I guess if you don't like change and don't like societies transformed by science there is a way for you to join the Amish - exactly how is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don't like societies transformed by government mandate, because that's the hallmark of fascist and communist societies.
I'll repeat what I said since apparently you have a psychosis that makes you imagine communists and nazis under every bed: if you don't like change and don't like societies transformed by science there is a way for you to join the Amish - exactly how is left as an exercise for the reader.
It is also worth noting that nobody is proposing a single gigantic change to the global economy and energy market based on the prediction that 100 years from now some species may evolve that may kill us.
Fascinating but irrelevant. Given the rate of change brought about by science over the last 115 years, the amount of change required to move from coal burning power stations to nuclear/wind/solar and from fossil fuel burning vehicles to electric is pretty trivial. I guess if you don't like change and don't like societies transformed by science there is a way for you to join the Amish - exactly how is left as an exercise for the reader.
Its too bad you learned from these new standards which pride itself on the band-wagon approach to science where the most popular theory is heralded as the correct theory and any other competing theories are dismissed out of hand.
"It might be bad for the coal industry" is not a competing theory on the cause of the present climate change.
I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie.
You said. That's it. That's the standard. I recognize that there are conflicts of interest that exist when someone purporting to pursue truth takes money from a propaganda organization. But that's not the same as being paid to lie.
If he is not being paid to represent their postion then what, in your fevered imagination, are they paying him to do? Wash little puppies and tie little bows around their necks?
I will not allow you to hold me to a different standard than you hold yourself to.
Too bad. You asserted that that science was corrupted by money despite being aligned to the observatioanl evidence - therefore it stands to reason that the mouthpieces of the denialist lie machine are also influenced by the money they recieve.
You asserted the first part (without evidence) and subsequently deny the conclusion without explanation. It's your assertion - you prove it. I made no assertion, so no such standard applies to me.
Normally, we would require evidence for an accusation.
Evidence to the contrary will suffice. Can you detail the assertion(s) from wattsupwiththat that (a) contradicts the science and (b) has proven to be true? Maybe - just name one, and we will work up from there.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not.
Another assertion.
Your beliefs are irrelevant. All that matters is what you can prove.
Who said that this was "the standard"? I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie. That is fraud. He probably doesn't even personally the lies he posts on his blog. It's just made up to cruel the gullible and suck them of their money.
Is that what happened to you? Did you get sucked in by the lie?
I match your pathetic claim with Mann and Jones "hockey stick" paper. There's the evidence of "fraud" that meets your low standards.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not. And you knew that already, which makes me wonder why you bothered to post a debunked claim.
Fossil fuel industries are the buggy whip manufacturers of our age. In the medium term it makes sense to divest, they don't have a future beyond supporting plastics manufacture and fuels for specialised fields (e.g. manufacturing fuel for aircraft, rather than mining it). So, even supposing their financial obligations should override their ethical obligations (which they don't) there isn't even a financial argument to do so.
There is no single "The Problem". And the bigger problems, such as poverty and overpopulation, have solutions that currently depend on elevated generation of greenhouse gases.
Your underlying assumption is that somehow, adaptation will be cheaper than mitigation, when the best estimates indicate the opposite - adaptation is far more expensive (20-30% GDP) versus mitigation (4-6%). Please cite an actual source for your assumption.
We can crudely divide countries by whether they're near the bleeding edge in wealth and well being of their citizens or not and whether they care enough about global warming to make any sacrifices. It turns out the only parties willing to make sacrifices are those who are wealthy (such as the EU) or under the climate gun (such as Bangladesh or Micronesia). This leads to the first observation - wealth leads to societies that care about the global environment.
You've gone and confused a broad brush correlation with causation. There are plenty of rich countries with poor climate policy. Australia, for example. The causation has less to do with being rich and more to do with evidence based policy, versus ideology.
The honest truth of the skeptical position: "There's a problem but I'd rather leave it for future generations to solve than get off my arse" sounds a bit amoral, and hence we never hear that spoken out loud. Admit you have a problem and move on.
That's not the honest truth of the skeptical position.
It is. These people suffer an ideological addiction, they focus on myths that help them maintain that addiction.
And how much moral responsibility should we have to future generations?
We are fully responsible, accountable, liable for our actions. Stop being a child.
I don't think it is right for us to make sacrifices for paltry benefits for future generations and some of the alleged sacrifices today probably impoverish those future generations rather than help them.
In other words There's a problem but I'd rather leave it for future generations to solve than get off my arse.
The field is dominated by a few, government-funded organizations. We don't have solid climate measurements of any sort before about 1850. This leaves the field wide open to chicanery.
Baseless allegations don't impress. Cite a specific example where a climatologist has faked the paleoclimatic record and demonstrate clearly how these results are reflected in the entire set of climate papers relating to climate sensitivity.
If the climate record did not indicate the currently calculated levels of secondary feedback then somebody, somewhere would have noted that.
The climate record of the last twenty years is one such counterexample and it has been noted [ed.ac.uk].
