Why Ideological Warfare Over Global Warming Isn't a Bad Thing

Democrats and Republicans played their part in the global warming saga this week. The White House issued a report

Mysi(new stream: www.flickr.com/photos/mysianne) / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution

showing that global warming was unleashing its wrath on America through mudslides, hurricanes and pests. Republicans trotted out their own brief, dismissing this as the usual liberal gloom and doom.

But I ask in The Week:

Why do Republicans so stubbornly resist the climate change story? It's not like when a tornado touches down, it spares them, targeting only Democrats. Conversely, why are liberals so eager to buy the climate apocalypse? It's not like they can insulate themselves from rising energy prices or job losses that a drastic energy diet would produce.

And the answer is that neither side can check their ideology at the gate before entering the temple of science on this issue. Both view it from the standpoint of their broader normative commitments. Conservatives to avoid Big Government and liberals to promote social justice. If conservatives have a massive blind spot on the issue, liberals have deep tunnel vision.

What's more, I note, this is just as it should be.

To find out why, go here.

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

There's something more here than politics. There's also reality. And using the scientific method to determine what really happens. Both parties are perfectly find distorting scientific findings and perverting the scientific method. In the AGW situation, the bigger sinner would be the Democratic party and its teamboys. But politics is all about lies and misrepresentation, which are anathema to good science.

[blcartwright]

So much of the population is uninformed, believing whatever the media feeds them.

Last year after an F5 hit Oklahoma City one of my left-leaning workmates commented that "there are just so many more tornadoes!". So, the type of person I am, I went to look it up. Wikipedia had a list of all F5's, and I found that over the last 30 years (1985-2013) the yearly rate of F5's was HALF of what it had been in the previous 30 years.

[Episiarch]

The reason is because, like so many other things the partisan TEAM morons appropriate, it has become part of their KULTUR WAR. It's part of their TEAM identities now. TEAM BLUE believes 100% in global warming. TEAM RED is skeptical to downright dismissive. And these positions have nothing to do with science. They have to do with "that's what a good member of TEAM X thinks". This is what partisans do. It's how they distinguish themselves from the other TEAM, because Jeebus knows they need a superficial way to do so, because at heart they're all the same: fucking statist morons who love seeing other people controlled.

[Pro Libertate]

I was inclined to believe that anthropogenic sources could be contributing to an apparent warming trend when this all first started, having no reason to think the science was being misrepresented or distorted. But the evidence isn't supporting the claims, certainly not to the level we keep seeing. And the political and economic motivations of many, including some scientists, have become increasingly apparent.

Aside from that, there are the ridiculous "solutions" being proposed to deal with warming, which make no fucking sense except and only as a political land-grab. Mo' better power, please.

If this were a serious concern, at least part of the discussion would be on adapting to major changes in the climate, because (1) it might be too late to change anything, even assuming it's AGW and not just nature (leaving aside the question whether we're warming at all), (2) it might be too late because the warming has little to do with us and is, in fact, a natural change, or (3) something entirely different might be coming, like a reduction in temperature (which is far more dangerous to humanity).

Why no talk whatsoever about adapting to change? Because it's bullshit.

[Episiarch]

Of course it's bullshit. But the point is that it's become politicized. And as soon as something becomes one of the hobby horses of TEAM BE RULED and they incorporate it into their required TEAM planks, it ceases to be anything that can be dealt with seriously in any way, because they will lie, distort, fudge, ignore, and do anything and everything necessary to "prove" their TEAM narrative.

They're completely untrustable, because as partisans you know that they will do or say anything to "win" for their side. They've proven this countless times. So as soon as they take up an issue and TEAM it, that issue is done. Because it will never be approached honestly again.

[Pro Libertate]

We need a new amendment for separate of science and state to go with another one requiring the separation of commerce and state.

In other words, we're so fucked. I bet those mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes were descended from people who decided the Earth needed to be rebooted, hence the doomsday device.

[Tonio]

"I expose myself to the bomb."

Talk about your mask coming off.

[Pro Libertate]

Who knew Taylor was a radical climatologist?

[Ted S.]

"I expose myself to the bomb."

I didn't know you were a pervert. :-p

[Pro Libertate]

He engages in sobomby!

[PM]

At least it wasn't mopery.

[kinnath]

It seems intuitively obvious that belching thousands of tons of greenhouses into the atmosphere for decades or centuries would have some level of impact on the overall balance of heat gain and heat loss.

But it also seems intuitively obvious that the earth's climate is a chaotic system in a generally stable equilibrium (with a dozen or so billion years of history to verify that).

It takes extreme hubris to think that we puny mortals could somehow push the earth out of that equilibrium.

[Episiarch]

Except that if someone has any actual comprehension of the volume of the Earth's atmosphere, it ceases to be intuitively obvious. The problem is that most people don't have any comprehension. About a ton of stuff.

[kinnath]

it ceases to be intuitively obvious.

I disagree. Should we start calling each other names now? I'd call you a dirty mic, but I'm a dirty mic. So that would kind of lesson the impact.

[Episiarch]

Well, I'm a dirty WOP so you can call me a mick all day if you want, you dirty mick.

[kinnath]

I shall try to remember that, wop.

[Ted S.]

He was calling you a dirty microphone, not a dirty Irishman.

[Lord Humungus]

Shure he was.

[R C Dean]

Science is all about checking and often refuting what is "intuitively obvious", starting with geocentric cosmology and going on from there.

[Pro Libertate]

Could be affecting climate in some way? Sure. We probably do. But is that significant in the long term? I find that unlikely, given the much larger influences on the climate, many of which we don't even come close to understanding.

If you look at the history of the planet, we've undergone extremely dramatic changes in the environment, many of which we only can guess about. Same planet, same solar system. Some things are different (for instance, the Earth isn't being bombarded anywhere near as frequently as it once was), but we can expect periods that are much warmer--and much cooler--than today. If nothing else, we do know that climate is volatile, in the near and especially long terms.

[kinnath]

I looked it up. They property my house sits on was under half a mile of ice 14,000 years ago. AGW is chicken shit compared to another ice age.

[Pro Libertate]

The whole planet was covered in ice at one time. If that happens now, we're fucked. Maybe not all of us, but most of us.

Warming is actually very beneficial to life in general. In our warmer periods, we had a great deal more diversity and a larger biosphere than we have now. Not saying I want a hotter planet, but you'd think some of the environuts would understand that and maybe secretly want a warmer world.

[kinnath]

Permanent ice caps at the pole is the least common climate situation for the planet. We tend to be all ice or no ice.

[Zeb]

I think that the snowball Earth was well before there was much complex life and the atmosphere and continents were very different, so I don't think that is at all likely to happen. But another major glaciation is certainly coming sometime in the next 10,000 years or so.

[kinnath]

http://geology.utah.gov/survey.....e_ages.htm

For example, as Earth was emerging out of the last glacial cycle, the warming trend was interrupted 12,800 years ago when temperatures dropped dramatically in only several decades. A mere 1,300 years later, temperatures locally spiked as much as 20?F (11?C) within just several years. Sudden changes like this occurred at least 24 times during the past 100,000 years. In a relative sense, we are in a time of unusually stable temperatures today?how long will it last?

Those fuckers in Utah don't understand consensus.

[Pro Libertate]

Holy shit. I sure hope that doesn't happen. Maybe we should start building domes now.

