Shikha Dalmia "Goes After 'Scientific' Liberal Thom Hartmann" on Russia TV

In Thom Hartmann's moral universe anyone who believes that global warming might not be catastrophic is a shill of the Koch brothers who are, apparently, in the words of his previous guest, willing to burn this planet and their children and grandchildren with it into "crispy embers" in order to make money. But Shikha Dalmia tells him why such alarmism is unwarranted and unscientific:

Comments

[WTF]

Thom Hartmann is Tony?

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Sure seems like that. His logic and reasoning is awful.

The guy thinks "renewable's" can solve our problems. Tell that to a 3rd world citizen who can only afford coal. Tell him he can't have access to electricity because TOP.MEN deem coal to be too dangerous due to potential global warming and only expensive and unreliable solar can be used.

These people have no ability to think critically.

[sarcasmic]

These people have no ability to think critically.

They don't think. Period. They emote. They feel. Thinking? Not so much.

[WTF]

See Tony below.

[Tony]

You haven't expressed a well-formed thought on these boards in the entire time I've been here.

[WTF]

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

[sarcasmic]

I've expressed more well-formed thoughts on these boards than you have had in your pathetic emotional life.

[Tony]

Your petulant and repeated attempt at an insult is comically off-base. I don't have emotions. I got rid of them sometime after high school. Not that emotions have no role to play in political debates. Does one need to save the human species from extinction? Not exactly an empirical question.

[sarcasmic]

Extinction?

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! REPENT YOUR CARBON SINNING WAYS! REPENT OR DIE AS THE WORLD IS CONSUMED BY FIRE! REPENT! REPENT NOW!

derp

[Sam Grove]

"Not that emotions have no role to play in political debates."

You can't be honest with others if you lie to yourself. You may suppress expression of your emotions, but there's no other explanation for your repeated visits to H&R.

[KPres]

"I don't have emotions."

Jesus Christ. I have emotions, I just recognize that they're a primitive evolutionary holdover, and don't let them overly cloud my reasoning. Only sociopath's don't have emotions.

[Penis Carrot]

So, the sociopath owns not having emotions?

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

KOCKTOPUS!!!!

[Raston Bot]

Why are they "debating" and not debating?

[WTF]

Maybe they're batein'.

[Mainer2]

They've become master debators.

[Raston Bot]

I don't have volume. Does Thom sound as exasperated as he looks?

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

He sounds like pure dumb.

[Brandybuck]

He's pissed that Shikha is not blindly accepting his points. He was told in Liberal Training Class that merely positing a point in an argument is sufficient. Maybe she didn't hear him the first time, so he says it again, and she doesn't. He is not winning the "debate" by regurgitating talking points, and it's very exasperating to him.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

What amazes me is that all of the global warming nuts won't accept nuclear power either. Nuclear is by far the best deployable, CO2 free, source of energy and they dismiss it based on the same paranoid, fact-less thinking that makes them think global warming is going to kill us all and that GMO's will give us all cancer.

[Tony]

"all of the global warming nuts won't accept nuclear power either"

Citation needed.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

I'll list three of the major international environmental groups who hold both a believe in global warming and an anti-nuclear stance:

-Greenpeace
-Friends of the Earth
-Sierra Club

Now do you have anything substantive to say?

[WTF]

Now do you have anything substantive to say?

This is rhetorical, right?

[Tony]

So the substance of your thought is that it "amazes" you that some environmental groups are both conscious of the climate problem and anti-nuclear. Okie dokie.

What's even more amazing is libertarians who are pro-nuclear, considering it couldn't possibly exist in a free market.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Please enlighten us on why it couldn't exist TONY...

[Tony]

Because no insurance company would touch them. Government guarantees of liability caps, not to mention massive subsidies besides and the fact that it invented the technology, means nuclear wouldn't exist in an unsubsidized market.

Libertarians going on about nuclear power gives away your entire game. You're not about solutions to a real-world problem, you're about shilling for the industries that underwrite libertarianism, which have absolutely no love for laissez-faire markets when they're the ones getting the government goodies.

[OldMexican]

Re: Tony,

Because no insurance company would touch them.

How do you know this, or are you talking ex cathedra?

