How about a little extreme right wing paranoia to start your morning?
Global warming is the perfect excuse to do what the Left always wanted to do – to destroy faith (Christianity), the family and freedom. There is no area of our lives that will not be invaded through taxation, control, regulation or obliteration to save the earth.
Read the whole thing — global warming is the conspiracy that ties together abortion, taxes, communism, and our hatred of little children. If only it had mentioned evolution, it would have been perfect.
Also, it’s from a Canadian. It’s reassuring to see that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on loons. To be fair, though, the replies from other Canadians are scathing.
“If only it had mentioned evolution, it would have been perfect.”
They are getting sloppy. They are used to tying all kinds of unrelated things together and then try to convince you it’s all logical but it ain’t what it used to be.
Nothing like a good, old bellylaugh.
How about a little extreme right wing paranoia to start your morning?
Strangely, it’s a welcome break from the repetitive comments of the concerned on the cracker threads.
Gee, they get confused babbling up north too. Good to see it slapped down.
But if there’s no global warming, how will us godless libruls fry babies n the sidewalk?
wow. you can smell the smell of loony as soon as the writer calls the topic of their wrath “The Church of (topic of my wrath)”.
(sets off to Church of Child-Murdering Lefties for morning service)
Not a nice way to start your morning at all :( Thankfully its mid afternoon in my time zone so i wont vomit on my cornflakes.
‘Green Terror’ – wow, that’s golden. What a nutjob.
Well, they’ve got us. I didn’t think they’d be smart enough to realize that the warming of the earth will be hot enough to fry only those wretched small children.
The pull-quote needs a few corrections:
“9/11 was the perfect excuse to do what the Right always wanted to do – to destroy the Constitution, the separation of church and state. There is no area of our lives that will not be invaded through faith-based taxation, control, regulation or obliteration to save souls for Christ.”
No! This can’t be Canadian – see the date format -July 17, 2008. That’s a mixed up format of large unit, smaller unit, larger unit. Canadians, being more logical than USAnians, write 2008-Jul-17.
Yikes! One of our nutters got out of the cage? I’ll have to add my scathing comments to that lot.
I find it truly amazing that the human mind – small though theirs are – can conflate those different things to find a conspiracy to destroy Xtianity. I mean, I have four children and I worry very much about the future they face – to the extent that I try to never drive more than is absolutely necessary (my biking muscles are in tip top shape as a consequence), I’m teaching them how to grow things, preserve things, and put seeds by. I don’t hate my little children. I love them. AND I’m very concerned about the consequences of global warming.
One of my chief concerns is that the models are wrong, and we have missed some key factor. We have a lot of conceit that we “understand” the complex system that constitutes our biosphere, but if you have ever studied system dynamics you know that modeling such a complex system is mind bogglingly difficult, with all manner of assumptions and approximations. Well, if we got it wrong and it’s not as bad as we think, then we have still done well to cut our energy usage and find renewables. But if we got it wrong and it’s worse, then there is going to be a very bad time ahead when adjustment to the new reality kicks in.
This frequently causes bouts of depression.
Damn, I didn’t realize we were against Canadian children too! We need to take care and not lose focus–it’s Americans who must stop reproducing.
Yet, again and again, you hear voices raised against the atheists, and secularists daring to call a spade a spade. These people are literally insane. Paranoid, delusional and obsessive. Good grief, it’s not as if we need to make shit up!!
There are any number outrages being perpetrated right now in plain sight. Dafur, Zimbabwe, Burma, Iraq. And the only thing this loon feels threatened by, is the near imperceptible bit of inertia finally imparted to the lumbering, ceaking apparatus of global governance on the climate change front. It makes me despair.
I didn’t get past the line, “church of global warming”.
I wonder if they have crackers in their service?
Good morning, fellow west coasters! We are at the heart of the great global warming/ecofreak conspiracy but we have to get cracking if we want to catch up with our east-coast comrades and their daily three-hour head start. It’s time for breakfast and then off to the clandestine meetings of our Green Terror cells. Mine meets at a school and pretends to be a math class. No one suspects a thing! Ha ha ha!
The writer lives in a small agricultural community in Manitoba with a population of under 3,000.
I wonder if he has even been to a large city, much less an overcroweded one like Hong Kong, Lagos, or Jakarta.
More than likely, he has not, so he is just writing out of isolated ignorance.
Move along people, nothing to see here.
must be an immigrant from the US. I don’t live in canada but spent many a summer there, and it’s the rare canadian that has that much rage. The only time I ever got yelled at for “trespassing” (stopped my car on a driveway to look at a map) was once, and the guy sounded American. Also, he was quick to mention he had a gun. Definitely American.
I’m an atheist but I agree with the authors general theme that enviromentalism is just the new referent from which the left critique capitalism after they gave up on marxism.
Besides whether global warming is caused by man or not the solution is not to stop exploiting the enviroment to our benefit, but rather to use technology and capitalism to deal with whatever problems might arise.
As to the enviromentalists motivation for their hysteria, think of it this way. Imagine that irrefutable evidence was forthcomming explaining that global warming is NOT caused by man. How many percent of enviromentalists do you think would dance in the streets from joy shouting:
“YES, the rich people can keep their SUVs and we can all keep pursuing more and more stuff and be “forced” by commercials to strive for unrealistic beauty ideals”
Your guess is as good as mine.
I’m not someone that gives a damn about this global warming thing. To me it’s just a fad, like the acid rains were back when I was younger, and like famine in africa. Everyone spoke about it for years, then something else came up and it was the end of that.
Now um… To destroy christianity? Dude, I don’t think so. Christianity does not need anyone’s help to destroy itself.
FH,
If irrefutable evidence comes out about GW not being human-caused, the environmentalists will still have plenty to complain about: nuclear waste, deteriorating natural resources, pollution, destruction of rain forests, etc..
We did some experiments in micro-econ class that dealt with limited resources. It was never pretty.
Cute the morning mood music from Peer Gynt as the trolls arise from their dewy beds of clover, rub the sleep from their eyes, and peer about for blogs to infest. Time to get to work, FH!
“Cute”? I meant “Cue”, of course. :-(
//It’s reassuring to see that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on loons.//
Um, PZ, I’m pretty sure it’s CANADA that has a monopoly on loons. It’s their $1 coin, after all!
Yeah all these people dying in Africa just because it’s fashionable should really get a grip!
There is a difference between crop failure and anorexia, you know Michelle…
I’ve lived in Canada all my Life (36 Years) and have to tell you, this guy is so far from the norm up here that guy’s like him barely register a blip on the map. He’s is clearly ignorant of anything resembling facts, but these types usually are. They have the Bible after all. Who needs facts?
It’s ironic how Christianity has been melded to American ideals and civil liberties. It was the Apostle Paul who told Christians that they must obey their government because Gawd allows all governments to come into power, and that to go against the government was in effect to go against God. When that letter was written (or supposedly written) the Roman Empire was in power. Those scriptures basically destroys the idea that Christianity is all about personal freedoms and Mom and Apple Pie.
Paul
Well, it was a little break, anyhow. FH and Michelle are already making me look more fondly on the chupahostias.
“Soviet Suzuki” ?
What does a Japanese automobile company have to do with Communism?
“How many people are too many? Global warming cultists never tell us. For 200 years, the Left has been screaming imminent doom is just around the corner because of population growth.”
The writer has this absurdly wrong–the rapture will be here long before global warming bakes us into cookies, or would that be unleavened crackers?