Yet you quote a paper not dealing with secondary feedbacks, but with climate model predictions. Do you have the faintest idea what you are talking about?
What I think is significant about it is that the future can't be controlled. That is precisely where you'd expect to see the greatest deviation between claims about climate and our perception of those results. And we do see large deviations from the predictions to the actual climate changes of this period.
If your interpretation of the papers outcomes are correct, then there is no correlation between model predictions and actual climate outcomes - which means that anything could happen. We could swing into an ice age, or suddenly jump 10 degrees. Any number of disasters are suddenly in scope. Suddenly, rather than dealing with climate change over 50-100 years, we are forced to consider far more drastic measures.
As for myself, I'm skeptical of your/Anthony Watts' alarmism. I'm more inclined to think that the authors conclusions re: their own paper is far more likely to be correct than Watts' interpretation of it. He is, after all, a known liar and in the employ of a major PR organisation, explicitly paid to deceive.
I did say there would be plenty to spare. It's not expensive to buy scientists. And I did say that this money was going to "explicit climate change related spending".
To quote you: My view is that kind of money (such as 34 billion euros per year) buys a lot of climate change research with plenty to spare. Making ti clear you meant to imply that the vast majority of it was spent on cliamte research (which would certainly not be a bad thing). So, I guess I've learnt my lesson - don;t take the things you say on face value.
Contrast that with climate denial. We KNOW that Anthony Watts receives a salary to post lies on his popular blog wattsupwiththat - a salary provided by the Heritage Foundation. Nobody denies it. We know how much money "Lord" Monkton makes by his travelling circus. We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication. We know that the claims of these salaried/entrepreneurial PR agents wiht respect to alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted - every single claim.
So you can do ad hominem attacks. Can you do real, honest, rational argument?
Are you seriously relying on these folks for your argument? Oh - I see that you have indeed referenced Watt's fraudulent and deceptive write up re: the paper by John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett and Francis W. Zwiers. I guess that stung a bit. Not the first time I've had to rub someones nose in it for that particular mistake over that particular paper.
Here's the thing - I'm not "doing" an argument. You haven't presented a valid case.
To be equivalent we need several additions things. First, an honest admission from you that Exxon might under those circumstances actually be pulling off this fraud not merely an implicit assumption that they can't possibly do so.
Let me be straight - it is impossible for Exxon to be selling water and claiming that it was petrol. When customers attempted to leave the petrol station, their vehicle(s) would not proceed. Nobody could ignore that chain of evidence.
Similarly, it is impossible for Climate Science to be a fraud. The chain of evidence is irrefutable. If CO2 was not a greenhouse gas, then one of the many thousands of times the experiment that demonstrates the radiative properties of CO2 was repeated would have revealed the truth. Unless there is a time travelling zombie Tyndall who, like Santa Claus, appears miraculously to protect the conspiracy, someone, somewhere would have noted that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Similarly for secondary feedbacks. If the climate record did not indicate the currently calculated levels of secondary feedback then somebody, somewhere would have noted that. The idea that skeptics and climatologists are jointly engaged in a conspiracy that a priori requires a time travelling zombie to pull off is laughable.
Laughable.
Contrast that with climate denial. We KNOW that Anthony Watts receives a salary to post lies on his popular blog wattsupwiththat - a salary provided by the Heritage Foundation. Nobody denies it. We know how much money "Lord" Monkton makes by his travelling circus. We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication. We know that the claims of these salaried/entrepreneurial PR agents wiht respect to alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted - every single claim.
So who is lying?
My view is that kind of money (such as 34 billion euros per year) buys a lot of climate change research with plenty to spare.
According to the EU Website the 34 billion euros is the entire budget for climate adaptation, technology and mitigation, not the research budget. I guess someone lied to you.
It claims that a full 1/3rd. of the warming in the 1990's, on record, was actually due to water vapor in the air, vs. CO2 emissions and the like. Y
Do you mean to say that water vapor has a greater secondary feedback effect than predicted? Or less? What precisely are you saying?
but it shows how we're still really in the early stages of understanding the details..... The statements of fact about exactly what's happening are largely premature.
So - in fact, it could be far worse than the models predict?
If us dumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is causing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to increase (and hence the problem), then, well maybe we should stop doing that. This is exactly like smoking. A man hears that smoking causes lung cancer "Well, there's a problem without a solution" he thinks to himself, while sucking down a Marlboro to calm his nerves. It's not complicated - stop smoking! Admit that you excuses, "I have a moral right to smoke!" "Its a cultural thing" "I'm skeptical of the evidence" "It's too hard to quit" are just things you made up to comfort yourself in your addiction, admit you have a problem, stop smoking, and move on.
Best estimates are that had we started maybe 10 years ago it would be about 3% of GDP over a defined period to solve the problem. It's a large number and it will take some effort, but so what? Previous generations dealt with problems larger than this. We have the means available with Nuclear power, solar and wind, which will only get cheaper as newer technologies arise through investment.