Government guarantees of liability caps, not to mention massive subsidies besides and the fact that it invented the technology,

So basically you're conceding that the market for nuclear fission energy is highly regulated by government, which just for starters makes your case that it could not exist in "the market" a fallacious argument.

means nuclear wouldn't exist in an unsubsidized market.

You still maintain that penchant for fallacious thinking, Tony. You totally confuse cause and effect, thinking that the government intervention is the result of the market's unwillingness to invest in nuclear fission energy, when in fact it is the other way around: the market's unwillingness is the result of government's interventions.

You're not about solutions to a real-world problem,

What is this "problem" you're alluding to? So far, the hysterical doom-and-gloom scenarios we were promised as far back as 1998 have proven to be totally and miserably mistaken, which is why more and more people are skeptical of the predictive powers of climate science.

[Juice]

So far, the hysterical doom-and-gloom scenarios we were promised as far back as 1998...

Um, it's been going on for far longer than that.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

You realize that fission was discovered by private scientists before WW2 right?

How do you know insurance companies wouldn't insure nuclear plants? The US government has held a monopoly on that since the beginning of nuclear power.

There has been 1 major accident in the United States in the 50 years of nuclear power. Didn't hurt anybody, nobody was killed. Sounds like a decent investment for an insurance company.

Why do you think nuke plants cost so much? Oh yes, you don't truly think. I mean incredibly inefficient regulations couldn't have any part of that could it? I mean the reason China is building the exact same plants as the US for 1/3rd the price is because they are totally unsafe in China right?

This is not to mention that radiation from a nuclear plant, outside of Chernobyl, has not killed a single person in the history of nuclear power.

This is not to mention that due to government regulatory stangling on nuclear power, its pretty expensive to build anything but the current tech. You don't really know anything about nuclear power though so it's alright.

If nuclear power can't make it in a truly free market, than by all means cast it away as a failure. But you don't actually know what a free market is and that it also require no government intervention (regulations) on free trade.

[Rasilio]

"There has been 1 major accident in the United States in the 50 years of nuclear power. Didn't hurt anybody, nobody was killed. Sounds like a decent investment for an insurance company."

Even worse for Tony in that one instance no one would have an actionable claim against the plant because no one was harmed and the radiation released was so low level there wasn't even a need for an evacuation or cleanup.

[Rasilio]

I hear this complaint all the time but the fact is that it is Bullshit.

In the entire history of nuclear power there has been exactly 1 incident which caused loss of life and only 2 which caused widespread radiation release.

Would any insurance company insure a plant design like Cherynobyl? Of course not but even Fukushima was insurable as the damage was actually quite limited.

No deaths and basically a 15 sq mile exclusion zone and basically less economic damage than was caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident. Further it took a massive once in a millenium natural disaster to cause that.

Worst case scenario assuming a Chernobyl/Fukishima type event once every 40 years and a handful of smaller events interspersed throughout the entire global nuclear industry paying out on average less than $2 billion per year in damages from those accidents, which comes out to a surcharge of ~$0.01 per KWH. Throw in a nice little profit margin for the insurance company and you get to maybe $0.03 per KWH

[LTC(ret) John]

Gosh Tony, tell me more about this "insurance industry" you know so much about!

I could really use the help as I am just some middle level slob here at this enormous, world spanning insurance giant. We obviously need your wisdom and guidance.

[Gray Ghost]

Rasilo, S Joe; there was the SL-1 accident, but otherwise your point on the lack of fatalities is a good one.

LTC John, since you work in re-insurance, IIRC, would large insurance companies cover nuclear power utilities in the absence of Price-Anderson, and if so, what's your WAG for what the premiums would look like?

[KPres]

"Because no insurance company would touch them."

Why? Actual damages from Nuclear plants have been pretty small relative to other forms of power.

"Libertarians going on about nuclear power gives away your entire game."

Again, why? Ours is a reaction to the anti-nuclear camp, which is the side with a clear ideological axe to grind. What possible stake could we have in the game? After all, I thought libertarians were funded by Big Oil/Koch? You realize that oil companies are decidedly against nuclear power (for obvious reasons).

[WTF]

Because Tony said so; he just feels like that's the case...

[Tony]

FTR I'm not against nuclear power, especially as an alternative to fossil fuel-based energy.