[Pro Libertate]

I saw a NOVA series on Australia, which discussed that (the program had quite a bit about the development of the Earth), and I believe that's right. The Cambrian Explosion happened after that.

But whether that could happen again is anyone's guess, because we don't really know why it happened then. Which is yet another way we know that climate science has limitations when it can't even explain known historical events. Not really a criticism of the science, which is really pretty new. And, back to the topic, we don't need to freeze up completely to have some bad times.

[110 Lean]

Smart Man (RIP)

[Mad Scientist]

It seems intuitively obvious that belching thousands of tons of greenhouses into the atmosphere for decades or centuries would have some level of impact on the overall balance of heat gain and heat loss.

It does at first, but the climate change folks never mention what the other greenhouse gasses are. By far the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is: water.

THE CLOUDS OF DEADLY GREENHOUSE GASES ARE COMING TO KILL US ALL!!!

[Juice]

Please learn the actual mechanism of global warming. Water is almost entirely in the troposphere, which transfers heat almost entirely by convection. Where the absorptive and radiative properties of CO2 come into play is in the stratosphere, again where there is very little water vapor. Fuck it, look the rest up yourself, but the point is this is a bad argument.

[Dinerboy]

Except that the concentration of CO2 that they warn about is still really, really small. 400 parts per million ain't a whole lot, and if as you note the Earth's climate didn't have some stabilizing components to it, we'd never have evolved.

The nattering nellies screamed about the destruction that the BP oil spill would cause in the Gulf. They kinda forgot that the Gulf is BIG.

[Juice]

This too is a bad argument to use. The low concentration of CO2 does not mean it doesn't have a substantial effect. Actually it has a more dramatic effect at lower concentrations due to Beer's Law.

[David Lango]

I'm saying the lies are bigger than everyone suspects.

How about those Chemtrails?

http://lango.us

[blcartwright]

a year or so ago John Batchelor interviewed an author about his book describing how society needs to change over the next century or so to deal with AGW. Near the end Batchelor asked him about mitigation, to which the author replied that it would be nearly impossible to tell whether mitigation was working, trying to separate out human attempts to correct the climate from what is occurring naturally. To which I then would respond "Well, if we can't distinguish our mitigation from natural processes, how can we be so sure that we are creating the situation in the first place?"

[R C Dean]

TEAM RED is skeptical to downright dismissive. And these positions have nothing to do with science.

If you're talking catastrophic, IPCC-style AGW, then I think the dismissive position actually has quite a lot to do with science, at this point. The politically useful, and used, strain of climate "science" should be dismissed.

[Dinerboy]

I think we're reaching the stage where the alarmists have to scream louder and more stridently in the face of failed predictions and awareness of failed predictions.

The BS is unraveling, so they have to distract our awareness of that unraveling.

[David Lango]

I want them to stop trying to manipulate the weather and stop spraying Chemtrails. Stop using HAARP ionosphere heaters to manipulate the jetstream.

The folks employed in Geo-engineering are living a lie. The nano-aluminum they spray reflects off the Sun. They believe they're fighting global warming.

It's a huge lie. The appointed psuedo-scientists are put in charge at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations by the establishment that wants to depopulate the Earth.

When a meteorologist is not allowed to show or talk about Chemtrails on television it's the same as lying.

[PM]

I think you dropped this.

[Sy]

But there is no pure free market or property rights solution to global warming

Uh, bullshit. There's only free market solutions to this "problem".
Good to see Shikha's already accepted their absurd premise at face value.

[Zeb]

There is only one "solution" that is going to actually happen, and that is that people will adapt and get on with life. Hopefully that will happen without a whole lot (more) of ineffective, yet economically harmful attempts to solve the problem.

[Sy]

What problem?

[Zeb]

Just assume for the sake of argument. Do you know what a dilemma is?

Whether or not AGW is a significant thing, my conclusion is the same.

[PapayaSF]

There are free market solutions, but Shikha isn't wrong to say that. Global warming is pretty much a textbook case of the tragedy of the commons.

[Sy]

It would be a tragedy of the commons if it was a real, quantifiable problem. Unfortunately for her and the AGW crowd, it isn't. If you consistently have to forge data, bury conflicting reports, and use politics to threaten funding of other research efforts, change from "global warming" to "climate change" when your hypothesis turns out to be completely bunk, and engage in fascist propaganda campaigns to punish thoughtcrime against mother Gaia.. It's safe to say your claims are invalid.

[PapayaSF]

I'm not denying all the alarmist shenanigans, just pointing out that it is a TOTC situation.

I think the problem is somewhat real and partially quantifiable, but greatly exaggerated. See my comment below.

[Dinerboy]

Agreed. In a grand scale, the "central planning" solution won't work. Why? Russia won't play. China won't play. India won't play. Brazil might play if paid enough.

Without those big players capping carbon, anything the US and Europe does is pissing in the wind.

[Lady Bertrum]

So, global warming alarmists bad and global warming deniers also bad because ideology?

False equivalency.

I might be forgetting my high school science, but why would the deniers need to prove a negative? Isn't it the responsibility of the alarmist to prove it's true? And that it's man made?

[sarcasmic]

Isn't it the responsibility of the alarmist to prove it's true? And that it's man made?

Human activity is bad and it must be harming the planet, therefore human activity is bad and it must be harming the planet.

Circular reasoning is circular.

[Mr. Soul]

Circular reasoning is square. Now prove it isn't.

[Sudden]

Well plants love brawndo and brawndo has electrolytes!`

[Sy]

It's as if Shikha showed up in the middle of a dispute between an intruder and a home-owner and declared them both to have equally valid reasons for being upset with each other.

[John Paul Jones]

This

[Zeb]

Well, they might be following the precautionary principle rather than the scientific method.

Isn't it the responsibility of the alarmist to prove it's true?

Almost. They need to gather evidence supporting their position and make predictions that can be checked against data. Which has not gone that well for them. In my opinion, they are far too confident that they have any kind of a clue how climate works.

I think there is a lot of sloppiness on the "denier" side as well, though. There isn't a complete lack of evidence for a warming climate.

[Sy]

There's a complete lack of evidence that it's anthropogenic.

[Zeb]

I don't know that, and I don't know anything about you. So I'll make my own judgement in time, thanks.

[Sy]

But you're willing to assume evidence exists without proof.

DERP.

[Pathogen]

There are known-knowns, and known-unknowns, but there are also unknown-unknowns... the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!

/drops mic

[PapayaSF]

I would not go that far. We're certainly pumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. The question is what the effects will be.

[Sy]

CO2 is pretty ineffective as a greenhouse gas, especially in an H2O rich atmosphere. That's why DoE reports on greenhouse gas emissions omit water vapor. People might actually catch on that CO2 isn't the problem. And as long as these reports fail to account for solar activity, which strongly correlates with atmospheric temperature (in turn increasing the amount of atmospheric h2o), no one should ever come close to believing this shit.

[Azathoth!!]

Didn't someone link that Feynmann video yesterday? 'If your experiments don't work, your guess is wrong.'

Their experiments don't work.

The people on the other side--I don't use the term 'denier', I prefer 'people who understand how science actually works and those who support them'--don't have anything to be sloppy about. There has been no warming that falls outside historical ranges.

[Zeb]

I think that deniers exist, but the vast majority of the people tarred with that epithet are more properly called "skeptical".

[Michael Ejercito]

Well, they might be following the precautionary principle rather than the scientific method.

