The the reality is, if I were to become homeless, I would want food, shelter, treatment until I got back on my feet. If I were unemployed, I would want food, shelter, medical treatment until I found a job. If I got some disease and couldn't afford it, I would want treatment.
I counted three separate "I would want" statements in your request. The problem with your "I want" strategy is that someone else is being compelled to provide it to you by means of taxation. You can't have an "I want" satisfied without taking it from someone else.
Just because some people refuse to find a job, or pick themselves up by the bootstraps doesn't mean the system is completely out of the question.
And how did people pick themselves up by their bootstraps before the implementation of these grand Federal wealth redistribution schemes? They did it with the help of families, charities, and even local churches if you were religiously inclined. I have no problem with giving to support people in a crisis. I have a huge problem with being compelled to give by the government, in an amount determined by the government, to be delivered to whomever the government deems worthy regardless of my preferences. Politicians inevitably use such power in order to transfer money from one segment of the population to another in order to buy votes. It's happening right now before our eyes. It's been happening for decades, much to the detriment of the concept of "individual liberty and responsibility" cherished by our Founders. Jefferson, Washington, and the rest would weep if they could see what kind of a president 49.7% of the country wants to elect. They wouldn't be too happy with the other guy, either.
And what about all the health problems that you didn't bring on yourself? Or are you a firm believer in "bad things only happen to you if you make bad decisions"?
Bad things happen to all kinds of people. What separates them at that point is how well prepared they are to handle the event. I've deferred gratification on a lot of expensive toys so I can enjoy the ability to handle crises on my own terms. There is nothing special about me in any regard, which is another way of saying "if I can do it, anybody can do it." That doesn't stop people from making foolish choices, but it should stop them from being able to reach into my well-prepared pocket to fund their ill-prepared lives.
in the hands of the people McCain trusted so much that he felt that less scrutiny and transparency was necessary.
And I suppose the fact that McCain supported S. 109, which called for more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2005 slipped your mind? Or perhaps you just forgot about the fact that Democrats blocked the very same bill? Or it might be that Obama received the 3rd most funding from FM and FM of any Senator, coming in behind John Kerry and Chris Dodd? And I'm quite you're neglecting the Clinton-era policies that forced banks to loan to unqualified prospective homeowners simply because they were minorities or from "depressed" areas.
Now that I've refreshed your memory on how things actually happened, I'm sure you'll want to revise your prior comment to better reflect reality. Unless, of course, you prefer being either ignorant or intellectually dishonest.
the healthcare system as it stands allows for irresponsible behavior with repercussions for unrelated parties. Someone gets stuck footing the bill and theres no good framework to address it currently. Its imbalanced.
Hey, you've just discovered a fantastic way to get votes! I'll just promise to tax the crap out of one group of people -- people who work hard, create jobs, and contribute to the economy by spending and investments -- and give it to another group of people who haven't earned it. The former group will be responsible for the actions of the latter group! The former group will typically be smaller than the latter group, thus I can always be assured of winning any election! The former group will be unable to do anything about it for the same reason.
I think a certain politician is advocating this right now. What's his name? Gosh, it just slips my mind. It's that guy who wants to "spread the wealth around." I think his name is "Senator Change" or "Senator Hope."
Nothing short of price controls across the entire medical industry can succeed.
Price controls inevitably lead to either rationing or shortages, period. So what you propose may bring "universal" healthcare to the masses, but it will be both lowest-common-denominator healthcare, you'll have to wait on a list to get to it, and the government will decide who you get to see despite any preferences you may have to the contrary.
nd now I don't have to pay for as much of it because my employer provides...
What you don't realize is that your company doesn't pay for any of it. The money they "pay" for your healthcare is actually money they could've paid to you if the laws did not compel them otherwise. So, in effect, you're still paying for your healthcare coverage, you just don't get much of a choice as to how it gets spent.
which candidate has the best answers to making sure that Americans are able to stay healthy without America being bankrupted in the process?
Please point out to me where in the Constitution it says the government either has the right or duty to have a "best answer" to anything to do with my personal health? The answer is: it doesn't, nor should it.
My personal health is my responsibility. If I want to smoke, drink, and eat fatty foods until I die of a massive heart attack, that's my business. Nobody else should be concerned with it. If it can't afford to pay for the health problems I've brought on myself, nobody else should be required to pay one red cent to cover me.
For crying out loud, we're becoming (or have already become) a nation of I-want-my-Mommy groupthinkers, where government is expected to make life simple, easy, safe, and rewarding. Government is a necessary evil that does nothing particularly well and many things quite badly. Those of you who are about to vote for it to take care of your health, your retirement, your jobs, or your finances are about to be grossly disappointed.
Linux, when its hosted by itself, AKA UML, hardware access through KVM. Crappy vendor driver takes down user mode kernel, but not the real mode one.
Bad example. Sure, the UML kernel can crash all day and not affect the host, but what if it's the host that has the bad driver? Sorry to burst your bubble there but you kinda left that whole "important part" out.
If a "crappy vendor driver" is able to bring the whole machine down, it is very much an OS issue.
Oh really? Then what do you think about Linux when a bad NIC driver causes a kernel panic? What do you say when a bad SCSI driver causes a kernel panic? I certainly hope you're not foolish enough to believe that no Linux driver has ever caused a kernel panic, because there are many here at Slashdot that would beg to differ (assuming they can put down their anti-MS bias long enough to admit it). Bad graphics drivers have routinely taken down X, and though that's not the OS proper you'd be hard pressed to explain the difference to a non-technical user who just lost all their work in OpenOffice.
So, fess up! If a bad driver can crash Linux, OSX, and Windows -- and all three can and do suffer from this -- exactly who do you want to blame about this? Inquiring minds want to know if you're honest enough to answer.
it really bugs me sometimes that people don't have the integrity to not abuse even this small amount of power.
And just think, many of these same people will be going to the polls in a few days to exercise a far greater and more drastic amount of power that could radically alter your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Frightening, huh?
Nine times out of ten this is due to a crappy vendor driver and has nothing to do with the OS. You can crash XP and panic Ubuntu just as quickly (if not quicker) with dodgy drivers. Anything that directly involved with the kernel can take down any OS pretty fast. There are ways to prevent this by not letting the driver have such deep hooks into the kernel, but this usually comes at the cost of performance.
Ironically, I've seen people try to load XP drivers onto Vista. The drivers might load but stability is a crapshoot. But when it barfs, people blame Microsoft instead of the vendor or their own ineptitude for loading the wrong driver.
I get frustrated at this stuff, too, but it's worthless to blame someone (Microsoft) who has no control over the situation. Blame the vendor and maybe they'll clean up their act.
Troopergate was about firing a public safety commissioner who didn't taser anyone (he was allegedly fired because he wouldn't bend the rules to fire another trooper.)
I knew that. She fired a guy who wouldn't fire a guy who exhibited egregious behavior as an officer of the law. That officer happened to be involved with a member of Palin's family. Now, ask yourself if we'd be having this conversation at all if this hadn't involved Palin's family? The answer is "most likely not." Palin, as governor of the state, is essentially the CEO of the state. State employees technically work for her. She felt the PSC wasn't doing his job and removed him. If he'd been dragging his heels on a case like this I'd have fired him, too.
And so I read the story and found out--- and it's not been disputed as far as I know--- that Wooten's 11 year old stepson asked his stepfather to show him what a Taser felt like.M.