This particular species of loon needs to be extinct.
Ah, Zeno, thanks for the link.
Hard to realize a human caught such beauty in musical form. A human just like the filthy scum that wrote the piece this entry is about…
A strange creature man is, indeed.
Oh wow. And just when I thought that it couldn’t get any sillier on the part of conservatives when it comes to climate change… It’s like saying that global warming raped your sister and it wants to eat your baby. That’s just pathetic.
Huh. And here I thought Alberta was the nutter province.
“It’s reassuring to see that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on loons.”
It’s not often discussed, but we’ve got a whole boatload of nutters in the Prairies, especially near the west in Alberta. For some reason, it’s just a massively conservative area of the country; they even have a little Creation museum!!
Fortunately, they have absolutely no power outside of local affairs.
Besides whether global warming is caused by man or not the solution is not to stop exploiting the enviroment to our benefit, but rather to use technology and capitalism to deal with whatever problems might arise. – FH
Care to be a little more specific about that?
Uncommon Descent has also become a nest of global warming denial of late. One would think they’d steer away from that since it’s just another issue where they’re out of touch with the scientific community, but it seems that the underlying right-wing agenda overwhelms those concerns.
“but rather to use technology and capitalism.
Exactly! We’ll just pay someone to build us some new icecaps.
ngong #35: “One would think they’d steer away from that since it’s just another issue where they’re out of touch with the scientific community”.
In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.
Those are far from exclusive options. What about technological solutions — more efficient solar cells, to pick a random example — which allow us to stop exploiting the environment?
“Uncommon Descent has also become a nest of global warming denial of late.”
All science is subject to ridiculous scrutiny by them; simply put, they are incapable of trusting it, because it’s so thoroughly debunked the Bible that they are forced to oppose it. Basically, anything they can’t see in effect RIGHT AWAY is false: global warming, evolution, etc. Hell, if you took away their TVs, they’d probably decry electromagnetic theory as false!
This author follows the familiar theme of categorizing a position he disagrees with as the “Church of Global Warming”. He can’t understand that there can be reasoned science and decision making outside the realm of dogma. It simply doesn’t fit his understanding of the world.
“Care to be a little more specific about that?”
I’ll translate. He’s use the old “the climate is far too complicated for humans to have the knowledge to fully understand nor the power to negatively change. However, on the off chance that we are, we humans certainly have the knowledge to understand it and the power to change it” argument.
Even here in the UK we are not immune to the global warming deniers. Strangely the most prominent seem to all be related. There is Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is even worse at science than he was at finance, and his son Dominic and Christopher Monckton, who is Dominic’s brother in law.
Even here in the UK we are not immune to the global warming deniers. Strangely the most prominent seem to all be related. There is Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is even worse at science than he was at finance, and his son Dominic and Christopher Monckton, who is Dominic’s brother in law.
And who’s that curly haired nutjob TV personality again?
“And who’s that curly haired nutjob TV personality again? ”
Jeremy Clarkson ?
He is no longer a problem since disappearing up his own backside.
There are also plenty of Canadian loons here where I live, generally of the funnymentalist variety, but I live in the Canadian equivalent of the Deep South, so there is an analogue there. (Hot weather makes crazy people, and we have cold winters besides.)
So, uh, anti-environmental folks here, do you believe in the concept of natural capital? The economic view of environmentalism is that humans found ourselves gifted in trust with this vast but finite amount of wealth that derives from the planet itself…and we’re busy spending it on booze, coke, and anonymous sex. Not taking care of the earth isn’t just environmentally irresponsible, it’s fiscally irresponsible. (Ever notice how a lot of resource companies are multibillion-dollar concerns?) And once that natural capital is gone, it’s not like humanity can get a part time job on the side to pay for repairs to the place…
It is clear that in the past, when man has tried to seriously change environmental factors, that we have pretty well mucked it up. Examples are the Bureau of Land Managements’ work in the US midwest and western states, and the un-thought out damning of rivers, many of which are being dismantled now.
This is not to say that any ideas should be discarded out-of-hand, but the current climate situation has probably already progressed too far for reversal by anything we currently have on the table, technologically. The great CO2 sink of the oceans is not capturing the amount it has in the past, and thawing of permafrost creating lakes seems to be quickening the problems.
Yes, we need to lower, or end our dependance on finite fuels, but I would object if extraordinary actions are not worldwide in scope, and serve only to diminish, or destroy the North American economy, without any guarantee of positive results.
Don’t Canadianians actually celebrate their loons on their currency?
Dahan, #27:
Fool! Do you actually believe the Leftist Lie that the Soviet Union ‘broke up’? No, the Soviet Union realized it could defeat the West faster by making Americans buy cost-effective fuel-efficient cars, so they infiltrated the Japanese auto industry and went underground. And that, my friend, explains why the USA still has 6,390 deliverable nuclear weapons, ready launch on short notice. You don’t really believe the USA would continue the very expensive maintenance of these systems if no other nation had half that many deliverable weapons, do you? Of course not. So there must be a hidden, heavily armed nuclear power. And it must like within the Japanese auto industry.
Matt, #16
Interesting pattern of (non)capitalization there.
Absolutely right. But let’s not forget that the vast majority of people who identify as Christian aren’t these people. Instead, they’re people who go to church on Sunday (more or less), maybe send their children to Sunday school, and otherwise mostly go on with their sane, secular lives. For a variety of reasons, I’ve spent plenty of Sundays in a variety of churches, and you really don’t meet many of these whackaloons. Mostly you meet people who are in church because it’s part of their received cultural heritage… it’s just “what you do.” Those folks aren’t committed to a crazy ideology; they can (potentially, at least) be enlightened and persuaded.
In pointing this out, I am by no means suggesting we should “go easy” on the batshit crazy enemies of sense and thought; I’m just saying we need to be thoughtful in making distinctions between who we should fight and who we should convince. If we really hope for a better, more secular world, it’s not sufficient to win fights; we must also change minds.
Hrmmm… the fact that there’s overlap between liberals’ concern for environmental sanity and their concern for socioeconomic justice in no way invalidates either concern. Among the lefties I know, the only concern about the rich and their SUVs and “stuff” stems from the fact that those riches are increasingly gained at the expense of the non-rich, as part of an increasingly inequitable system. Nobody wants you to not be rich; we just want you to not be rich on our backs.
Polykookery is more common than not. Many of these are unmedicated paranoid schizophrenics.
I know one such. She collects all delusions and carefully knits them into a tapestry. The Catholic church controls the world and the Jews and Illuminati are subsidiaries. The Pope travels around in a flying saucer with bug eyed aliens who are really demons from hell.
The pharmaceutical industry is a big part of it. She hates docs because they keep telling her she is crazy and trying to prescribe zyprexa or abilify.
If you step back a little, these people are hurting and tend to have short lives. She is also one step away from being homeless, keeps getting kicked out of housing for erratic disruptive behavior, and frequently barricades herself inside for weeks on end. Her family has the same affliction and two of them committed suicide.
Hey, the guy might be Canadian, but you should drive though that part of the Canada. Start at Barrie and drive north. There are so many roadside signs about preparing to meet thy god and the wages of sin is death, that you begin to think you’ve landed on another planet. Sure, there are lots of Canadian loonies, but we carry them around in our pockets, and spend them.
Ahh… the power of the net. I send PZ an email about a crazy letter to the editor in my local newspaper during breakfast, and its posted with 46 comments by the time I get to work.