How is the precautionary principle superior?

[BakedPenguin]

I've said this before, but I'll keep repeating it because it's true: A huge part of why the left loves this is that it's their version of original sin. Instead of knowledge, it's economic activity, and instead of God, it's Gaia. But knowledge and economy are just as sinful, as they are unavoidable for anyone who wishes to live as a human being.

[sarcasmic]

Carbon, the building block of life, is the original sin.

[Pro Libertate]

Nah, it's oxygen. Damned cyanobacteria!

[Curtisls87]

Nice reference!

[Episiarch]

Yeah, I agree with you. It's the perfect variation of original sin for people with a particular mindset: that of self-hatred (and therefore by extension and projection, the human race as a whole). And self-hatred is a massive feature of those drawn to TEAM BLUE.

[Lady Bertrum]

Yeah. My science education doesn't go beyond high school chemistry, so the science, or lack there of, of global warming is above my pay grade. Most Americans probably view it as I do.

But, but, but, I sincerely suspect the left views it as a pseudo religion as you say. And, the group think in academia and the grants paid to academics to produce the science that underpins the theory lead me to believe it's possibly complete bullshit.

[sarcasmic]

Science financed by the private sector can't be trusted because corporations and profits, but science financed by government to justify policy can absolutely be trusted because democracy and consensus.

[Mad Scientist]

We need TOP MEN who will tell us what to think!

[Tonio]

Don't forget fear, ignorance and self-hatred which are, of course, staples of religious thought.

[Pro Libertate]

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[Emmerson Biggins]

But you can cleanse yourself of the original sin by simply acknowledging the goodness of Pope Gore, the second of his name, flyer of planes, offsetter of carbon. And paying a small fee.

So what's your problem?

[Emmerson Biggins]

damnit. how did I forget "forger of the interwebs" in his honorific? that was a gimme.

[Zeb]

Why would one assume that Gaia wouldn't want people to use all available resources to do as much cool stuff as possible?

The Gaia hypothesis is a neat idea, and in many ways I think it is true. Life on Earth is basically one thing. It all started in the same place and is built on the same kinds of chemistry. In some sense the world is a single organism. But why make the completely unjustified leap to assume that that means that it is bad to change things to be more convenient for humans? We're Gaia's brain.

[PapayaSF]

Oh yes, I noticed this long ago. It's as if the psychological/emotional urge previously expressed as puritanism has taken on a new, secular, hip form. Same thing with the social justice warriors and the guardians of political correctness.

[Sam Grove]

"The right's chief commitment (which I share) is to free enterprise, property rights, and limited government that it sees as core to human progress."

That may be their rhetorical commitment, but in practice, is it true?

[Bill Dalasio]

Well, I won't presume to speak for all Republicans. But, I think it goes a bit beyond my ideological predisposition for limited government. The big driver here is that I don't like bullies. And that's what the advocates of AGW theory are increasingly looking like. If the facts are on their side, the last thing I would expect the advocates of an interpretation of science to insist is that "the debate is over". And that's what I consistently hear from AGW advocates. Most advocates of the theory of evolution are only too happy to explain the science. Every time I try to get a straight explanation of the theory and its support, I'm responded to with a lot of outrage and handwaving. And that's just the basic science. When you try to get into a discussion of cost-benefit, you're vilified. The bottom line, from where I sit, is that I'm willing to entertain the possibility of AGW theory being correct. But, the more you try to bully me into acceptance - both of the theory and of the advocated policy presciption - the more I'm going to write you off as a charletan.

[Pro Libertate]

That's a good point. While people who understand evolution might roll their eyes about people not accepting the huge amounts of evidence supporting it (certainly it's indisputably more correct than creationist theories that involve everything being 6,000 years old), they also tend to explain why it's a much better theory, because, well, mountains of evidence.

In most arguments, when the facts are totally on your side, you pound the facts.

[Bill Dalasio]

Exactly.

If you go to someone who is a big supporter of the theory of evolution with questions or challenges, you won't suffer for lack of substantive response. Hell, you'll find most scientists are happy to talk your ear off about it. With the AGW folks, it's "shut up and believe!".

[sarcasmic]

Global warming alarmists are pounding the table.

[Pro Libertate]

That's where I was going.

[Zeb]

I agree. And the unwillingness to do the cost-benefit is the worst part, I think. I'm not a climate scientist and I don't have the time to learn enough about it to really know for myself what the evidence says about the whole AGW proposition. I'm willing to assume that it is true to some extent. Seems plausible. But the science is definitely not as strong as some claim.

What the science doesn't (and cannot) tell us is what should be done about it. But people seem to think that "the science is settled" means that the appropriate response is also settled. Which is utter crap. You really do need to do that cost-benefit analysis. And consider whether any of the proposed responses could possibly work as intended.

[Pro Libertate]

I intend to start a dome company then suggest that the solution is. . .domes.

[Tony]

Here you go. *Gives a firm, friendly handshake.*

[Sam Grove]

BTW, the represented counter by the right, in referring to empirical evidence, doesn't seem that outlandish.

"which points out that the observed warming ? 0.8 degrees C since 1895 ? is much milder than previously expected and can't possibly be blamed for these extreme weather events which, they claim, are no worse than before."

There has been no increase in extreme weather events, tornadoes are down in frequency and the drought/flooding pattern are not abnormal.

[Tonio]

But, but, but....how dare you ignore my cherry-picked data when a couple of largish storms just happened to hit major population centers.

[HazelMeade]

^^^ THIS.

This sort of thing is the easy part of the debate.
This is math. This is statistics. Either the number of extreme weather events has increased or it hasn't.
And if it hasn't then you can't blame every freaking hurricane or flood on global warming.

Fact.

[Sam Grove]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....te-change/

[Mike M.]

In the world of real science, when events and the data don't support the original theory and its predicted results, you have no choice but to modify the theory, or even discard it altogether.

In the world of fraudulent science such as that which the global warming cabal occupies, when events and the data don't support the original theory and its predicted results, you destroy all of the data and claim that some outsider hacked into your system.

[William of Purple]

But GAIZ, 97% agree! That's like a consensus and shit.

[Troof Hurts]

WRONG BILLY

The vast majority of scientists who conduct climatological research and publish their results in professional journals say humans are the cause of global warming. There is essentially no controversy among actual climate scientists about this.

Of course, if you read the Wall Street Journal or the contrarian blogs, you might think the controversy among scientists is bigger. But you'll find that the vast majority of people writing those articles, or who are quoted in them, are not climatologists. You'll also find many, including politicians so vocally denying global warming, are heavily funded by fossil fuel interests, or lead institutes funded that way.

[Jordan]

I love how your response to somebody mocking you for just shouting "CONSENSUS!" is to shout "CONSENSUS!"

[Episiarch]

Even better is that it thinks "consensus" is a valid scientific argument. My god these people are stupid.

[sarcasmic]

Funny thing is that many of these people will openly admit to being stupid, which is why they support consensus. Because a consensus of really smart people must be truth, and who are these stupids to question the really smart scientists? Therefore consensus equals science because scientists are really smart.

[Lady Bertrum]

Top. Men. say consensus, so consensus.

Just more shut-upery.

[Zeb]

Well, consensus is usually a good way to tell that science is pretty well settled. Of course it is no guarantee that it is correct, but usually it works out that way.
But the consensus has gotten it wrong many times in the past and there is no reason to assume it is necessarily right now. Newtonian mechanics is all wrong, but there was a whole lot more and better evidence for it than there is for anything in climate science.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

These people parody themselves, before we can even put finger to keyboard...