If you want to argue for nuclear and for eliminating liability caps, then you can be consistent and libertarian. I just don't think anyone would ever build a nuclear power plant without such caps.

[Sy]

Sweet. A non-libertarian (who's about as consistent as an emo teenager) telling libertarians how to be consistent.

[Dweebston]

With the EPA refusing to greenlight any new plants, it's immaterial whether or not we keep the cap.

Good God! Has the Kochspiracy captured even that redoubtable stalwart? It's

[Dweebston]

...a policy tailor-made to favor coal-fired and natural-gas plants.

[Sam Grove]

From Libertarian Party Platform on nuclear energy:

We oppose all direct and indirect government participation in the nuclear energy industry, including subsidies, research and development funds, guaranteed loans, waste disposal subsidies, and federal uranium enrichment facilities. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should be abolished; full liability -- not government agencies -- should regulate nuclear power. The Price-Anderson Act, through which the government limits liability for nuclear accidents and furnishes partial payment at taxpayer expense, should be repealed. Nuclear energy should be denationalized and the industry's assets transferred to the private sector. Any nuclear power industry must meet the test of a free market.

[KPres]

"FTR I'm not against nuclear power."

Of course you are. That's why you're here instead of over at greenpeace arguing with them. Hell, there's probably enough pro-nuclear forces on the political right that if the left actually cast off their anti-nuclear nut jobs, they'd be able to form a political coalition that could get them the carbon reductions they want.

[Rasilio]

Again why?

Deepwater Horizon cost BP about $90 Billion dollars.

Fukushima would have merely required them to buy all of the land in the exclusion zone, land which I should also add was already devalued due to a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting it.

Lets call it a 20 mile radius cut in half since it is on the coast, at $25,000 per acre. That comes out to about $2 billion. Throw in another $5 billion for injuries other property damage and damage to the fisheries and to set up a trust fund for cancers resulting from radiation exposure and the loss of the plant itself plus decomissioning costs and you are looking at less than $12 billion. A tiny fraction of what Deepwater Horizon cost BP.

[bostonaod]

They really think that to agree with the AGM premise is to accept every policy already spilling off their wish list.

Where's the "climate change is a real phenomenon, but I don't give a fuck" option?

Or even if you want to grant AGM is a 'problem' that must be 'fixed', then we'll fix it via technological innovation, not embracing neo-Luddism.

But nope, it's always "IT'S GETTING HOTTER, ADOPT SOCIALISM OR REPENT"

[Tony]

Doing nothing is a conscious policy choice with real consequences. Not giving a fuck doesn't absolve you of moral culpability. Your radical individualistic lifestyle ends at your front yard. You don't get to impose it (and all the environmental harm that comes with it) on other people against their will. Or perhaps you think you should be able to?

[sarcasmic]

Libertarians would force those who would use force to not use force!

They're tyrants!

[Tony]

All the libertarians here are arguing for the continued radical use of force in the form of global environmental harm.

[WTF]

Opposing the use of force to implement Tony's policy preferences is using force!! Derp de derpity DERP!!

[sarcasmic]

Remember kids. Not giving is taking. Not taking is giving. Darkness is light. Silence is sound. Vacuum is mass. Ignorance is knowledge. Weakness is strength. Freedom is slavery.

[Restoras]

And don't forget, there are three lights.

[Tony]

So it's not force for me to dump all my trash on your lawn, but it is force when you call the cops to make me stop? Noted.

[OldMexican]

Re: Tony,

So it's not force for me to dump all my trash on your lawn,

It would be an initiation of aggresive force on your part against my property - and me, by extension.

but it is force when you call the cops to make me stop? Noted.

I don't need no stinkin' cops. If you dump trash on my lawn, you will hear from my two friends: Smith, and Wesson.

[Tony]

Not if you hear from my personal security force and the many, many friends in their arsenal first. Ah freedom!

[Sy]

"Not if you hear from my personal security force and the many, many friends in their arsenal first. Ah freedom!"

In which case you've violated the NAP, rendering your shit-stained hypothetical useless.

[darius404]

Sy, we call those "hypocriticals".

[sarcasmic]

That's just dumb. Even for you.

[WTF]

I'll bet he can go even dumber, just wait.

[WTF]

And there it is, at 1:05!