The problem is, people don't want to admit there is a problem. The honest truth of the skeptical position: "There's a problem but I'd rather leave it for future generations to solve than get off my arse" sounds a bit amoral, and hence we never hear that spoken out loud. Admit you have a problem and move on.
Which I guess is why people such as yourself, who make predictions "Nothing will change!" with extrapolating from the past are making meaningless waffle, whereas scientists who extrapolate from past data "the climate was x sensitive in the past to CO2 levels, I predict it will again in the future" are merely extrapolating a meaningful result.
So if you and your denialist friends want a seat at the table and want your ideas to be heard, then by all means, bring your extrapolations to the table, if indeed, you have any.
If, by half a billion you mean 750 million, then yes. Roughly.
But going by your reasoning, there's only $34 dollars of Exxon profit per person in the EU, three days parking and all that. That must mean that $34 billion per year is not a lot of money, amirite? Why is it that a lot of money is a lot of money when it is earned by Exxon, but not when it comes from the EU?
To be equivalent I would have to have said that Exxon's product was completely fraudulent, their fuels don't really work and they are engaged in a massive conspiracy to cover up the fact that their fuels do not actually combust and drive internal combustion engines in the way that Exxon claims they do. Instead, everybody who uses Exxon fuel has been paid off and everybody employed by Exxon has been paid off so that Exxon can sell something other than petroleum to an unsuspecting public, for some reason not specified.
So cite me making that claim, otherwise you are engaged in a fallacy of false equivalency.
Or that your reasoning is deeply flawed and irrelevant to any discussion we might have on the subject. I find that more likely. Note that every scientist you mention above didn't actually do any work with today's multidimensional climate simulations. Arrhenius, the only one who actually did a relatively modern climate model, worked with a primitive one-dimensional radiative model.
Apparently you are ignorant as to the purpose and scope of climate models - and therefore not qualified to comment as to their veracity. Do some research and come back when you can speak on this subject without revealing yourself to be utterly ignorant on the first attempt.
And it is laughable to suggest that these historical scientists have something to do with today's consistent bias in predictive models towards exaggerating the effects of AGW (especially given that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is in addition generally somewhat worse than predicted by those models). All those scientists with those erroneous models are funded by the entities spending all those dollars and euros per head, not by Exxon.
It is laughable to suggest that they have something to do with some imaginary bias, because the notion that there is a bias is laughable, and the people who claim (without a shred of evidence) that there is a bias should certainly be subject to ongoing ridicule. In other words, nobody is interested in your conspiracy theory, which has all the weight and impact of a 9/11 truther conspiracy or a moon landing/kennedy shooting conspiracy.
In short:
You've failed to produce a skerrick of evidence, not even the minutest, barely detectable quantity
You've failed to even demonstrate how such a conspiracy could be feasible
You've failed.
Personally, I think Exxon and similar businesses are profiting immensely from the current level of climate alarmism.
If by alarmism, you mean yourself and your cohorts (the most likely reading) then yes, they have profited somewhat from your panic.
And the EU is dumping 30 billion euros every year through 2020 on explicit climate change related spending. That's a lot of money too.
There are a billion people in the EU. So that's 30 bucks a head. That's about a third of a tank of fuel, 3 days parking, 1 weeks worth of coffee. That is an incrediby small amount. I'm amazed it's so low, particularly given that only a fraction of a percent of this would go to climate research, the rest invested in renewable energy.
They get more than that. They get staff, power, prestige, and easy living. And more than $48k per year, if they can rope a big grant. And you know what? College professors are human. I bet you can find some that are of that less noble, mother-trodding sort.
Well, your contention is that every one of them is corrupt. Everyone. For a 150 years, form Fourier, Tyndal, Arrhenius all the way to the present. Every scientist - every physicist, chemist, biologist. This does seem hard to accept.
Not directly to the actual debates and studies, no. On the other hand, he managed to make a little movie, do a little activism, and made a metric ton of money off the subject. He also elevated the status and notoriety of quite a few scientists in the process.
Not quite following your logic. There are quite a number of people who made considerable amounts of money of the internal combustion engine. Which doesn't imply that the internal combustion engine doesn't work as advertised - it does exactly what the label says it does. Why then, would the fact that people have made money off climate change (and especially off promoting and selling renewable energy) imply that the underlying science is wrong? Sounds a bit ridiculous.
Sounds to me like you're angry because they saw an opportunity, and jumped on it, and you were fooled by some scumbag denialist and didn't, and so you lost, and they won. Sucks to be you I guess.
Meanwhile, the scientists most associated with the theory are given the aforementioned fame, prestige, recognition, etc.
And so they should. These guys (and girls) deserve to be as rich as thieves, considering how much money we will save if we shift to renewable energy now, rather than waiting for when big coal is good and ready to close the doors. Of course they aren't rich though.
to rename our efforts to create a world wide carbon exchange to tax nations and deindustrialize them to bring them under rule.
What nations?
Under rule of what?
Why is it important to de-industrialise them?
Not going to work, because the cat is out of the bag. The sicence behind Global Warming is so fake, it is like watching two drunk people doing Cherades at your company Christmas party.