[sarcasmic]

You'll also find many, including politicians so vocally denying global warming, are heavily funded by fossil fuel interests, or lead institutes funded that way.

You'll also find many, including businesses so vocally supporting global warming, are heavily funded by government interests who seek to gain power by regulating every aspect of human activity.

Same principle, different principals.

But you don't care about principles, do you? Just principals.

[Pro Libertate]

Here's the thing: If evidence of catastrophic warming in the near future was really overwhelming, why the heck would people not want to do anything about it? Even rejecting the TOTAL CONTROL approach, wouldn't there be at least some effort to prepare?

Sure, people are quite capable of ignoring the truth and do so all the time, but for something so dramatic and destructive, you'd think even a compelling argument would give them pause, let alone this supposed overwhelming proof.

[#]

Related, if this was so obvious to anyone with 2 brain cells, why is that the only people on Earth who seem to be wanting to act on this are American left-leaning political interests and European Bureacrats?

Is China, Australia, Japan, and pretty much all the rest of the world filled with denier tea-bagger Rethuglicans too?

[Pro Libertate]

Who want to die. Don't forget that part.

Of course, the same might be said for watching our government spend money our grandchildren might not have, let alone us. But maybe that's too complicated to get or something.

[Tony]

Apparently not.

[kinnath]

Galileo was excommunicated for contradicting the consensus opinions of the catholic leadership.

99.99999999999999999999999% consensus means jack shit the first time someone provides contradictory evidence (and by evidence I mean verifiable facts).

[Tony]

So go find some and become the Galileo of climate.

[Joshua]

say humans are the cause

They say no such thing. What do say is that humans are A CONTRIBUTOR to the warming, but they aren't sure by how much.

[OldMexican]

Re: Troof is Butthurt,

THE 97% CONSENSUS MYTH

We've all been subjected to the incessant "97% of scientists agree ...global warming ...blah blah" meme, which is nothing more than another statistical fabrication by John Cook and his collection of "anything for the cause" zealots. As has been previously pointed out on WUWT, when you look at the methodology used to reach that number, the veracity of the result falls apart, badly. You see, it turns out that Cook simply employed his band of "Skeptical Science" (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers, rather than letting all authors of the papers rate their own work (Note: many authors weren't even contacted and their papers wrongly rated[...]). The result was that the "97% consensus" was a survey of the SkS raters beliefs and interpretations, rather than a survey of the authors opinions of their own science abstracts. Essentially it was pal-review by an activist group with a strong bias towards a particular outcome as demonstrated by the name "the consensus project".

Anyway, the fact that troll Troof pointed to an article in Slate to backup his counterargument should tell you something about the validity of that claim.

[R C Dean]

Since the vast majority of articles published in professional journals go through editors and review committees populated by committed AGW supporters, this claim is circular, and amounts to little more than "AGW journals publish AGW authors, and AGW authors support AGW."

[Tony]

Yeah same with evolution and heliocentrism.

[R C Dean]

So, you are agreeing that journals under the control of a particular scientific belief aren't the place to look if you are trying to confirm a consensus?

[Tony]

Are you saying that only scientists who disbelieve in evolution are trustworthy on the topic of evolution?

[HazelMeade]

There's a vast difference between the majority believing that some kind of global warming is happening and the majority believing that the entire ecosystem is going to collapse in a massive cataclysym if we don't make draconian cuts in our emissions NOW.

[Tony]

What's that difference? The evidence is what it is.

[HazelMeade]

The evidence is that the ecosystem isn't going to collapse at all.

The evidence is that the changes will be gradual and absorbable enough that we can simply live with global warming and adapt.

[Tony]

Anything to keep burning fossil fuels. You must own a lot of stock.

Citation for this evidence?

[PM]

Anything to keep burning fossil fuels. You must own a lot of stock.

Nobody is making any money, of course, on deeply subsidized government contracts to build solar arrays, for example. Al Gore is almost a billionaire because of that slick business acumen. Certainly not because of being cozy with companies whose valuations went through the stratosphere on the back of massive government support.

Of course, it's never us who's greedy is it? It's always the other fellow who's greedy.

[HazelMeade]

Have you not noticed that James Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, who 10 years ago what predicting a global apocalypse within 10 years is now basically saying "Fuck it. Nobody has any idea what the climate is going to do."

Locklock practically fucking invented alarmist global warming hysterial, and he, it's patron saint, has changed his tune. that ought to give you some pause for thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

[Tony]

Who the fuck cares what that kook says about anything?

[Ken Shultz]

Ultimately, the resistance to proposals to curb carbon emissions aren't about science. They're about people being reluctant to commit economic suicide. Until the environmentalists start making proposals that will do things to stimulate economic growth, none of their goals will be met.

I'm not even sure they're actively socialist; I think they're just so steeped in their own perspective that they really don't understand that people aren't willing to sacrifice their standard of living. They blame climate change denial on things like evangelical Christianity--they think it's like creationism.

If we eliminated all income taxes for everyone who makes less than around $33,000 a year, the federal government would only lose about 2.25% of its income tax revenue.

http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/.....taxes.html

Just tell the bottom 50% that they don't even have to file anymore if they support carbon taxes! And if getting carbon taxes accepted requires small compromises from them like that, why haven't environmentalists made them?

Because they're stuck in the civil rights era/class struggle/Reagan-hate ideology they were spawn from in the 60s, and if saving the environment means no longer being able to do things like redistribute other people's incomes, they'd rather the environment went straight to hell.

[R C Dean]

Ultimately, the resistance to proposals to curb carbon emissions aren't about science.

I think in significant part, it is about the science, which simply doesn't support the purported reason for those proposals.

If the AGW models and all that were being confirmed by data, then we would be having the conversation you refer to, about the best way to respond.

[Ken Shultz]

Look at it from their perspective.

They really believe it.

If they want to do something about it, they're going to have to do something to compensate for all the damage their solutions would do to the economy.

From their perspective, the problem shouldn't be about climate change denialists. The problem is there own denial about what makes economies grow and what their solutions would do to people's standard of living.

If they came to terms with what makes economies grow, they'd get their environmental reforms. Their problem is that they don't know what they're talking about in regards to the economy.

Listening to an environmentalist talk about how we're all going to have to learn to make sacrifices in regards to the economy is like listening to a Malthusian creationist talk about evolution. They have no idea what they're talking about.

[HazelMeade]

Ultimately, the resistance to proposals to curb carbon emissions aren't about science. They're about people being reluctant to commit economic suicide. Until the environmentalists start making proposals that will do things to stimulate economic growth, none of their goals will be met.

The problem is that "economic growth" = "capitalist greed" as far as they are concerned. Saving the earth is fundamentally incompatible with living in a modern technological industrial society in their minds.

They will continue to twist the facts and the science and get increasingly alarminst until they either get their way and destroy the economy, or they are defeated and hoplessly marginalized.

I think it will be the latter. Unless people really see their lives being actively threatened by rogue hurricanes every week (and that's not going to happen), they aren't going to give up their air conditioning and cars.

[Brandon]

I don't care if AGW is real or not. The answer is the same either way.

[hamilton]

We have to give someone our money?

