It is a simple fact that there is more money in denialism
Is it really? I don't know. Considering how much of the world's energy is provided by fossil fuels, I'd say the potential to make money by switching people to "green" energy and all the associated carbon-reducing technology is very high. Not to mention the power to control people that forcing compliance with expensive new rules provides.
Oh, the good ol' "I didn't mean what I said, I meant what I meant" defense.
Or you're saying the "fact" that he's an idiot is irrelevant. Ok, cool. I don't understand why you said it, but oh well, sometimes your fingers go faster than your brain.
Wait, he's illiterate too? He can't read? Oh, I guess he's using an amanuensis, then. Either that or your words really are meaningless. In which case, you just poisoned your own well.
You're an idiot. The human-made factor in the current climate change is a measurable, empirical fact. The only to explain it away is to come up with a different mechanism, and explain why it would overwhelm the effect of human-contributed CO2 concentration increases.
"...about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun.” --Nicola Scafetta, Duke University
If we assume that CO2 was the sole cause of warming in the last 130 years and nothing else was going on
No one is claiming this. There's a reason why these models take very large compute clusters to run: they have a huge number of variables and input data from a very large number of experimental inputs.
Is that like a reverse strawman there? The IPCC is indeed claiming that 90-100% of global warming is anthropogenic.
Oh, well, they use a "huge" number of variables, so their models must be correct.
Except that the lead author of the IPCC report said their model doesn't match reality for the last 20 years.
By statistical modeling correlated to rising CO2 that shows trend lines antithetical to Global Warming modeling predictions. You'll need a large data sampling to reduce sensitivity to individual weather events. There's a reason such statistical modeling hasn't been done yet -- the data doesn't correlate antithetically to Global Warming models.
Oh, is that why the lead author of the IPCC report said explicitly that their models don't match reality over the last 20 years?
That infinitesimally small number of scientists that aren't part of the "consensus" by and large don't disagree with the data, just the cause.
Not only are you wrong about the number of scientists, but you take it upon yourself to speak for them, as well. Do you even know about the lies behind the "consensus"?
And they all failed to prove Einstein wrong, in the same way everyone who has tried to prove the climate models (fundamentally) wrong have failed.
Oh, is that why the lead author of the IPCC report explicitly said that their models don't match reality over the last 20 years? Reality has proven the models wrong. But I'm the one in denial, sticking my head in the sand.
For what reason would there be? If that were the case you suddenly have two new problems to find explanations for: 1) There would have to be a mechanism that can cause sudden spikes in the Earth's energy exchange at a planetary scale, other than greenhouse gases; and 2) You need to find a reason why the current increase in greenhouse gases, which should have exactly that (heating) effect based on pretty basic physics, for some reason doesn't.
“What my papers say is that the IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun.” --physicist Nicola Scaffeta, Duke University
Wow, I bet a lot of gullible people fell for that bait and switch you pulled there. "Einstein's theory of relativity was right, and the idea that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is older than that, so it must be true that we're heating ourselves to death!"
Thing is, the "consensus" is a myth. The real consensus is that we don't know whether AGW is real. A minority of scientists believe it's real. The "consensus" is among those that believe it's real--they believe there's a consensus. Just read up on the study by Cook, et al. and see how they completely rigged the numbers, and even planned to doctor their raw data before they began.
But consensus matters not, anyway. Science is not about consensus. Science is about reproducible results, about proof. Opinions are not proof. Truth is truth whether anyone knows it or believes it or not.
Your entire post is basically "but what if they're WRONG!?", to which the answer is... We'd have reduced pollution dramatically, we'd have pushed cleaner, less dangerous, more stable and more forward-looking energy sources. Well shit, that's really a terrible situation we'd be in. It'd be completely useless without CO2 being the evil gas we currently posit it to be.
Or we'd have bankrupted nations that currently have a high standard of living, forcing billions into poverty, and crippling all the research and development toward cleaner technology that these nations currently do, while shifting CO2 production to developing nations like China that don't care and have an even greater potential to pollute in all sorts of nasty ways when their GDP per capita catches up. You think they care? Do you have to wear masks to walk downtown? They do.
We're all on this planet together. If you really want to fix pollution, you have to get everyone in on it. Or, you know, convince entire nations to give up electricity and automobiles. You first.
Many of these models (such as CO2 PPM, temperature) are being based around data that we haven't verified to be accurate because we weren't actually there to measure it proper thousands or millions of years ago (wherever the data points come from.) Ice cores in particular, because ice cores can actually lose data during hot periods (the ice can sublimate.) This means we could have periods just like the ones we are in now where there's a sudden heat spike, followed by cooling, and what we're seeing now may even be something that happens all the time. And on the subject of ice, there's been a lot of alarmism about major glaciers and whatnot melting away, but how many times has this happened in the past, and they end up returning just like this, but nobody was there to actually record it?
