SSI is not a federal income tax. The idea of FICA is that you pay in to it now so you can pull out of it later (when OTHERS are paying in to it). It's supposed to be zero-sum.
It is a payroll tax, imposed by the federal government. Wordsmith all you like, but it IS a federal income tax. What something is supposed to be is irrelevant. What is is is all that matters.
No one is saying we need to stop driving cars. Its a straw man argument.
And yet when asked to quantify the degree of change AGW advocates are calling for, the ebst they can do is list things that have been and are already being done (better car emissions, switching to cleaner alternate energies like solar/geo, etc, etc). A change, by definition, requires something different. So either they want more extreme action (which you claim they don't), or they're just shouting in the wind for no apparent reason.
1) Paul claims to be a constioutionalist and a libertarian but he opposes the seperation of church and state
You want to prove that? I've never seen him vote in favor of religion over constitution. Or are you one of those people that believes that any attempt to push power from federal to state level (ala repealing Roe v Wade) is an automatic "desire to create a state theocracy"?
2) He is a creationist who says that evolution is "just a theory". Now, I'm not sure whether or not he actively seeks to increase the teaching of creationism in schools (I think not)
If it doesn't affect how he's voting, why do you give a damn what he thinks? Perhaps that's the difference between you and I -- I'd sooner vote for a person saying one crazy thing while voting completely logically than I would a person telling me exactly what I want to hear and then doing whatever he damn well pleases (such as our current president)..
3) He wants abortion to be banned on a federal level because in his words "If you can't protect life then how can you protect liberty?".
It's a conflict, but an explained one. He doesn't want a federal ban, he wants the states to decide. Granted the imperfect world we have where the courts have made it legal everywhere, the partial abortion ban was a regreattable alternative (in essence a flawed response to a flawed law).
4) Paul claims to oppose "congressional overspenfdng" and claims that the goverment should not interfere in business at all, yet for example in 2007 he requested about 400 million dollars in earmarks
Now I know you're trolling...Ron Paul's stance on earmarks is well known. With even the barest minimum of googling: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wCNIYPY5mgcJ:www.ronpaul.com/2009-03-11/ron-paul-on-earmarks/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Regardless, he has a duty to his constituents to ensure that federal money that has been taken from them will at least in _some_ way help them. Earmarks are issued for money that was going to be spent anyway. Fucking over his constituents in the name of believing in reduced spending while the rest of the country taxes his state and continues its spending binge doesn't exactly make sense to me. Earmarks are good for transparency, accountability, and responsible spending.
6) His enviromental policies would cause even more strain to the enviroment than the current ones
Agreed not the best record on the environment, but consistent with his constitutional beliefs.
7) He wishes to withdraw the us form the United Nation
...which coincides with his isolationist we-shouldn't-police-the-world views. I'm not a huge fan of this either, but as with most of his other more extreme ideas, they would never actually occur,
In fairness, I don't exactly see "Rapture Ready" members blowing themselves up and flying planes into buildings. Misguided words is one thing. Misguided wanton murder and destruction is something entirely different.
Why do you care what a bunch of religious nutsos do? If they want their own theocracy with a state built on their religious dogma, and the vast majority (or nearly all) of the people that live there are cool with it, why the hell does it bug you so much? Right now about 80% of Utah's legislature are Mormon, as is 61% of their population -- if they want a Mormon paradise with strange laws, so be it -- why the hell does it bug you so much? More importantly, why doesn't it bug you that those people are using federal law to determine what your freedoms should be? (Defense of Marriage act anyone?). The "spirit" of the Constitution is to limit the federal government from dictating how people should live their lives. That means very little federal law.
All this debate is exactly why I think all federal law should require either a three-fifths majority or a super majority. Shit that is direly necessary will get passed. Borderline opinion-bullshit the federal politicians have no business meddling in would never passed. And most importantly, they'd be forced to compromise (or simply be completely lame duck).
How's that tin foil hat working out for ya? Lemme guess, 9/11 was masterminded by the Bush administration too, right? I love Ron Paul and I can tell you right now that he is _not_ that clever.