Who faked their work? Was it Arrhenius?
We are suppose to be stewards of the Earth. If we REALLY wanted to clean up the environment we would agressive upgrade our energy production facilities like we do with our PC's.
Thorium Nuclear power would be a good place to start.
Chemical Fusion/Low Energy Fusion would be another nice place to start.
We have tons of energy solutions for personal cars/transport and mass transit. We are refusing to do these things because it disrupts the power structures, all of them political.
How is this different to what is actually proposed to mitigate the impacts of climate change?
I can't speak to local experience, but here on Slashdot we frequently have people (the "2nd amendments folks") allude to using their guns to overthrow the US government by force (which is obviously a totalitarian strategy) and also threatening to arbitrarily kill people for various perceived offences without a proper trial (mob rule, which is indistinguishable in practice form a police state).
Then of course there are the ways they inadvertently (or perhaps deliberately) prevent action against the current acts of tyranny by the oligarchs, discussed just a few days ago.
Do you think members of the US military will follow orders to shoot their countrymen?
If a bunch of amateurs start taking pot shots at them? Absolutely. What better excuse could you give the government to kill you then shooting at members of the armed forces? After all, Marines and Rangers ar US citizens as well, they have families just like you. You shoot someones daughter, do you think that man will ever support your cause? Ever?
You can't have it both ways. You can't have the protection and safety afforded by peaceful protests - that civilised militaries will not fire upon you for protesting peacefully, and also plan to enact your violent fantasies. That is the contract - we won't shoot them, they don't shoot us. Break the contract and bets are off.
Why do you think US gun laws are so liberal? Because it's in the Constitution? Don't make me laugh! Because powerful lobby groups fought for them? Perhaps, but not for the sake of your freedoms. Quite the opposite. The reason that revolution will never again happen in the U.S is because in every protest, there is a small group of lunatics waving guns and baying for violence. Nobody wants to put these people in charge - how would they be better than the current tyranny? And so the hope of revolution dies.
It's not a question of whether it is forbidden by European law, just that those companies, like most people outside the U.S find the idea of execution unconscionable and thus don't WANT their products used for this purpose, and refuse to sell them on that basis.
I refer you to Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
The article makes no mention of feeling secure. Gun toting idealogues coming into my home are an immediate threat to my family, and hence, my and my families rights to be secure overrides their right not be relieved of their weapon.
And in protecting it in the way they are, they are of course, contributing to the erosion of your rights in other quarters.
Examples? I see no reason we have to pick and choose which rights to protect.
Unimportant rights frequently must give way to essential rights. For instance, my right to be safe and secure in my own home (as guaranteed by the UNCHR) overrides your right to carry a gun. So you may not carry your gun into my house, or, even (thankfully) into my country. Security and liberty is essential - the right to pack heat, though it makes you feel like a big man, is not.
As to specific examples as to how the NRA and other ideologues are eroding your basic, essential rights, refer to my previous comment. Essentially:
People forget that rights are often exercised at the expense of other rights. Really, the right to carry a gun is like glass beads - the tyrants who offer it to you do so knowing that by doing so, they are offering something worthless in exchange for something of real value, rights you would exercise if you did not think that your gun afforded you protections which it does not. Gun holders live in a haze of delusion. They think they are secure and at liberty, and because of this delusion, do not act on incremental erosion of fundamental rights. Thus, tyranny is enacted.
You're conflating two different uses of the right. One is defense of the lives of self and others.
We (the others) are not looking to you for protection, and you aren't the protector. You are the danger. We have a fundamental right to be free of you.
I carry a handgun on a daily basis, but have no intention of every shooting a public official (unless that official happens to be illegally and imminently threatening someone's life and that's the only way I can stop it -- but that would be a legally justifiable shooting). For defense against tyranny my little 9mm (or.380 pocket pistol) is useless. My rifles, however, are not.
You are deluded. If your rifle is a defence against tyranny, why are you living in tyranny?
As for the expected riposte about how semi-automatic rifles are also useless against machine guns, cannon, attack aircraft, helicopters, tanks, JDAMs and nuclear weapons other than to say that if you think rifles aren't effective against them you need to (a) study the history of guerrilla warfare
People who point out that hunting rifles are useless against trained marines, A10 Warthogs and Tomahawk missiles, drones and the like are speaking from a position of knowledge on the subject of how recent rebellions have borne out.
As an example, every successful armed revolution since the 1980s has relied on AK 47s and rocket launchers (both of which are in abundance). Not a hunting rifle in sight. And in general, peaceful revolutions are much more successful (Romania, Latvia, East Germany) than armed rebellions (Kosovo, Croatia, Lybia, Syria, Egypt), and the latter always, always, rely on military style weapons, which, fortunately or otherwise, can be readily obtained from black market suppliers. There is no way you or your rifle can compete with the weapons available to the LRA or the Syrians - weapons these people obtained without reference to the government they are rebelling against.
We don't live in the 18th century anymore.
