So what about that "gets" you? Supernatural by definition needs not be observable. What gets me are the natural conclusions supposedly justified by this supernatural being, like that God considers homosexual behavior to be a sin (not to mention the concept of sin in the first place) or that humanity can continue to multiply exponentially because God will end the game before too many people become a serious problem.
Maybe we shouldn't be able to buy a lawnmower at 3am?
Any reason why shopping for a lawnmower at 3am somehow is a moral quandary? What is so magical about that time that we should keep people from shopping for lawnmowers?
Greed drives extra hours, plain and simple. If it was a shopkeep deciding to keep his store open to let folks buy stuff on his own time that's one thing but that's now how it is, it's some employer deciding to keep doors open all the time to get that extra X percent of revenue. The people who decide the hours don't work them.
Something has to keep those shops open to provide us with valuable services. "Out of the goodness of their hearts" doesn't work.
I make it a point not to patronize businesses open when they shouldn't be
And I make it a point of not having my code of morality decree when a shop should be open.
Because a hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon.
Here's the phenomenon is "Guy" seeing a bunch of white swans and not (yet) seeing a black swan. If you're going to be a pedant, please be a correct pedant.
I find your supposed observations about "denialist logic" particularly absurd, since I supported my original argument with evidence while you have yet to present anything other than weak insults.
Seriously, learn to research and debate. You wouldn't have presented the argument you did, if you had done even a little research and questioning.
The bit about oyster spat (the young) die-offs due to ocean acidification is particularly bad since seriously, it's probably been going on for millions of years. We just haven't noticed it until fairly recently. The problem here is not that the ocean is acidic, but that it is far more acidic than can be explained by human CO2 emissions.
But what does explain suddenly acidic ocean waters? Undersea volcanism - which has probably been causing local ocean acidification for millions of years.
There's no hypothesis involved, for one thing, just a statement which happens in this example to be false.
So why do you think the hypothesis, "All swans are white" is not a hypothesis? And "simple observation" is how you go about evaluating hypotheses though they usually are a bit more rigorous and take more effort to carry out than in the example of the grandparent.
There already is climate change. Acidic oceans making shell formation difficult to impossible for baby clams in the NW coastal areas, species migration to higher elevations, entire forests decimated by insects that don't die due to global warming.
Acidic oceans has been a problem in the pacific northwest of the US long before someone thought to blame climate change for it. Species have been migrating to higher elevations for ten thousand years. And there wouldn't be that decimation of forests without those invasive species - which is not a climate change-related issue.
This is a typical case of confirmation bias. Find a bunch of bad things happening (some which have happened probably for millions of years as in the case of the local ocean acidification) and blame it on a nebulous "climate change".
It helps if the tragedy of the commons problem is actually a real problem.
We can, however, use more energy by burning inexpensive fuel which consumes O2 and releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and we don't, as individuals or as companies, have to pay for that "externality".
What's the amount of that "externality" per gallon? Is it a few pennies or a few dollars? And if people pay for the externality and still drive, what is it to you?
Adapt is the obvious choice. I think it's a huge indication of the collective head-in-ass thinking about climate change debate that adaptation was allowed to be rhetorically ruled out from the beginning by the parties that had the most to gain from exaggerating the effects of global warming.
Are we honestly worried that someone will be unable to move out of their home in a few centuries (even though the people and the home will likely be gone long before any such need to adapt would occur)? Or that societies that can move their populations every five years and rebuild every building they have in thirty, somehow can't move people around to avoid serious harm from climate effects that take centuries to manifest?
As to agriculture, global warming actually results in an increase in arable land (due to the warming of the northern hemisphere). And one of the greatest food crop reductions of recent years (including droughts and such) came from subsidizing US corn production for biofuels (with carbon dioxide emission reduction being one of the flimsy rationalizations for implementing this program).
I think here the challenge won't be adapting to climate change. It will be noticing climate change.
That never stopped being important. There's just two things people tend to forget. First, they have yet to demonstrate a serious threat to said climate (or from ocean acidification for that matter). Second, climate is not the only thing I consider important.
A good way to keep a few billion people from starving to death is to have a few billion less people in the future. We're starting to get population levels under control, so we're on the right path as long as we never, ever follow the advice of the nutball economists suggesting we should increase poopulation levels to keep their silly game running (I guess we need more unemployed people?).
And that's one place where modern CO2-belching civilization helps big time. Every bit of increasing technology and wealth results in lower human fertility. Native populations of most of the developed world reproduce at below replacement rate.
If you're going to replace that with something "greener", you need to consider whether you will destroy that advantage in the process. For example, a global carbon emissions reduction scheme that creates a huge pile of high fertility poor people isn't going to work.
I did say removing tax exemptions and subsidies for fossil fuels.
Well, that gets into a new area of debate. Most of the parties which pay subsidies for oil are OPEC countries which have little interest in stopping such payments. In comparison, your average developed world country just isn't kicking that much out in subsidy. Most of the remaining subsidies are of the sort given to similar industries (such as the accelerated depreciation schedule given to resource extract industries, for example). I include the US military-industrial complex in that - which is really a subsidy for defense rent-seekers than oil producers.