That is your core problem right there, not a single one of the examples you offer are examples of true communism. They all are - or were - examples of corrupt dictatorships where someone adopted the label of "communism", "marxism", or even "socialism" to make their brand of ruling more palatable to those who might otherwise oppose it.
And, knowing that, you don't see the failing in your own beliefs? If every attempt to implement such a system has failed due to greed and human corruption, why are you convinced that such an ideal is even possible? If you're going to approach this argument with a premise of "it isn't true communism unless human beings are perfect altruistic creatures", I would argue you've created yourself one hell of a deluded world there.
Can you specify what those "trillions upon trillions of dollars" will be spent on?
Who knows? Impact of carbon credits? Impact of shutdown of entire coal industry? Impact of ditching crude entirely w/ full conversion of all cars to clean energy sources? There's lots of "extreme" green ideas out there that are very expensive and very good for the environment. The devil, as always, is in the details. The Kyoto Protocol is the most obvious "ridiculously expensive" thing that comes to mind. It may not be in the "trillion and trillions" range, but it is most certainly in the hundreds of billions as far as "cost to our country". It's not a straw man if such ideas are being proposed.
I have no problem with the government incentivizing the industry as we have with many others in the past.
Nor do I. Moderate inexpensive incentives are one thing. But like I said in my previous posts, these things are already being done. The global warming crowd is calling for larger action.
Tax cuts do not get spent to the extent that things like SS and Medicare do.
That is actually very debatable. Especially considering the fact that Medicare and SS exclusively benefit the elderly (the richest age demographic in our country). People say the poor spend more than the rich, right? Well, without means-testing, SS and Medicare are little more than a cash dump to the rich, which isn't effective spending.
If consumers aren't spending as much and there is low demand why would they invest it in something productive that creates jobs?
I concur. I don't believe SS or Medicare creates jobs. Something like "Cash for Clunkers" (which I think was a fantastic idea) manages to produce jobs _and_ help the environment at the same time, for a very small cost. We should be directing our efforts towards similar ideas. The Cash for Caulkers effort was notable as well...it's a shame that died a horrible death in the Senate: http://www.recurve.com/blog/article/what-happened-to-home-star1/
Medicare is cheaper than any private policy would be. It only has 3% overhead compared to 10-30% for private insurance.
When it comes down to it, Medicare in its totality simply isn't cutting it. Old people who aren't rich still can't afford healthcare, people who aren't old have shitty healthcare, and healthcare overall is way too expensive despite whatever "savings" people think Medicare is producing. And without means-testing, it's a complete waste of money.
I would prefer well implemented government programs like they have in Germany and Japan.
I would prefer a system like Canada's. State-level health insurance with a bare-minimum framework at the federal level. The problem with this country is that everyone thinks everything has to be done at the federal level (which is a terrible idea).
Do you know that the price of solar cells has dropped something like 60% in the past two years and is likely to drop below coal within the next decade. Battery technology has some exciting things coming down the pike.
You're making my point. Namely, that the innovation of the free market and alternate energy incentives we've been passing over the past X decades have already been making moderate progress. And that accentuates my point of "why are all the global warming chicken littles raising a ruckus when we're doing exactly what they want? (and have been for some time now)" The only possible answer is that they want more extreme and more expensive action -- that is exactly why we come to the conclusion they're envirowackos that want to spent trillions upons trillions of dollars.
You know, 70% of the US economy is consumer spending. Those people receiving Social Security are spending that money on food and living expenses and maybe some frills. More consumer spending. How much would it hurt the economy if you took that money out of it?
You could say the exact same thing for tax cuts, yet (and this is a wild guess) I bet you don't support the Bush tax cuts. Frankly, I don't buy that argument. Especially since if we eliminate SS AND the associated tax, I would say it would be a net zero effect. I think the fallacy here is that you think this money is coming from nowhere when in fact it's money being taken from people, sat on for 50 years, and then handed back to them at pisspoor "investment" rates.
It should have been Medicare for all.