(b) think about the political aspects of armed resistance and how the members of the police and armed forces are likely to respond to being asked to fire upon their countrymen. If necessary, consult with a few policemen and soldiers to clarify any uncertainty you may have about (b).
I did - they indicated that if fired upon by you or your team, they would have no compunction in firing back. Fair enough, I would too in their position, regardless of my thoughts on the politics of the government. Of course, if ther
Slashdot Mirror
I guess if you don't like change and don't like societies transformed by science there is a way for you to join the Amish - exactly how is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don't like societies transformed by government mandate, because that's the hallmark of fascist and communist societies.
I'll repeat what I said since apparently you have a psychosis that makes you imagine communists and nazis under every bed: if you don't like change and don't like societies transformed by science there is a way for you to join the Amish - exactly how is left as an exercise for the reader.
It is also worth noting that nobody is proposing a single gigantic change to the global economy and energy market based on the prediction that 100 years from now some species may evolve that may kill us.
Fascinating but irrelevant. Given the rate of change brought about by science over the last 115 years, the amount of change required to move from coal burning power stations to nuclear/wind/solar and from fossil fuel burning vehicles to electric is pretty trivial. I guess if you don't like change and don't like societies transformed by science there is a way for you to join the Amish - exactly how is left as an exercise for the reader.
What connection is there between the US government and the IPCC?
Its too bad you learned from these new standards which pride itself on the band-wagon approach to science where the most popular theory is heralded as the correct theory and any other competing theories are dismissed out of hand.
"It might be bad for the coal industry" is not a competing theory on the cause of the present climate change.
I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie.
You said. That's it. That's the standard. I recognize that there are conflicts of interest that exist when someone purporting to pursue truth takes money from a propaganda organization. But that's not the same as being paid to lie.
If he is not being paid to represent their postion then what, in your fevered imagination, are they paying him to do? Wash little puppies and tie little bows around their necks?
I will not allow you to hold me to a different standard than you hold yourself to.
Too bad. You asserted that that science was corrupted by money despite being aligned to the observatioanl evidence - therefore it stands to reason that the mouthpieces of the denialist lie machine are also influenced by the money they recieve.
You asserted the first part (without evidence) and subsequently deny the conclusion without explanation. It's your assertion - you prove it. I made no assertion, so no such standard applies to me.
Normally, we would require evidence for an accusation.
Evidence to the contrary will suffice. Can you detail the assertion(s) from wattsupwiththat that (a) contradicts the science and (b) has proven to be true? Maybe - just name one, and we will work up from there.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not.
Another assertion.
Your beliefs are irrelevant. All that matters is what you can prove.
What a shitty standard for fraud.
Who said that this was "the standard"? I said previously that Watts is in the employ of the Heartland Institue - employed to lie. That is fraud. He probably doesn't even personally the lies he posts on his blog. It's just made up to cruel the gullible and suck them of their money.
Is that what happened to you? Did you get sucked in by the lie?
I match your pathetic claim with Mann and Jones "hockey stick" paper. There's the evidence of "fraud" that meets your low standards.
Given that we now known that in fact, the much maligned graph actually accurately reflects the path of climate, I'm afraid not. And you knew that already, which makes me wonder why you bothered to post a debunked claim.
Are you a fraud as well?
Fossil fuel industries are the buggy whip manufacturers of our age. In the medium term it makes sense to divest, they don't have a future beyond supporting plastics manufacture and fuels for specialised fields (e.g. manufacturing fuel for aircraft, rather than mining it). So, even supposing their financial obligations should override their ethical obligations (which they don't) there isn't even a financial argument to do so.
There is no single "The Problem". And the bigger problems, such as poverty and overpopulation, have solutions that currently depend on elevated generation of greenhouse gases.
Your underlying assumption is that somehow, adaptation will be cheaper than mitigation, when the best estimates indicate the opposite - adaptation is far more expensive (20-30% GDP) versus mitigation (4-6%). Please cite an actual source for your assumption.
We can crudely divide countries by whether they're near the bleeding edge in wealth and well being of their citizens or not and whether they care enough about global warming to make any sacrifices. It turns out the only parties willing to make sacrifices are those who are wealthy (such as the EU) or under the climate gun (such as Bangladesh or Micronesia). This leads to the first observation - wealth leads to societies that care about the global environment.
You've gone and confused a broad brush correlation with causation. There are plenty of rich countries with poor climate policy. Australia, for example. The causation has less to do with being rich and more to do with evidence based policy, versus ideology.
The honest truth of the skeptical position: "There's a problem but I'd rather leave it for future generations to solve than get off my arse" sounds a bit amoral, and hence we never hear that spoken out loud. Admit you have a problem and move on.
That's not the honest truth of the skeptical position.
It is. These people suffer an ideological addiction, they focus on myths that help them maintain that addiction.
And how much moral responsibility should we have to future generations?
We are fully responsible, accountable, liable for our actions. Stop being a child.
I don't think it is right for us to make sacrifices for paltry benefits for future generations and some of the alleged sacrifices today probably impoverish those future generations rather than help them.
In other words There's a problem but I'd rather leave it for future generations to solve than get off my arse.
