from the taxpayer standpoint for a second, locally, we're gonna have to pay to condemn and bulldoze a lot of buildings like this (and in worse conditions). This could be avoided by letting the woman stay in the house so it doesn't go to hell. Moreover, this place was a haven for crime and drugs for years under the bank's neglectful stewardship.

Counter:
You could say that this is all or mostly the owner's fault, that she shouldn't have taken out a loan she couldn't pay back etc.

Counter to Counter:
She bought the house in the 1980s, and then she certainly could make the payments. She had no reason to think she ever wouldn't be able to and it is kinda hard to predict almost 30 years out into the future. This isn't an irresponsible person in my eyes, and as someone who deals with foreclosures in a boots on the ground sense, that often isn't the case. How do you plan for losing your job 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or more years down the line? You really can't if home ownership is on the table. Fact is without a job, the overwhelming majority of people out there couldn't afford their mortgage or rent or whatever. The only way these people can "plan" for not being able to make a payment due to job loss is to never buy a home, but even then, you can't plan for the rent without a job either.

Basically:
No to vacant houses, no to people being thrown out of homes, no to setting up havens for crime and drugs, no to pawning off the bank's bad investment on local taxpayers, no to ruining the property values of entire neighborhoods. Yes to a responsible foreclosure modification program.

It might be a good idea to rethink the depreciation rules for property. People I know in the industry point out that the best thing about "investing" in property is the tax write off due to depreciation of the value of the home, even when the value of the property is actually going up. I'd like to see either doing away with it entirely, or else doing away with it for properties not being occupied by the owner as a primary residence.

Call me crazy, but I do not think it is the first, best destiny of property to be owned and leased out by landlords. It's a complicated issue, but the fact that the system is designed more or less from the ground up to have huge amounts of property owned by people who do not live there is a bad thing.

Quote from: Durin on March 01, 2012, 12:54:20 am

I was recently poking around concerning solar myself, and the problem is that it is not cheap to make the panels. Oh, they are easier to make than semiconductor CHIPS, but they are still not cheap, and they do wear out over time, meaning that there is a continual cost of maintaining an already expensive physical structure.

So that's why that is not working out as hoped.

The hard truth concerning fossil fuels is they represent millions of years of stored energy, they are relatively easy to get at, and if we do not use them other countries will. So this idea that we should artificially make them expensive in order to drive energy innovation is basically self destructive.

If fossil fuels are as bad for the environment as the left says, then we really have almost no choice but to go to war with China and then suffocate the developing world. I somehow doubt that is the appropriate way forward. I suspect the real issue is that the rich in America and Europe are going to have to start sacrificing a lot of their affluence in order to share clean energy with the rest of the world and help build the worldwide energy infrastructure. Places like China and India also need help with other industries as their agricultural practices are part of what make them such horrific places for the environment compared to western countries.

The more you look, the more it seems unrestrained wealth accumulation in the hands of a tiny western minority has led to mismanagement of worldwide resources. When western working class folks finally snap to that, hopefully sooner than later, we can begin the somewhat daunting task of determining in what manner to also lift the working men and women of the so called "third world" out of the cesspool our leaders have made out of their lands.

We'd have to break the power that the interests tied into energy control have over the government, fund alternate energy research, and hope desperately that it gets cheaper and better. If research gets alternate energy sources competitive with fossils, and developing nations can be made to change over through the use of other incentives (popular pressure, government planners persuaded to take environment into account, less economic imperialism by the World Bank), market forces should facilitate the shift on their own.

Of course, that's a really big IF. ;P

Well, we need to work together to get that big IF turned into a WHEN. Because right now things are not looking good, you know?

I was recently poking around concerning solar myself, and the problem is that it is not cheap to make the panels. Oh, they are easier to make than semiconductor CHIPS, but they are still not cheap, and they do wear out over time, meaning that there is a continual cost of maintaining an already expensive physical structure.

So that's why that is not working out as hoped.

The hard truth concerning fossil fuels is they represent millions of years of stored energy, they are relatively easy to get at, and if we do not use them other countries will. So this idea that we should artificially make them expensive in order to drive energy innovation is basically self destructive.

If fossil fuels are as bad for the environment as the left says, then we really have almost no choice but to go to war with China and then suffocate the developing world. I somehow doubt that is the appropriate way forward. I suspect the real issue is that the rich in America and Europe are going to have to start sacrificing a lot of their affluence in order to share clean energy with the rest of the world and help build the worldwide energy infrastructure. Places like China and India also need help with other industries as their agricultural practices are part of what make them such horrific places for the environment compared to western countries.

The more you look, the more it seems unrestrained wealth accumulation in the hands of a tiny western minority has led to mismanagement of worldwide resources. When western working class folks finally snap to that, hopefully sooner than later, we can begin the somewhat daunting task of determining in what manner to also lift the working men and women of the so called "third world" out of the cesspool our leaders have made out of their lands.

Quote from: Durin on February 29, 2012, 10:57:45 pm

How did it GET stigmatized?

Did God come down out of heaven and stigmatize it?

I have shown several examples from several different cultures where it somehow repeatedly gets stigmatized. How is that, do you suppose? "I don't know" is not a particularly heartening argument for forcing the normalization of a behavior that has collected a lot of stigma all over the world for millenia.

The answers to all your questions are tucked away in the answer to that question, and yet you studiously avoid it. And yet you assert your view is the correct one.

You could pretend this post is about racism and it would be equally valid. Think about that for a second.

Turns out humans are pretty good at stigmatizing/getting intolerant over similar issues time and time again. Interesting how that happens. Finding similar intolerances throughout many different cultures does not validate those intolerances.



Oh, and I didn't respond to this earlier:

Quote from: Lysabild on February 29, 2012, 09:49:36 pm

I'm waving between reporting for homophobia and hate-speech or letting G-Flex carry the torch, because I do not have the tolerance for discussing with someone not even reading the posts before repeating his hateful circular speech.

I actually already did report this, a while back. Just for the record.

Racism can be a pretty handy thing if a specific race is trying to enslave you, such as the Romans conquering and enslaving those around them. But where racism becomes bigotry is when people judge an individual purely by color to the exclusion of other, more rational measures.

Racism has causes and cures. If you want to "cure" homophobia, start by understanding where it comes from and stop demonizing people for not leaping up and down to agree with you on every aspect of this issue.

Quote from: Durin on February 29, 2012, 10:52:14 pm

Quote from: Lysabild on February 29, 2012, 10:45:28 pm

Quote from: Durin on February 29, 2012, 10:44:19 pm

I am not the one denying anything, nor do I misunderstand. You are making assertions you cannot back.

Then why do you keep connecting them, when they are totally different things?

They can be totally separate, or they can be related. You are demanding that they be permanently separated, but I do not agree that that is necessarily the case. Completely separating them is necessary for your viewpoint that it is a civil rights issue. Making it a civil rights issue is the path toward creating a permanent schism between the church and state that eventually leads to the state destroying all churches and substituting medical mandates for freedom of conscience.

Okay, do you guys read this? Because by now I'm honestly speechless.

Yeah that's it, I'm done, this is just mind blowing.

You're mind blown that I can see how you look at it but don't agree, and that anyone would require of you any proof that the two are totally unconnected in any way?

You can't imagine how the issues could be connected at all?

Well, then by all means, be amazed and wonder greatly at the mystery of it all.