Yeah, because that program has had substantial success lowering health care costs./sarcasm
The US spends about 17% if its GDP on health care and the rest of the OCED countries spend around 10%.
And yet you throw your full support being the poorly implemented govt programs that have gotten us there?
Too many of them are denying that human activities have anything to do with climate change.
They're questioning scope, that is all. The fact humans leave a footprint on the planet is indisputable, and I'd say the group that denies this simple fact are simply loons shouting in the wind. The larger percentage I believe are people that acknowledge that we do produce warming, but believe the science quantifying man vs nature's impact isn't exactly solid. And even if man was determined to be the #1 factor, quantification is still necessary to determine how much to react (spend billions/trillions? go to war over the issue?).
If they are wrong then we've wasted some money but
Why is it that people hand wave money as if it's a non-issue? Ya know, like dropping trillions and trillions of dollars on something is just a "well, that didn't work out, so let's try something else" rather than the proper response of "OH MY GOD WE JUST WASTED A SHIT-TON OF MONEY". I think of things like Social Security (which certainly isn't solving our retirement problem) and Medicare (which certainly hasn't improved our healthcare) and the trillions and trillions of dollars we dump into those programs every year. And yet supporters of the program just go "meh, better than nothing", when I go "OMG, that money could have been doing so much good solving real problems instead of getting frittered away on stupidity, corruption, and waste. Obama's healthcare plan comes to mind as well -- all the supporters are like "meh, it's a step in the right direction", when in fact its a terrible program. Why does no one think "bang for buck"? Why is a "lost dollar" simply a "lost dollar" rather than "a dollar that could have done good elsewhere? Why is waste not seen as waste? Many (if not most) well-meaning proposals are rife with Broken Window fallacies.
If the "deniers" are wrong and we don't address the problem then we've opened ourselves to even bigger problems that will cost us far more in the long run than any other course of action.
That is true. Tell the scientists to prove the catastrophic outcome and we'll get on board. Because we think the opposite is just as bad: if the deniers are wrong and we DO spend all that money, it'll make the current debt fiasco look like a picnic. If you think a AA credit rating is bad, try D. We've wasted enough money already on terrible spending choices, regardless of how benevolent they may have appeared at first. And if we end up spending all our money reducing our carbon emissions just to discover it wasn't a serious problem in the first place and then I end up dying of cancer by age 40 because the government had no money to fund the cure research, I'm gonna haunt every last one of you bastards for the rest of your lives, I swear it.
Oh please. Could someone make a coherent argument against AGW already? Didn't think so.
There's a huge difference between arguing against AGW and arguing against quantification/relevance of AGW. The latter is the issue. Is ignoring AGW catastrophic, or is it inconsequential? To quote another Slashdot user:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2355816&cid=36931740
t's like somebody having built a cistern in the desert, and it built up a lot of water, so somebody starts using it profligately, without realizing that he just doesn't have a steady replenishment of the water.
That attitude will be costly.
And that attitude is even costlier. Fact of the matter is that we do have oil substitutes, lots of them in fact. Hell, we even have something called "synthetic oil" for use in cars. But they're all more expensive than oil, because oil is plentiful and therefore cheap. When oil becomes rare and more expensive, one of the things that is currently too expensive will suddenly become the "cheap way" to do things. Jumping to the more expensive solution early is ridiculous.
And you don't see the consequences to this, which is becoming dependent on a supply of oil, which will, inevitably, not be there. You may think that the market will react in a prepared manner, but me, I think it'll be a catastrophic one,
Why do you seem to think oil will disappear overnight? Why do you think oil will not become gradually more expensive as demand outstrips supply until its no longer financially feasible to continue using? The economics of oil will force us away from it LONG before we exhaust the oil on the planet.
So other than all the scientists simply making a giant honest mistake (which they're VERY adamant they're not doing)
Why is the idea of a whole bunch of experts in a field being off the mark so unfathomable to you? All the economic experts swore there was no housing bubble right up until the house of cards fell apart as well. Yet they were all masters of their field -- why didn't they see it coming? Is it perhaps because they were biased? Incompetent? Or maybe because the economy is a large, chaotic, complicated system that can't be so easily predicted? Sound at all familiar?