[Brandon]

No, we have to allow people to build wealth without undue restraint, because as people become wealthier they begin to care more about the cleanliness and sustainability of their environment. Once peoples' basic needs and wants are met, they will be more willing to spend their own money on things like clean energy, which will lead to an actual (IOW, not completely fucked up by cronyism and government corruption) market for those technologies, which will lead to actual useful iterations of the technologies. The answer, whether you buy into AGW or not, is to get government out of the way.

[Ken Shultz]

"I don't care if AGW is real or not. The answer is the same either way."

I agree.

And the answer is that we should use the issue to make the world more libertarian.

The environment is too important to leave to the government to fix.

[JohnZeus]

At the very least, the utter failure of virtually every so-called "expert" computer model (some of them quite elaborate and expensive) to predict the last 17 years (no warming increase) should humble the pro-AGW side. It doesn't. It made them double-down on a clearly flawed premise. That alone proves quite elegantly that their primary motive is not facts and truth... it's agenda-driven and designed to reach a pre-determined conclusion. That is the antithesis of science.

[Tim]

"The planet is mad at us and that's why bad things happen" is this science?

[GILMORE]

Climate Change
= Potentially Bad

Proposed Methods of Addressing Climate Change
= Much fucking worse

[GILMORE]

Oh, and even worse than that??

Even though I agree about the "Climate Change" part? =

I am called a "denier" for opposing their stupid proposed policies

They want to pretend people are debating scientific facts rather than the economic policies, which are profoundly idiotic, useless at best, and intended only to give the progressive ideologues a stranglehold over vast swaths of the economy.

[Troof Hurts]

What about the upcoming CLIMATE CHANGE REFUGEES????

[Episiarch]

What about the upcoming Godzilla movie???

[sarcasmic]

That's more probable.

[GILMORE]

HOLY SHIT, PEOPLE MOVE??

Migration, how does it work?

[HazelMeade]

Voted up for best new spoof.

[Joshua]

Yes, this is very frustrating.

They are saying in effect "If you disagree with any part of my premise, you are evil."

[sarcasmic]

That's what religious people do. Hello.

[GILMORE]

No, because you don't even have to disagree with the premise =

its the policy proposals (e.g. Ethanol!) AFTER the premise (e.g. "Carbon Emissions Warm the Earth") that are so fucked up.

you can agree with their premise, and they will still call you a DENIER if you dare tell them how stupid their fucking policies are.

[angus]

When you get right down to it the basic premise of socialism is the state must subsidise energy consumption.

[Tony]

Citation?

[GILMORE]

You know what's retarded?

When you describe someone's hyperbolic "THE END IS NIGH!"-Climate-Change Doomsday-Predictions as "NeoMalthusian"?

... and they don't actually know who Malthus was.

Something similar happened to me during 'Occupy Wall St.';

I told some kid "you aren't fit to carry Abbie Hoffman's jock-strap" - his reaction was, "Oh, yeah? "Abbie Hoffman"-Who?, your CORPORATE CEO OVERLOARD?!"

[Episiarch]

Ignorance is only second to victimhood in what are now desirable social cache traits. People are happy--proud, even--to be profoundly ignorant. It's incredible.

[Curtisls87]

That made me guffaw out loud! Thanks for making my day!

[The Late P Brooks]

If only someone had foreseen the consequences of a government mandate to add ethanol to motor fuel.

[GILMORE]

IF YOU OPPOSED ETHANOL YOU WERE A CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER

[Tman]

I love the new show Cosmos with Neil Tyson for a variety of reasons, especially the references to the often-overlooked scientific heroes that have fundamentally changed how science understands the physical world.

However, in the latest episode they decided to go in to full scold mode about global warming. What's funny is that the whole episode is basically about the Permian extinction, and how much the earth has changed over time and then sort of at the end as they are reminding you how insignificant mankinds tenure is they say "the dinosaurs couldn't see it coming, what's our excuse?"

It seemed as if they almost did it half-heartedly which leads me to believe that there are skeptics amongst the writers who don't think comparing a 100 year temperature cycle with a hundred million year climate change makes a lot of sense.

[Pro Libertate]

Tyson probably insisted on it. I think he's a warmist.

[Troof Hurts]

Nope

[Pro Libertate]

Um, yes?

[GILMORE]

" Tyson said on CNN that he hopes America doesn't wait until climate change has drastically changed the Earth's landscape to realize that our policies haven't done enough to prepare us."

I think that qualifies as a dedicated "Warmifyer"

Not that it matters = everyone can agree on the science, and still think people like him are pants-wetting idiots.

[GILMORE]

""our policies haven't done enough to prepare us."""

BTW - note that people like him spend 99% of their energy simply waving their hands and huffing about "the others" and how they're "Getting in the way" of "Appropriate measures" and "denying the facts" and "sleeping at the wheel while DOOMSDAY approaches!" etc etc.

...yet, when it comes down to actually giving them the mic and saying, "OK buddy = you're in control of the planet = everyone does what YOU want now! no more 'oppositionist' or 'political obstruction'... WHAT DO YOU *INSIST* ON BEING DONE THAT NO ONE IS DOING?"

...they kind of huff and shuffle their feet and then go, "Well, first we need a committee of TOP MEN to talk it over... and meanwhile, TAX A WHOLE LOT OF SHIT WHILE WE THINK ABOUT IT!"

Not impressed.

If guys like him had a 'solution' to offer, or any fucking useful ideas, they'd offer them. Instead, they piss and moan about all the people "stopping them" from being the Sciency-Problem-Solvers.

[HazelMeade]

They have plenty of solutions. Mainly they involve giving up automobiles and air-conditioning and living in ecologically friendly organic communes, where your only power source is your locally-made windmill and solar panel.

[Pathogen]

Agrarian city-states... FTW!

[Pro Libertate]

I don't care much for his beating the drum, especially since he's not a climatologist. He's no more credible on this topic than I am. And note that it's consistent with his politics--he recently trashed the idea of manned space exploration being conducted by evil, nasssty, corporationssss.

My biggest problem with all of this are the claims about definite cataclysmic consequences. That's total bunk, especially when more recent data makes any warming trend look slight at best, and when we have no evidence whatsoever that we can do anything about the climate, whether it warms, stays the same, or cools. That's true even if anthropogenic factors actually are significant.

[Tman]

Tyson is not as ideologically blinded as say Bill Nye appears to be.

I've posted this before, but if you wanna really blow some lefty head check this out. Neil is answering a question (in 2009) about if he was "happy Obama is now president and the war on science is over"?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Bush Innocent in War on Science

[Pro Libertate]

No, he's definitely not as bad as some.

[PapayaSF]

I'm sort of a "luke-warmist," willing to admit the Earth is warming up somewhat, and that we have something (but not everything) to do with it. But a huge problem in all the alarmist models is that they depend on large positive feedback effects (the bad kind) to turn a small warming increase into a large one. And, AFAIK, the Earth's climate is not dominated by positive feedback effects. If it were, it would be very unstable, but instead it's rather homeostatic in many ways. So I think the alarmist models are probably wrong, and their inability to account for the 17-year "pause" seems to confirm it.

[Zeb]

That's about where I am on this as well.

There is probably something to it. The alarming predictions are probably wrong. I also think that the proposed fixes are almost certain not to work and even if they did probably would do more harm than good for humanity.

[Pro Libertate]

"Luke, I am not your weather."

I'm agnostic. Maybe human factors are contributing to a general warming trend. But I'm not convinced, and I definitely don't buy the cataclysmic claims or the proposed political "solutions."