This story comes from the guy doing the Tasering, not from the child being Taser'd. Weight the evidence accordingly.
Furthermore, his alleged misconduct in this case is not the tasering, but rather "misusing government property".
And Al Capone was sent to prison for tax evasion because that's the only thing the government could get on him. Doesn't mean that Capone wasn't guilty of far more heinous things the government couldn't get a solid case on.
Further, the general gist of everything I've read on this case is that Wooten was anything but a model officer. It would be tough to make such an accusation stick if it flew in the face of other behavior, but it doesn't. If he doesn't "take kindly" to the accusation, he has no one to blame but himself.
Witty! And so intelligently thought out! A paragon of intelligence are you! How can I hope to make a cogent response? Truly, you have a dizzying intellect! Ad hominem attacks...the last refuge!
Now that I've gotten the sarcasm out of my system for a moment, let me quote one of my other posts on this subject.
Actually, if you think about it for more than a nanosecond, you'll see that your scenario is not a reasonable answer. After all, if the McCain camp wanted to get background info on Joe before the final debates they would simply (drum roll please) ask Joe for permission to search his background. Joe is friendly to the McCain camp, why would he refuse if he had nothing to hide? If Joe assents to the search, McCain could feel comfy using Joe during the debate. Likewise, if Joe didn't assent, McCain probably would not have used him as an example. There was no need for the McCain camp or its surrogates to illegally access the info.
But if I were an unscrupulous Obama supporter looking to make a quick kill...
Oops! I think I broke your argument! Hope you kept the receipt so you can return it, although I suspect it's out of warranty.
After all, McCain didn't check Sarah Palin out at all before they built a campaign around her.
Actually, McCain was well aware of Palin's "Troopergate" situation. She called for the firing of a police officer who tasered a minor child for punishment. Do you want to defend that officer's behavior? The truth of the situation is there is nothing wrong with Palin's actions except what the liberal media has whipped up to create the illusion of a scandal. Meanwhile, Bill Ayers blew up buildings, tried to kill a judge, advocated the violent overthrow of the government, sat on a board for years with Obama, launched Obama's political career in Ayers' livingroom, received millions from the foundation Obama chaired, funds Obama's campaign, got Obama to give his anti-American book a glowing review, yet nobody on the left is the slightest bit upset about it. Now who was it you were saying wasn't properly vetted?
It's reasonable to assume the purpose of these unauthorized accesses were to try and dig up dirt on Joe. Since Joe's comments have noticeably harmed Obama and/or helped McCain, it's reasonable to assume those doing so were Obama supporters or surrogates hoping to find evidence with which to smear Joe. Joe supports McCain, thus I don't expect any public outcry at all over this at all.
Now if the tables were turned and it was an Obama supporter who was having his/her info illegally accessed...well, I don't have to describe the media orgy that would occur, do I?
I had only hoped they'd go another couple years, drop the prices a few thousand, and have service centers in a few more areas near where I like to live.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if it was only "a few thousand" standing in your way from owning a Tesla, you'd already have one. What's more likely is a few tens of thousands of dollars. Such price reductions were not likely in any span of time so long as Tesla production runs were as short as they were. And they weren't likely to produce more due to the high price.
Even if you factor in the (formerly) high price of gas, there's no ROI to buying a Tesla. You can get the same (or better) performance for much less money in a gasoline-powered vehicle. The money you saved will buy a lot of gas over time -- several years worth given typical driving rates.
Further, the Tesla is not a "zero emissions" vehicle because it has to be charged from a power grid. Most likely that grid is supplied in large part by a coal-fired power plant somewhere, which belches out lots of carbon (gee, thanks, you anti-nuke "environmentalists"). The electrons do not magically find their way into the Tesla all on their own, and no large grid in existence is supplied in any measurable quantity by any renewable power sources (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.). The bulk of power comes from coal, and that's not going to change anytime soon unless we start building nuclear reactors again.
I'm willing to bet the Tesla's "carbon footprint" is not significantly different from a typical gasoline-powered vehicle once it's all added up. Thus, you buy a Tesla, you spend a ton of money for looking green when in fact you're just "looking" and no more. The car is neat and performs well, but buying it to be "green" is the silliest reason you could have.
the fact is that I am well familiar with most of the usual suspects you've been citing, and that "dissenting claims" which are demonstrably wrong don't really count.
If it's so cut and dried then please, by all means, enlighten me. Provide your proof. Back it up with data. Show me the model that predicts, within reasonable limits, the past 100-200 years of weather trends and also predicts the next 100 years. Show me how it accounts not for year-to-year variations but decade-to-decade variations that ought to be large enough to predict. Show me that it's all based on CO2, and the only way to counteract it is by massively reducing humanity's carbon footprint. When you can do that, I'll consider your case as having at least some validity. Until then, you have no more credibility than the sources you claim "don't really count."
Lastly, if you want a pretty thorough list of scientists who are skeptical of warming -- or at least skeptical that it's anthropocentric -- go here. I'd love to see a post debunking all of them as hopeless crackpots. You do, of course, have data proving them as such...right?
All these guys have been known to do good science in other areas, but that doesn't exempt them when they publish bad science, or good but wrong science.
And of course, all your sources are unimpeachable, deeply imbued with nothing but the essence of honesty, integrity, impartiality, and infallibility. None of the generate global warmist data in at attempt to get more funding and grants. None of them have a bone to pick with capitalism. Paragons of virtue, all!
Once you start working your way through the journals, you will find that not all opinions are created equal.
Which is another way of saying "some opinions are more equal than others." I'm saying that what you present is so calamitous that the proof ought to be clear and unquestionable. Yet it is not. You freely admit your models are incomplete. You freely admit you cannot accurately predict past weather trends using the models you claim can predict future trends. Huge variables such as water vapor, cloud formation, planetary albedo, solar variation...most models omit all of them, and no model contains the full gamut of them and others that could affect the outcome. Yet you claim your results are infallible. Is it hubris that drives you to such a conclusion when it's completely obvious that you cannot possibly have an ironclad grasp on what's really going on?
Just a few examples of dissent, all of which come from disreputable, non-notable, totally-uneducated sources. Like this fellow:
# Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: "That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation - which has a cooling effect.... We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle."[20]
Or how about this one:
# William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University: "This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential."[23] "I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people."[24] "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thingâ"all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more."[25]
Or how about this contributor to the IPCC report:
# John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports: "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time."[49]
You don't have to look hard to find dissenting voices to the popular global warmist crowd. The fact that you seem to believe they don't exist gives evidence that you haven't even tried to seek opposing viewpoints. One is taken to wondering why.
Mitigation is insurance against risk in the face of uncertainty. There is uncertainty to the tune of several degrees in the climate projections, because our understanding of the climate isn't perfect. We take out insurance not because we're sure something bad is going to happen, but because we can't rule out something bad not happening.
I'll present you with the following situation: you have just ingested a cup of colorless, odorless, tasteless fluid which you believed to be water. Suddenly, three complete strangers run into the room. The first carries a syringe and says "I am an expert in poisons! You just drank a deadly poison! Inject yourself right now with this syringe or the poison will kill you in a month!"
The second stranger loudly interrupts, saying "No! I am an expert in poisons! That syringe contains the wrong antidote! If you take it, the antidote alone will kill or cripple you. But what *I* have in this syringe will save you if you inject yourself right now!"
The third stranger looks at the first two and says "I am an expert in poisons! These guys are lunatics. Both of their syringes contain chemicals that will harm or kill you. What you drank in the cup was plain water, completely harmless. You can safely ignore both of them."