Really? Because my observation is that the anti-AGW crowd tend to raise a lot of complaints, then I look up the pro-AGW response and the responses are clear and convincing. By in large, I'd say that the anti-AGW crowd is using an awful lot of already-debunked arguments. My guess is that the anti-AWG crowd isn't reading the responses from the pro-AGW crowd; instead they're in some kind of a echo chamber and don't seem too eager to read information that contradicts their position.
Okay, now perform the following replacements on the paragraph you just typed:
anti-AGW -> Republican
pro-AGW -> Huffington Post
Now pretend this is any typical political debate where your confirmation bias has you primarily reading sources you agree with and feeling validated by other people that share your view.
Do you still feel like this is scientifically settled?
This is a fool's errand. Let's make this learning process more granular. Break it down into separate steps:
Confirm global warming is occuring.
Confirm that global warming is man-made.
Decide how best to counter this effect.
Sigh, when are you people ever going to learn that quantification is a necessary step?
How much of global warming is manmade? How much do we spend addressing this problem? Millions? Billions? Trillions? How much do we change our lifestyle to prevent catastrophe? These are the 'facts" most deniers ask for that are never provided. Details on size and scope end at "it'll be an unreversable catastrophe! we swear! get on board!"
When someone can make a coherent argument against AGW, then I'll listen.
Sounds suspiciously like a religious nut defending their god. Why is the onus of proof on us? We didn't make the extreme claim. If you tell me the world is gonna end in a few decades, I'm gonna call you a loon and go back to spending my time on worthwhile endeavors. I'm not going to spend it trying to return you to reality.
The scientists, as in the ones who actually do it, all agree with a very high level of fidelity.
Maybe the problem here is that we equate the amount of "science" done by people in the climate field to say economists "factual" belief they can predict economics. Large chaotic systems aren't as easy to predict (or reproduce) as people seem to think. Frankly, its shocking to me that anyone in such a macrocosmic field with so many variables could ever be that certain. But time and time again (even after being wrong time and time again), they're always "certain".
Completely untrue.
From wikipedia: "Secondly, because the argument is inductive (which implies that the truth of the conclusion cannot be guaranteed by the truth of the premises), it also is fallacious to assert that the conclusion must be true.[2] Such an assertion is a non sequitur; the inductive argument might have probabilistic or statistical merit, but the conclusion does not follow unconditionally in the sense of being logically necessary."
A reduction of carbon emissions will not only reduce climate change
You're arguing apples and oranges. "A reduction of carbon emissions" is what we're been doing, what we've always been doing: from hybrid cars to clean air laws to green incentives and cleaner tech (wind/solar). The global warming alarmists shouting that the sky is falling want more/extreme action taken, in the trillions++ range. This is the problem. Calling for "moderate environmental action" is stupid, because we're already doing that. Calling for "extreme and radical environmental action" (which as aforementioned is the clarion call all the "deniers" balk at) could very well hurt us greatly if the "catastrophic" claims are exaggerated/false. Now I'm not saying we're going to return to the Dark Ages, but there are ALOT of "middle ground" areas between "Dark Ages" and "now" that are just as unpleasant. Frankly, I'd sooner dump several trillions into solving cancer than I would reducing carbon emissions.
They are called deniers, because nothing will satisfy them.
Maybe the problem here is that there's a _wide range_ of anti-CAGW opinions, from "its not happening at all" to "its happening but not to a degree that matters or is worth returning to the dark ages" and you're just lumping all these opinions into a single group that appears to be moving the goalposts.
No, but being concerned about overreaction is perfectly reasonable. Or do you bug bomb your entire house when you see a single ant? Or buy out the grocery store when they're calling for an inch of snow? "Deniers" is and has always been the wrong term. The thing they're denying is "catastrophic global damage" with a major focus on scope and primary cause.
Yes, because moderation is impossible. All or nothing, Your way or the the highway!