[Tony]

So you're at the intelligent design phase of creationism. Hard to argue with dating methods and small-time natural selection, but but bacterial flagella and the eyeball!

The "17-year pause" is complete bunk. Why start the range in an el nino year unless your entire point is to cherry pick? There is no pause. Almost all of the last 10 years have broken average temperature records.

[PapayaSF]

And Tony is back with idiocy. This is nothing like creationism. It's not cherry-picking point to a certain year that begins a long period in which predicted trends do not occur. If the pause is "bunk," why do the alarmist models not fit the data?

[Tony]

The models have been fine; you don't know what you're talking about. It is cherry picking to select exactly 17 years that seem to confirm what you want to believe, ignoring the more relevant multi-decadal data that shows equivocally that the planet has continued to warm.

[PM]

It is cherry picking to select exactly 17 years that seem to confirm what you want to believe

We only have two 17-year periods of time from which to choose in which accurate space-based temperature data exist. Ironically, you insist on ignoring the latter 17-year period for exactly the same reason. Odd, that.

[OldMexican]

Why Ideological Warfare Over Global Warming Isn't a Bad Thing

So I guess is not longer about science, but ideology.

Why do Republicans so stubbornly resist the climate change story? It's not like when a tornado touches down, it spares them, targeting only Democrats.

Because tornadoes appeared out of nowhere the moment people started their SUVs or something. There were never tornadoes before.

Ms. Dalmia, do you understand that us skeptics do not argue that there's no climate phenomena but only that there's no compelling evidence that shows we humans, alone, are the cause of supposed radical changes in the climate?

Conversely, why are liberals so eager to buy the climate apocalypse? It's not like they can insulate themselves from rising energy prices or job losses that a drastic energy diet would produce.

Of course they can insulate themselves from it, because the Demo-rats that subscribe to this "We're Killing Gaia!(TM)" claptrap already have plenty of money.

[Tony]

This is so fucking enragingly dumb I want to kill a spotted owl just to demonstrate that being concerned about climate change has actually nothing to do with partisan politics or niche environmentalism and everything to do with trying to mitigate the worst fucking disaster the human species will have ever experienced.

Only one side is playing politics. Because people who believe in science have been dragged into political debates doesn't mean it's just one coin with two sides. That liberals tend to believe in science doesn't mean anything except just that: liberals tend to believe in science. Maybe that's why some of us are liberals in the first place.

Here's why it's more ideological for conservatives and most of you idiots: the solution to a massive global problem involving the entire energy economy will likely not have anything to do with small government and laissez-faire economic policy. Contrary to conspiracy theories, nobody actually likes that this problem exists and has to be addressed.

Rational people, when realizing that there is no solution to this problem to be found in their political ideology, would amend or discard that ideology. It's an amazing fucking spectacle that you guys would prefer to simply be idiots and ignore science.

[Jensen]

So do you have anything substantial to contribute, or do you just have to get your daily hissy fit and projection out of the way?

[Tony]

The entire scientific community has something substantial to contribute but getting any of you to consult reputable sources has proven a bizarrely impossible task.

[Jensen]

You seem to think that the scientific method involves 'believing'. No one should take your opinions on the scientific community seriously.

[Tony]

Nobody has to. That every single reputable scientific organization and publication on earth agrees with me shouldn't dissuade you from coming to your own conclusion.

[HazelMeade]

Not every reputable scientific organization agrees that we're all going to die in a fire unless we radically restructure our economy according to the draconian dictates of the proletariate-planet-protection-brigade.

[Tony]

But nobody said that.

[HazelMeade]

The White House certainly seems to be promoting the alarmist line these days.

[Zeb]

Good. Ignore those of us who are willing to accept that AGW is a real thing but think that the only answer is laissez-faire free market based adaptation to changing conditions rather than massive government intrusions that will almost certainly fail. You really think that subsidies for solar and wind, and a carbon tax in a few rich countries is going to stop all of the developing countries in the world from using all the fossil fuels they can get hold of to develop? If so, you are as dumb as everyone says. Whatever the consequences are of humans putting a bunch of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, that's what's going to happen and people are going to adapt. We are a species evolved on tropical planes and we live everywhere it is remotely possible for us to live. I think we'll figure something out.

[Tony]

A carbon tax IS the laissez-faire approach. It's what rightwingers used to advocate before they all figured they'd rather be total lunatics. Kinda the same idea as Romneycare turning into an evil socialist government takeover.

I just really have a hard time patting you on the back for believing in facts, but if you insist, congratulations for believing in facts. Apparently that's optional around here, and if you truly do believe in the facts then why are you talking to me and not the 90% of people here who don't?

[Tony]

And if you insist that developing countries are going to completely negate any mitigation attempts on the table, then that is not an argument for doing nothing, but for doing far more.

[HazelMeade]

Only if you actually think we're all going to die in a fire unless we "do something".

What if the globe warms up, and we simply adapt and survive?

What if the costs of reducing carbon emissions are greater than the costs associated with changes in rainfall patterns?

[Tony]

Do you understand what adaptation means in the context of significant environmental change? Mostly death.

You're comforting yourself with the unjustified belief that the harm will be minimal. That's not what the science says. Sorry.

[PM]

You're comforting yourself with the unjustified belief that the harm will be minimal. That's not what the science says. Sorry.

The Malthusian doomsday cult bullshit you espouse isn't even tangentially related to the actual underlying science even of the scientists whose conclusions about the rate and cause of global warming you would agree with. You're the kind of tool they laugh at privately while cashing your checks. Speculative fiction with a scientific basis is fun, but it isn't science. Ray Kurzweil, for example, isn't doing science.

[HazelMeade]

the solution to a massive global problem involving the entire energy economy will likely not have anything to do with small government and laissez-faire economic policy.

And that's exactly why you love it. Nothing gives you a boner like a big excuse to control more of the economy.

[Tony]

I love what?

[HazelMeade]

You love masterbating to the idea of controlling what other people do with their money.

[R C Dean]

everything to do with trying to mitigate the worst fucking disaster the human species will have ever experienced.

Bzzt. Wrong again. That would be when the species came within a whisker of going extinct during a supervolcano eruption. Here, have some NPR:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulw.....70-000-b-c

[Tony]

Oh well everything's OK then.

[R C Dean]

I take it you are agreeing that your statement that AGW is the worst fucking disaster the human species will have ever experienced is wrong?

[Tony]

I bet in terms of raw numbers of dead climate change will be worse. But if you insist, fine, the worst fucking disaster the human species has experienced in 70 millenia.

Well, that was enlightening.

[HazelMeade]

I have yet to see any serious evidence that global warming is going to be anything like the cataclysm you alarmists predict.

I also note that you have recently had to become more and more alarmist about it in order to get any attention. Is that maybe because people are not taking you seriously any more.

You guys should watch out before you completely discredit yourselves.

[Tony]

You quite clearly are refusing to look at the evidence, so perhaps that's why you haven't seen it.

[HazelMeade]

Is you want me to take the evidence seriously, you could try not hysteriacally screaming and proclaiming that the sky is falling.

I can look around me and see quite clear that it is obviously not.

[Tony]

Looking around yourself doesn't trump scientific evidence.

[PM]

Looking around yourself doesn't trump scientific evidence.

Believing is seeing. All you need is faith.