Stop being reasonable! There's no time for that! We have to do something! NOW!
As an environmentalist (she worked as an environmentalist involved in carbon trading) explained to me, it doesn't matter if CO2 doesn't turn out to be a problem, because by cutting CO2 you force a reduction in production, and a reduction in consumption. Then she added with emphasis, "it's about reducing greed."
Wait, you mean CAGW is about controlling people? No way!
We know, pretty much, since the mid-1800s (starting with Fourier) what effect that CO2 will have on our atmosphere. We monitor it both in amount and radioisotope and it matches expectations pretty much spot on.
Nope. CO2 levels and temperature do not always correlate as one might expect. And the lead author of the IPCC reports has explicitly said that their models do not match reality over the last 20 years. Are you lying or ignorant?
Another big difference: Christian "fundamentalists" (ignoring for the moment the inherent problem with such generalizations and labels) don't believe that non-believers must be exterminated. Jesus's command is to love your enemies, not hate them and kill them.
Clearly you think the real problem is too many people, but we have other related problems that a carbon tax would address. For instance, it should provide an economic incentive for making changes and performing research that reduces the population's impact on the planet.
Who's going to pay for those changes and research?
Educating them to what? Stop having sex? Or are you going to give them free condoms? Who's going to pay for those?
Educating them to stop having family members who can help earn a living? Or should they just have two kids and not be able to do enough work to survive? What about when their children die young?
Does your data still pass through the USA? The UK? Sheesh, now your data is no longer domestic, so you're even more of a target. Way to go.
Germany is hardly a nation that holds freedom of speech in high regard. Plenty of types of speech are illegal there. And who knows, maybe they're worse than the NSA but haven't had a whistleblower yet.
The bottom line hasn't changed: either use strong encryption or assume your Internet traffic isn't truly private. And any data out of your physical control isn't under your control.
You're drinking the coolaid. The US Library of Congress doesn't even know how many laws there are much less what they may be. The people who create the tax code have no idea how to follow it. You have to devote your career to the tax code to have even a reasonable understanding of it. Just given those 2 pretty much everyone in the US is a criminal.
I think that argument can work both ways. If they don't know the laws, they can't enforce them. Yeah, maybe if one of them wanted you in jail so badly he could find some random law you broke. But that's less of a worry than them simply declaring you to be a terrorist or national security risk and detaining you without charges. They don't need to find a law for you to have broken to do that.
And the NSA is busy collecting all the evidence and then secretly giving it to the police to use against you when ever they want. Sure you can protest as long as you only do within the Government mandated restrictions. Step out of those bounds and you're off to jail.
Eh, you're exaggerating and generalizing. The NSA is certainly not piping data to local police departments--they aren't even part of the same governments. And even the FBI won't get anything from them without having specifically targeted someone. Don't forget how incompetent and inefficient most of the government is, especially inter-agency. Not that I'm excusing them, but I think these specific fears are unjustified.
Besides, I really think they just don't care about J. Random Citizen complaining on the street or on the Internet. That's not a threat to them. They're more likely to feel threatened by journalists, as we have seen.
That we can have this conversation without fear of retribution at all is testament to that fact.
I can't find it at the moment but just yesterday I was reading an article that the Chinese government allows people to talk and complain about the government as much as they want. As long as it's just talk. Once actions start any dissent is oppressed. This bares a striking resemblance to what happened with the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was all good and fine until people actually started doing something. Then the peaceful protest were forcible oppressed. You have just enough freedom to keep you in line. If you get out of line those freedoms all go away.
Wish I had time to write more but I'm on lunch.
More generalizing. The U.S. governments (yes, plural) are not the Chinese government. And you're generalizing the OWS thing as well. Most of the people who participated were not oppressed or arrested. Those that were were not harassed by federal agents but by the NYPD. I don't think they take orders from the FBI--at least, not to do mass arrests. And besides, some of those who were arrested may have actually broken laws and ignored warnings. Just stop generalizing; it doesn't help rational discussion.
I think that would be as legally binding as saying, "If I'm lying, you can shoot me." If someone then found out you were lying and shot you, he'd still be guilty of murder. "Perjury" isn't a magic word you can use in an incantation to invoke special powers.