Now, what do you do? You're presented with two opposing solutions, each claiming equal validity of curing the poison, and a third solution claiming there is no poison at all. Every choice you make is risky because there is no choice lacking a significant (perhaps even deadly) downside.
An intelligent person might conclude that the smartest thing to do would be to find out which one of them is right before doing anything at all. There is enough time (assuming you're poisoned in the first place) to get multiple doctors to test you and rule if you're poisoned and, if so, which antidote would be best. If your life really is in jeopardy, getting complete consensus from multiple reputable doctors should not be difficult.
Instead, you're suggesting that we do something in the hopes that (a) it's the right thing to do, (b) it's worth the cost, and (c) it isn't overlooking some crucial flaw that will cause even greater damage. You have not satisfied any of these criteria beyond a reasonable reproach. This is either because you can't or you won't. If you can't, you should consider your conclusion may be flawed. If you won't...well, don't feel to surprised if you don't get many converts to your "cause." What you don't understand is this: I am open to being convinced, but you lack credible evidence. Provide it and you'll have a convert, perhaps even a flock of them.
The premise of insurance is that it guarantees to protect you from a potential threat. You can't guarantee the threat but, and most importantly, you can't guarantee the insurance will actually protect against the potential threat. Indeed, if you're really wrong, implementing the insurance could exacerbate the situation. More study is needed. Why can't you admit that?
And here's some other good quotes for you to chew on. You know, from those disreputable sources like MIT:
# Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences: "We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 ÂC higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But â" and I cannot stress this enough â" we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future."[54] "[T]here has been no question whatsoever that CO2 is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas â" albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in CO2 should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed."[55]
Or how about this one from a guy who actually contributed to the IPCC report:
# John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports: "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time."[49]
Or how about this one from a minor, less-than-notable facility called Los Alamos National Labs:
# Petr Chylek, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory: "carbon dioxide should not be considered as a dominant force behind the current warming...how much of the [temperature] increase can be ascribed to CO2, to changes in solar activity, or to the natural variability of climate is uncertain"[50]
Yep, that about wraps it up! There are no notable, reputable, learned dissenting voices out there! It's just one big, happy, consensus-filled scientific community where all the heads are bobbing up and down at the same time!
I could go on, you know, but I'm tiring of pointing out what should be blatantly obvious to anyone who cares to do some objective Googling or other research on the subject. You have confined your knowledge of the subject to nothing more than that which already agrees with you. That is not science. That is dogma.
Warming would also take land out of agricultural production.
That was implied by my statement. It's rather obvious that warming would alter the farming landscape rather drastically. That said, my statement still stands: if you have to choose cooling or warming, warming is preferable. Neither would be pleasant, however.
And yours is compleat?
More complete than your spelling education, I see.
Even skeptics of human induced global warming admit the world is warming. Heck even President Bush said it was real.
It doesn't matter one whit to me what Bush -- or any other politician -- has said on the environment. Politicians speak mainly to gain political favor. Reality only occasionally intersects with what comes out of their mouths. Right now it's politically correct to mouth platitudes about the environment, so I would expect Bush, McCain, and Obama to spew such stuff on a regular basis. None of them, however, know a damned thing about the environment that their advisors -- both scientific and polticial -- haven't told them.
You seem oblivious to the fact that there is debate on whether we're headed for a long-term warming or cooling trend. Yes, we have been warming for a little while, but will it continue? There is data saying we could be headed for a long-term cooling very similar to the Little Ice Age despite an intermittent warming. Wikipedia has this to say on the last LIA:
It is generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals.[1]
No SUV's and coal-fired power plants back then dumping CO2 into the air, so why the warming/cooling fluctuations? Our current climate models cannot explain it, but it sure wasn't anthropocentric. And note how these "minor" fluctuations took decades to play out before the final Big Chill.
I'm not saying what we're going through now is identical. It could be we're on a road to sustained, anthropocentric warming. Then again, we might not. There is no hard data either way despite your protestations to the contrary. If you accept the fuzzy data saying we're on a long-term warming trend, then you must also accept the similarly-fuzzy data that says we're on a long-term cooling trend. Both have "facts" and data models backing them up. Both are obviously flawed models that could be off by a little, a lot, or not at all. You put too much faith in the warming models because you've decided that's what you want to believe. I, on the other hand, believe none of them. I demand more research and proof before we commit to a specific course of action.
Just as those who deny Global Warming is false is a decided minority. To me there's little difference, both discount or ignore facts. Yes, there are facts showing cooling in some places, but the world as a whole is warming.
And you aren't discounting or ignoring inconvenient facts as well? Quit being dishonest. There is evidence out there that contradicts your assumptions. Even the vaunted IPCC had to fiddle with their data to make it look like we're on a long-term warming trend. Is the world getting warmer? Yes, it has been for a little while, but for the last few years it's been cooling. The warming models don't say how or why this should happen. So will it continue to warm? Will it cool? Will it stabilize? Nobody knows, least of all you. Quit acting like you've got all the answers locked up tight in some unassailable data model. You don't. Nobody does. You, like everybody else, are guessing. The problem with your guessing is that you're unable to separate your personal desires and agenda from what should be a rational thought process, hence your dogmatic insistence that anyone questioning your conclusions must be an idiot.
Sadly for your argument, the three cases are not equally likely.
Sadly, for your argument you've provided no proof whatsoever to back up your claims.
Have you ever read anything ever published on the subject, Dr. Climate Economics?
Your sarcasm betrays your emotional involvement in what should be a rational argument. Yes, I have read quite a bit on the subject, but unlike you I've read arguments from both sides. Hence my skepticism. You appear to have sought out only that which reinforces your predefined belief, hence your ignorance and arrogance.
I hope you realize that climate trends sustained throughout most of a century are quite different from random weather events.
And I hope you realize that a model being used to predict weather trends -- your "climate change catastrophe" if you will -- ought to be reliable enough to predict past weather trends as well. But it doesn't. If you plug the data in for past decades, the outputs don't match with the weather we actually had. The model is either faulty, incomplete, or both, yet you wish to put it forth as the unquestioned -- and not-to-be-questioned -- gospel of truth. Any reasonable scientist must question such results and conclusions, yet curiously many do not. You've made it abundantly obvious which camp you're in.
That can be turned on it's head too. If Global Warming is true then many can die or become ill, forget about flooding of lowlands.
Very true. Unfortunately, you've not provided any furtherance of evidence either for or against the item at hand. Regardless of whether we do something or we do nothing, we could have a global warming, a global cooling, or no change at all. Climatologists have said, however, that an ice age would be more damaging than warming due to shorter growing cycles. Warming, for all its predicted deleterious effects, would potentially thaw out land that is currently unproductive for food crops. I'm not saying it would be nice (far from it), but warming is preferable to cooling if you had to choose the lesser of two evils.
I can't answer about the others
Again, I appreciate your comments but you're not offering anything to further the evidence for or against.
Why do people automatically assume doing something about Global Warming will hurt the global economy? Doing something about Global Warming can actually help the economy. Renewable energy can create a lot of well paying jobs.
I can see your economic education has been dismally incomplete. So renewable energy can create a lot of "well paying" jobs, eh? And who do you suppose pays the salaries of these well-paying jobs? Ah! Energy customers, that's who! That would be you and me. We'll pay far more for energy, meaning we'll have far less for other things like milk, cars, PC's, and just about every other consumer product known to man.