Then there are the fantasy numbers attached to the alleged environmental harm of petroleum. Sure, if oil really did have a huge global warming externality attached to it, then yes, you could reasonably consider that akin to subsidy.
I don't consider complaints about petroleum subsidies very serious, when they ignore both that much of the alleged subsidies are either outside the control of the country they reside in or imaginary.
No point having a nicer climate for a little while as we set the stage for an oceanic mass extinction.
Because we have nothing better to do? Like keep a few billion people from starving to death? Or managing an industrial civilization through a difficult time for a few centuries? Or merely to have a nicer place to live?
There's plenty of reasons to have a nicer climate, even if you choose not to recognize those reasons.
No, investment implies a CHANCE to positive return.
Not different enough to matter for this discussion.
That's not going to pay the bills especially when you have a better funded opposition playing the same game.
...and here you are, attributing so much to the mystical power of money. Amusing.
It's a context-based argument. Even if you happen to have a viewpoint that puts undue emphasis on the power of money, you have to explain why the Koch brothers' money goes so far, but not money spent by various governments and NGOs.
If your forecasts are garbage, then it's a bad idea to use that forecast for "making good decisions" (which actually aren't). I think that sums up the current state of climate modeling.
Investment implies positive return - getting more out than you put in. All I see here is vague talk about how the Koch brothers are gaining "political power". That's not going to pay the bills especially when you have a better funded opposition playing the same game.
You find pictures and videos of the said floods, hurricanes and so on, dead and displaced people and comparisons made by scientists to be inadmissible as evidence?
Of course, I find them inadmissible. You should too. Storms and such will continue to happen even if they are growing less frequent rather than more frequent. Evidence distinguishes between theories. The above information doesn't do that.
OTOH, "comparisons made by scientists" is so profound nebulous and unscientific a term, that it doesn't even qualify as information. I can find "comparisons made by scientists" to "prove" a huge variety of conspiracy theories or pseudoscience theories. That's in fact a standard tool of the trade to add a veneer of authority to all sorts of crazy assertions.
I already figured that out long ago - modern medicine and public sanitation are wonderful things. I'm more interested in this huge piece of evidence which runs counter to your assertion that there are more catastrophes "on a global scale".
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So what about that "gets" you? Supernatural by definition needs not be observable. What gets me are the natural conclusions supposedly justified by this supernatural being, like that God considers homosexual behavior to be a sin (not to mention the concept of sin in the first place) or that humanity can continue to multiply exponentially because God will end the game before too many people become a serious problem.
I doubt it. For example, there's UFOs and New Age crystal healing.
Maybe we shouldn't be able to buy a lawnmower at 3am?
Any reason why shopping for a lawnmower at 3am somehow is a moral quandary? What is so magical about that time that we should keep people from shopping for lawnmowers?
A good economy is one that maximizes productivity while helping workers find a work-life balance.
Real life is way ahead of you. The reason most workers don't have "work-life balance" is because they don't want it as much as they want other things.
Greed drives extra hours, plain and simple. If it was a shopkeep deciding to keep his store open to let folks buy stuff on his own time that's one thing but that's now how it is, it's some employer deciding to keep doors open all the time to get that extra X percent of revenue. The people who decide the hours don't work them.
Something has to keep those shops open to provide us with valuable services. "Out of the goodness of their hearts" doesn't work.
I make it a point not to patronize businesses open when they shouldn't be
And I make it a point of not having my code of morality decree when a shop should be open.
I like how "it works" means "a study of a hypothetical situation which confirms my biases".
Because a hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon.
Here's the phenomenon is "Guy" seeing a bunch of white swans and not (yet) seeing a black swan. If you're going to be a pedant, please be a correct pedant.
I find your supposed observations about "denialist logic" particularly absurd, since I supported my original argument with evidence while you have yet to present anything other than weak insults.
Seriously, learn to research and debate. You wouldn't have presented the argument you did, if you had done even a little research and questioning.
The bit about oyster spat (the young) die-offs due to ocean acidification is particularly bad since seriously, it's probably been going on for millions of years. We just haven't noticed it until fairly recently. The problem here is not that the ocean is acidic, but that it is far more acidic than can be explained by human CO2 emissions.
But what does explain suddenly acidic ocean waters? Undersea volcanism - which has probably been causing local ocean acidification for millions of years.
So why do you think the hypothesis, "All swans are white" is not a hypothesis? And "simple observation" is how you go about evaluating hypotheses though they usually are a bit more rigorous and take more effort to carry out than in the example of the grandparent.
There already is climate change. Acidic oceans making shell formation difficult to impossible for baby clams in the NW coastal areas, species migration to higher elevations, entire forests decimated by insects that don't die due to global warming.
Acidic oceans has been a problem in the pacific northwest of the US long before someone thought to blame climate change for it. Species have been migrating to higher elevations for ten thousand years. And there wouldn't be that decimation of forests without those invasive species - which is not a climate change-related issue.