@#27: Suzuki refers to David Suzuki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suzuki), a highly respected Canadian scientist, environmentalist, and educator (tonnes of letters after his name, including Companion of the Order of Canada, our highest civilian honour, also greatest living Canadian by popular vote).
To the folk mentioning the bird on the Canadian coin: You realize that the call of the loon is actually a satire of letters like the one this article is about.
@26: “chupahostias”
May your coinage enter the dictionary!
Just so you guys don’t get confused too much, being a “liberal” in Canada, especially in Quebec, is very near the center in the political arena (in fact, journalists often say they are center-right). Even then, our left in not anywhere near communism. And their politics certainly don’t include mass murdering of children, quite the opposite!
This guy is completely out of the political game. However, we’re hearing more and more of these freaks, and the federal government right now doesn’t seem to disapprove too much with these views…
My personal favourite is in one of the responses, “When Mother Nature takes a wee wee or blows big wind or worse, the faithful pray. I buy lottery tickets.”
Also note that while my area of Canada is a little more backward than some, the author of the crackpot letter is actually from Manitoba, a thousand kilometres away.
PZ, conservatism in Canada is just as wacky as it is in the US.
Just this morning I nearly puked in my tea as I read a local letter to the editor in my small-town southern Ontario newspaper decrying Morgentaler’s Order of Canada, replete with token patriotic bullshit that one would have expected from Americans in the deep south, but not from Canadians… we’re supposed to be too nice for that kind of asshole maneuver.. Apparently if you’re a real Canadian, you put your accidental pregnancy up for adoption. *rolls eyes*
Except as the federal government…
@ 49
Maybe it’s a poem!
I’m with Michelle (#18) on this one, sort of.
I think, perhaps, the point she was making was that the trend to give a damn about the issues comes and goes. The issues at hand don’t really go away but they cease to be trendy and get replaced with the next global issue meme of the month.
Global warming is just that, much like the sudden surge of people making a fuss about China and Tibet. It’s not as if it’s a new issue or anything but it’s suddenly hip to talk about it because dullard celebrity X wore a t-shirt about it.
This isn’t to say the issues aren’t real (the jury is out on global warming…waiting for some science there) but the “supporters” ability to make a leap to the next bandwagon certainly is.
As for that article, total batshit loony. I bet aliens with UFO lasers are helping those nasty leftists heat everything up too!
…we would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling god and jesus fellows.
And don’t forget Sir Patrick Moore. Although he’s not technically curly haired, or much of a TV personality.
I quit buying the BBC’s “The Sky at Night” magazine, and my fiancée cancelled her “Focus” after we both kept getting infuriated when this guy’s bleatings on global warming were treated as science, just because the guy knows how to point a telescope at the moon.
Oh; that and “Sky at Night” seemed to keep giving the “Gold” award in a product review to the most outrageously expensive piece of kit.
“Scapegoat”?
He forgot to blame the French.
Blake:
I think what we have here is a linguistic problem: “Exploit” is these days almost always used in its negative connotation of selfish manipulation… but it also has the sense of simply make use of or even make best use of.
We (along with every other living species) exploit the environment inherently, just by living in it, taking energy from it, discharging waste to it…. It’s not that we should (or even could) stop exploiting the environment; it’s that we must learn to exploit it in sustainable, beneficial ways instead of unsustainable, destructive ones.
To a certain extent, I agree with FH about technology: We’re not going to retreat to a global population of a few million in scattered tribes of hunter-gatherers using Stone Age technology (at least, we’re not going to do that voluntarily), and making our large, modern, technological culture environmentally sustainable is going to require (IMHO) more (and better) technology, not less. Even conservation will require advanced technology if we’re to maintain something close to our current standard of living (e.g., reducing the energy cost of lighting means developing new kinds of lightbulbs, not sitting in the dark).
That’s where I think the right-wing AGW deniers fall off the sled: They claim to be all about capitalism and and markets and entrepreneurship… but if they were serious about that, they ought to see AGW as an enormous opportunity. Wingers are always blathering on about how the market is a meritocracy, and how smart individuals and small businesses can outperform the big corporate “dinosaurs” and such. Well, guess what? The fact of AGW creates huge new markets that are perfectly well suited for the sort of entrepreneurial capitalism that wingers have these wet-dreams about… but instead of jumping on these new markets with all four paws, they spend all their energy denying they even exist. WTF?
The people who will come out of all this smelling like roses (if any of us come out of it at all) will be the left-leaning entrepreneurs, who understand that in the long run, making the world a better place for everyone is a better way to get rich than making the world a shitty place for everyone but yourself.
#61 : A UN research committee has already analysed a lot of the researchs, and they declared the evidence was overwhelming (as a whole). If the UN and the best scientists gathered by it cannot be trusted on this subject, I don’t know who we can trust. =/
“Jeremy Clarkson ?
He is no longer a problem since disappearing up his own backside. “
That’s the one. Surprised I couldn’t remember his name.
I watch pretty much only non-US stuff these days – mostly UK with some Canadian, Oz, NZ and even South Africa thrown in. (thank you usenet!)
I can’t physically escape this country so I guess I’m escaping it that way.
Sadly, no nationality has an exclusive lease on kooks. For Canadians, one of our primary patriotic activities is the unexamined assumption that we possess fewer of them than the US. As a Canadian, I also would like to believe this, but am too afraid to actually go see if it is really true.
Even if GW does turn out to be completely unrelated to human activity today, it is certain that, if our patterns of behavior do not change, it, and other environmental catastrophes, will become related to human activity in the future. Anyone who’s ever grown yeast in a petri dish knows this.
The usable resources on earth are finite. Technology can, and has, done remarkable things in allowing us to obtain ever greater and more efficient yields from the resources at hand, but no technology can turn a finite quantity into infinity.
We have three choices: 1. we expand beyond this earth, 2. we voluntarily control our growth and consumption, or 3. our growth and consumption will be involuntarily curbed.
A true environmentalist does not care about GW or any other human created natural disturbance. The earth will slough us off and recover. Only those who care about the continuing happiness and prosperity of PEOPLE on this earth need to care about environmental degradation.
Schweet! One of those responses is a Mendelson Joe letter!
(Google him if you’re curious. Central Ontario gadfly/artist guy… tho’ as I see he’s now living in Almaguin, I guess he’s more a middle/Northern Ontario gadfly, now.)
the jury is out on global warming…waiting for some science there
You’re kidding, right? RIGHT?
We have three choices: 1. we expand beyond this earth, 2. we voluntarily control our growth and consumption, or 3. our growth and consumption will be involuntarily curbed.
Correct. I think #1 is highly unlikely. Energy cost to move more than a breeding pair is very high. And we don’t have a really good destination to hold the expansion.
#2 would be the smart choice, but humanity has pretty well proven that it’s not capable of doing the smart thing (due to greed, short term thinking, loony beliefs, etc.).
So my cynical prediction is that #3 will be the “choice” we stagger into eventually. And my feeling is that when the limits are really being felt in a serious way, the scene is going to get very ugly. It will bring out the worst in us.
“We have three choices: 1. we expand beyond this earth”
I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s not a choice. It’s silly.
Expanding off the earth means terraforming. It’s silly to think that while we aren’t smart enough not to fuck up a wonderfully robust, self-regulating ecosystem with all the amenities, we ARE smart enough to build one from scratch in a less desirable location that is so much less suitable that one didn’t arise on its own.
Forget pre-existing ones – interstellar travel is not going to happen in any real sense.