Paleoclimate data is the obvious counterexample.
No, it isn't.
The field is dominated by a few, government-funded organizations. We don't have solid climate measurements of any sort before about 1850. This leaves the field wide open to chicanery.
Baseless allegations don't impress. Cite a specific example where a climatologist has faked the paleoclimatic record and demonstrate clearly how these results are reflected in the entire set of climate papers relating to climate sensitivity.
If the climate record did not indicate the currently calculated levels of secondary feedback then somebody, somewhere would have noted that.
The climate record of the last twenty years is one such counterexample and it has been noted [ed.ac.uk].
Yet you quote a paper not dealing with secondary feedbacks, but with climate model predictions. Do you have the faintest idea what you are talking about?
What I think is significant about it is that the future can't be controlled. That is precisely where you'd expect to see the greatest deviation between claims about climate and our perception of those results. And we do see large deviations from the predictions to the actual climate changes of this period.
If your interpretation of the papers outcomes are correct, then there is no correlation between model predictions and actual climate outcomes - which means that anything could happen. We could swing into an ice age, or suddenly jump 10 degrees. Any number of disasters are suddenly in scope. Suddenly, rather than dealing with climate change over 50-100 years, we are forced to consider far more drastic measures.
As for myself, I'm skeptical of your/Anthony Watts' alarmism. I'm more inclined to think that the authors conclusions re: their own paper is far more likely to be correct than Watts' interpretation of it. He is, after all, a known liar and in the employ of a major PR organisation, explicitly paid to deceive.
I did say there would be plenty to spare. It's not expensive to buy scientists. And I did say that this money was going to "explicit climate change related spending".
To quote you: My view is that kind of money (such as 34 billion euros per year) buys a lot of climate change research with plenty to spare. Making ti clear you meant to imply that the vast majority of it was spent on cliamte research (which would certainly not be a bad thing). So, I guess I've learnt my lesson - don;t take the things you say on face value.
Contrast that with climate denial. We KNOW that Anthony Watts receives a salary to post lies on his popular blog wattsupwiththat - a salary provided by the Heritage Foundation. Nobody denies it. We know how much money "Lord" Monkton makes by his travelling circus. We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication. We know that the claims of these salaried/entrepreneurial PR agents wiht respect to alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted - every single claim.
So you can do ad hominem attacks. Can you do real, honest, rational argument?
Are you seriously relying on these folks for your argument? Oh - I see that you have indeed referenced Watt's fraudulent and deceptive write up re: the paper by John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett and Francis W. Zwiers. I guess that stung a bit. Not the first time I've had to rub someones nose in it for that particular mistake over that particular paper.
Here's the thing - I'm not "doing" an argument. You haven't presented a valid case.
To be equivalent we need several additions things. First, an honest admission from you that Exxon might under those circumstances actually be pulling off this fraud not merely an implicit assumption that they can't possibly do so.
Let me be straight - it is impossible for Exxon to be selling water and claiming that it was petrol. When customers attempted to leave the petrol station, their vehicle(s) would not proceed. Nobody could ignore that chain of evidence.
Similarly, it is impossible for Climate Science to be a fraud. The chain of evidence is irrefutable. If CO2 was not a greenhouse gas, then one of the many thousands of times the experiment that demonstrates the radiative properties of CO2 was repeated would have revealed the truth. Unless there is a time travelling zombie Tyndall who, like Santa Claus, appears miraculously to protect the conspiracy, someone, somewhere would have noted that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Similarly for secondary feedbacks. If the climate record did not indicate the currently calculated levels of secondary feedback then somebody, somewhere would have noted that. The idea that skeptics and climatologists are jointly engaged in a conspiracy that a priori requires a time travelling zombie to pull off is laughable.
Laughable.
Contrast that with climate denial. We KNOW that Anthony Watts receives a salary to post lies on his popular blog wattsupwiththat - a salary provided by the Heritage Foundation. Nobody denies it. We know how much money "Lord" Monkton makes by his travelling circus. We know that Judith Curry was lying when she said she had seen AR5 prior to publication. We know that the claims of these salaried/entrepreneurial PR agents wiht respect to alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted - every single claim.
So who is lying?
My view is that kind of money (such as 34 billion euros per year) buys a lot of climate change research with plenty to spare.
According to the EU Website the 34 billion euros is the entire budget for climate adaptation, technology and mitigation, not the research budget. I guess someone lied to you.
Which places in particular?
It claims that a full 1/3rd. of the warming in the 1990's, on record, was actually due to water vapor in the air, vs. CO2 emissions and the like. Y
Do you mean to say that water vapor has a greater secondary feedback effect than predicted? Or less? What precisely are you saying?
but it shows how we're still really in the early stages of understanding the details..... The statements of fact about exactly what's happening are largely premature.
So - in fact, it could be far worse than the models predict?
It's extremely difficult to accept at face value a report that says every possible outcome from climate change is bad.
So you can't contradict the content of the report, but you can tell us you have a feeling that the report is wrong?
Thanks for that.