But wait, it gets better! All of those products will get more expensive as well since the companies producing them will have higher energy costs just like you and me. The end result is much higher prices for everything. This causes inflation and a slowing economy. If bad enough, it causes a recession. If really bad, it causes a Depression. Crumbling economies cause widespread poverty, disease, and human suffering.
And what of the trillions insurance companies can lose as well? How many billions will New Orleans cost? What about Texas? What about a volcanic eruption?
You're making the assumption that this climate change -- if it even exists -- is man-made, and that we also have the power to change it. Assuming that none of the above is true, we could cost ourselves trillions in higher energy costs and still pay trillions in insurance. Does that make any sense?
And methane farts, er burbs, aren't enough, on top of a melting North Pole and Greenland's glaciers?
No, it's not, because you're unable to prove this isn't some naturally-occurring event. Further, you're unable to prove that it's anything humanity can alter or deflect no matter what we do. If it is indeed natural, and if it is something we cannot avoid, I'd rather spend those billions (or trillions) on coping with the change rather than wasting them in fruitless attempts to either (a) alter the un-alterable or (b) alter that which isn't going to happen in the first place.
I bet even the day after you won't get 100% agreement, being afterwards, on the cause.
And I'm sure you're right. There are still people who believe the Earth is flat. Those people are a decided minority. Those who don't subscribe to the Church of Climate Change are neither irrational nor a minority. If we're so darned sure this whole "climate change" is coming, where is the hard evidence? For every "melting North Pole" and "Greenland glacier" there's another story about a record snowfall, or a record winter, or some other similar-but-opposite climate phenomena. If you choose to look only for that which confirms your belief, you will not see evidence to the contrary. I see evidence for and against. Both seems convincing. Both cannot be right. Until one is proven, I'm withholding my judgment.
Mitigating climate change doesn't require you to be personally bankrupted or for the global economy to be ruined.
Then why do I keep getting asked to completely change my lifestyle and to spend vast sums of money to buy more expensive "carbon neutral" products? Everything you suggest has a cost involved that is in excess of the current economic model. The only demonstrable return for these higher prices is the nebulous claim that it will somehow prevent unwanted climactic change. It won't bankrupt me, but it would cost me more and give me nothing new in return unless it averts climate catastrophe. Since the catastrophe has not been proven to exist, I see no value it this entire concept.
That's not really true, it's an example of the success of the denialist publicity machine.
I find it amazingly funny that you attribute any dissent to the "denialist publicity machine" and then turn right around and cite (of all things) the IPCC report. This report has been called into question not just by crackpots but by reputable climatologists from many countries and backgrounds. Although I'm loathe to quote Wikipedia as a source of information, the page on the IPCC has a wonderful synopsis of IPCC criticisms. Suffice to say, the IPCC had significant political meddling involved. The results are circumspect precisely because of that.
On the other hand, there is nobody respected and reputable who is seriously claiming that we are going to enter a new Little Ice Age.
When most of us think about Ice Ages, we imagine a slow transition into a colder climate on long time scales. Indeed, studies of the past million years indicate a repeatable cycle of Earthâ(TM)s climate going from warm periods (âoeinterglacialâ, as we are experiencing now) to glacial conditions.
The period of these shifts are related to changes in the tilt of Earthâ(TM)s rotational axis (41,000 years), changes in the orientation of Earthâ(TM)s elliptical orbit around the sun, called the âoeprecession of the equinoxesâ (23,000 years), and to changes in the shape (more round or less round) of the elliptical orbit (100,000 years). The theory that orbital shifts caused the waxing and waning of ice ages was first pointed out by James Croll in the 19th Century and developed more fully by Milutin Milankovitch in 1938.
These is just the first one I could come up with and I didn't even look hard. So I guess WHOI is considered unreputable and unrespected by you, huh?
That's what the peer reviewed literature is for. It's already out there. People have been working on the relative attribution of natural and anthropogenic climate changes for decades now. Go into the IPCC AR4 WG1 report for a massive collection of references to studies.
And I'll again point out to you the assumptions and data involved in the IPCC report have been called into serious question by noted climatologists. The IPCC has declined to even address their concerns. The IPCC also completely ignores the fact that their own models used to predict this coming catastrophe cannot account for past weather trends, nor can it account for the current cooling trend we are now experiencing. An objective scientist would conclude that we know too little about the climate -- that there are too many variables and even unknown variables -- for us to accurately predict the doom you say is a foregone conclusion. Yet you insist your predictions are the utter truth in spite of your inability to prove it. Instead, you merely denounce detractors as part of some conspiracy.
The fact that most Americans think this is funny is the problem. "If you do anything about global warming, you'll hurt my portfolio."
No, you miss the point entirely. Although I'm sure there are a number of completely irrational people out there who do meet your description, the vast, overwhelming majority of Americans (or Republicans, if you prefer to further subdivide) do not.
That rational group merely says this: I don't want my portfolio destroyed unless it absolutely must be destroyed to stop some life-threatening catastrophe. I worked hard for my savings and I want to enjoy it. It follows that if something horrible might happen that could prevent me from enjoying it (i.e. global catastrophe) then I'd be predisposed to address it regardless of the cost.
I would spend every dime I had (and then work hard to earn more dimes) to defeat climate change if it were a provable fact. Instead, we have several camps, each trying to outshout the other. We have one camp saying it's getting warmer and humanity is to blame. We have another camp saying it's getting warmer but it's not man-made. We have another camp saying it's not getting warmer at all, that we're headed for another Little Ice Age in the coming decades. There are plenty of shades in between, but the point is that there are respected, reputable scientists on practically all sides of this issue. Each points to his or her data and says "See! What I'm saying is true, and everyone else is lying!" This does not engender confidence. You may claim that your pet theory is the One True Way. I say that if you've got unequivocal, unassailable, undeniable, verifiable data proving something, you ought to speak up because nobody else on the planet does. I'll point out that even the most esteemed minds on the planet -- far better equipped than you or I to analyze such things -- have been unable to put this issue to bed, so I don't have much hope that you'll change that.
There are some that say "we can't wait for proof, we should do something now and worry about proof later." There are multiple problems with this idea. First, and most alarming, is what if we are headed for another Little Ice Age? If so, all this "carbon footprint" nonsense would be turned on its head. We'd need to produce more carbon to head off global cooling. Wouldn't you feel like a complete fool if all of humanity cut back on carbon emissions and exacerbated a cooling trend? Billions could die if this were to come true.
Second, what if warming isn't man-made? What if the planet is getting warmer due to solar activity, or planetary magnetic fields flipping, or any of the other non-anthropocentric theories? You could argue reducing CO2 might make this less impactful, but what if nothing we do has any meaningful effect? Ruining a global economy (or even a national one) might be worth it if there was a positive climactic change, but it's certainly not worth it if there is no measurable effect.
I'm not terrified of dying poor. I'm terrified of living poor for no good reason. Again, I put it to you that if you've got proof that some drastic climactic change is headed this way, and the only way to avoid it is to wreck an economy, I'm all for it. Until then, I'm not going to wreck anything that I've worked hard for when there's no benefit to doing so.
Carl Sagan famously said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." You're claiming something extraordinary is on the way and that I should take extraordinary measures to offset it. I'm asking for extraordinary proof. Submit it. While you're at it, submit a counter-argument to those who disagree with you, one that contains a point-by-point proof of where their models fail. Submit it for rigorous peer review. When you've got it to the point where no reputable, knowledgeable climatologist will disagree with it, I'm on board. Such consensus is not impossible. You just need to have unassailable evidence. The lack of just that is what keeps people like me on the fence, not greed or avarice.