And even if we DID get the smarts to terraform, say, Mars, we’re not going to be able to launch the hundreds of thousands of people per day, every day that it would take to “move” there.
Which means that at best, such a project would simply mean a handful of people using a drastically disproportionate amount of earth’s resources than what would be their “fair share,” in order to keep their lives relatively cushy while leaving the 99.9999% humanity behind to deal with the consequences.
Which is pretty much the attitude that’s causing the problem in the first place. It’s just a vastly scaled-up version of the HumVee drive telling everyone else to suck on his exhaust.
And I say that as a life-long rabid space program enthusiast.
Sounds almost apocalyptic. I can’t see why a good christard would be bothered by a little apocalypse.
Basically it’s a good thing that they expand their “ideas” to denying anthropogenic global warming, and use the same hyped rhetoric for both.
They thereby undermine both at once, by being equally stupid on them, and by showing that these are only ideological enemies to them.
I like each and every mindless bleat on UD about global warming (Dembski joins in occasionally). Nothing makes them look more stupid than the fact that they do indeed oppose science in general (mostly because it must refrain from opposing their religious notions prior to its accepted), even though they despise science in the particular.
Beyond that, the linked article looks like it’s written for a very limited audience of fairly ignorant people.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
StuV,
I can only assume Hessenroots is stuck in 1998 rather than 2008.
Canadian? I’m so embarrassed…
Funny that the online letter has received no comments so far. Is Almaquin News, “The Voice of the People” damming the flood?
The name of the guy who wrote that sounds Dutch. One less here.
I suspect if global warming scientists had framed their work as a technological means to control Earth’s climate and increase man’s dominion over nature, the political polarization around global warming science would have lined up differently.
Funny Joe should mention Gawd being on vacation…
OT, but related:
It’s kind of tough to say whether or not he should have said that the story of Adam and Eve shouldn’t be taken literally. Telling students that it wasn’t historical would be in order, because it’s clearly not what happened, but it does seem a religious interpretation to claim that the early chapters of Genesis aren’t to be taken “literally”.
That said, he makes a good point about academic freedom–especially at levels beyond high school. Unless he had turned the course into his own opinions about religion, it’s hard to see justification for firing him. And they’re denying admission of liability for the obvious fact that paying him suggests that they are liable.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Bill Dauphin:
Yes, my use of “stop exploiting” was meant in the sense of “selfish manipulation”.
I’m always fascinated to hear the basis on which GW denying atheists substantiate their claims.
If you accept the scientific method, understand how it works and are not an expert in the relevant field, on what basis would you reject the findings of a significant proportion of the actual experts? Its a puzzler.
@70
Ok my comment was a bit too generic.
Climate change is obviously a real thing, arguing that would be moot.
Maybe I’m alone here but there’s a pretty damn good chance that this scenario is a natural process. The evidence that human activity is the cause doesn’t seem solid enough. There’s way too much at work that we don’t know and understand to start running around pointing fingers and panicking that we’ve sealed our fate.
As a platform to get people to really think about how they live and consume it’s a great thing. We’re certainly not helping the environment but suggesting that we’ve brought this on ourselves is nothing short of hyperbole.
Trade in your SUV and buy a bike, put solar panels on your roof, stop using plastic bags (or paper bags)…whatever helps you sleep at night. Don’t do it because someone told you the sky is falling, do it because you actually give a damn.
Maybe I’m wrong, it’s just my opinion on the matter.
CURSES!!!
The Jesus League used their super-powers of prayer and scripture to discover our evil plan to murder all the babies on this earth! Fellow baby-killing, totalitarian Stalinist comrades; our plan has been exposed, and all will be lost if we do not act quickly!
Hurry, we must finish the last phases of our plan before it is too late, when Jesus returns (which I hear will be sometime in late October).
In case you forgot our plan:
Phase 1: Enact legislation to protect environment and allow social justice
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: All your babies are belong to us.
Yet another professional contrarian, eh? If Al Gore had been saying that we need to drive Hummers everywhere, even to our mailboxes, they would now be the conservationists. They aren’t right wingers, they are right whingers. The only problem is that they are never right.
“It’s kind of tough to say whether or not he should have said that the story of Adam and Eve shouldn’t be taken literally.”
No it’s not. It’s very easy.
When discussing stories that are absolutely batshit insane if taken literally, teachers should not only be free to state the fact that they shouldn’t be taken literally, they should be encouraged to.
Don’t do it because someone told you the sky is falling, do it because you actually give a damn.
Can’t one do both?
Maybe I’m wrong, it’s just my opinion on the matter.
On what basis did you form your opinion? IPCC reports? Fox news? Instinct?
Holy Crap! We will soon have a global cracker warming!
Aw man, first hockey sticks, then LaBatt Blue and now this!?
:-)
Just kidding, Canada. I love ya.
No, as I stated, it is entirely proper to say that the story isn’t historical. Because it isn’t.
One might move from there to say that the story is a literal account, but it is completely wrong. IOW, there is no obvious reason why a person teaching in a state school should supply the liberal theological apologetics that many do. It is fine and legal for a priest or minister to say that Genesis is true but “not literal”, if that is his understanding, but that is a religious interpretation, indeed.
The fundamentalists can make a case that Genesis is properly taken literally. In that case, Genesis is only properly judged as being wrong, because historically that narrative is bullshit. Bitterman is giving the liberal theological interpretation, not the atheist or fundamentalist interpretation, as one could argue he should (at least as possibilities).
The neutral statement would be that Genesis is not history, not historically accurate. Just because it’s completely wrong is no reason to judge that it “should not be taken literally.” For if it is taken literally, it is a strike against belief in the Bible.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Yeah, theres a ‘debate’ over whether or not glabal warming is caused by humans, just like there is a ‘debate’ that evolution and creationism are competing schools of thought. One side is overwhelmingly supported by empirical evidence, scientists, and experts in the field, while the other has large masses of dogmatic followers who constantly try to innoculate their beliefs from reality (resulting in about a 50-50 public opinion split, yet about a 99.99-0.001 intellectual split)
Glen, gotcha. I guess I was reading your comment out of context.
OK I ask for your forgiveness in advance, but I am an Australien. I’m sure it’s been mentioned a thousand times already…..but this church/state separation thingy, that gives tax free status to relgion sales companies
@ 87
The point of my original post was a comment on how these kinds of issues become trendy for a while then seem to vanish. If people actually cared instead of just doing it because it was the current fad we might actually see progress. I was simply reitterating that point.
The only thing Fox News is good for is a nice hearty laugh or vomiting a little in disgust…or both.
Instinct is fairly blind and unreliable (beyond eating and sex anyway). I wouldn’t call it instinct but I suppose one could argue that I’m skeptical by nature.
I’m hardly a scientist (use that against my opinion if you like) but having looked over the IPCC reports I would agree that it does certainly look like we’re the main driving force behind the climate shift. I’m skeptical here because it seems like there is a lot more at work that we don’t fully understand.
Maybe I’m just not fully understanding the research but isn’t it at least slightly logical to think that there’s more nature at work then we realize?
I’m not militant on the issue or set in stone.
Speaking of global warming…
FIRST LEGO League team registration has just opened up. The theme this year is “Climate Connections”. If you have kids, you should really check out this organization. It’s Legos and science!
http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=70
What’s all this talk about Canada? That Guy, Reitsma, clearly has a Dutch Y-chromosome, but I don’t feel embarassed at all.
