Friday Funnies

The climate change debate

Comments

[Suki]

Nice!

[Untermensch]

I can't agree. This one is really low, even by FF standards. It just doesn't work very well: too preachy and in your face with its message, nothing clever or requiring a second thought.

[TheOtherSomeGuy]

Hey, we groundlings huddled in the pit need some low brow comedy every now and then. It was a good toon.

[Untermensch]

OK, go watch Armageddon and get your fix...

[Conservative Libertine]

The end is near! Repent!

I've seen the pictures of those guys standing on the corner.

[Suki]

I liked that movie! It had a pretty ending.

[The Libertarian Guy]

There's nothing preachy in this 'toon. What IS preachy, is presented in the last panel, which represents the pro-AGW view.

Now THAT'S preachy.

[Jaysea]

Loved it. Sometimes it takes in your face journalism to get the point across

[Fist of Etiquette]

Put the red words together and get a secret message.

[Brandybuck]

The of over! The over! By over!

[K-Y]

I should never have eaten those mushrooms, man!

[TheOtherSomeGuy]

So true! Science has gone right out the window in this debate. Complete disregard for scientific standards and procedures so people can argue for the doomsday scenario being presented.

[Mister DNA]

Climate change is caused by the lack of pirates.

Debate over.

[Captain Feathersword]

I'm doing all I can to recruit more, me hardies

[Marc]

That graph was apparently created by Edward Tufte's evil twin. Genius.

[DADIODADDY]

Too qualitative or too quantitative?

[anarch]

Are panel one and panel two arguing for the declaration in the final panel?

[ed]

It is indeed a religious debate. As such it will never end. There will be a few apostates along the way, but most of the True Believers will take their faith to the grave.

[domoarrigato]

not a funny, but at least it's still friday!

[spambot]

Of course those that deny "climate change" are portrayed by those who believe in it as flat world types. They have this same cartoon, the last panel is different is all.

[Kyle Jordan]

A+ for truth.

[Warren]

UGH!

Not funny
Gross ignorance of Elizabethan thought
Fair artwork

Grade: F

[P Brooks]

I wonder what Marmaduke is up to, this morning.

[DADIODADDY]

or Nancy...ever wonder what she'd look like naked?

[Brandybuck]

Or Kathy! Mmmmm....

[The Art-P.O.G.]

Decent point, good art, not really "funny". C.

[Chris]

I thought the art was okay, I really liked the switcharoo. Taking the typical AWG worshiper analogy the other way.

Grade: B

[Suki]

I liked the words, not the art.

[alex]

funny how the anti-science crowd is claiming that they are with the history of free thought on this one...change the last panel to a guy in a nascar shirt saying that climate change is not caused by humans and the cartoon becomes much more accurate

[SugarFree]

Do better, troll. We have very few slots for gibbering liberal idiots, we we're all full up right now.

[Suki]

Thank you SF.

[Conservative Libertine]

Who is anti-science? You almost mimick the cartoon. Science says debate over!

Not true mister inquiring mind. The guys at MIT know some science.

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....25400.html

Mr. Lindzen is professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[DADIODADDY]

you keep bringing real science into this and you're gonna be in trouble mister

[Drex]

Al Gore will decide what "real science is". Not anyone else. Debate over.

[Suki]

You almost mimick the cartoon.

Almost?

[Charles]

That middle dude is about to catch on fire.

[troy]

Shhheeesssshhh. The cartoon job at Reason is a tough gig.

I give it a B+.

[anonymous]

Well, I had become a skeptic again, but this cartoon convinced me to believe in AGW.

[heller]

I think Mr. Stantis made a few mistakes. First of all, the first panel should contain Aristarchus of Samos, a greek philosopher and astronomer (310BC-230BC) who first presented the theory that the Sun was at the center of the solar system (heliocentrism). This knowledge was forgotten during the Dark Ages, and rediscovered by Copernicus and Galileo.

