I didn't say there was anything wrong with studying climate change. I'm saying that the erroneous and premature conclusions people have reached, and the resulting resources we have wasted on fighting a non-existent threat, have cost us a lot. In particular, the cheery conclusion of the original post that it wasn't all that bad because we got "Priuses and Teslas" are b.s.
So instead, we've turned to our ingenuity and inventiveness as a way to ensure our dominance; our patents, our copyrights, our trademarks. We've hitched our wagon to the idea that our "intellectual property" will keep us a prominent force on the world stage.
Keep in mind that the patent and copyright systems originated in Europe and Europe used to exert strong pressure on the US to adopt their systems. It wasn't until the 1970's that the US finally gave in in copyrights. So, this isn't some kind of nefarious US plot to enslave the world, it's what Europe chose and imposed on the world, we just ended up beating them at their own game.
If advantages from copyrights and patents would disappear, like the advantages we used to have in other areas, we'd succeed in whatever other metric the world likes, provided we don't screw up our economy and our laws the way Europe has done with theirs (unfortunately, people like Obama are hell-bent on doing exactly that).
And when automation means 30 to 40 % of the citizens of the country can't find work?
We have two centuries of experience with automation; it has never meant that and it will never mean that. What automation does is make more people wealthier and successful, across the board.
I don't really think we have anything to talk about. You believe what you believe and I believe differently. I think 2020 is going to be an interesting year.
The difference is that my beliefs are informed by two centuries of economic experience and history, whereas yours are the typical extreme left and extreme right fear mongering.
Very roughly, the rate of CO2 and temperature increase today is at least an order of magnitude higher than the "natural" transitions of the past that we have (indirectly) measured
That's because we simply can't accurately measure temperature and CO2 concentrations changes over short time scales at all prior to maybe a million years ago. Therefore, your statement, while literally true, is deceptive and misleading.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the current rate of change is "unprecedented" over the last couple of hundred million years.
I simply said that the general understanding of CO2 influencing atmospheric temperature is much, much older than you imply it is.
I did not imply that at all. You falsely responded as if I had implied that.
I didn't say Arrhenius's work lends credence to modern results.
You didn't say much of anything, in fact. What you did was put out irrelevant statement in an obvious attempt to manipulate and mislead readers into erroneous conclusions, a common tactic among advocates for action on climate change. I corrected the erroneous conclusions that readers might have reached from your incoherent drivel.
By the way, you just engaged in the typical deception again, misrepresenting an old result that modern results happen to rely on as if that lent any credence or evidence for the modern result.
For example, cold fusion doesn't become any more credible just because people justify it in part with known 19th century chemistry.
The general principles and some interesting initial conclusions, which started (very slowly at first) a lot of this research, were worked out by Arrhenius in the (very) late 19th century.
If all that happened with the atmosphere was what Arrhenius proposed, global warming would clearly be a non-issue.
It only becomes an issue because people postulate all sorts of positive feedback mechanisms, economic futures, and effects on biology. Those postulates are based on very recent results and computer models.
There is no need to look at leaks, the last official IPCC report was an indictment of progressive climate change policies all by itself: despite a lot of handwaving, in the end, the report couldn't even bring itself to say that climate change policies, even if they could be implemented politically, would be cost effective.
The CO2 graph (direct measurement) is clearly climbing at a never-before-seen rate. How does this compare to the conclusions in the report?
Note that sawtooth shape? That's regular glaciation cycles, the kind that cover most of Europe, Asia, and North America in thick ice sheets.
If we're really lucky, our CO2 spike will actually finally break us out of those cycles and take us out of the current ice age, an ice age that has been going on for 7 million years.
The average trend is what everyone should be looking at.
And the average trend is a slow and gradual warming, and a very slow and gradual increase in sea levels since long before the industrial revolution. None of those are anything to worry about, and they will find a natural end when we switch to nuclear and solar for cost reasons anyway.
This is how real science works, particularly with highly complex issues like the earth's climate. We learn new things as we go along, and when new knowledge means we need to adjust our undestanding, that's what is done.
Real science also means that people don't run out and incur trillions of dollars in costs and expenses based on scientific speculation and papers that are barely a few years old and based on a couple of computer models with thousands of tunable parameters.
Unfortunately, the polarization of politics will take this latest IPCC report (if it indeed says what the article states) as an indication that these science types have been lying to us all along and they should now be ignored and driven from the temple.
"These science types" have been lying to us, not about their discoveries, but about the confidence we should have in those discoveries, and for that they should be "ignored and driven from the temple".
Rational policy based on scientific results should be based on scientific results that have stood the test of time and numerous independent replications, and even then it is prudent to have doubts.
And suppose for a moment that we happen to realize further down the line that "Climate Change" worries were a bit overblown? Well, no harm done! Without the Climate Change alarmism of the last 2 decades, nobody would have put much money into developing renewables like wind and solar or tidal energy. We also might not have Toyota Priuses or Tesla electric cars on the market today. Not to mention computers and other household devices that save a lot of energy compared to past cousins.