The thing I don’t get about Right-wingers is that they claim to support “capitalism” yet in effect demand a form of welfare, namely that society as a whole, not individuals or corporations, bear the cost of the pollution those entities produce. In other words, you expect society to clean up after you and like it. My 4 year old daughter has already mostly grown out of that mentality; why haven’t you?
(Of course, I doubt they teach you THAT much about external vs. internal costs in University of Google’s Economics 0A course…)
And what the fuck do you think emission control devices and cap-and-trade schemes are, genius?
Maybe I’m just not fully understanding the research but isn’t it at least slightly logical to think that there’s more nature at work then we realize?
Thanks for the clarification, you are not alone (scientist or otherwise) in this perfectly sensible perspective. While the consensus is that human activity is a key driver, both the scale of our contribution, and the scale of the impact are hard to gauge (that woman has ruined a perfectly good word), and thus the source of genuine uncertainty.
I humbly relax my over sensitive hackles:-)
Michelle would do well to contact her local environmental regulators. In the Northeast of the US, many streams, lakes, and ponds are DEAD from acid rain. Some of these bodies of water supported fisheries up to the 1950s. Not Cheney fishing, with dynamite and a private lake…Commercial fishing…
As to the predictions, there is an energy input from oil that has staved off the issue for most of the last century…much of the starvation happened someplace other than the US (this is why China has a one-sprat policy)…the excess population of Europe was sent overseas to fight wars and annex others’ territory…the US had an abundance of land, thanks to the biowar waged on the natives…
It’s called reading, folks.
PZ; you are being rather short-sighted. Perhaps you should have your prescription checked?
Hessenroots, #61:
First, “the jury” IS NOT OUT. Stop “waiting” for some science on it to come to you, and instead go and LOOK for the mountains of evidence that are already there, waiting for you.
Secondly, if you accept the scientific evidence that this is anthropogenic (and if you don’t, it’s pointless to discuss further), I think it’s fundamentally different from the issues Michelle compares it to. I agree that there’s something to the comparison in terms of the public reaction, but there is such a thing as “reality” beyond public opinion and politics.
For instance, acid rain is, to some extent, a solved problem, I think. OK, it’s a huge problem in quickly developing places like China, but in the west, thanks to low-sulfur fuels and emissions controls on industry, we only have the existing damage to deal with.
Caring about famines in Africa, or massacres in Tibet, I think, are fads that come and go because, let’s face it, they don’t affect you and me, in Europe or North America or wherever, directly. You hear about starving kids in Africa, you’re outraged for a while, you tell your friends, it’s a huge topic in the media for a while, then it fades and you get on with your own life.
Why do I think global warming is different? Because 1) It’s here to stay. Cutting CO2 by as much as we need to is going to be much harder and take much longer than, say, sulfur or lead. And 2) it *is* going to affect us here in the developed countries. How bad it’s going to hit us directly is hard to predict, but it’ll probably do enough damage to the world’s economy that we’ll feel it either way. Unless the oil running out kills the economy first…
Sorry to disagree, but we’re not all that consistent, and tend toward the American format as much as the European. The pay period on a pay stub sitting before me begins ’23-Jun-2008′, while the deposit date just above it reads ‘July 15, 2008’. The confusing numerical format mm/dd/yy is as common as–if not more than–dd/mm/yy, and yy/mm/dd or yy/dd/mm would probably fubar us into retreating to the cabin with a mickey of rye and a case of Molson.
And as for generally being logical, I dunno: I live in Edmonton, where the daily temperatures bracket freezing 7-8 months of the year, and yet as soon as warm weather hits everyone heads off to Jasper, the only place in the province with glaciers.
Just to be fair, and to clarify; Marxism was one of the first ideologies to argue for a sustainable environment and ecological protections, which is why environmentalists often (and unjustly) get attacked as being communists.
Second, you don’t have to be a Marxist to agree with some of what Marx said: he obviously wasn’t right about everything, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything either.
Third, just because you want higher taxes, more social spending, or like (to some extent) the idea of bigger government doesn’t make you a communist or hard-line Marxist; and even for those out and out socialists – it doesn’t mean that they are fans of Stalin or other totalitarian communist regimes – that generalization is radically unfair.
@ 101
I clarified myself a bit in #94.
Oh, sure, I understood what you were getting at. But I think there’s an inherent trap in that word, in that it tends to put the whole debate on a (false, IMHO) exploit/don’t exploit footing, when we should be talking about better or worse ways to “exploit” (in the sense of “use”).
It’s well and good to say we should “stop explioting” (in the selfish, destructive sense) the environment, but the whole predicate of this conversation is that we’re talking to stupid people, who will quite easily mistake us for suggesting that humans stop “exploiting” (in the sense of using) the environment altogether… thus making our position seem silly and easily dismissable, from the stupid-person point of view.
And before we say “screw ’em; they’re stupid,” it behooves us to recall that there are more of them than us… and they vote.
I feel bad that similar sentiments came to me when I read his last name (no, really, I love the Dutch), but I’m just going to chalk it up to memories of Jim Keegstra, a former high school teacher here in Alberta who was convicted in the 1980s of hate speech for teaching his students that the Holocaust did not happen and that Jews sought to destroy Christianity.
Hey, wait: Holocaust=global warming; Jews=leftists–this Reitsma idiot is obviously parroting the bullshit in the long-ago-discredited Protocols of the Elders of Greenpeace.
Where the fuck did that come from? “Hey, look at me: I have an opinion though I won’t bother to explicate or support it with anything!”
Irrelevant idiot. Whatsa matter, don’t you get all the attention you need from God?
Nick Gotts, first of all, if the current predictions are correct, what exactly do we have to deal with? Isn’t it something like the temperature will rise 1 degree over the course of a century? What could happen if that occurs?
Let’s see, it gets to dry in some places to grow certain crops, so move the feilds – you have an entire century to do so. Alternativly you can artificially lower the temperature or increase the humidity with some kind of reverse greenhouse. Or you bio-engineer the crops to withstand the climate.
Besides other forms of crop might grow even better in the new climate, and the sweet spot for the old still exists – you just have to go further north or south depending of which side of the equator you are.
It could also become uncomfortably warm, then move somewhere else. I live in Sweden and hope to move to a warmer climate, and hopefully somewhere where the tax-climate isn’t so bad :)
Some say there might be a shortage of fresh water, so what, just desalinate water from the oceans.
Or we could put “sunglasses” on the earth by putting some dust or whatever in the atmosphere, alternativly put a giant screen in orbit that blocks part of the sunlight.
And what about the poor in africa who can’t afford such technology? Well they can choose to be rich instead of beeing poor – It’s been done time and time again in other countries and the way to do it is by adopting capitalism.
They even have lots of natural resources in Africa so they’ll do it easy. Hong Kong, the freest economy in the world was nothing 60 years ago + they had absolutly no natural resources and look what they built there: http://static.flickr.com/19/113171578_e5f82d8bf9.jpg
People dying of malaria? Spray the bastards with DDT.
The sea level rises slightly? Build dikes, damms or move elsewhere, we’re talking about a change that occurs over the course of centuries.
That’s about all I could come up with related to global warming, but I’ll give examples for other types of problems related to the enviroment, resource depletion etc.
We run out of oil. I don’t think we will… New extractionmethods makes it profitable to extract oil where it wasn’t before. There’s plenty of shale oil that isn’t profitable to refine today, but if the price of oil goes up or refining technology improves it will be.
Besides we have LOTS of ways to generate energy, nuclear power, wind, hydro, the sun, wavepower, coal, ethanol, hydrogen etc etc.