This is a typical case of confirmation bias. Find a bunch of bad things happening (some which have happened probably for millions of years as in the case of the local ocean acidification) and blame it on a nebulous "climate change".
But keep denying it, if you want.
Or rather because anything nuclear in the US has been blocked for several decades.
We can, however, use more energy by burning inexpensive fuel which consumes O2 and releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and we don't, as individuals or as companies, have to pay for that "externality".
What's the amount of that "externality" per gallon? Is it a few pennies or a few dollars? And if people pay for the externality and still drive, what is it to you?
Or we could just realize that "proof" in empirical science means something different than it does in pure mathematics.
Adapt is the obvious choice. I think it's a huge indication of the collective head-in-ass thinking about climate change debate that adaptation was allowed to be rhetorically ruled out from the beginning by the parties that had the most to gain from exaggerating the effects of global warming.
Are we honestly worried that someone will be unable to move out of their home in a few centuries (even though the people and the home will likely be gone long before any such need to adapt would occur)? Or that societies that can move their populations every five years and rebuild every building they have in thirty, somehow can't move people around to avoid serious harm from climate effects that take centuries to manifest?
As to agriculture, global warming actually results in an increase in arable land (due to the warming of the northern hemisphere). And one of the greatest food crop reductions of recent years (including droughts and such) came from subsidizing US corn production for biofuels (with carbon dioxide emission reduction being one of the flimsy rationalizations for implementing this program).
I think here the challenge won't be adapting to climate change. It will be noticing climate change.
Oh so now the climate's really important to you?
That never stopped being important. There's just two things people tend to forget. First, they have yet to demonstrate a serious threat to said climate (or from ocean acidification for that matter). Second, climate is not the only thing I consider important.
A good way to keep a few billion people from starving to death is to have a few billion less people in the future. We're starting to get population levels under control, so we're on the right path as long as we never, ever follow the advice of the nutball economists suggesting we should increase poopulation levels to keep their silly game running (I guess we need more unemployed people?).
And that's one place where modern CO2-belching civilization helps big time. Every bit of increasing technology and wealth results in lower human fertility. Native populations of most of the developed world reproduce at below replacement rate.
If you're going to replace that with something "greener", you need to consider whether you will destroy that advantage in the process. For example, a global carbon emissions reduction scheme that creates a huge pile of high fertility poor people isn't going to work.
I did say removing tax exemptions and subsidies for fossil fuels.
Well, that gets into a new area of debate. Most of the parties which pay subsidies for oil are OPEC countries which have little interest in stopping such payments. In comparison, your average developed world country just isn't kicking that much out in subsidy. Most of the remaining subsidies are of the sort given to similar industries (such as the accelerated depreciation schedule given to resource extract industries, for example). I include the US military-industrial complex in that - which is really a subsidy for defense rent-seekers than oil producers.
Then there are the fantasy numbers attached to the alleged environmental harm of petroleum. Sure, if oil really did have a huge global warming externality attached to it, then yes, you could reasonably consider that akin to subsidy.
I don't consider complaints about petroleum subsidies very serious, when they ignore both that much of the alleged subsidies are either outside the control of the country they reside in or imaginary.
No point having a nicer climate for a little while as we set the stage for an oceanic mass extinction.
Because we have nothing better to do? Like keep a few billion people from starving to death? Or managing an industrial civilization through a difficult time for a few centuries? Or merely to have a nicer place to live?
There's plenty of reasons to have a nicer climate, even if you choose not to recognize those reasons.
No, investment implies a CHANCE to positive return.
Not different enough to matter for this discussion.
If your forecasts are garbage, then it's a bad idea to use that forecast for "making good decisions" (which actually aren't). I think that sums up the current state of climate modeling.
Investment implies positive return - getting more out than you put in. All I see here is vague talk about how the Koch brothers are gaining "political power". That's not going to pay the bills especially when you have a better funded opposition playing the same game.
Unless global warming doesn't end up being that big a problem. Then we don't even need to start your two step program. "Simple".
I think it's more status signalling via a really expensive hobby. I doubt "OMG the Koch brothers are corrupting our emails!" is an investment.
You find pictures and videos of the said floods, hurricanes and so on, dead and displaced people and comparisons made by scientists to be inadmissible as evidence?
Of course, I find them inadmissible. You should too. Storms and such will continue to happen even if they are growing less frequent rather than more frequent. Evidence distinguishes between theories. The above information doesn't do that.
OTOH, "comparisons made by scientists" is so profound nebulous and unscientific a term, that it doesn't even qualify as information. I can find "comparisons made by scientists" to "prove" a huge variety of conspiracy theories or pseudoscience theories. That's in fact a standard tool of the trade to add a veneer of authority to all sorts of crazy assertions.
I already figured that out long ago - modern medicine and public sanitation are wonderful things. I'm more interested in this huge piece of evidence which runs counter to your assertion that there are more catastrophes "on a global scale".