Well, "all or nothing" is pretty much what the AGW crowd is calling for. You see, we already have "moderation" in green pursuits: we have hybrid car initiatives, solar/geo energy subsidies, energy efficiency tax credits, etc, etc, etc. We are (and have been) taking steps towards reducing our global footprint. It is the view of the AGW crowd that what we're currently doing is not enough and requires more drastic changes (ie economy-shaking wealth redistribution treaties and such). It's the AGW "skeptics" that are the more moderate stance: they're all like "hey man, we're already making strides in saving the planet, chill the fuck out". That of course is met with "OMGBBQ the world is ending NOWWWW, shut down all factories!!!"
I don't know of anyone else that knows better how to deal with the economy.
The free market is very qualified. It responds far quicker to market dynamics than people. Artificial constraints that resist market flow tend to do nothing more than build up pressure and make the eventual release that much worse (such as the US's crazy low borrowing rate fueling the housing bubble, or China's previous currency peg fueling it's current wild inflation). I think the problem is that people insist on soft landings when the hard landing typically ends up being far less painful in the long term. For instance, had the housing market & banks been allowed to plummet the way the free market dictated they _should_ have, the short-term in housing and borrowing would have been far worse, but two things would have corrected far quicker: housing values & employment/growth. When you let things drag along long enough to form a trend, a sentiment follows (such as the current view all companies have that future growth will be sluggish, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy). And that sentiment is very difficult to break. And on top of that, there's the added expense of "government action to slow things down" working against you (like all those trillions we spent on "stimulus").
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that "FICA" stands for Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax, right? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions_Act_tax
It is a payroll tax, imposed by the federal government. Wordsmith all you like, but it IS a federal income tax. What something is supposed to be is irrelevant. What is is is all that matters.
And yet when asked to quantify the degree of change AGW advocates are calling for, the ebst they can do is list things that have been and are already being done (better car emissions, switching to cleaner alternate energies like solar/geo, etc, etc). A change , by definition, requires something different. So either they want more extreme action (which you claim they don't), or they're just shouting in the wind for no apparent reason.
You want to prove that? I've never seen him vote in favor of religion over constitution. Or are you one of those people that believes that any attempt to push power from federal to state level (ala repealing Roe v Wade) is an automatic "desire to create a state theocracy"?
If it doesn't affect how he's voting, why do you give a damn what he thinks? Perhaps that's the difference between you and I -- I'd sooner vote for a person saying one crazy thing while voting completely logically than I would a person telling me exactly what I want to hear and then doing whatever he damn well pleases (such as our current president)..
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gHN7G1IRrLwJ:www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php%3F24933-Question-about-ron-paul-s-abortion-stance+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
It's a conflict, but an explained one. He doesn't want a federal ban, he wants the states to decide. Granted the imperfect world we have where the courts have made it legal everywhere, the partial abortion ban was a regreattable alternative (in essence a flawed response to a flawed law).
Now I know you're trolling...Ron Paul's stance on earmarks is well known. With even the barest minimum of googling: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wCNIYPY5mgcJ:www.ronpaul.com/2009-03-11/ron-paul-on-earmarks/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a Regardless, he has a duty to his constituents to ensure that federal money that has been taken from them will at least in _some_ way help them. Earmarks are issued for money that was going to be spent anyway . Fucking over his constituents in the name of believing in reduced spending while the rest of the country taxes his state and continues its spending binge doesn't exactly make sense to me. Earmarks are good for transparency, accountability, and responsible spending.
He is right in choosing his stance (affirmative action isn't "Equal rights", it's preferred treatment): https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kcHqTL_FhcQJ:answers.yahoo.com/question/index%3Fqid%3D20071210131825AA7jyoP+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Agreed not the best record on the environment, but consistent with his constitutional beliefs.
...which coincides with his isolationist we-shouldn't-police-the-world views. I'm not a huge fan of this either, but as with most of his other more extreme ideas, they would never actually occur,
In fairness, I don't exactly see "Rapture Ready" members blowing themselves up and flying planes into buildings. Misguided words is one thing. Misguided wanton murder and destruction is something entirely different.