What about other resources? Well the stuff we dig up does not go out of existence, they are still here and we can recycle it and put it to other uses. People have been saying that this or that resource will run out for centuries but they are more plentifull than ever due to improved methods for finding and extracting them.
*Recycling most things are completly useless today, note that YOU get paid for returning coca-cola cans and so on, that’s because it makes financial sence to re-use the aluminum. For things like paper it’s just a complete waste of time and money to do so, it’s better to just throw it in the trash and make new paper from trees. Btw did you know there are more trees today than in the year 1920? They plant trees like potatoes you know.
Besides in the unlikely event that we run out of something we can find an alternative or get it from space. The moon has about the same composition as the earth, just mine for stuff there then build a mass driver and strap it to a nuclear reactor and ship it back in containers.
What about overpopulation? More people is good, that means there are more extraordinairy people born who can carry us mere mortals to greater heights.
As to population density, did you know that if half the worlds population moved to the US it would be about as densely populated as England is today?
Food shortage? Well, a first step is to stop the insanity about growing things organicly. Use whatever technology available to get as much yield as possible out of a given area. For instance, effective fertilizers, pesticides geneticly altered crops and so on. I don’t think it’s a problem.
My overall point is that the only limited resource is human inginuity. Capitalism is the system of the mind. It leaves people free to lead their lives as they wish, including to think, invent, invest, hire, fire, take risks etc. That is the source of capitalisms unparalleld success at generating wealth.
Bill Dauphin: You are correct that I did not mean that it’s bad to exploit the earth for our benefit.
Just a note on an acid rain note, the address below leads to a report released by the Cornell ornithological lab in 2002 regarding acid rain’s effects on the woodthrush population and includes a map showing the most effected areas in the Eastern US.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Publications/Birdscope/Autumn2002/wood_thrush.html
This is going to sound crazy and sanctimonious, but I’m going to say it anyway…
But the sky may really be falling. In one particular “environmentalist” situation, it is. We are running out of accessible oil. The range of estimates from various groups on how long the oil will last is about 40-80 years. So the most optimistic is 80 years. So, there’s no way you can make an argument that we’re not going to run out of oil in the relatively near future (within 100 yrs.) unless we put our creative energies into devising new technologies to deal with the oil problem. People talk about conservation (which is important as a stop-gap measure), but it simply postpones the problem. I just don’t get it…how can people ignore the situation as oil prices climb higher and higher.
Besides, the breaking point on oil won’t be when the last of it is pumped out of the ground or purified from shale, but when the price becomes so prohibitively expensive that large portions of the population cannot afford to fuel their cars and eat in the same month.
If we can devise a solution to the oil problem that also prevents the addition of more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, why would anyone oppose it? It makes no sense unless you believe Jesus will be back soon to fix it all. Or maybe these wackos think that god will be angry if we try to deal with our own problems and not ask for a miracle? Can anyone explain this to me?
Jason @ 103:
Welcome to the most obvious thing in the world, politically speaking. The unfortunate reality though, is that we have to deal with a present political situation where still, today, large swathes of the American public think the Democratic party:
A) is practically in Soviet hands
B) if they’re not run by the soviets, China or North Korea, well, they’re still atheist commu-socialists
C) will tax us into oblivion
D) will take all of our guns
E) will close down and/or burn all places of worship
F) will subvert the US military every time it has an opportunity to
G) will rip children out of parents’ hands and put them though liberal brain washing in public schools
H) runs the media
I) is behind nearly every bad thing that’s happened to the US, natural or otherwise, in the last 100 years
J) any and all of the above, and more.
The infuriating part is that the Democrats let most of this happen to them by not punching back at the Cold War memes, and worrying too much about what others thought of them. There was a time for that, but that time was past in 1999.
It’s nigh on impossible to say in today’s society that Marx was right about even one thing, because doing so automatically means you’re a communist sympathizer, in nearly all cases. If you’re in the company of conservatives and liberals and mention Marx may have been right about something, the conservative will write you off as someone worth ignoring completely, and the liberal will likely shuffle his feet and agree in an off-hand way with the conservative, so as to avoid a verbal beating by said conservative.
The fact is Marx was terrible at economics and many other things, but even he wasn’t 100% wrong all the time.
Sounds like it’s straight out of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism)” – there’s a whole series of these loony-tunes Guides competing with each other to see which can make the most egregiously incorrect claims – apparently ‘politically’ is now a synonym for ‘factually’ in wingnut land.
And if you think that’s nutty, check out The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design… if you dare. I probably lost hundreds of brain cells just scanning the covers in disbelief yesterday.
It’s amazing how the righties almost invariably buy the whole package of Neoconservatism, rather than taking a more “cafeteria”-like approach. Deluded to the core, yet convinced that WE are the lunatics.
The whole “free market” canard is really hilarious, the corporatists thrive on no-bid contracts, government handouts, and externalization of costs. The efforts of the multinationals have hampered the development of public transportation, alternate fuels, and conservation measures, and only a regimen of government regulation and investment in R and D is going to pull our chestnuts out of the fire.
The last thirty years have been a morass of lost oportunities, willful stupidity, and moronic overconsumption. We were “put on notice” in the 70s, but have blown it ever since… and I don’t trust that evil bastard T. Boone Pickens when I hear his radio announcements.
@111: Sadly, yes, a frighteningly large percentage of the US population is actively hoping and -sigh- praying for Armeggedon. They believe that humans have to trash our Earth in order for the “second coming” to happen.
The ones who aren’t completely militant about the end times focus their belief on the “fact” that their god can recreate the world any time it’s needed. It’s like kids who drop their dirty clothes on the floor of their room and then lo-and-behold the next day everything is clean and neatly folded in their dresser. No sense of personal responsibility.
Guess they believe that their god is an over-worked, under-appreciated mom, not a father!
@ 111
I’m not sure if that post was directed at me or you were just using a quote from me to make a point but I’ll comment anyway.
Running out or not I think it’s high time we work to get off oil. There’s some good looking alternatives on the horizon (I’m all sorts of excited about hydrogen cells) but without a massive paradigm shift I think it will be a long while before we see oil dependencies vanish. There’s too many people with too much political clout that make too much money on oil for things to really turn around any time soon, in my opinion.
@ 101
I fully agree that it’s a different brand of issue. People rethinking how they chose to live and interact with the environment isn’t a bad thing. We spend a little more money developing tech (fuel cells, etc) or perhaps have limits put on certain things we take for granted…so be it. No harm done in striving to lessen our impact on the natural world, globally or individually.
Will the general population’s reaction be any different though? The bandwagon effect is strong but falls prey to attention spans.
That’s the jest of my original post.
FH You sir, are an ignorant buffoon. Any 5th grader from my class could refute you. The only question in my mind is whether or not any other commentator here will waste their time addressing your pathetic post on a point for point basis. I certainly will not. I will pray for you and the sheep you rode in on.
Nonsense. Reitsma isn’t a True Dutchman. That name is Friesian.
I’m from Alberta (some of you will know what that means) and I can attest that there are wing-nuts like this here. I thank FSM that they they are the minority, even here. I worry that their voices are growing. We need more education based on fact and critical thinking. Less on crackers and archaic manuscripts.
I should invent a “bible blind” for these idiots. It would be a harness to that would allow people to wear the bible on their head in front of their eyes. People can strap it to their faces 24/7 so that they can avoid reality everyday, all day, read the “word,” be happy and maybe leave the rest of us alone.