Best estimates are that had we started maybe 10 years ago it would be about 3% of GDP over a defined period to solve the problem. It's a large number and it will take some effort, but so what? Previous generations dealt with problems larger than this. We have the means available with Nuclear power, solar and wind, which will only get cheaper as newer technologies arise through investment.
The problem is, people don't want to admit there is a problem. The honest truth of the skeptical position: "There's a problem but I'd rather leave it for future generations to solve than get off my arse" sounds a bit amoral, and hence we never hear that spoken out loud. Admit you have a problem and move on.
with = without of course. So much for previewing.
So if you and your denialist friends want a seat at the table and want your ideas to be heard, then by all means, bring your extrapolations to the table, if indeed, you have any.
Half a billion people roughly.
If, by half a billion you mean 750 million, then yes. Roughly.
But going by your reasoning, there's only $34 dollars of Exxon profit per person in the EU, three days parking and all that. That must mean that $34 billion per year is not a lot of money, amirite? Why is it that a lot of money is a lot of money when it is earned by Exxon, but not when it comes from the EU?
To be equivalent I would have to have said that Exxon's product was completely fraudulent, their fuels don't really work and they are engaged in a massive conspiracy to cover up the fact that their fuels do not actually combust and drive internal combustion engines in the way that Exxon claims they do. Instead, everybody who uses Exxon fuel has been paid off and everybody employed by Exxon has been paid off so that Exxon can sell something other than petroleum to an unsuspecting public, for some reason not specified.
So cite me making that claim, otherwise you are engaged in a fallacy of false equivalency.
Or that your reasoning is deeply flawed and irrelevant to any discussion we might have on the subject. I find that more likely. Note that every scientist you mention above didn't actually do any work with today's multidimensional climate simulations. Arrhenius, the only one who actually did a relatively modern climate model, worked with a primitive one-dimensional radiative model.
Apparently you are ignorant as to the purpose and scope of climate models - and therefore not qualified to comment as to their veracity. Do some research and come back when you can speak on this subject without revealing yourself to be utterly ignorant on the first attempt.
And it is laughable to suggest that these historical scientists have something to do with today's consistent bias in predictive models towards exaggerating the effects of AGW (especially given that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is in addition generally somewhat worse than predicted by those models). All those scientists with those erroneous models are funded by the entities spending all those dollars and euros per head, not by Exxon.
It is laughable to suggest that they have something to do with some imaginary bias, because the notion that there is a bias is laughable, and the people who claim (without a shred of evidence) that there is a bias should certainly be subject to ongoing ridicule. In other words, nobody is interested in your conspiracy theory, which has all the weight and impact of a 9/11 truther conspiracy or a moon landing/kennedy shooting conspiracy.
In short:
You've failed.
Personally, I think Exxon and similar businesses are profiting immensely from the current level of climate alarmism.
If by alarmism, you mean yourself and your cohorts (the most likely reading) then yes, they have profited somewhat from your panic.
And the EU is dumping 30 billion euros every year through 2020 on explicit climate change related spending. That's a lot of money too.
There are a billion people in the EU. So that's 30 bucks a head. That's about a third of a tank of fuel, 3 days parking, 1 weeks worth of coffee. That is an incrediby small amount. I'm amazed it's so low, particularly given that only a fraction of a percent of this would go to climate research, the rest invested in renewable energy.
They get more than that. They get staff, power, prestige, and easy living. And more than $48k per year, if they can rope a big grant. And you know what? College professors are human. I bet you can find some that are of that less noble, mother-trodding sort.
Well, your contention is that every one of them is corrupt. Everyone. For a 150 years, form Fourier, Tyndal, Arrhenius all the way to the present. Every scientist - every physicist, chemist, biologist. This does seem hard to accept.
Not directly to the actual debates and studies, no. On the other hand, he managed to make a little movie, do a little activism, and made a metric ton of money off the subject. He also elevated the status and notoriety of quite a few scientists in the process.
Not quite following your logic. There are quite a number of people who made considerable amounts of money of the internal combustion engine. Which doesn't imply that the internal combustion engine doesn't work as advertised - it does exactly what the label says it does. Why then, would the fact that people have made money off climate change (and especially off promoting and selling renewable energy) imply that the underlying science is wrong? Sounds a bit ridiculous.
Sounds to me like you're angry because they saw an opportunity, and jumped on it, and you were fooled by some scumbag denialist and didn't, and so you lost, and they won. Sucks to be you I guess.
Meanwhile, the scientists most associated with the theory are given the aforementioned fame, prestige, recognition, etc.
And so they should. These guys (and girls) deserve to be as rich as thieves, considering how much money we will save if we shift to renewable energy now, rather than waiting for when big coal is good and ready to close the doors. Of course they aren't rich though.
to rename our efforts to create a world wide carbon exchange to tax nations and deindustrialize them to bring them under rule.
What nations?
Under rule of what?
Why is it important to de-industrialise them?
Not going to work, because the cat is out of the bag. The sicence behind Global Warming is so fake, it is like watching two drunk people doing Cherades at your company Christmas party.