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The the reality is, if I were to become homeless, I would want food, shelter, treatment until I got back on my feet. If I were unemployed, I would want food, shelter, medical treatment until I found a job. If I got some disease and couldn't afford it, I would want treatment.
I counted three separate "I would want" statements in your request. The problem with your "I want" strategy is that someone else is being compelled to provide it to you by means of taxation. You can't have an "I want" satisfied without taking it from someone else.
Just because some people refuse to find a job, or pick themselves up by the bootstraps doesn't mean the system is completely out of the question.
And how did people pick themselves up by their bootstraps before the implementation of these grand Federal wealth redistribution schemes? They did it with the help of families, charities, and even local churches if you were religiously inclined. I have no problem with giving to support people in a crisis. I have a huge problem with being compelled to give by the government, in an amount determined by the government, to be delivered to whomever the government deems worthy regardless of my preferences. Politicians inevitably use such power in order to transfer money from one segment of the population to another in order to buy votes. It's happening right now before our eyes. It's been happening for decades, much to the detriment of the concept of "individual liberty and responsibility" cherished by our Founders. Jefferson, Washington, and the rest would weep if they could see what kind of a president 49.7% of the country wants to elect. They wouldn't be too happy with the other guy, either.
And what about all the health problems that you didn't bring on yourself? Or are you a firm believer in "bad things only happen to you if you make bad decisions"?
Bad things happen to all kinds of people. What separates them at that point is how well prepared they are to handle the event. I've deferred gratification on a lot of expensive toys so I can enjoy the ability to handle crises on my own terms. There is nothing special about me in any regard, which is another way of saying "if I can do it, anybody can do it." That doesn't stop people from making foolish choices, but it should stop them from being able to reach into my well-prepared pocket to fund their ill-prepared lives.
in the hands of the people McCain trusted so much that he felt that less scrutiny and transparency was necessary.
And I suppose the fact that McCain supported S. 109, which called for more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2005 slipped your mind? Or perhaps you just forgot about the fact that Democrats blocked the very same bill? Or it might be that Obama received the 3rd most funding from FM and FM of any Senator, coming in behind John Kerry and Chris Dodd? And I'm quite you're neglecting the Clinton-era policies that forced banks to loan to unqualified prospective homeowners simply because they were minorities or from "depressed" areas.
Now that I've refreshed your memory on how things actually happened, I'm sure you'll want to revise your prior comment to better reflect reality. Unless, of course, you prefer being either ignorant or intellectually dishonest.
the healthcare system as it stands allows for irresponsible behavior with repercussions for unrelated parties. Someone gets stuck footing the bill and theres no good framework to address it currently. Its imbalanced.
Hey, you've just discovered a fantastic way to get votes! I'll just promise to tax the crap out of one group of people -- people who work hard, create jobs, and contribute to the economy by spending and investments -- and give it to another group of people who haven't earned it. The former group will be responsible for the actions of the latter group! The former group will typically be smaller than the latter group, thus I can always be assured of winning any election! The former group will be unable to do anything about it for the same reason.
I think a certain politician is advocating this right now. What's his name? Gosh, it just slips my mind. It's that guy who wants to "spread the wealth around." I think his name is "Senator Change" or "Senator Hope."
Nothing short of price controls across the entire medical industry can succeed.
Price controls inevitably lead to either rationing or shortages, period. So what you propose may bring "universal" healthcare to the masses, but it will be both lowest-common-denominator healthcare, you'll have to wait on a list to get to it, and the government will decide who you get to see despite any preferences you may have to the contrary.
No thanks. I'll pay my own way, thank you.
nd now I don't have to pay for as much of it because my employer provides...
What you don't realize is that your company doesn't pay for any of it. The money they "pay" for your healthcare is actually money they could've paid to you if the laws did not compel them otherwise. So, in effect, you're still paying for your healthcare coverage, you just don't get much of a choice as to how it gets spent.
which candidate has the best answers to making sure that Americans are able to stay healthy without America being bankrupted in the process?
Please point out to me where in the Constitution it says the government either has the right or duty to have a "best answer" to anything to do with my personal health? The answer is: it doesn't, nor should it.
My personal health is my responsibility. If I want to smoke, drink, and eat fatty foods until I die of a massive heart attack, that's my business. Nobody else should be concerned with it. If it can't afford to pay for the health problems I've brought on myself, nobody else should be required to pay one red cent to cover me.
For crying out loud, we're becoming (or have already become) a nation of I-want-my-Mommy groupthinkers, where government is expected to make life simple, easy, safe, and rewarding. Government is a necessary evil that does nothing particularly well and many things quite badly. Those of you who are about to vote for it to take care of your health, your retirement, your jobs, or your finances are about to be grossly disappointed.
Linux, when its hosted by itself, AKA UML, hardware access through KVM. Crappy vendor driver takes down user mode kernel, but not the real mode one.
Bad example. Sure, the UML kernel can crash all day and not affect the host, but what if it's the host that has the bad driver? Sorry to burst your bubble there but you kinda left that whole "important part" out.
If a "crappy vendor driver" is able to bring the whole machine down, it is very much an OS issue.
Oh really? Then what do you think about Linux when a bad NIC driver causes a kernel panic? What do you say when a bad SCSI driver causes a kernel panic? I certainly hope you're not foolish enough to believe that no Linux driver has ever caused a kernel panic, because there are many here at Slashdot that would beg to differ (assuming they can put down their anti-MS bias long enough to admit it). Bad graphics drivers have routinely taken down X, and though that's not the OS proper you'd be hard pressed to explain the difference to a non-technical user who just lost all their work in OpenOffice.
So, fess up! If a bad driver can crash Linux, OSX, and Windows -- and all three can and do suffer from this -- exactly who do you want to blame about this? Inquiring minds want to know if you're honest enough to answer.
it really bugs me sometimes that people don't have the integrity to not abuse even this small amount of power.
And just think, many of these same people will be going to the polls in a few days to exercise a far greater and more drastic amount of power that could radically alter your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Frightening, huh?
Nine times out of ten this is due to a crappy vendor driver and has nothing to do with the OS. You can crash XP and panic Ubuntu just as quickly (if not quicker) with dodgy drivers. Anything that directly involved with the kernel can take down any OS pretty fast. There are ways to prevent this by not letting the driver have such deep hooks into the kernel, but this usually comes at the cost of performance.
Ironically, I've seen people try to load XP drivers onto Vista. The drivers might load but stability is a crapshoot. But when it barfs, people blame Microsoft instead of the vendor or their own ineptitude for loading the wrong driver.
I get frustrated at this stuff, too, but it's worthless to blame someone (Microsoft) who has no control over the situation. Blame the vendor and maybe they'll clean up their act.
Troopergate was about firing a public safety commissioner who didn't taser anyone (he was allegedly fired because he wouldn't bend the rules to fire another trooper.)
I knew that. She fired a guy who wouldn't fire a guy who exhibited egregious behavior as an officer of the law. That officer happened to be involved with a member of Palin's family. Now, ask yourself if we'd be having this conversation at all if this hadn't involved Palin's family? The answer is "most likely not." Palin, as governor of the state, is essentially the CEO of the state. State employees technically work for her. She felt the PSC wasn't doing his job and removed him. If he'd been dragging his heels on a case like this I'd have fired him, too.
