Global Warming

[John Feeney]

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It tells me the folks advocating here are not scientists. Lobbyists? Maybe. Green warriors? Maybe. Scientists? Not a chance.

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You could certainly be right. There are lots of nonscientists on the Web arguing for and against human caused climate change. Best to learn about the issue from the experts.

Not that there was anything wrong with Wacki's posting the image. It did convey the general idea and had some useful additional info with it.

[FlFishOn]

"Best to learn about the issue from the experts."

I submit that there really can not be an expert here. So many of the important side issues involved are not understood by anyone and untestable. You can easily invent an hypothesis relating albedo, carbon cycle and atmosphere composition but you will not be able to test same. It's all feedback loops, non-linear stuff, impossible to untangle.

I use this idea as my guide: Assume the future of humanity depends upon raising global temperature 2 deg. C. in 40 years. Could we do it? Could we even develop a consesus plan? I betting 'don't pass' here.

[NoamChomsky]

That's the worst bet you could ever make. Who's gonna pay you?

[FlFishOn]

LOL

[Borodog]

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We (meaning including me) have not been over this before, so either stop with the insults and produce something useful,

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When I mentioned the $1/gallon tax I did mix you up with natedogg. I apologize for that. But we have been over capitalism and research/pollution concepts before. I am willing to bet you any amount of money I can prove it.

If you want to bet $10,000 or more I'd be more than happy to.

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Produce a thread where you explained how to reduce world greenhouse emissions by half (preferably an order of magnitude) without crippling the world economically, which is what I asked for when you flipped out (again).

[QuadsOverQuads]

Don't worry. It's all just a Liberal Conspiracy Theory. All the science behind it is Junk Science. All the data is faked. The Communists are involved, but I'm not sure how yet -- but you can bet they're in there, yessiree, Communist Propaganda, every word of it. The American Enterprise Institute told me so, and then Rush Limbaugh confirmed it on his AM radio show, so that proves that science is a lie.

So, in conclusion: global warming isn't happening, all the data that says otherwise is a lie, all scientists who say otherwise are conspiring with communists and liberals, and the earth is only 6000 years old.

PS: evolution is also a liberal conspiracy against God and The Family. I personally think that gay activists are behind it -- the same ones that are planning on tracking us with RFID chips implanted in our foreheads, right before the Rapture takes all the good people away so Jesus can torture the world into submission for us.

PPS: buy gold! paper dollars are a Marxist conspiracy too! Remember, FDR was a communist infiltrator!

(Now, time to go back to right-wing radio for my next dose of Real Truth. Thank God that they've shown me the light so that now I can see how the world really works! My God, the evil Liberal/Communist/Marxist/Science/Media conspiracy is everywhere! Vote Republican or die!)


q/q

[Myrtle]

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Don't worry. It's all just a Liberal Conspiracy Theory. All the science behind it is Junk Science. All the data is faked. The Communists are involved, but I'm not sure how yet -- but you can bet they're in there, yessiree, Communist Propaganda, every word of it. The American Enterprise Institute told me so, and then Rush Limbaugh confirmed it on his AM radio show, so that proves that science is a lie.

So, in conclusion: global warming isn't happening, all the data that says otherwise is a lie, all scientists who say otherwise are conspiring with communists and liberals, and the earth is only 6000 years old.

PS: evolution is also a liberal conspiracy against God and The Family. I personally think that gay activists are behind it -- the same ones that are planning on tracking us with RFID chips implanted in our foreheads, right before the Rapture takes all the good people away so Jesus can torture the world into submission for us.

PPS: buy gold! paper dollars are a Marxist conspiracy too! Remember, FDR was a communist infiltrator!

(Now, time to go back to right-wing radio for my next dose of Real Truth. Thank God that they've shown me the light so that now I can see how the world really works! My God, the evil Liberal/Communist/Marxist/Science/Media conspiracy is everywhere! Vote Republican or die!)


q/q

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....As Gabby Johnson said in Blazing Saddles.....