[Mnestheus]

Indiana Dalmia and the Temple of Gloom

A generation ago ,a conservative analyst observed in The National Interest that :

"the political neutrality of scientific institutions must first exist in order to be respected. "

He went on to conclude:

At all times and in all polities , science politicized is science betrayed."

Welcome to the Temple of Gloom, Shikla- pundits like you got us into it.

[HazelMeade]

I completely believe that humans are causing some degree of warming. How much is unknown.

But I absolutely do NOT buy the bullshit that global warming is making "extreme events" more frequent.

For one thing, I have not seen ANY statistical analysis showing that the number of hurricanes or tornados has increased.

Secondly, floods and droughts are *relative* to a baseline. If less rain falls in the future than the baseline, you can call that a "drought" or a new baseline. Big deal.

I've noticed that in recent years any time anything that deviates statistically from the norm happens, Democrats tend to blame it on global warming. Unusually warm winter? Global warming! Unusually Cold winter? Global warming!(and some blather about the jet stream).
Mudslides in california? Global Warming! Drought in California? Global warming!

It's pretty easy to get people to see patterns in random events where there aren't any.

[Tony]

Here's 800 pages on the subject.

[HazelMeade]

You really think the White House's latest propganada pamphlet got a scientific peer review?

[Tony]

"A team of more than 300 experts guided by a 60-member Federal Advisory Committee produced the report, which was extensively reviewed by the public and experts, including federal agencies and a panel of the National Academy of Sciences."

Hey guess what, you don't get to declare something propaganda without evidence any more than scientists get to make claims without evidence.

[HazelMeade]

All of whose members were selected by the administration.

It's good to be King.

What happened to the lefts fetish for "independent" evidence.

That's always the rage any time a corporation issues a study.

[Tony]

Pathetic.

[Tony]

Here. Shorter reading. Knock yourself out.

[GILMORE]

Great, tony.

I note that you fail to add any thoughts to the above point where we note = we can agree there's some warming going on.

Now is the "so what" part where you justify your stupid fucking policies rather than huff and moan about 'deniers'

because Cap & Trade, Ethanol, Electric Cars, 'sustainable farming' etc. are all a bunch of bullshit that do nothing, are useless, make shit expensive and simply give progs some kind of Moral Feelgood.

again = AGW? So What? is there some Really Great Solution no one has thought of *other* than simply saying, 'Derp Let the Progs Do like Whatever...'?

because all of the proposed policies from the Left have been idiotic and useless.

Like 'stopping Keystone'.

Sure Global Warming is fucking real! Whoopie! Will that let you get the fuck out of the way of Keystone *now*?

[Tony]

Fuck Keystone, we need to stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible. Period. The most charitable explanation for your incoherent policy choices is that you're scared of that sort of monumental change. That you're shilling for Keystone--a project that has absolutely nothing to do with the public good or the good of any American except those who happen to work for benefiting companies--suggests the more obvious explanation. You consume media that have a heavy bias toward protecting the interests of those companies, including this very site.

There is no solution. We're going to be affected and are currently. There is only the best we can do. And doing absolutely nothing is hopefully not that.

[PM]

There is no solution. We're going to be affected and are currently. There is only the best we can do.

Tony is the secular equivalent of a 7th Day Adventist. Each failure of the prophecy only redoubles his faith.

[HazelMeade]

Yes, Tony, I'm not objecting to the existence of global warming.

I'm objecting to the theory that it is going to cause more "extreme events" such as hurricanes and tornados.

Did you not even read my original comment?

[Tony]

So what do you suppose it's going to cause?

[PM]

So what do you suppose it's going to cause?

The person making the prediction has the onus of proving the prediction. The null hypothesis isn't the one that needs to be modified if it doesn't work out.

[HazelMeade]

I can't believe I actually just inflicted that bullshit on myself.

Yeah, Tony, a website that appears to have been written at a 6th grade reading level.

Whose only evidence that "extreme" weather events have increased is to say that there are more heat waves and that high temperature records are being broken more often.

Seriously. Did YOU actually read the report?

[Tony]

I don't see why it's going out on a limb to suggest that global warming will cause more extreme weather events, but if that's your only concern, fine, why don't we move on to the bigger problems? What is your point?

[Pro Libertate]

Science needs to be falsifiable and to be able to make predictions.

[Sy]

Three years ago, I was hardpressed to find any non-shriek comment in support of AGW.
It's like everyone forgot this entire controversy was started by a politician funding a bogus documentary in order to commodify carbon and make billions while impoverishing billions.
AGW didn't start with a premise, it started with a solution: enrich the elite. Impoverish the masses. To hell with the data, we'll make it up as we go along. People will still buy into his shit, jus promise them their cut. We'll hold research grants and funds over the heads of any so-called scientist that refuses to go along. Lo and fucking behold, we are sitting here debating whether or not the solution is effective, not whether or not the entire premise is fucking absurd. Because if anyone here was actually concerned with an effective solution, someone by now would have mentioned sequestering carbon by planting more vegetation. But it hasn't. And as more and more "reports" are discovered to be falsified, and flat-out WRONG, people still continually buy into it.

[Jayburd]

HIDE THE DECLINE, BABY!

Can the Author hide the decline in her writing?

[angus]

The solution to climate change is small government. There is a flamin' obvious free market and property rights solution to global warming.

"But there is no pure free market or property rights solution to global warming."

You are wrong. You have allowed yourself to be trapped in a framework that causes you to think this.

"There is no practical way to privatize the Earth's atmosphere or divvy up pollution rights among the world's seven billion inhabitants in 193 countries."

The Earth as a planet incorporates methods of losing excess heat, therefore this not a problem of the commons. Climate change is a problem of rate of consumption.

And the definitive way of privitising rate of consumption - make people pay for their stuff

[Dinerboy]

The cost of the Left's proposed solution to AGW is astronomical, and not only in dollars. Millions will die premature or preventable deaths, and billions will have their standards of living substantially impacted by brute-force carbon caps. Given all this, the level of certainty that global warming is primarily anthropogenic and will have substantial negative effects on future humanity must be very high. And, given the failure of the models to predict the last 17 years of climate, the crowding out of science by politics, the scandals and falsehoods that have emerged, the case is very strong that more study is needed before carbon caps are imposed.

Moreso, those caps, if not implemented globally, won't accomplish the desired result, and there's no way that any rational person can expect that the BRIC nations will kill their economies with carbon caps.

So, unilateral action taken by the USA, or multilateral action taken by the USA and Europe, will be pointless and destructive. It will also misallocate resources. Given global realities, any solution to AGW, provided it's real, destructive and a long-term trend that the Earth won't balance out, must necessarily be technological.

[Dybbuk]

I disagree with the explanation of why the Republicans are skeptical of global warming. It's not because of any "ideology". Republican politicians don't care about limiting government. They care about winning elections.

Democrats jumped on the global warming issue first, and at the time Republicans didn't see any need to tag along with the Democrats, as the issue wasn't nearly as popular then. The GOP figured there was advantage in quietly representing the status quo, while the Dems hurt themselves by supporting policies that would make consumers pay more for gas and electricity.

Now the dynamic has shifted. Now Republicans won't cave because they would be seen as "losing" if they changed their minds. They've already taken big hits on issues such as gay marriage, where history has left them looking reactionary for their status quo positions. They don't want to multiply that defeat by admitting that Democrats were right about the climate too.