The second panel should also contain a Greek. Homer originally thought the world to be flat, while Pythagoras postulated that the earth was round. A century later, Aristotle sided with the theory of the roundness of the earth. Eratosthenes, calculated both the diameter of the earth, and the inclination of its axis rotation to its orbit around the sun. Again, this knowledge was lost to the Dark Ages, and eventually rediscovered.

So basically, if you wanted to look at the REAL scientists of pre-modern age history, the Greeks, they were usually right about our world. If Mr. Stantis doesn't want to redraw the first two panels, he could simply make the last panel a science-rejecting AGW denier. They are, after all, more closely related to the religious fanatics that rejected the knowledge of the Greeks during the Dark Ages.

[Lord Jubjub]

Further to the point of the middle panel, the roundness of the Earth had not been in question since the time of the Greeks. Much had been forgotten but not this. Most of the learned people in Columbus' time thought that Eratosthenes had overestimated the diameter by several thousand miles but none of them agreed with Columbus who claimed the Earth's diameter was only 16,000 miles.

[Conservative Libertine]

then you should really contact your local PTA. Tell the Teacher's union what a horrible job they are doing.

Please. I beg you!

[Schuyler T. Colfax]

If you'll forgive this libtard hippie's trollery, and indulge me a moment, I have a question.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that global warming is indeed a manmade effect of burning fossil fuel that will cause catastrophic climate change, rising sea levels, etc. Supposing this hypothetical challenge, what would be the philosophically correct libertarian response? How would you solve the problem, or is it even a problem?

[Jewel]

I'm not sure what the philosophically correct libertarian response would be, and I sure don't know how to solve the problem. But the way NOT to do it is to develop political policies and invest large sums of money in schemes that were developed by "scientists" who altered or destroyed data and told the people who didn't believe them to shut the f*ck up.

[Redux]

We've answered this before, so to summarize:

1. Safe, clean, affordable nuclear power. (We have to repeal some retarded regulations to get it, though.)

2. Continued development of e-cars in the tradition of the Tesla Roadster (a good idea anyway, apocalyptic nonsense aside).

3. Using nukes on volcanoes and/or prolonged industrial smokestacks to spew huge amounts of dust into the stratosphere and block out the Sun for a while. (Not recommended, but could be done cheaply in an extreme scenario.)

[Schuyler T. Colfax]

I'm all for new nuclear power development and research, especially toward figuring out how to make breeder reactors commercially feasible.

But petroleum and coal will, absent regulatory action, continue to be the cheapest energy source for many years to come. Why should I, and billions like me, stop building coal plants, or driving our gas cars?

[jesse]

Well you see thats the thing, if we could deregulate our businesses, those who do the R&D would have more freedom to do their expirements. The private sector will find cheaper renewable energy way before the government. There is quite a bit of money in being the first one to create or discover something which is why most companies have R&D departments.

[Schuyler T. Colfax]

You say deregulate and invent, fine, but there is no purely market-driven reason to reduce CO2 emissions. It's an externality. Again, why not burn coal? Why not drive?

Coal, unregulated, is going to be cheaper than solar/wind/nuclear for quite a while, long past the point in my (ha ha, imaginary) scenario that long-term damage is unavoidable, and most of the damage comes long after the CO2 has been emitted. There is no incentive for a power company to not invest in more coal plants.

[Drex]

Don't worry. If you stop driving your car or using coal-powered electricity there will be a person in India or China very happy to burn fossil fuels to drive their new car and to heat or cool their home and make up for your reduction in CO2 generation.

[Schuyler T. Colfax]

That's kind of my point, yeah. Again, this thought experiment assumes that C02 emissions are a /bad/ thing. Is there a mechanism by which we could reduce global CO2 emissions that passes muster around here?

[Redux]

See #3. We don't need to reduce C02 emissions at all. We can solve problems the same way Alexander the Great solved the problem of the Gordian Knot.