And so I read the story and found out--- and it's not been disputed as far as I know--- that Wooten's 11 year old stepson asked his stepfather to show him what a Taser felt like.M.
This story comes from the guy doing the Tasering, not from the child being Taser'd. Weight the evidence accordingly.
Furthermore, his alleged misconduct in this case is not the tasering, but rather "misusing government property".
And Al Capone was sent to prison for tax evasion because that's the only thing the government could get on him. Doesn't mean that Capone wasn't guilty of far more heinous things the government couldn't get a solid case on.
Further, the general gist of everything I've read on this case is that Wooten was anything but a model officer. It would be tough to make such an accusation stick if it flew in the face of other behavior, but it doesn't. If he doesn't "take kindly" to the accusation, he has no one to blame but himself.
Reasonable if you're a moron, maybe.
Witty! And so intelligently thought out! A paragon of intelligence are you! How can I hope to make a cogent response? Truly, you have a dizzying intellect! Ad hominem attacks...the last refuge!
Now that I've gotten the sarcasm out of my system for a moment, let me quote one of my other posts on this subject.
Actually, if you think about it for more than a nanosecond, you'll see that your scenario is not a reasonable answer. After all, if the McCain camp wanted to get background info on Joe before the final debates they would simply (drum roll please) ask Joe for permission to search his background. Joe is friendly to the McCain camp, why would he refuse if he had nothing to hide? If Joe assents to the search, McCain could feel comfy using Joe during the debate. Likewise, if Joe didn't assent, McCain probably would not have used him as an example. There was no need for the McCain camp or its surrogates to illegally access the info.
But if I were an unscrupulous Obama supporter looking to make a quick kill...
Oops! I think I broke your argument! Hope you kept the receipt so you can return it, although I suspect it's out of warranty.
After all, McCain didn't check Sarah Palin out at all before they built a campaign around her.
Actually, McCain was well aware of Palin's "Troopergate" situation. She called for the firing of a police officer who tasered a minor child for punishment. Do you want to defend that officer's behavior? The truth of the situation is there is nothing wrong with Palin's actions except what the liberal media has whipped up to create the illusion of a scandal. Meanwhile, Bill Ayers blew up buildings, tried to kill a judge, advocated the violent overthrow of the government, sat on a board for years with Obama, launched Obama's political career in Ayers' livingroom, received millions from the foundation Obama chaired, funds Obama's campaign, got Obama to give his anti-American book a glowing review, yet nobody on the left is the slightest bit upset about it. Now who was it you were saying wasn't properly vetted?
It's reasonable to assume the purpose of these unauthorized accesses were to try and dig up dirt on Joe. Since Joe's comments have noticeably harmed Obama and/or helped McCain, it's reasonable to assume those doing so were Obama supporters or surrogates hoping to find evidence with which to smear Joe. Joe supports McCain, thus I don't expect any public outcry at all over this at all.
Now if the tables were turned and it was an Obama supporter who was having his/her info illegally accessed...well, I don't have to describe the media orgy that would occur, do I?
I had only hoped they'd go another couple years, drop the prices a few thousand, and have service centers in a few more areas near where I like to live.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if it was only "a few thousand" standing in your way from owning a Tesla, you'd already have one. What's more likely is a few tens of thousands of dollars. Such price reductions were not likely in any span of time so long as Tesla production runs were as short as they were. And they weren't likely to produce more due to the high price.
Even if you factor in the (formerly) high price of gas, there's no ROI to buying a Tesla. You can get the same (or better) performance for much less money in a gasoline-powered vehicle. The money you saved will buy a lot of gas over time -- several years worth given typical driving rates.
Further, the Tesla is not a "zero emissions" vehicle because it has to be charged from a power grid. Most likely that grid is supplied in large part by a coal-fired power plant somewhere, which belches out lots of carbon (gee, thanks, you anti-nuke "environmentalists"). The electrons do not magically find their way into the Tesla all on their own, and no large grid in existence is supplied in any measurable quantity by any renewable power sources (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.). The bulk of power comes from coal, and that's not going to change anytime soon unless we start building nuclear reactors again.
I'm willing to bet the Tesla's "carbon footprint" is not significantly different from a typical gasoline-powered vehicle once it's all added up. Thus, you buy a Tesla, you spend a ton of money for looking green when in fact you're just "looking" and no more. The car is neat and performs well, but buying it to be "green" is the silliest reason you could have.
the fact is that I am well familiar with most of the usual suspects you've been citing, and that "dissenting claims" which are demonstrably wrong don't really count.
If it's so cut and dried then please, by all means, enlighten me. Provide your proof. Back it up with data. Show me the model that predicts, within reasonable limits, the past 100-200 years of weather trends and also predicts the next 100 years. Show me how it accounts not for year-to-year variations but decade-to-decade variations that ought to be large enough to predict. Show me that it's all based on CO2, and the only way to counteract it is by massively reducing humanity's carbon footprint. When you can do that, I'll consider your case as having at least some validity. Until then, you have no more credibility than the sources you claim "don't really count."
Lastly, if you want a pretty thorough list of scientists who are skeptical of warming -- or at least skeptical that it's anthropocentric -- go here. I'd love to see a post debunking all of them as hopeless crackpots. You do, of course, have data proving them as such...right?
All these guys have been known to do good science in other areas, but that doesn't exempt them when they publish bad science, or good but wrong science.
And of course, all your sources are unimpeachable, deeply imbued with nothing but the essence of honesty, integrity, impartiality, and infallibility. None of the generate global warmist data in at attempt to get more funding and grants. None of them have a bone to pick with capitalism. Paragons of virtue, all!
Once you start working your way through the journals, you will find that not all opinions are created equal.
Which is another way of saying "some opinions are more equal than others." I'm saying that what you present is so calamitous that the proof ought to be clear and unquestionable. Yet it is not. You freely admit your models are incomplete. You freely admit you cannot accurately predict past weather trends using the models you claim can predict future trends. Huge variables such as water vapor, cloud formation, planetary albedo, solar variation...most models omit all of them, and no model contains the full gamut of them and others that could affect the outcome. Yet you claim your results are infallible. Is it hubris that drives you to such a conclusion when it's completely obvious that you cannot possibly have an ironclad grasp on what's really going on?
Just a few examples of dissent, all of which come from disreputable, non-notable, totally-uneducated sources. Like this fellow:
# Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: "That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation - which has a cooling effect. ... We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle."[20]
Or how about this one:
# William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University: "This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential."[23] "I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people."[24] "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thingâ"all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more."[25]
Or how about this contributor to the IPCC report:
# John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports: "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time."[49]
You don't have to look hard to find dissenting voices to the popular global warmist crowd. The fact that you seem to believe they don't exist gives evidence that you haven't even tried to seek opposing viewpoints. One is taken to wondering why.
Mitigation is insurance against risk in the face of uncertainty. There is uncertainty to the tune of several degrees in the climate projections, because our understanding of the climate isn't perfect. We take out insurance not because we're sure something bad is going to happen, but because we can't rule out something bad not happening.
I'll present you with the following situation: you have just ingested a cup of colorless, odorless, tasteless fluid which you believed to be water. Suddenly, three complete strangers run into the room. The first carries a syringe and says "I am an expert in poisons! You just drank a deadly poison! Inject yourself right now with this syringe or the poison will kill you in a month!"