Who faked their work? Was it Arrhenius?
We are suppose to be stewards of the Earth. If we REALLY wanted to clean up the environment we would agressive upgrade our energy production facilities like we do with our PC's.
Thorium Nuclear power would be a good place to start.
Chemical Fusion/Low Energy Fusion would be another nice place to start.
We have tons of energy solutions for personal cars/transport and mass transit. We are refusing to do these things because it disrupts the power structures, all of them political.
How is this different to what is actually proposed to mitigate the impacts of climate change?
Then of course there are the ways they inadvertently (or perhaps deliberately) prevent action against the current acts of tyranny by the oligarchs, discussed just a few days ago.
Do you think members of the US military will follow orders to shoot their countrymen?
If a bunch of amateurs start taking pot shots at them? Absolutely. What better excuse could you give the government to kill you then shooting at members of the armed forces? After all, Marines and Rangers ar US citizens as well, they have families just like you. You shoot someones daughter, do you think that man will ever support your cause? Ever?
You can't have it both ways. You can't have the protection and safety afforded by peaceful protests - that civilised militaries will not fire upon you for protesting peacefully, and also plan to enact your violent fantasies. That is the contract - we won't shoot them, they don't shoot us. Break the contract and bets are off.
Why do you think US gun laws are so liberal? Because it's in the Constitution? Don't make me laugh! Because powerful lobby groups fought for them? Perhaps, but not for the sake of your freedoms. Quite the opposite. The reason that revolution will never again happen in the U.S is because in every protest, there is a small group of lunatics waving guns and baying for violence. Nobody wants to put these people in charge - how would they be better than the current tyranny? And so the hope of revolution dies.
It's not a question of whether it is forbidden by European law, just that those companies, like most people outside the U.S find the idea of execution unconscionable and thus don't WANT their products used for this purpose, and refuse to sell them on that basis.
The article makes no mention of feeling secure. Gun toting idealogues coming into my home are an immediate threat to my family, and hence, my and my families rights to be secure overrides their right not be relieved of their weapon.
And in protecting it in the way they are, they are of course, contributing to the erosion of your rights in other quarters.
Examples? I see no reason we have to pick and choose which rights to protect.
Unimportant rights frequently must give way to essential rights. For instance, my right to be safe and secure in my own home (as guaranteed by the UNCHR) overrides your right to carry a gun. So you may not carry your gun into my house, or, even (thankfully) into my country. Security and liberty is essential - the right to pack heat, though it makes you feel like a big man, is not.
As to specific examples as to how the NRA and other ideologues are eroding your basic, essential rights, refer to my previous comment. Essentially:
People forget that rights are often exercised at the expense of other rights. Really, the right to carry a gun is like glass beads - the tyrants who offer it to you do so knowing that by doing so, they are offering something worthless in exchange for something of real value, rights you would exercise if you did not think that your gun afforded you protections which it does not. Gun holders live in a haze of delusion. They think they are secure and at liberty, and because of this delusion, do not act on incremental erosion of fundamental rights. Thus, tyranny is enacted.
You're conflating two different uses of the right. One is defense of the lives of self and others.
We (the others) are not looking to you for protection, and you aren't the protector. You are the danger. We have a fundamental right to be free of you.
I carry a handgun on a daily basis, but have no intention of every shooting a public official (unless that official happens to be illegally and imminently threatening someone's life and that's the only way I can stop it -- but that would be a legally justifiable shooting). For defense against tyranny my little 9mm (or .380 pocket pistol) is useless. My rifles, however, are not.
You are deluded. If your rifle is a defence against tyranny, why are you living in tyranny?
As for the expected riposte about how semi-automatic rifles are also useless against machine guns, cannon, attack aircraft, helicopters, tanks, JDAMs and nuclear weapons other than to say that if you think rifles aren't effective against them you need to (a) study the history of guerrilla warfare
People who point out that hunting rifles are useless against trained marines, A10 Warthogs and Tomahawk missiles, drones and the like are speaking from a position of knowledge on the subject of how recent rebellions have borne out.
As an example, every successful armed revolution since the 1980s has relied on AK 47s and rocket launchers (both of which are in abundance). Not a hunting rifle in sight. And in general, peaceful revolutions are much more successful (Romania, Latvia, East Germany) than armed rebellions (Kosovo, Croatia, Lybia, Syria, Egypt), and the latter always, always, rely on military style weapons, which, fortunately or otherwise, can be readily obtained from black market suppliers. There is no way you or your rifle can compete with the weapons available to the LRA or the Syrians - weapons these people obtained without reference to the government they are rebelling against.
We don't live in the 18th century anymore.
(b) think about the political aspects of armed resistance and how the members of the police and armed forces are likely to respond to being asked to fire upon their countrymen. If necessary, consult with a few policemen and soldiers to clarify any uncertainty you may have about (b).
I did - they indicated that if fired upon by you or your team, they would have no compunction in firing back. Fair enough, I would too in their position, regardless of my thoughts on the politics of the government. Of course, if ther