To everyone who actually has the authority to affect policy change on what software is being used in places that actually matter(and that will NEVER be you as long as you can't understand this), this open source guy looks like a toxic waste dump. Him and his products need to be avoided, lest we be associated with someone so shamelessly lacking in professionalism. You can hate the rules, but that won't change them.
Interesting. Is that why Linux is used by and in, e.g. Intel, Google, Yahoo, Android, NYSE, NASDAQ, airplanes, spaceships, cars, trucks, TVs...need I go on? Apparently all of those places aren't familiar with your rules.
What you meant to say is that clueless PHBs who "never got fired for using Microsoft" and don't have a clue who Linus Torvalds actually is would not want to use his software if they heard him say something like that. And that's why they are not Intel, Google, Yahoo, Android, NYSE...
The Democrats do a better job of balancing the budget? Is that what happens when you enact massive government spending and entitlement programs?
I won't argue that many Republicans have helped enact massive military spending, and NSA-type programs--it's not a case of one party being good and the other being evil--but there are actually some Republicans who favor small government and want to decrease the size of the government; they actually are calling for fiscal responsibility.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't recall having heard many Democrats advocating reducing spending and closing departments of the federal government.
It's my impression that Democrats actually pander to the lower-class masses by raising taxes on the other classes and creating entitlement programs that benefit the poor. I don't think that makes "an economy that works for the middle class."
If you really want freedom, advocate small government (especially at the federal level), lower taxes (which limits the powers of government), and returning power to the states (which brings representation and accountability closer to the people).
4) Obamacare - I wish we could smack people upside the head that talk about it and haven't read it. Anyways, ultimately it will be a savings. Not the healthcare plan I want, but a lot better the what we have now.
You mean like the people who voted for it? And aren't you one of those people, too? Or have you read all of its thousands of pages?
Please explain to me how putting people out of work and forcing people to give up existing health insurance--which is happening right now, before the program even goes into effect--will ultimately be a savings.
Even the congressmen who introduced the bill have said it's like an out-of-control train wreck! I suppose you know better than they do?
I agree that Gilmore's hypotheses aren't proof, per se. However, in light of recent revelations, I think the NSA is less credible than he is. His comments deserve serious consideration.
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It is a simple fact that there is more money in denialism
Is it really? I don't know. Considering how much of the world's energy is provided by fossil fuels, I'd say the potential to make money by switching people to "green" energy and all the associated carbon-reducing technology is very high. Not to mention the power to control people that forcing compliance with expensive new rules provides.
Oh, the good ol' "I didn't mean what I said, I meant what I meant" defense.
Or you're saying the "fact" that he's an idiot is irrelevant. Ok, cool. I don't understand why you said it, but oh well, sometimes your fingers go faster than your brain.
Wait, he's illiterate too? He can't read? Oh, I guess he's using an amanuensis, then. Either that or your words really are meaningless. In which case, you just poisoned your own well.
You're an idiot. The human-made factor in the current climate change is a measurable, empirical fact. The only to explain it away is to come up with a different mechanism, and explain why it would overwhelm the effect of human-contributed CO2 concentration increases.
"...about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun.” --Nicola Scafetta, Duke University
Never mind, I must be an idiot.
If we assume that CO2 was the sole cause of warming in the last 130 years and nothing else was going on
No one is claiming this. There's a reason why these models take very large compute clusters to run: they have a huge number of variables and input data from a very large number of experimental inputs.
Is that like a reverse strawman there? The IPCC is indeed claiming that 90-100% of global warming is anthropogenic.
Oh, well, they use a "huge" number of variables, so their models must be correct.
Except that the lead author of the IPCC report said their model doesn't match reality for the last 20 years.
But I'm just in denial.
I do not think 40 years qualifies as a significant trend.
Over what time scale? Oh, wow, forty years! That clearly proves that we are soon going to heat ourselves to extinction.
By statistical modeling correlated to rising CO2 that shows trend lines antithetical to Global Warming modeling predictions. You'll need a large data sampling to reduce sensitivity to individual weather events. There's a reason such statistical modeling hasn't been done yet -- the data doesn't correlate antithetically to Global Warming models.
Oh, is that why the lead author of the IPCC report said explicitly that their models don't match reality over the last 20 years?
That infinitesimally small number of scientists that aren't part of the "consensus" by and large don't disagree with the data, just the cause.
Not only are you wrong about the number of scientists, but you take it upon yourself to speak for them, as well. Do you even know about the lies behind the "consensus"?
And they all failed to prove Einstein wrong, in the same way everyone who has tried to prove the climate models (fundamentally) wrong have failed.