The second stranger loudly interrupts, saying "No! I am an expert in poisons! That syringe contains the wrong antidote! If you take it, the antidote alone will kill or cripple you. But what *I* have in this syringe will save you if you inject yourself right now!"
The third stranger looks at the first two and says "I am an expert in poisons! These guys are lunatics. Both of their syringes contain chemicals that will harm or kill you. What you drank in the cup was plain water, completely harmless. You can safely ignore both of them."
Now, what do you do? You're presented with two opposing solutions, each claiming equal validity of curing the poison, and a third solution claiming there is no poison at all. Every choice you make is risky because there is no choice lacking a significant (perhaps even deadly) downside.
An intelligent person might conclude that the smartest thing to do would be to find out which one of them is right before doing anything at all. There is enough time (assuming you're poisoned in the first place) to get multiple doctors to test you and rule if you're poisoned and, if so, which antidote would be best. If your life really is in jeopardy, getting complete consensus from multiple reputable doctors should not be difficult.
Instead, you're suggesting that we do something in the hopes that (a) it's the right thing to do, (b) it's worth the cost, and (c) it isn't overlooking some crucial flaw that will cause even greater damage. You have not satisfied any of these criteria beyond a reasonable reproach. This is either because you can't or you won't. If you can't, you should consider your conclusion may be flawed. If you won't...well, don't feel to surprised if you don't get many converts to your "cause." What you don't understand is this: I am open to being convinced, but you lack credible evidence. Provide it and you'll have a convert, perhaps even a flock of them.
The premise of insurance is that it guarantees to protect you from a potential threat. You can't guarantee the threat but, and most importantly, you can't guarantee the insurance will actually protect against the potential threat. Indeed, if you're really wrong, implementing the insurance could exacerbate the situation. More study is needed. Why can't you admit that?
And here's some other good quotes for you to chew on. You know, from those disreputable sources like MIT:
# Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences: "We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 ÂC higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But â" and I cannot stress this enough â" we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future."[54] "[T]here has been no question whatsoever that CO2 is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas â" albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in CO2 should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed."[55]
Or how about this one from a guy who actually contributed to the IPCC report:
# John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports: "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time."[49]
Or how about this one from a minor, less-than-notable facility called Los Alamos National Labs:
# Petr Chylek, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory: "carbon dioxide should not be considered as a dominant force behind the current warming...how much of the [temperature] increase can be ascribed to CO2, to changes in solar activity, or to the natural variability of climate is uncertain"[50]
Yep, that about wraps it up! There are no notable, reputable, learned dissenting voices out there! It's just one big, happy, consensus-filled scientific community where all the heads are bobbing up and down at the same time!
I could go on, you know, but I'm tiring of pointing out what should be blatantly obvious to anyone who cares to do some objective Googling or other research on the subject. You have confined your knowledge of the subject to nothing more than that which already agrees with you. That is not science. That is dogma.
Warming would also take land out of agricultural production.
That was implied by my statement. It's rather obvious that warming would alter the farming landscape rather drastically. That said, my statement still stands: if you have to choose cooling or warming, warming is preferable. Neither would be pleasant, however.
And yours is compleat?
More complete than your spelling education, I see.
Even skeptics of human induced global warming admit the world is warming. Heck even President Bush said it was real.
It doesn't matter one whit to me what Bush -- or any other politician -- has said on the environment. Politicians speak mainly to gain political favor. Reality only occasionally intersects with what comes out of their mouths. Right now it's politically correct to mouth platitudes about the environment, so I would expect Bush, McCain, and Obama to spew such stuff on a regular basis. None of them, however, know a damned thing about the environment that their advisors -- both scientific and polticial -- haven't told them.
You seem oblivious to the fact that there is debate on whether we're headed for a long-term warming or cooling trend. Yes, we have been warming for a little while, but will it continue? There is data saying we could be headed for a long-term cooling very similar to the Little Ice Age despite an intermittent warming. Wikipedia has this to say on the last LIA:
It is generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals.[1]
No SUV's and coal-fired power plants back then dumping CO2 into the air, so why the warming/cooling fluctuations? Our current climate models cannot explain it, but it sure wasn't anthropocentric. And note how these "minor" fluctuations took decades to play out before the final Big Chill.
I'm not saying what we're going through now is identical. It could be we're on a road to sustained, anthropocentric warming. Then again, we might not. There is no hard data either way despite your protestations to the contrary. If you accept the fuzzy data saying we're on a long-term warming trend, then you must also accept the similarly-fuzzy data that says we're on a long-term cooling trend. Both have "facts" and data models backing them up. Both are obviously flawed models that could be off by a little, a lot, or not at all. You put too much faith in the warming models because you've decided that's what you want to believe. I, on the other hand, believe none of them. I demand more research and proof before we commit to a specific course of action.
Just as those who deny Global Warming is false is a decided minority. To me there's little difference, both discount or ignore facts. Yes, there are facts showing cooling in some places, but the world as a whole is warming.
And you aren't discounting or ignoring inconvenient facts as well? Quit being dishonest. There is evidence out there that contradicts your assumptions. Even the vaunted IPCC had to fiddle with their data to make it look like we're on a long-term warming trend. Is the world getting warmer? Yes, it has been for a little while, but for the last few years it's been cooling. The warming models don't say how or why this should happen. So will it continue to warm? Will it cool? Will it stabilize? Nobody knows, least of all you. Quit acting like you've got all the answers locked up tight in some unassailable data model. You don't. Nobody does. You, like everybody else, are guessing. The problem with your guessing is that you're unable to separate your personal desires and agenda from what should be a rational thought process, hence your dogmatic insistence that anyone questioning your conclusions must be an idiot.
Sadly for your argument, the three cases are not equally likely.
Sadly, for your argument you've provided no proof whatsoever to back up your claims.
Have you ever read anything ever published on the subject, Dr. Climate Economics?
Your sarcasm betrays your emotional involvement in what should be a rational argument. Yes, I have read quite a bit on the subject, but unlike you I've read arguments from both sides. Hence my skepticism. You appear to have sought out only that which reinforces your predefined belief, hence your ignorance and arrogance.
I hope you realize that climate trends sustained throughout most of a century are quite different from random weather events.
And I hope you realize that a model being used to predict weather trends -- your "climate change catastrophe" if you will -- ought to be reliable enough to predict past weather trends as well. But it doesn't. If you plug the data in for past decades, the outputs don't match with the weather we actually had. The model is either faulty, incomplete, or both, yet you wish to put it forth as the unquestioned -- and not-to-be-questioned -- gospel of truth. Any reasonable scientist must question such results and conclusions, yet curiously many do not. You've made it abundantly obvious which camp you're in.
That can be turned on it's head too. If Global Warming is true then many can die or become ill, forget about flooding of lowlands.
Very true. Unfortunately, you've not provided any furtherance of evidence either for or against the item at hand. Regardless of whether we do something or we do nothing, we could have a global warming, a global cooling, or no change at all. Climatologists have said, however, that an ice age would be more damaging than warming due to shorter growing cycles. Warming, for all its predicted deleterious effects, would potentially thaw out land that is currently unproductive for food crops. I'm not saying it would be nice (far from it), but warming is preferable to cooling if you had to choose the lesser of two evils.
I can't answer about the others
Again, I appreciate your comments but you're not offering anything to further the evidence for or against.
Why do people automatically assume doing something about Global Warming will hurt the global economy? Doing something about Global Warming can actually help the economy. Renewable energy can create a lot of well paying jobs.