True. Instead, if all those resources and brains had been directed towards that actually mattered, we might have cures for HIV and cancer, landed humans on Mars, and achieved artificial intelligence. That's in addition to the fact that we might have a rapidly growing economy and more developing nations might be out of poverty.
Dealing with non-existent environmental threats is similar to fighting wars: it wastes resources and lives, and keeps humanity from making progress.
Hayden claimed "Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide," presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service
Yes, and air is their primary breathing gas, water the main component of their beverages, and they drive around in vehicles powered by gasoline, itself mostly dug out of countries harboring these very terrorists! We can't have that! Nobody should be allowed to breathe air, drink water, or drive a car without government control. (And if you think recent administrations haven't been trying, you haven't been paying attention.)
I already have nanny... but I'm working her 90 hours a week.
Really? Are you holding her at gunpoint? Otherwise, it's her choice to work for you, presumably because what you pay her is still worth it for her to work.
Three other nanny's are homeless and starving.
Then they should change jobs, since obviously they aren't needed for nannying.
Meanwhile, after paying for everything, I'm making 265 times as much as her.
No, you do not. The business owner makes whatever profits there are. The manager may make 265 times as much as another employee, but the manager is hired by the owners to do a job, and they have chosen to pay him that much.
First, just from a moral standpoint- is it fair that I get 265 times as much when half the cause is that I was born into it (in the u.s. your parents income is 50% of the factor of your income-- the "winners" of the prior generation are allowed to give their children a leg up so after a couple iterations, it's no longer a meritocracy but an oligarchy.)
Twin studies show that a big part of intelligence is inherited. In addition, married, educated and successful parents teach their children well. I don't see what's "unfair" about any of that. If you have drug addicted, low-IQ, separated parents, there is nothing anybody can do for you to make up for that. Society tries to help you a bit, but outcomes will never be equal.
Plus, at a fundamental level it bothers me to step over all those starving people and to see reports about them on the news so unless I'm a sociopath,
There are essentially no starving people in the US. You're inventing problems that don't exist in order to push an economic and political agenda that is only going to hurt people.
I'm going to naturally support some kind of charity for them
No, you are not. Charity is voluntary giving, and is usually done for people we know have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. What you actually are advocating is forcing people to support others who may well have brought their misfortune upon themselves through poor choices. That isn't charity, it's offensive.
(1) If you think the US is unusual, you're probably simply unaware of the level of insanity in your own country.
(2) We tell nobody how to live their lives. You people choose to buy our products, listen to our music, and watch our movies.
We do send in our military when (a) you threaten our economic interests or (b) you start killing people in large numbers; as long as you don't do either, we don't give a f*ck how you live.
So there is a chance companies will no longer get pathetic fines and be pretty much unaccountable for this misdeeds. Individuals who made decisions within the organization will be held responsible. Good.
Most likely, you own lots of shares in your retirement portfolio. This makes you a part owner of those corporations. If owners are regularly held liable for the misdeeds of corporations, you will be held liable for the misdeeds for the corporations you own shares in, with all your personal assets. Congratulations.
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I didn't say there was anything wrong with studying climate change. I'm saying that the erroneous and premature conclusions people have reached, and the resulting resources we have wasted on fighting a non-existent threat, have cost us a lot. In particular, the cheery conclusion of the original post that it wasn't all that bad because we got "Priuses and Teslas" are b.s.
Keep in mind that the patent and copyright systems originated in Europe and Europe used to exert strong pressure on the US to adopt their systems. It wasn't until the 1970's that the US finally gave in in copyrights. So, this isn't some kind of nefarious US plot to enslave the world, it's what Europe chose and imposed on the world, we just ended up beating them at their own game.
If advantages from copyrights and patents would disappear, like the advantages we used to have in other areas, we'd succeed in whatever other metric the world likes, provided we don't screw up our economy and our laws the way Europe has done with theirs (unfortunately, people like Obama are hell-bent on doing exactly that).
We have two centuries of experience with automation; it has never meant that and it will never mean that. What automation does is make more people wealthier and successful, across the board.
The difference is that my beliefs are informed by two centuries of economic experience and history, whereas yours are the typical extreme left and extreme right fear mongering.
Yeah, massive tax increases, decades of disruption in third world development, and global economic depressions are indeed a "dog in the fight".
Truth is, climate change "science" is becoming more and more akin to creationism/ID.
That's because we simply can't accurately measure temperature and CO2 concentrations changes over short time scales at all prior to maybe a million years ago. Therefore, your statement, while literally true, is deceptive and misleading.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the current rate of change is "unprecedented" over the last couple of hundred million years.
I did not imply that at all. You falsely responded as if I had implied that.