[newscaper]

#2 is wrong -- imagine how useless a plug-in-only electric car is when the grid is down for long (as could happen in hurricane country or some other worse circumstance). Then you're one of the poor fools in NO waiting for those buses that never came in Katrina.

Some sort of hybrid is better, if you've only got one car. A pure electric vehicle is only good as a 2nd car.

[Redux]

If your car can store enough juice to get at least 100 miles the way the Tesla Roadster can, chances are you can get well out of the disaster area and into a place where the grid is still up. That's hardly what I'd call "useless" in any circumstance!

The main problems with Tesla's line of cars is the expense, which is too high, and the range, which still needs extending. Also, Tesla doesn't really have a family sedan yet; these are all sports cars without any real trunk space or back seat worth mentioning. With new microfibers to increase the efficiency of the batteries and more R&D on the other problems, I'm confident we'll eventually have efficient electric cars for everyone.

Meanwhile, since we have the means to cool the planet with a controlled nuclear winter, all this talk of reducing C02 "emissions" is retarded; C02 is not a pollutant, and even if the trace amounts of it in the atmosphere had anything at all to do with the climate (not proven), we wouldn't have to do anything with it to cool the earth.

That the greentards continue to focus entirely on our C02 "emissions" when they know there are other ways to heat and cool the planet that cost less and are friendlier to civilization is one more proof that they don't really give a damn about the environment. Waiting until we actually have any objective proof global warming is real and then cheaply reversing it using a few of the nukes we have left over from the Cold War wouldn't give our self-righteous greener-than-thou elitists any excuse to boss us around, and to those humanity-hating Stalinists, that's intolerable.

[Sam-hec]

Finally a sane person!

Anyway, my usual response to that has been:
1. End subsidies and market protections for fossil fuel industry. Also for farm subsidies for adaptive reasons.
2. Get government to zero out it's own CO2 emissions. Even military activity. This needs Offsets to work.
3. Carbon-Tariff imports from countries who won't be a part of the solution.

The above would have worked just fine 20 years ago. But now it seems to me to be too little too late. So we must add a Carbon Tax, CapnTrade, and/or Regulate. These are often presented as a false choice of Pick One, no mixing! But the best solution is a mixture appropriate to each nation and industry.

Re: nuclear power? In a truly free market, there would be no room for such a utility-monopoly behemoth. Wind and solar are getting much cheaper every year and are quicker to market (and at this point don't really need government support), fossil and nuclear are stagnating but for government subsidies.

[Carbon Sink]

I just stumbled in here from the cold, but I'm getting a real right-wing feel. I'm a child of science, not politics or religion, and I believe that science has spoken. If you want to stick your heads in the sand and deny, deny, deny, all I can say is, "You'd better be right." there is a lot riding on this. Fortunately, all the posturing (including my own) is utterly pointless. The chances that all of the world's people will realize the danger and put aside all of their issues (that's a lot of issues) and work together on reducing greenhouse gases is absolutely zero. We are just getting to the finger pointing stage and the clock is ticking.How any one can look at the data and not be alarmed is beyond me.

[Conservative Libertine]

I guess you need to be a free thinker or just knowledgeable about some basic scientific truths.

http://conservativelibertine.b.....-real.html

Climate change has been happening for 4.5 Billion years. And if you don't like my answer, the here is a science guy from MIT.

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....25400.html

All scientists are supposed to be skeptical (asking questions etc), so I do not know why you apply a right-wing agenda to legitimate questions?

Even if man is contributing, man cannot control the climate. There is a difference. If you are of a scientific mind then you know what Darwin said is true. ADAPT! Praying to god, or pretending you can control mother nature won't work.

[You're both idiots.]

I just stumbled in here from the cold...

Kindly "stumble" back to one of Gore's eco-religious fantasy sites then, greentard. Science is not capable of speaking and it has no children; it's not a god and we don't owe it any of the pagan worship you're demanding. The only real danger from this hoax is that of mad cultists like you who talk of destroying civilization and murdering humanity in the supposed cause of preventing this purely imaginary apocalypse of yours based on your fudged data.