Does that mean we have the right to call Germany "the Great Satan" for trying to take over the world 60 fucking years ago? Get over it and grow up.
Why do you care what a bunch of religious nutsos do? If they want their own theocracy with a state built on their religious dogma, and the vast majority (or nearly all) of the people that live there are cool with it, why the hell does it bug you so much? Right now about 80% of Utah's legislature are Mormon, as is 61% of their population -- if they want a Mormon paradise with strange laws, so be it -- why the hell does it bug you so much? More importantly, why doesn't it bug you that those people are using federal law to determine what your freedoms should be? (Defense of Marriage act anyone?). The "spirit" of the Constitution is to limit the federal government from dictating how people should live their lives. That means very little federal law.
All this debate is exactly why I think all federal law should require either a three-fifths majority or a super majority. Shit that is direly necessary will get passed. Borderline opinion-bullshit the federal politicians have no business meddling in would never passed. And most importantly, they'd be forced to compromise (or simply be completely lame duck).
How's that tin foil hat working out for ya? Lemme guess, 9/11 was masterminded by the Bush administration too, right? I love Ron Paul and I can tell you right now that he is _not_ that clever.
And, knowing that, you don't see the failing in your own beliefs? If every attempt to implement such a system has failed due to greed and human corruption, why are you convinced that such an ideal is even possible? If you're going to approach this argument with a premise of "it isn't true communism unless human beings are perfect altruistic creatures", I would argue you've created yourself one hell of a deluded world there.
Who knows? Impact of carbon credits? Impact of shutdown of entire coal industry? Impact of ditching crude entirely w/ full conversion of all cars to clean energy sources? There's lots of "extreme" green ideas out there that are very expensive and very good for the environment. The devil, as always, is in the details. The Kyoto Protocol is the most obvious "ridiculously expensive" thing that comes to mind. It may not be in the "trillion and trillions" range, but it is most certainly in the hundreds of billions as far as "cost to our country". It's not a straw man if such ideas are being proposed.
Nor do I. Moderate inexpensive incentives are one thing. But like I said in my previous posts, these things are already being done. The global warming crowd is calling for larger action.
That is actually very debatable. Especially considering the fact that Medicare and SS exclusively benefit the elderly (the richest age demographic in our country). People say the poor spend more than the rich, right? Well, without means-testing, SS and Medicare are little more than a cash dump to the rich, which isn't effective spending.
I concur. I don't believe SS or Medicare creates jobs. Something like "Cash for Clunkers" (which I think was a fantastic idea) manages to produce jobs _and_ help the environment at the same time, for a very small cost. We should be directing our efforts towards similar ideas. The Cash for Caulkers effort was notable as well...it's a shame that died a horrible death in the Senate: http://www.recurve.com/blog/article/what-happened-to-home-star1/
You're focusing on a single fact. If I might offer a counter: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/retirementspecial/02health.html
When it comes down to it, Medicare in its totality simply isn't cutting it. Old people who aren't rich still can't afford healthcare, people who aren't old have shitty healthcare, and healthcare overall is way too expensive despite whatever "savings" people think Medicare is producing. And without means-testing, it's a complete waste of money.
I would prefer a system like Canada's. State-level health insurance with a bare-minimum framework at the federal level. The problem with this country is that everyone thinks everything has to be done at the federal level (which is a terrible idea).
You're making my point. Namely, that the innovation of the free market and alternate energy incentives we've been passing over the past X decades have already been making moderate progress. And that accentuates my point of "why are all the global warming chicken littles raising a ruckus when we're doing exactly what they want? (and have been for some time now)" The only possible answer is that they want more extreme and more expensive action -- that is exactly why we come to the conclusion they're envirowackos that want to spent trillions upons trillions of dollars.