If I had describe this douche to my friends in a way they’d understand, I’d probably say that after church he probably drinks Coors Light… piss for his mind, reads piss, piss to drink. Nuff said.
Hessenroots,
Not specifically at you, just used the quote for a jumping point. I think the greater problem for most people WRT oil is that it’s prohibitively expensive to purchase a new vehicle. Even if a great new technology emerged, there’s no guarantee most people will have the money to get it.
I’m driving a car that’s 12 yrs old (I do get 29 mpg) b/c I can’t afford a car payment now and I own it free and clear.
I do think the oil cabal has too much control over our economy and government. It wouldn’t be too hard to offer tax credits and such for hydrogen power once it really gets going, but I don’t see that happening (tax credits that is, I think hydrogen has enormous potential)…
Naw. He isn’t that bright to be an ignorant buffoon. He is just parroting neocon talking points.
Don’t worry, the market will fix everything. As we slide back into the stone age chanting “Adam Smith”.
So FH, you’re fine with people from Mexico moving en masse to the US when it becomes too dry for them to grow crops over there? Oh no! You live in Sweden? You’ll have to accept people from North Africa.
And no, it’s not a question of a slight change of the ocean levels or a degree Celsius over 100 years, it’s far more than that. We are talking whole countries – like Bangladesh – disappearing from the surface of the Earth.
Do you really think we can relocate hundreds of millions of people like that, without problem? Without war? For fuck sake, the US right doesn’t even want to know about a couple million of illegal aliens; how are they going to take the arrival of entire nations in their backyards?
As for “choosing to be rich”, yeah, obviously that’s the problem. You’re like Michelle, believing people die by choice…
Why, people who tell us what we want to hear, of course!
Holy shit, I thoguht FH’s post was a sarcastic joke at first: is this guy really a cornucopian?! Jesus Christ.
The first obvious problem with your ideology is that there is an overall limit, as Jared Diamond has brilliantly pointed out: even if everything you say is true (and it isn’t) is that if Human breeding patterns continue at this rate then the total mass of all humans will outweight the total mass of the universe in about 7000 years [now I know thats a long way off, and obviously not going to happen, but this illustrates the begining of many larger flaws with his whole argument]
The easy rational complaint is that this is the only earth we have, the only one shot on a pale blue dot for life that we know of, yet you want to treat it like there’s a fucking reset button or a second chance: there isn’t. This is the only chance our species has at life, and you want to bank it all on the principle that all things are limitless (a point that any scientist will tell you is retarded)
I dont think you get how energy and the environment/ecosystem work. ALL ENERGY (ANYWHERE EVER) IS SOLAR ENERGY. Oil is millions and millions of years of stored solar energy, and so is uranium and other energy sources: it all came from the sun, and it took millions and millions of years to form; and were wasting millions of years of energy in a few short decades.
1 degree over 100 years doesn’t mean anything (much) for the equator, where the effects are smaller, but it means 10-15 degrees in the polar ice caps; meaning the all but certain extinction of many forms of arctic life (special genocide), ecosystem derangement (not just for animals, but for our ecosystem too; we’re part of nature too). Not to mention its not simply a temperature by lattitude thing: this will radically reshape (and destory) ecosystems and environments, leading to changes in percipitation, wind currents, etc.
Relocating people? Are you fucking serious? Have you ever tried to relocate billions of people? Its not fucking easy, or even realistically possible. And why dont you sprat yourself with some DDT while you’re at it. Do you even know what that shit does?!
Hong Kong developed because it was property of the British Empire, and England constantly fueled the economy, just like the Americans with the South Koreans, Japan, and other global interventions; which are the only ‘capitalist’ nations to really develop. The unregulated free market is actually in effect in the third world, and its the biggest reason that their poor and getting poorer – because all their resources are being extracted by megacorporations while they work in sweatshops for fruit rind to feed their kids, to raise another generation of sweatshop workers ad infinitium.
We will NEVER run out of oil?!?! Are you kidding me?! it is by definition a finite resource, so of course we will run out at some point: and moreover, peak oil has very appearantly passed, meaning that we’re getting less and less for how much it takes to extract. Other forms of energy aren’t going to cut it without a population decrease (most ecologists and scientists say the earth can handle about .5 – 3 billion people sustainably, but, hey, what do they know, they just examine this stuff for a living – I’m sure your management degree means that you know more about ecology than them). There isn’t enough nuclear energy on the planet to power it all, and solar, wind, hydro, etc will never, ever, ever, be able to match our current energy demand. And don’t get me started on ethanol (which is a huge reason for the current food crisis). And again, I dont think you get how energy works: its not a video game where you have a little recharging meter on the side, energy is an ecosystem unto itself it all comes from and goes somewhere! More people means more energy from resources (like food) invested in those people, meaning fewer resources for other things – it is not an all you can eat buffet!
And sunglasses on the earth? I just said all the energy on the planet is solar energy: let’s try and block some of that out? Even if it did make the planet cooler (which it probably wouldnt – it wouldnt just amplify the greenhouse effect – like that planet Venus), then we’d be dramatically reducing our only source of energy!
Oh, and space resources! Considering that the farthest humans have ever travelled was the moon (and while I’m mentioning it, it takes alot of energy to reach escape velocity, meaning trips to the moon aren’t cost efficient). ANd really?! Mine the moon?! Mars?! What the hell ideas are these: why not simply grind up some unicorn horns and elfdust to power our perpetual motion machines for energy. That isn’t a realistic solution!
Also, as Jared Diamond so ellegantly puts it in Guns Germs and Steel, and Collapse, extraordinary people aren’t born into societies simply because there are enough people; but because they are born into societies which can sustain and nurture them, even at cost.
And yeah, people themselves dont take up a whole lot of area, but the resources we consume do!!! We’ve used most of the world’s arable land already, which has already lead to extinctions and ecosystem degradation.
And unregulated free market style capitalism leaves the rich free to get richer and live the lives they want (while furnishing their children with all the opportunities that poorer children will be removed from, like a decent education or health care), while exponentially increasing the poor, depleting resources, and destroying the environment (and eliminating democracy, by taking political power away from government and granting it to people by the dollar). I assure you, our most limited resource is not human ingenuity, it’s petroleum.
@121
Oh, and hey, dont sully Adam Smith’s good name by associating him with the Libertarians/anarcho-capitalists. For those few who have actually read Adam Smith, he was pro-government intervention when the market produced unwanted outcomes or inequality. But he’s become an icon to them in the same way that the traditional Jesus of the bible became Jeezus of America (http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly050504.htm)
[neither of which existed, but that’s not the point]
I thought the law of cause and effect =ed global warming in the 1980’s. That 50% rise in CO2 had to do something. However:
1. Can we do anything to stop it? Our whole world civilization is based on fossil fuels. While we worry about AGW, we are worried more about where to dig and drill and get more fossil fuels to burn. Peak oil is probably a much more serious problem. People are actually starting to starve in some countries due to food shortages. A lot of people in the AGW field don’t think we can do anything.
2. Will we do anything? We being the world. I doubt it. We will just do the usual, complain about it while going about our daily business.
Some scientists think it will be slow enough that we will just adjust. Like we have a choice anyway.
IMO, that is what we are doing now. It isn’t going to be easy. Fire season in California is now 12 months out of the year and water is tight. New Orleans almost disappeared. There has been a presistent drought in Australia and their major rivers are drying up.