Oh, is that why the lead author of the IPCC report explicitly said that their models don't match reality over the last 20 years? Reality has proven the models wrong. But I'm the one in denial, sticking my head in the sand.
For what reason would there be? If that were the case you suddenly have two new problems to find explanations for: 1) There would have to be a mechanism that can cause sudden spikes in the Earth's energy exchange at a planetary scale, other than greenhouse gases; and 2) You need to find a reason why the current increase in greenhouse gases, which should have exactly that (heating) effect based on pretty basic physics, for some reason doesn't.
Oh, I don't know, maybe the sun?
“What my papers say is that the IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun.” --physicist Nicola Scaffeta, Duke University
Wow, I bet a lot of gullible people fell for that bait and switch you pulled there. "Einstein's theory of relativity was right, and the idea that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is older than that, so it must be true that we're heating ourselves to death!"
Thing is, the "consensus" is a myth. The real consensus is that we don't know whether AGW is real. A minority of scientists believe it's real. The "consensus" is among those that believe it's real--they believe there's a consensus. Just read up on the study by Cook, et al. and see how they completely rigged the numbers, and even planned to doctor their raw data before they began.
But consensus matters not, anyway. Science is not about consensus. Science is about reproducible results, about proof. Opinions are not proof. Truth is truth whether anyone knows it or believes it or not.
Your entire post is basically "but what if they're WRONG!?", to which the answer is... We'd have reduced pollution dramatically, we'd have pushed cleaner, less dangerous, more stable and more forward-looking energy sources. Well shit, that's really a terrible situation we'd be in. It'd be completely useless without CO2 being the evil gas we currently posit it to be.
Or we'd have bankrupted nations that currently have a high standard of living, forcing billions into poverty, and crippling all the research and development toward cleaner technology that these nations currently do, while shifting CO2 production to developing nations like China that don't care and have an even greater potential to pollute in all sorts of nasty ways when their GDP per capita catches up. You think they care? Do you have to wear masks to walk downtown? They do.
We're all on this planet together. If you really want to fix pollution, you have to get everyone in on it. Or, you know, convince entire nations to give up electricity and automobiles. You first.
Many of these models (such as CO2 PPM, temperature) are being based around data that we haven't verified to be accurate because we weren't actually there to measure it proper thousands or millions of years ago (wherever the data points come from.) Ice cores in particular, because ice cores can actually lose data during hot periods (the ice can sublimate.) This means we could have periods just like the ones we are in now where there's a sudden heat spike, followed by cooling, and what we're seeing now may even be something that happens all the time. And on the subject of ice, there's been a lot of alarmism about major glaciers and whatnot melting away, but how many times has this happened in the past, and they end up returning just like this, but nobody was there to actually record it?
Stop being reasonable! There's no time for that! We have to do something! NOW!
As an environmentalist (she worked as an environmentalist involved in carbon trading) explained to me, it doesn't matter if CO2 doesn't turn out to be a problem, because by cutting CO2 you force a reduction in production, and a reduction in consumption. Then she added with emphasis, "it's about reducing greed."
Wait, you mean CAGW is about controlling people? No way!
We know, pretty much, since the mid-1800s (starting with Fourier) what effect that CO2 will have on our atmosphere. We monitor it both in amount and radioisotope and it matches expectations pretty much spot on.
Nope. CO2 levels and temperature do not always correlate as one might expect. And the lead author of the IPCC reports has explicitly said that their models do not match reality over the last 20 years. Are you lying or ignorant?
Another big difference: Christian "fundamentalists" (ignoring for the moment the inherent problem with such generalizations and labels) don't believe that non-believers must be exterminated. Jesus's command is to love your enemies, not hate them and kill them.
How? What kind of harm?
Clearly you think the real problem is too many people, but we have other related problems that a carbon tax would address. For instance, it should provide an economic incentive for making changes and performing research that reduces the population's impact on the planet.
Who's going to pay for those changes and research?
Educating them to what? Stop having sex? Or are you going to give them free condoms? Who's going to pay for those?
Educating them to stop having family members who can help earn a living? Or should they just have two kids and not be able to do enough work to survive? What about when their children die young?
Does your data still pass through the USA? The UK? Sheesh, now your data is no longer domestic, so you're even more of a target. Way to go.
Germany is hardly a nation that holds freedom of speech in high regard. Plenty of types of speech are illegal there. And who knows, maybe they're worse than the NSA but haven't had a whistleblower yet.
The bottom line hasn't changed: either use strong encryption or assume your Internet traffic isn't truly private. And any data out of your physical control isn't under your control.