You could say the exact same thing for tax cuts, yet (and this is a wild guess) I bet you don't support the Bush tax cuts. Frankly, I don't buy that argument. Especially since if we eliminate SS AND the associated tax, I would say it would be a net zero effect. I think the fallacy here is that you think this money is coming from nowhere when in fact it's money being taken from people, sat on for 50 years, and then handed back to them at pisspoor "investment" rates.
Yeah, because that program has had substantial success lowering health care costs. /sarcasm
And yet you throw your full support being the poorly implemented govt programs that have gotten us there?
They're questioning scope, that is all. The fact humans leave a footprint on the planet is indisputable, and I'd say the group that denies this simple fact are simply loons shouting in the wind. The larger percentage I believe are people that acknowledge that we do produce warming, but believe the science quantifying man vs nature's impact isn't exactly solid. And even if man was determined to be the #1 factor, quantification is still necessary to determine how much to react (spend billions/trillions? go to war over the issue?).
Not always true, as posted elsewhere: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2355816&cid=36931740
Why is it that people hand wave money as if it's a non-issue? Ya know, like dropping trillions and trillions of dollars on something is just a "well, that didn't work out, so let's try something else" rather than the proper response of "OH MY GOD WE JUST WASTED A SHIT-TON OF MONEY". I think of things like Social Security (which certainly isn't solving our retirement problem) and Medicare (which certainly hasn't improved our healthcare) and the trillions and trillions of dollars we dump into those programs every year. And yet supporters of the program just go "meh, better than nothing", when I go "OMG, that money could have been doing so much good solving real problems instead of getting frittered away on stupidity, corruption, and waste. Obama's healthcare plan comes to mind as well -- all the supporters are like "meh, it's a step in the right direction", when in fact its a terrible program. Why does no one think "bang for buck"? Why is a "lost dollar" simply a "lost dollar" rather than "a dollar that could have done good elsewhere? Why is waste not seen as waste? Many (if not most) well-meaning proposals are rife with Broken Window fallacies.
That is true. Tell the scientists to prove the catastrophic outcome and we'll get on board. Because we think the opposite is just as bad: if the deniers are wrong and we DO spend all that money, it'll make the current debt fiasco look like a picnic. If you think a AA credit rating is bad, try D. We've wasted enough money already on terrible spending choices, regardless of how benevolent they may have appeared at first. And if we end up spending all our money reducing our carbon emissions just to discover it wasn't a serious problem in the first place and then I end up dying of cancer by age 40 because the government had no money to fund the cure research, I'm gonna haunt every last one of you bastards for the rest of your lives, I swear it.
There's a huge difference between arguing against AGW and arguing against quantification/relevance of AGW. The latter is the issue. Is ignoring AGW catastrophic, or is it inconsequential? To quote another Slashdot user: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2355816&cid=36931740
And that attitude is even costlier. Fact of the matter is that we do have oil substitutes, lots of them in fact. Hell, we even have something called "synthetic oil" for use in cars. But they're all more expensive than oil, because oil is plentiful and therefore cheap. When oil becomes rare and more expensive, one of the things that is currently too expensive will suddenly become the "cheap way" to do things. Jumping to the more expensive solution early is ridiculous.
Why do you seem to think oil will disappear overnight? Why do you think oil will not become gradually more expensive as demand outstrips supply until its no longer financially feasible to continue using? The economics of oil will force us away from it LONG before we exhaust the oil on the planet.
Why is the idea of a whole bunch of experts in a field being off the mark so unfathomable to you? All the economic experts swore there was no housing bubble right up until the house of cards fell apart as well. Yet they were all masters of their field -- why didn't they see it coming? Is it perhaps because they were biased? Incompetent? Or maybe because the economy is a large, chaotic, complicated system that can't be so easily predicted? Sound at all familiar?
Okay, now perform the following replacements on the paragraph you just typed:
anti-AGW -> Republican
pro-AGW -> Huffington Post
Now pretend this is any typical political debate where your confirmation bias has you primarily reading sources you agree with and feeling validated by other people that share your view.
Do you still feel like this is scientifically settled?
Sigh, when are you people ever going to learn that quantification is a necessary step?