....RIVVITT!!!!

[Borodog]

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The problem with the global warming debate is that the science (which I believe is incontrovertible) is used to draw the wrong conclusions. At the end of the wickipedia article there is a fairly good estimate of the cost of the impacts of global warming. But what is not there is an estimate of the cost of "doing something" to try and prevent global warming. Basically what it comes down to is this: significantly reducing greenhouse emissions can only be done by crippling the world economically. While the costs associated with global warming could be trillions of US dollars, the costs associated with the various Kyoto-style plans to reduce greenhouse emissions are in the hundreds of trillions, with no guarantee that they would work.

The number one killer of human beings is not heat, or cold, or tornados, or hurricanes, or droughts, or any other climate-related disaster. It is poverty. And the only cure for poverty is increased productivity that can raise standards of living. The cost of coercively shackling world productivity to reduce emissions will be a drastic increase in world poverty, and poverty brings starvation, disease, misery, and death on unimagineable scales.

Human beings live in every environment on Earth, from the blistering cold to the blistering heat. Some places will get worse, and some places will actually get better. People will have to move. But they will have decades over which to do it. There's already enough poverty in the world. Don't advocate policies that will multiply it ten or a hundred fold.

My $0.02 on global warming.

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Boro,

Once again, you are wrong on many points. Number one, even if it did cost trillions that doesn't cripple the economy it strengthens it. Where do you think the money goes? Into a black hole? It goes into the economy in terms of expenditures on new equipment and technologies. It creates jobs. It is a trillion dollar shot in the arm.

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Broken Window Fallacy.

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You are just parroting the standard response when it comes to environmental regulations and it effects on industry. It has been shown that environmental regulations actually create jobs instead of losing them. The other health and environmental benefits are just a plus. They said the clean air and water act would destroy some industries - didn't happen. The recovery of the Great Lakes region has added hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars into the economies of the Great Lake states.

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Correlation does not imply causation.

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Down in Tampa the local power company (Tampa Electric) spent almost a billion dollars converting their plant to more efficient natural gas instead of fighting the environmentalists. A billion dollars. Did it hurt them??? Nope. They recovered it in 3 years because they were so much more efficient. The CEO, a republican could not believe it. They are more profitable now than ever before. The area residents no longer complain of breathing and sinus problems. And they ended up added almost a billion into the economy.

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Uh, your point? A business switched to a more efficient technology when it was profitable and hence made more money from it? Thanks for making my point.

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You are also partly wrong about this - "the only cure for poverty is increased productivity that can raise standards of living." This is true to a point but there are not enough resources in the world to support every human at the same standard of living as say the United States. We would end of completely depleting the world's natural recourses and then there would be a disastrous decline in everyone's standard of living.

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Seriously: Read. Increasing productivity includes lowering costs, i.e. the value of inputs. Capitalism is rooted in conservation, i.e. using as few resources as is technologically possible to produce the product, thus leaving more scarce resources available for other uses. The longer capitalism is allowed to operate, the more efficient the economy becomes. You don't [censored] with the conservation machine if you want conservation to go up.

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Your 2 cents aren't worth a penny.

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How pseudo-witty.

[HLMencken]

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Basically what it comes down to is this: significantly reducing greenhouse emissions can only be done by crippling the world economically.

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Arguments like this just make me want to cast off my libertartian ideals and burn buildings at a WTO conference.

Time to watch Fight Club again.

[HLMencken]

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Can you explain how human greenhouse emissions can be reduced, for example by one half (preferably by one order of magnitude), without crippling the world economically?

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If anarcho-capitalism crippled the world economy, would you still be for it? (And please don't argue that it wouldn't, that's not my point.)

I can say that if a libertarian govt crippled the US economy, I wouldn't give a flying f--k. My measure of merit as far as "good" isn't GDP.