Tony|5.14.13 @ 1:05PM|#

So it's not force for me to dump all my trash on your lawn, but it is force when you call the cops to make me stop? Noted.

[sarcasmic]

I'll bet he can go even dumber, just wait.

You're right. Look above at his 1:05 comment.

[WTF]

To be sure, it's pretty much like betting the sun will rise in the east.

[OldMexican]

Re: Tony,

All the libertarians here are arguing for the continued radical use of force in the form of global environmental harm.

A "harm" that hasn't been proven to exist, at all. No islands have succumbed to raising sea levels; no shotage of polar bears; no year-round droughts; still plenty of snow available so rich politicians and actors can sky on Switzerland.

Again, your contention is fallacious just for that part. You're appealing to a non-existent crisis.

But it is good to know that liberals, like you, fancy themselves geniuses, not unlike telling a daughter that she's the prettiest monster in the group.

[PapayaSF]

In all fairness, it must be noted that the polar bears have not yet suffered the blow of a higher speed limit on rural Ohio interstates.

[KPres]

"global environmental harm."

At the level that warming is actually happening, as opposed to the political models which aren't bearing out, it's probably a global environment benefit.

[Suthenboy]

So by advocating no action, we are savagely assaulting kittens and unicorns and all that is good. I wonder what would be done about that egregious offense in Tonyland?

Oh yeah, make shitweasel emperor for life, round up and kill all of the deniers, and then turn all industry over to the king of shitweasels.

I wonder how that would turn out?

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Who is "doing nothing"?

You think that without government's clumsy and deadly hand forcing TOP.DECISIONS, nothing happens.

It is a good thing government came in and forced us to use electricity or we would still be without power!

[WTF]

And thank God government is in charge of distributing food, or we would all be starving! Oh, wait...

[sarcasmic]

If the government had not given research grants to Oog and Uurg to invent the wheel, we'd never have had electricity!

[Tony]

Acclaimed climate expert Shikha Dalmia: "teach the controversy!"

[WTF]

Acclaimed climate expert Tony: "DERP!"

[sarcasmic]

He agrees with the consensus because he feels that they must be right! That makes him smart!

Critical thinkers who doubt the experts are the doopid ones!

[WTF]

Stop othering Tony by questioning the validity of his emotions, you monster!

[Sy]

There's a kid in one of my art classes. Pock-marked face with a permanent grimace, lips pushed together in permanent smugness, shoulders raised but tight to his chest with his arms folded neatly across his turtlenecks, designer glasses trained on his iPad.
This kid always feels the need to interject and display his ignorance of math and science whenever one of subjects comes up. This is exactly what comes to mind when I think of Tony.

[darius404]

This can't be true. Everyone knows those traits are nerd trademarks, he HAS to know what he's talking about!

^What the kid probably believes.

[Jordan]

Meanwhile, the "real experts" are busy walking back their climate sensitivity estimates which were off by laughable amounts.

[WTF]

They just need to figure out a way to 'hide the decline'.

[LTC(ret) John]

I hear there is a "trick" for that!

[KPres]

"Meanwhile, the "real experts" are busy walking back their climate sensitivity estimates which were off by laughable amounts."

But the thing is, once they finally settle on something in the ~1.5-2.0 range, the Tony's of the world will STILL be screaming as if the end is nigh.

[Ken Shultz]

When she first starts talking about how our models may be overestimating temperature predictions, they split screen her with a montage of huge chunks of ice breaking off of icebergs and plunging into the ocean.

They set her up. It's an ambush. Nice to see she can walk through it unscathed.

[Ken Shultz]

I'd love to see somebody do that with Obama the next time he makes a speech about ObamaCare...

He'll be talking about all the people he's helped, and on a split screen, we could show somebody opening an insurance bill, seeing their premium having gone through the roof, and dropping dead of a heart attack.

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

Talking about humanity and integrity with a split screen of a drone attack on a wedding.

[Ken Shultz]

+1

[Smilin' Joe Fission]

I'm surprised they didn't split her with footage from The Day After Tomorrow. That is about the integrity Thom Hartmann has.

[PapayaSF]

I loved the scene in which frost came racing down a building hallway. "Look out! Frost! Aaaargh!"

[Brandybuck]

Because icebergs NEVER calved before the KOCHTOPUS started pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

[NeonCat]

The Titanic was sunk by laissez-faire economics. If only there had been a regulation forbidding ships to sink!