I can see your economic education has been dismally incomplete. So renewable energy can create a lot of "well paying" jobs, eh? And who do you suppose pays the salaries of these well-paying jobs? Ah! Energy customers, that's who! That would be you and me. We'll pay far more for energy, meaning we'll have far less for other things like milk, cars, PC's, and just about every other consumer product known to man.
But wait, it gets better! All of those products will get more expensive as well since the companies producing them will have higher energy costs just like you and me. The end result is much higher prices for everything. This causes inflation and a slowing economy. If bad enough, it causes a recession. If really bad, it causes a Depression. Crumbling economies cause widespread poverty, disease, and human suffering.
And what of the trillions insurance companies can lose as well? How many billions will New Orleans cost? What about Texas? What about a volcanic eruption?
You're making the assumption that this climate change -- if it even exists -- is man-made, and that we also have the power to change it. Assuming that none of the above is true, we could cost ourselves trillions in higher energy costs and still pay trillions in insurance. Does that make any sense?
And methane farts, er burbs, aren't enough, on top of a melting North Pole and Greenland's glaciers?
No, it's not, because you're unable to prove this isn't some naturally-occurring event. Further, you're unable to prove that it's anything humanity can alter or deflect no matter what we do. If it is indeed natural, and if it is something we cannot avoid, I'd rather spend those billions (or trillions) on coping with the change rather than wasting them in fruitless attempts to either (a) alter the un-alterable or (b) alter that which isn't going to happen in the first place.
I bet even the day after you won't get 100% agreement, being afterwards, on the cause.
And I'm sure you're right. There are still people who believe the Earth is flat. Those people are a decided minority. Those who don't subscribe to the Church of Climate Change are neither irrational nor a minority. If we're so darned sure this whole "climate change" is coming, where is the hard evidence? For every "melting North Pole" and "Greenland glacier" there's another story about a record snowfall, or a record winter, or some other similar-but-opposite climate phenomena. If you choose to look only for that which confirms your belief, you will not see evidence to the contrary. I see evidence for and against. Both seems convincing. Both cannot be right. Until one is proven, I'm withholding my judgment.
Mitigating climate change doesn't require you to be personally bankrupted or for the global economy to be ruined.
Then why do I keep getting asked to completely change my lifestyle and to spend vast sums of money to buy more expensive "carbon neutral" products? Everything you suggest has a cost involved that is in excess of the current economic model. The only demonstrable return for these higher prices is the nebulous claim that it will somehow prevent unwanted climactic change. It won't bankrupt me, but it would cost me more and give me nothing new in return unless it averts climate catastrophe. Since the catastrophe has not been proven to exist, I see no value it this entire concept.
That's not really true, it's an example of the success of the denialist publicity machine.
I find it amazingly funny that you attribute any dissent to the "denialist publicity machine" and then turn right around and cite (of all things) the IPCC report. This report has been called into question not just by crackpots but by reputable climatologists from many countries and backgrounds. Although I'm loathe to quote Wikipedia as a source of information, the page on the IPCC has a wonderful synopsis of IPCC criticisms. Suffice to say, the IPCC had significant political meddling involved. The results are circumspect precisely because of that.
On the other hand, there is nobody respected and reputable who is seriously claiming that we are going to enter a new Little Ice Age.
I'll quote Terrence Joyce, Senior Scientist, Physical Oceanography and
Lloyd Keigwin, Senior Scientist, Geology & Geophysics:
These is just the first one I could come up with and I didn't even look hard. So I guess WHOI is considered unreputable and unrespected by you, huh?
That's what the peer reviewed literature is for. It's already out there. People have been working on the relative attribution of natural and anthropogenic climate changes for decades now. Go into the IPCC AR4 WG1 report for a massive collection of references to studies.
And I'll again point out to you the assumptions and data involved in the IPCC report have been called into serious question by noted climatologists. The IPCC has declined to even address their concerns. The IPCC also completely ignores the fact that their own models used to predict this coming catastrophe cannot account for past weather trends, nor can it account for the current cooling trend we are now experiencing. An objective scientist would conclude that we know too little about the climate -- that there are too many variables and even unknown variables -- for us to accurately predict the doom you say is a foregone conclusion. Yet you insist your predictions are the utter truth in spite of your inability to prove it. Instead, you merely denounce detractors as part of some conspiracy.
I'll again demand what should be easy to
The fact that most Americans think this is funny is the problem. "If you do anything about global warming, you'll hurt my portfolio."
No, you miss the point entirely. Although I'm sure there are a number of completely irrational people out there who do meet your description, the vast, overwhelming majority of Americans (or Republicans, if you prefer to further subdivide) do not.
That rational group merely says this: I don't want my portfolio destroyed unless it absolutely must be destroyed to stop some life-threatening catastrophe. I worked hard for my savings and I want to enjoy it. It follows that if something horrible might happen that could prevent me from enjoying it (i.e. global catastrophe) then I'd be predisposed to address it regardless of the cost.
I would spend every dime I had (and then work hard to earn more dimes) to defeat climate change if it were a provable fact. Instead, we have several camps, each trying to outshout the other. We have one camp saying it's getting warmer and humanity is to blame. We have another camp saying it's getting warmer but it's not man-made. We have another camp saying it's not getting warmer at all, that we're headed for another Little Ice Age in the coming decades. There are plenty of shades in between, but the point is that there are respected, reputable scientists on practically all sides of this issue. Each points to his or her data and says "See! What I'm saying is true, and everyone else is lying!" This does not engender confidence. You may claim that your pet theory is the One True Way. I say that if you've got unequivocal, unassailable, undeniable, verifiable data proving something, you ought to speak up because nobody else on the planet does. I'll point out that even the most esteemed minds on the planet -- far better equipped than you or I to analyze such things -- have been unable to put this issue to bed, so I don't have much hope that you'll change that.
There are some that say "we can't wait for proof, we should do something now and worry about proof later." There are multiple problems with this idea. First, and most alarming, is what if we are headed for another Little Ice Age? If so, all this "carbon footprint" nonsense would be turned on its head. We'd need to produce more carbon to head off global cooling. Wouldn't you feel like a complete fool if all of humanity cut back on carbon emissions and exacerbated a cooling trend? Billions could die if this were to come true.
Second, what if warming isn't man-made? What if the planet is getting warmer due to solar activity, or planetary magnetic fields flipping, or any of the other non-anthropocentric theories? You could argue reducing CO2 might make this less impactful, but what if nothing we do has any meaningful effect? Ruining a global economy (or even a national one) might be worth it if there was a positive climactic change, but it's certainly not worth it if there is no measurable effect.
I'm not terrified of dying poor. I'm terrified of living poor for no good reason. Again, I put it to you that if you've got proof that some drastic climactic change is headed this way, and the only way to avoid it is to wreck an economy, I'm all for it. Until then, I'm not going to wreck anything that I've worked hard for when there's no benefit to doing so.
Carl Sagan famously said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." You're claiming something extraordinary is on the way and that I should take extraordinary measures to offset it. I'm asking for extraordinary proof. Submit it. While you're at it, submit a counter-argument to those who disagree with you, one that contains a point-by-point proof of where their models fail. Submit it for rigorous peer review. When you've got it to the point where no reputable, knowledgeable climatologist will disagree with it, I'm on board. Such consensus is not impossible. You just need to have unassailable evidence. The lack of just that is what keeps people like me on the fence, not greed or avarice.