And Republicans realize that if they DID agree to join forces with Democrats to fight climate change, the Democrats wouldn't graciously praise them for courageously putting the planet before politics. For decades, Democrats would throw it back in their faces, running ads saying "The Republicans were wrong on climate change...and now they're wrong again!".

Let's not be naive and pretend that corrupt politicians do what they do because they care about their "beliefs". It's all about power, plain and simple.

[HazelMeade]

Read it and weep, Tony:

http://www.nature.com/news/jam.....cy-1.15017

[Tony]

Who the fuck cares what that kook says about anything?

[J Neil Schulman]

Let's be clear here. When an ideologue like Al Gore or a president of the United States like Barack Obama or a TV pundit like Bill Maher declares that man-made global warming or climate change is an established scientific consensus with no further room for debate and those who are skeptical "climate change deniers" not deserving university research or teaching positions, this is the precise equivalent of the 1615 Roman Inquisition declaring geocentricism to be unquestionable truth, banning books questioning geocentrism, and forbidding Galileo from advocating heliocentrism.

No real scientist would ever, ever, ever ? under any circumstances ? declare that a question has been answered finally and that a scientific debate is over, once and for all. Ever.

[Tony]

Some things have more evidence for them than others, and that's how they should be assessed. The answers to every question ever asked are not equally uncertain. Right now we have more than enough evidence necessary to judge that massive changes are needed quickly. "The greenhouse effect isn't real" is not a default position. It's not what we have to believe until you say it's OK to believe otherwise. It's an outlandishly extraordinary claim.

Inaction is not a default either. It's a serious and massively consequential choice.

[PM]

Right now we have more than enough evidence necessary to judge that massive changes are needed quickly.

See, this is where you really wallow in your status as an abject moron. As if the summation of scientific evidence were a government policy proposal. Scientific facts demand nothing. They simply are. When he sole outcome of your ostensibly scientific inquiry is a policy proposal, you may be certain you are not doing science.

This is precisely why hard science people go apeshit when idiots like you appropriate the term "science" for sociology and economics and then substitute the imprecise and non-scientific methodology of those fields to actual science.

[Professor Woland]

The thing is whether the most apocalyptic predictions about AGW are true or human activity has minimal effect on the climate is ultimately irrelevant to what public policy should be. If the only way to stave off ecological catastrophe is to develop clean energy, the best course of action is massive deregulation and lower taxes to enable the sorts of investment necessary to develop the necessary technologies. If AGW is shown to be bullshit the proper policy is, once again massive deregulation and lower taxes (if we have to have the state at all.) For those concerned about the climate for whom environmentalism is not cover for an affinity for leviathan this argument might seem counterintuitive, but if they are intellectually honest, they can be convinced.

[Tony]

A market that does not account for the very environmental harm we're talking about is one that underprices the forms of energy causing that harm. If you have a free-market, no-subsidy way of pricing for global environmental harm, I'm all ears.

[PM]

If you have a free-market, no-subsidy way of pricing for global environmental harm, I'm all ears.

Go to court. Show damages by direct causation. Collect your damages.

That was easy.

[Jayburd]

We are the Spotted Owl.

[Ray_Cathode]

Conservatives dismiss AGW for three main reasons: there is not a scrap of verified truth to it,because it is just an enormous swindle by crony capitalists and power lusters, and because it is a travesty of science bought and paid for by a political agenda. Anyone who has bothered to read the hacked emails knows this.

[John Paul Jones]

This

[Jayburd]

HIDE THE DECLINE, BAAAABY!

[MoreFreedom]

I can't say I agree with Dalmia that conservatives have a blind spot on global warming. The entire AGW/government complex depends on the assumption that man can and is changing the climate.

While putting various chemicals in the air will have some effect, I haven't seen evidence that man is affecting the climate significantly. All the AGW proponents base their concerns on climte models whose predictions don't follow reality. Nor have I seen evidence that warming isn't good for humanity (certainly there will be winners/losers depending on where one owns property).

As Dalmia points out in her other article:

"He [Yale professor Dan Kahan] found that when geo-engineering ? pumping sulfates into the atmosphere to deflect heat ? is offered as the solution to climate catastrophe instead of emission restrictions, liberals become far more questioning of global warming science. .... because it does nothing to curb western greed"

I'm concerned that we will engage in geo-engineering attempts, with the typically unexpected consequences of liberal government meddling in the marketplace, at a great cost to our prosperity. But instead of affecting just one economy, it will affect the entire world.

[enviro414]

People with broad science skill have discovered the two drivers of climate change that accurately (R^20.9) explain average global temperatures since before 1900. Search AGWunveiled for the drivers. CO2 is not one of them.

[Jayburd]

Isn't Man just the highest form of Nature? Why isn't asphalt just as natural as a babbling brook? Why can't Man screw up the climate and it be 'natural'? Just because we've evolved from primates gives us some special mandate to save this planet? Fuck that. Sounds like too much work.

[concerned cynic]

No public policy debate on anything substantive can be purged of ideological precommitments. To believe otherwise is to be deeply naive about human nature. I grew up during the Cold War, and so think that it is very natural for people to fight to the death over what kind of economic system they desire, and over property rights.

Right of centre hostility to global warming would ease, if the owners of any capital scrapped because of climate change concerns, would be compensated out of the public purse, and the government would do so without a material increase in taxes. In other words, legislation aimed at reducing climate change would be seen as a takings, as per the USA constitution, and compensated as such.

[concerned cynic]

About 2 millions years ago, our planet moved into an oscillating ice. The glaciers have advanced and retreated 7 times. Each retreat is followed by a warm spell lasting several tens of thousands of years. We are currently in a warm spell, one that began about 12000 years ago. We humans are as tough and smart as we are, because of the natural selection arising from the last ice age. These advances and retreats occurred long long before the Industrial Revolution. Our climate is unstable for reasons having nothing to do with us. That said, I accept that we humans are going to have to learn to manage the Earth's entire atmosphere and oceans. The question then becomes
"who shall bear the cost, and how?"

[concerned cynic]

All humans need to understand that the industrial methods of the past were cheap, because they treated the air, the water table, and water courses as costless sinks for undesired byproducts of manufacturing. Treating nature in this manner will have to gradually come to an end, even if it means a substantial rise in manufacturing costs. The externalities will have to be internalised, sooner or later. It would be much easier to sell this point to the Right, if the person making it was one who understood business and competitive realities well, and who was also someone warmly committed to property rights, and market economies. Obama is not the sort of person the task requires. In the language of the small town upper south I hail from, "that guy never had to worry about having enough money in the bank to make the next payroll".

The problem with Obama is not his black skin, but the fact that he hever worked a "real job", and does not appreciate how rough life is for many of us out there on the coal face of economic life.

[concerned cynic]

All humans need to understand that the industrial methods of the past were cheap, because they treated the air, the water table, and water courses as costless sinks for undesired byproducts of manufacturing. Treating nature in this manner will have to gradually come to an end, even if it means a substantial rise in manufacturing costs. The externalities will have to be internalised, sooner or later. It would be much easier to sell this point to the Right, if the person making it was one who understood business and competitive realities well, and who was also someone warmly committed to property rights, and market economies. Obama is not the sort of person the task requires. In the language of the small town upper south I hail from, "that guy never had to worry about having enough money in the bank to make the next payroll".

The problem with Obama is not his black skin, but the fact that he hever worked a "real job", and does not appreciate how rough life is for many of us out there on the coal face of economic life.