[Brandybuck]

I continue to be amazed at Chris Mooney's extremely unskeptical mind, quite ironic considering his status in the Skeptic community.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Most of the "skeptic" community is a joke. Check out Dr. Novella's blog post on Taubes. If I recall correctly (and I may not be), he said Taubes was engaging in "special pleading" and didn't address any of the major claims he made.

When the "skeptic" community's sacred cows are questioned, they're just as reactionary and uncritical as the religious people they criticize.

I'm sure there are some in the skeptic community who are good, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Penn Jillette.

[Juice]

Some "skeptic" bloggers want to "kick him out" of the "skeptic community" because he's an evil libertarian who hates the poor and Mother Earth.

[PapayaSF]

James Randi, though I don't know if he's considered part of the "skeptic community."

[WomSom]

That makes a lot of sense dude. Wow.

http://www.Proxy-Anon.tk

[OldMexican]

Tony: All the libertarians here are arguing for the continued radical use of force in the form of global environmental harm.

This is how Progressives argue: They make up a crisis to then argue for freedom-limiting policies and actions as "solution".

The problem for the AGW millenarists is that their predictions have proven to be totally wrong and their predictive powers a dismal failure, not unlike the Pyramid predicitions made by the founding father of the Jehova's Witnesses before WWI.

The other and more risible part of Tony's statement is how he equates normal everyday LIVING by HUMANS with "force" to then argue that libertarians are hypocrites for supporting the initiation of force. In rethoric, this is what formally we would call "equivocating" but it can also be known by its other, less formal name: "making shit up."

[KPres]

"The problem for the AGW millenarists is that their predictions have proven to be totally wrong and their predictive powers a dismal failure"

Who cares about evidence when you have a poll of 75 climatologists answering two vaguely worded questions engineered to elicit a pre-determined response. This is the scientific method we're talking about!

[Tony]

Citation fucking needed. Jesus. You could spend the time you use reading bullshit denier talking points instead reading some reliable sources on this subject. That's what a grownup would do.

[cavalier973]

Here you go.

This brief report addresses the two primary questions of the survey, which contained up to nine questions (the full study
is given by Kendall Zimmerman [2008]):
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or
remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures?

In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate
change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who
also have published more than 50% of
their recent peer-reviewed papers on the
subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2%
(76 of 79) answered "risen" to question 1
and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.

[KPres]

Extinction level event? LOL! Right.

Anyway, I love how all of the sudden liberals love Dick Cheney's off-the-wall reasoning.

[Dweebston]

Hartmann's moronic comparison to crossing the street is beyond contemptible. The scenario he portrays isn't analogous because in both cases something occurs with a similar probability. Rather, it's disparate because in both scenarios he suggests a 20% die-off. That's a brazen claim, even for a glib remark, and neatly demonstrates Dalmia's point.

[cavalier973]

A 1% chance that humans won't adapt? Does this guy believe in evolution or not?

[cavalier973]

What has become of science? We thought that science was about the pursuit of truth. Then we became perplexed at how quickly scientists have prostituted themselves in the service of political agendas. We have seen the unedifying spectacle of scientists refusing to share their data, fiddling their results, and resorting to ad hominem attacks on those who have exposed their work to be fraudulent. We have seen the Royal Society becoming a shamelessly crude advocacy society. We have seen President Obama choosing notorious climate alarmists and liars to be his personal advisors. We have seen the peer review process and journal editors colluding to prevent publication of results that do not serve the politically-correct agenda, and scientists refusing to consider results that demolish their pet theories. What is going on here?

[VangelV]

It would help if Reason's commentators were familiar enough with the issue to argue against the AGW fraud effectively.

[Curtisls87]

It was previously noted that they split-screened to show the ice calving. I also noted that at one point when talking specifically on CO2 concentration, they showed "smoke stacks." The only problem is, these were cooling towers and the billowing "smoke" seen coming from them was instead water vaport. CO2 is completely invisible - but hey, never let a chance to be sensationalist go by.

[darius404]

It doesn't. That doesn't mean you won't get witchhunts amongst the self-proclaimed "tolerant", which has significant overlap with the most vocal atheists and anti-theists.