You didn't say much of anything, in fact. What you did was put out irrelevant statement in an obvious attempt to manipulate and mislead readers into erroneous conclusions, a common tactic among advocates for action on climate change. I corrected the erroneous conclusions that readers might have reached from your incoherent drivel.
By the way, you just engaged in the typical deception again, misrepresenting an old result that modern results happen to rely on as if that lent any credence or evidence for the modern result.
For example, cold fusion doesn't become any more credible just because people justify it in part with known 19th century chemistry.
If all that happened with the atmosphere was what Arrhenius proposed, global warming would clearly be a non-issue.
It only becomes an issue because people postulate all sorts of positive feedback mechanisms, economic futures, and effects on biology. Those postulates are based on very recent results and computer models.
There is no need to look at leaks, the last official IPCC report was an indictment of progressive climate change policies all by itself: despite a lot of handwaving, in the end, the report couldn't even bring itself to say that climate change policies, even if they could be implemented politically, would be cost effective.
Note that sawtooth shape? That's regular glaciation cycles, the kind that cover most of Europe, Asia, and North America in thick ice sheets.
If we're really lucky, our CO2 spike will actually finally break us out of those cycles and take us out of the current ice age, an ice age that has been going on for 7 million years.
And the average trend is a slow and gradual warming, and a very slow and gradual increase in sea levels since long before the industrial revolution. None of those are anything to worry about, and they will find a natural end when we switch to nuclear and solar for cost reasons anyway.
Real science also means that people don't run out and incur trillions of dollars in costs and expenses based on scientific speculation and papers that are barely a few years old and based on a couple of computer models with thousands of tunable parameters.
"These science types" have been lying to us, not about their discoveries, but about the confidence we should have in those discoveries, and for that they should be "ignored and driven from the temple".
Rational policy based on scientific results should be based on scientific results that have stood the test of time and numerous independent replications, and even then it is prudent to have doubts.
True. Instead, if all those resources and brains had been directed towards that actually mattered, we might have cures for HIV and cancer, landed humans on Mars, and achieved artificial intelligence. That's in addition to the fact that we might have a rapidly growing economy and more developing nations might be out of poverty.
Dealing with non-existent environmental threats is similar to fighting wars: it wastes resources and lives, and keeps humanity from making progress.
Yes, nothing new here: climate change is still as irrelevant to human affairs as it has always been.
So?
Yes, and air is their primary breathing gas, water the main component of their beverages, and they drive around in vehicles powered by gasoline, itself mostly dug out of countries harboring these very terrorists! We can't have that! Nobody should be allowed to breathe air, drink water, or drive a car without government control. (And if you think recent administrations haven't been trying, you haven't been paying attention.)
Shut it down, charge the top brass of the NSA with high treason. Maybe that will deter future abuses.
Really? Are you holding her at gunpoint? Otherwise, it's her choice to work for you, presumably because what you pay her is still worth it for her to work.
Then they should change jobs, since obviously they aren't needed for nannying.
No, you do not. The business owner makes whatever profits there are. The manager may make 265 times as much as another employee, but the manager is hired by the owners to do a job, and they have chosen to pay him that much.
Twin studies show that a big part of intelligence is inherited. In addition, married, educated and successful parents teach their children well. I don't see what's "unfair" about any of that. If you have drug addicted, low-IQ, separated parents, there is nothing anybody can do for you to make up for that. Society tries to help you a bit, but outcomes will never be equal.
There are essentially no starving people in the US. You're inventing problems that don't exist in order to push an economic and political agenda that is only going to hurt people.
No, you are not. Charity is voluntary giving, and is usually done for people we know have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. What you actually are advocating is forcing people to support others who may well have brought their misfortune upon themselves through poor choices. That isn't charity, it's offensive.
I find (b) unacceptable. For (a), it depends on the situation.
(1) If you think the US is unusual, you're probably simply unaware of the level of insanity in your own country.
(2) We tell nobody how to live their lives. You people choose to buy our products, listen to our music, and watch our movies.
We do send in our military when (a) you threaten our economic interests or (b) you start killing people in large numbers; as long as you don't do either, we don't give a f*ck how you live.
From this I gather that playing cowboys and Indians with real-looking plastic guns is somehow frowned upon these days?
I use icewm pretty regularly on some machines. It hasn't changed in years, and I like it that way.
Is there actually anything that needs doing?
Most likely, you own lots of shares in your retirement portfolio. This makes you a part owner of those corporations. If owners are regularly held liable for the misdeeds of corporations, you will be held liable for the misdeeds for the corporations you own shares in, with all your personal assets. Congratulations.
Yes, apparently.
The CEOs, despite their evil black hearts, don't have the power to take away our tax dollars.
The only people who can ever "cost the US taxpayer billions" are politicians, and primarily the executive branch.
So, we should go after the politicians that gave away our tax dollars freely and without coercion, that means both Bush and Obama.