You're drinking the coolaid. The US Library of Congress doesn't even know how many laws there are much less what they may be. The people who create the tax code have no idea how to follow it. You have to devote your career to the tax code to have even a reasonable understanding of it. Just given those 2 pretty much everyone in the US is a criminal.
I think that argument can work both ways. If they don't know the laws, they can't enforce them. Yeah, maybe if one of them wanted you in jail so badly he could find some random law you broke. But that's less of a worry than them simply declaring you to be a terrorist or national security risk and detaining you without charges. They don't need to find a law for you to have broken to do that.
And the NSA is busy collecting all the evidence and then secretly giving it to the police to use against you when ever they want. Sure you can protest as long as you only do within the Government mandated restrictions. Step out of those bounds and you're off to jail.
Eh, you're exaggerating and generalizing. The NSA is certainly not piping data to local police departments--they aren't even part of the same governments. And even the FBI won't get anything from them without having specifically targeted someone. Don't forget how incompetent and inefficient most of the government is, especially inter-agency. Not that I'm excusing them, but I think these specific fears are unjustified.
Besides, I really think they just don't care about J. Random Citizen complaining on the street or on the Internet. That's not a threat to them. They're more likely to feel threatened by journalists, as we have seen.
That we can have this conversation without fear of retribution at all is testament to that fact.
I can't find it at the moment but just yesterday I was reading an article that the Chinese government allows people to talk and complain about the government as much as they want. As long as it's just talk. Once actions start any dissent is oppressed. This bares a striking resemblance to what happened with the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was all good and fine until people actually started doing something. Then the peaceful protest were forcible oppressed. You have just enough freedom to keep you in line. If you get out of line those freedoms all go away.
Wish I had time to write more but I'm on lunch.
More generalizing. The U.S. governments (yes, plural) are not the Chinese government. And you're generalizing the OWS thing as well. Most of the people who participated were not oppressed or arrested. Those that were were not harassed by federal agents but by the NYPD. I don't think they take orders from the FBI--at least, not to do mass arrests. And besides, some of those who were arrested may have actually broken laws and ignored warnings. Just stop generalizing; it doesn't help rational discussion.
I think that would be as legally binding as saying, "If I'm lying, you can shoot me." If someone then found out you were lying and shot you, he'd still be guilty of murder. "Perjury" isn't a magic word you can use in an incantation to invoke special powers.
New Hampshire? Huh?
To everyone who actually has the authority to affect policy change on what software is being used in places that actually matter(and that will NEVER be you as long as you can't understand this), this open source guy looks like a toxic waste dump. Him and his products need to be avoided, lest we be associated with someone so shamelessly lacking in professionalism. You can hate the rules, but that won't change them.
Interesting. Is that why Linux is used by and in, e.g. Intel, Google, Yahoo, Android, NYSE, NASDAQ, airplanes, spaceships, cars, trucks, TVs...need I go on? Apparently all of those places aren't familiar with your rules.
What you meant to say is that clueless PHBs who "never got fired for using Microsoft" and don't have a clue who Linus Torvalds actually is would not want to use his software if they heard him say something like that. And that's why they are not Intel, Google, Yahoo, Android, NYSE...
The Democrats do a better job of balancing the budget? Is that what happens when you enact massive government spending and entitlement programs?
I won't argue that many Republicans have helped enact massive military spending, and NSA-type programs--it's not a case of one party being good and the other being evil--but there are actually some Republicans who favor small government and want to decrease the size of the government; they actually are calling for fiscal responsibility.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't recall having heard many Democrats advocating reducing spending and closing departments of the federal government.
It's my impression that Democrats actually pander to the lower-class masses by raising taxes on the other classes and creating entitlement programs that benefit the poor. I don't think that makes "an economy that works for the middle class."
If you really want freedom, advocate small government (especially at the federal level), lower taxes (which limits the powers of government), and returning power to the states (which brings representation and accountability closer to the people).
4) Obamacare - I wish we could smack people upside the head that talk about it and haven't read it. Anyways, ultimately it will be a savings.
Not the healthcare plan I want, but a lot better the what we have now.
You mean like the people who voted for it? And aren't you one of those people, too? Or have you read all of its thousands of pages?
Please explain to me how putting people out of work and forcing people to give up existing health insurance--which is happening right now, before the program even goes into effect--will ultimately be a savings.
Even the congressmen who introduced the bill have said it's like an out-of-control train wreck! I suppose you know better than they do?
I agree that Gilmore's hypotheses aren't proof, per se. However, in light of recent revelations, I think the NSA is less credible than he is. His comments deserve serious consideration.