If you're going to bow and scrape to your false idols while they go on carbon-spewing jaunts all over the globe on our tax dollars, then take it outside, you treasonous commie-worshiping eco-freak! The only clock that's ticking now is the timer on our patience with you genocidal freaks, and when it runs out, we patriots are going to hoist the skull and crossbones and start hanging you false alarmists from every tall tree/street lamp we can find.

CL, you can stow it too: "mother nature" is no more a god than science is, and neither is Darwin. We need not "adapt" to any such false gods of nature. You "free thinkers" are idiots and dimbulbs too, and we don't need your fool religion any more than we need the greentards'. Humanity can control the climate if there's ever really any need, because we very demonstrably have dominion over all the earth. (Even leaving aside the Biblical charters that say as much, have you ever considered what our huge inventory of nuclear weapons could do to the climate? That's overwhelming empirical proof of our dominion all by itself.)

Our only concern as a civilization is keeping that power in the hands of the free peoples and out of the hands of megalomaniacs like 0bama and Gore and their totalitarian minions like Carbon Sink here. And you; you atheists never ponder that the very freedoms you need to practice science have arisen only in a Christian nation, and that atheism has failed every nation that ever tried it, putting all power in the hands of despots like Stalin and his "scientific" lackey Lysenko.

Begone, both of you! The only warming either of you needs to worry about is in the afterlife, not here.

[William Walsh]

So, let me get this straight. You're a Christain?

Wow! If you get to talk like that, I might join.

[Carbon Sink]

>> Kindly "stumble" back to one of
>> Gore's eco-religious fantasy sites
>> then, greentard.
Wow. Thanks for taking time to notice me.

I was speaking metaphorically about being a child of science, I'll have to stop doing that.

So I see that you're in the 'God gave man dominion over the earth' club. I suppose you also believe that God (notice the capitalization, I hedge all my bets) put all that coal under
West Virgina just so Americans can dig it up and burn it.

You seem pretty secure in your world view so I won't try to upset the cart. I sincerely hope that you are correct; I would love to burn all the fossil fuel I want and take all the fish I need from the ocean and simply replace the removed volume with a similar amount of trash and pollution.

I really hope that works out for us (but I don't think it will).

>> treasonous commie-worshiping
>> eco-freak!
I might have this one framed; kinda brings a tear to my eye.

[Nicholas]

ok.. that definitely was not that funny

[HeadTater]

I find this hilarious. Of course, I'm on pain meds after getting my wisdom teeth removed.

But, we do have a tendency to disprove what we were once certain of.

[Michael]

The cartoon is stupid. Science is self-correcting and never says "debate over". It simply says "provide evidence and we will reexamine it".

The fact that the earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around was known in ancient Greece, it was religion that said the Earth was the center of the universe and "debate over", not science.

Likewise, it was known that the earth wasn't flat in ancient Greece. Again, it was science that discovered this.

If the debate was over then we would believe these things today; however, science self-corrected.

It is a fact that the Earth is warming, all current evidence points to humans as the cause. If someone doesn't believe this please provide evidence for an alternative cause that can stand up to peer-review.

Now, whether we should be supporting Socialistic government controls to limit carbon emissions is a whole different story. We would be better off getting government out of the picture (including subsidies to oil companies) and let private companies develop alternate energy sources.

[abercrombie milano]

My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I'm sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane. Even some cursory knowledge of Hebrew and doing some mathematics and logic will tell you that you really won't get the full deal by just doing regular skill english reading for those books. In other words, there's more to the books of the Bible than most will ever grasp. I'm not concerned that Mr. Crumb will go to hell or anything crazy like that! It's just that he, like many types of religionists, seems to take it literally, take it straight...the Bible's books were not written by straight laced divinity students in 3 piece suits who white wash religious beliefs as if God made them with clothes on

[nike shox]

is good

[??????]

Thank you