How much of global warming is manmade? How much do we spend addressing this problem? Millions? Billions? Trillions? How much do we change our lifestyle to prevent catastrophe? These are the 'facts" most deniers ask for that are never provided. Details on size and scope end at "it'll be an unreversable catastrophe! we swear! get on board!"
Sounds suspiciously like a religious nut defending their god. Why is the onus of proof on us? We didn't make the extreme claim. If you tell me the world is gonna end in a few decades, I'm gonna call you a loon and go back to spending my time on worthwhile endeavors. I'm not going to spend it trying to return you to reality.
Maybe the problem here is that we equate the amount of "science" done by people in the climate field to say economists "factual" belief they can predict economics. Large chaotic systems aren't as easy to predict (or reproduce) as people seem to think. Frankly, its shocking to me that anyone in such a macrocosmic field with so many variables could ever be that certain. But time and time again (even after being wrong time and time again), they're always "certain".
Completely untrue. From wikipedia: "Secondly, because the argument is inductive (which implies that the truth of the conclusion cannot be guaranteed by the truth of the premises), it also is fallacious to assert that the conclusion must be true.[2] Such an assertion is a non sequitur; the inductive argument might have probabilistic or statistical merit, but the conclusion does not follow unconditionally in the sense of being logically necessary."
You're arguing apples and oranges. "A reduction of carbon emissions" is what we're been doing, what we've always been doing: from hybrid cars to clean air laws to green incentives and cleaner tech (wind/solar). The global warming alarmists shouting that the sky is falling want more/extreme action taken, in the trillions++ range. This is the problem. Calling for "moderate environmental action" is stupid, because we're already doing that. Calling for "extreme and radical environmental action" (which as aforementioned is the clarion call all the "deniers" balk at) could very well hurt us greatly if the "catastrophic" claims are exaggerated/false. Now I'm not saying we're going to return to the Dark Ages, but there are ALOT of "middle ground" areas between "Dark Ages" and "now" that are just as unpleasant. Frankly, I'd sooner dump several trillions into solving cancer than I would reducing carbon emissions.
Maybe the problem here is that there's a _wide range_ of anti-CAGW opinions, from "its not happening at all" to "its happening but not to a degree that matters or is worth returning to the dark ages" and you're just lumping all these opinions into a single group that appears to be moving the goalposts.
No, but being concerned about overreaction is perfectly reasonable. Or do you bug bomb your entire house when you see a single ant? Or buy out the grocery store when they're calling for an inch of snow? "Deniers" is and has always been the wrong term. The thing they're denying is "catastrophic global damage" with a major focus on scope and primary cause.
Well, "all or nothing" is pretty much what the AGW crowd is calling for. You see, we already have "moderation" in green pursuits: we have hybrid car initiatives, solar/geo energy subsidies, energy efficiency tax credits, etc, etc, etc. We are (and have been) taking steps towards reducing our global footprint. It is the view of the AGW crowd that what we're currently doing is not enough and requires more drastic changes (ie economy-shaking wealth redistribution treaties and such). It's the AGW "skeptics" that are the more moderate stance: they're all like "hey man, we're already making strides in saving the planet, chill the fuck out". That of course is met with "OMGBBQ the world is ending NOWWWW, shut down all factories!!!"
The free market is very qualified. It responds far quicker to market dynamics than people. Artificial constraints that resist market flow tend to do nothing more than build up pressure and make the eventual release that much worse (such as the US's crazy low borrowing rate fueling the housing bubble, or China's previous currency peg fueling it's current wild inflation). I think the problem is that people insist on soft landings when the hard landing typically ends up being far less painful in the long term. For instance, had the housing market & banks been allowed to plummet the way the free market dictated they _should_ have, the short-term in housing and borrowing would have been far worse, but two things would have corrected far quicker: housing values & employment/growth. When you let things drag along long enough to form a trend, a sentiment follows (such as the current view all companies have that future growth will be sluggish, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy). And that sentiment is very difficult to break. And on top of that, there's the added expense of "government action to slow things down" working against you (like all those trillions we spent on "stimulus").