Jason,
You forgot one more point. FH says we can get anything we need from the moon or, I guess, Mars, but he overlooks the very thing you pointed out…oil is the product of the decay of organic matter. There is no oil on the moon b/c there isn’t life on the moon, and it’s fairly unlikely that there was ever enough life on Mars (if any at all) to produe oil stores. FH doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. The problem is that there are tons of people just like FH, who think they know what’s going on and they go VOTE! You know, it’s fine if you (FH and others) want to ruin your life, but when you’re ruining the global ecosystem it affects my life too.
I love it! The Market to the rescue! We need to continue exploiting the environment, and we need to place a billion parasols into orbit around the earth! Now just imagine the revenues from selling all that high-altitude ad space. Go to it, Wall Street!
FH@109,
Your ignorance is truly impressive – it seems a shame to sully it.
Isn’t it something like the temperature will rise 1 degree over the course of a century? What could happen if that occurs?
No, it isn’t. The rise in mean global temperatures so far from pre-industrial levels is about 0.7C. It is unlikely the total rise over pre-industrial levels can be limited to less than 2C even with rapid falls in greenhouse gas emissions. It could be considerably more this century. The rise is not evenly distributed: land temperatures will rise more than sea, polar more than equatorial. Changes in precipitation are at least as important, and harder to predict, than changes in temperature.
Let’s see, it gets to dry in some places to grow certain crops, so move the feilds – you have an entire century to do so.
I can see you’ve never been in any way involved in agriculture. You don’t just need the right temperature and precipitation – you need the right soil and topography, you need the right equipment, you need transport and marketing infrastructure, you need to deal with pests and diseases, you need farmers who know what they are doing. What’s more, you most certainly do not “have an entire century” – change is already happening, and is likely to be both continuous, and highly unpredictable.
Alternativly you can artificially lower the temperature or increase the humidity with some kind of reverse greenhouse. Or you bio-engineer the crops to withstand the climate.Besides other forms of crop might grow even better in the new climate, and the sweet spot for the old still exists – you just have to go further north or south depending of which side of the equator you are.
Oh, just like that, eh? Considering that global agriculture is currently struggling to meet demand before much climate change has occurred, your complacency is astonishing. “Some kind of reverse greenhouse”? Over what portion of the Earth’s surface? Built how and of what, at what cost? You think you can just “bio-engineer” a crop like magic to use less water? That farmers can just switch from one crop to another at the drop of a hat?
It could also become uncomfortably warm, then move somewhere else.
Oh, yes, everyone is free to move to whatever country they like these days, aren’t they?
Some say there might be a shortage of fresh water, so what, just desalinate water from the oceans.
Do you have any idea of the energy requirements for doing so?
Or we could put “sunglasses” on the earth by putting some dust or whatever in the atmosphere, alternativly put a giant screen in orbit that blocks part of the sunlight.
These plans would of course have no unwanted environmental side-effects whatever, because it would be so unfair if they did. They wouldn’t do anything about the acidification of the oceans, however, which is the other serious problem greenhouse gas emissions are causing. By the way, who gets to control the “sunglasses”? What if one country or industry wants a higher temperature, and another, a lower one?
And what about the poor in africa who can’t afford such technology? Well they can choose to be rich instead of beeing poor – It’s been done time and time again in other countries and the way to do it is by adopting capitalism.
It is both stupid and offensive to claim that “the poor in Africa” choose to be poor. Capitalism is a global system, in which it is (quite deliberately) very hard for poor countries to break out of the subordinate roles they are in. Those countries that have become rich in the last two centuries have done so by protecting their nascent industries with import tariffs, as the USA did throughout the 19th century and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan etc. more recently. China and India have also had decades of such protection in order to reach their current growth rates – which have, I note, pushed up both greenhouse gas emissions and commodity prices. All the poorer countries are now under tremendous pressure not to protect their industries in this way.
As to population density, did you know that if half the worlds population moved to the US it would be about as densely populated as England is today?
So what? England doesn’t feed itself.
Food shortage? Well, a first step is to stop the insanity about growing things organicly. Use whatever technology available to get as much yield as possible out of a given area. For instance, effective fertilizers, pesticides geneticly altered crops and so on. I don’t think it’s a problem.
Again, you make your ignorance abundantly clear. Technology doesn’t come free. It uses oil and other non-renewable resources, and produces waste.
My overall point is that the only limited resource is human inginuity.
Your “overall point” is utter bilge. Land, soil, fresh water, oil, gold, copper, tin, platinum, phosphates and many other resources are limited, either absolutely or in terms of how fast supply can be increased.
The sea level rises slightly? Build dikes, damms or move elsewhere, we’re talking about a change that occurs over the course of centuries.
How much sea-level will rise in the coming century is one of the biggest areas of uncertainty, because ice is melting much faster than expected. Even if it is “only” a meter, that means billions of people needing to move, and vast areas of land unuseable for agriculture (google “salination”).
All your “solutions” are of course immensely expensive, where feasible at all. You apparently think you just have to toss out a sentence or two, and all the problems are solved.
Anyone would think, from your smug recital of its virtues, that capitalism has no serious problems. Most people, however, have noticed that even if we set aside environmental issues, it is currently not looking all that healthy: soaring commodity prices, currency fluctations, collapsing banks, asset depreciation, rising unemployment. I suggest it might be time to take your head out of the sand and look at reality. There are good prospects of solving the serious problems we face, but if there’s too much of your kind of purblind ideology and invincible ignorance around, we won’t solve them.
I once calculated just how much, back in 2002 or so. Assuming a population of ~6.4 billion people using the same amount as the average Edmontonian’s municipal water usage (to include agricultural and industrial usage, double or triple the figure), the energy required to distill that water from seawater would require a continuously sun-facing solar-panel satellite the size of Peru (assuming 100% efficient solar-panels.)
I find it annoying that those that assume that ‘scientists’ will be able to solve all these problems just like that are usually those whose understanding of science is virtually non-existent.
Nick,
You mean Capitalism won’t fix all of our problems. Are you saying that GWBush and Dick Cheney lied to me?! I can’t believe it. They seem like such nice boys ;)
Ideological stuff aside, I have a question(s):
Is nuclear energy more or less risky than fossil fuels, and, is it possible to reasonably meet energy needs without either?
Just to add some heat to this warming thread, One thing FH fails to consider is the impact of oceanic conveyor systems. That isn’t something that can be fixed as easily as moving to a more arable climate.
see-
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/05mar_arctic.htm
In addition to what could be a very quick and very radical climate change, a shutdown of the oceanic conveyor system could be catastrophic to most sea life, which would obviously affect the entire food chain.
Ideological stuff aside, I have a question(s):
Is nuclear energy more or less risky than fossil fuels, and, is it possible to reasonably meet energy needs without either?
Posted by: Jams
The way I understand it, nuclear energy could be used to create electricity in the short term future, but we have no effective method of disposal for the radioactive waste it generates. So, we could patch the fossil fuel hole, but we’re just creating a much bigger problem.
Nutjobs like FH no longer surprise me.
For more lunacy, we have a “must read” article in which the author posits “that the (California) wildfires could heat up the rock formations, thus creating geological instability.”
Science: It works, bitches!
Canada, ginger ale…mmmmmmmmmmm!
@#134:
I have heard from reliable sources (snatching time at work for this post, so can’t look them up right now) that if we reprocess nuclear waste into MOX (mixed-oxide), the stuff we are left over with and not able to put back in the reactor would be LESS radioactive than the original yellowcake (uranium ore).
That being said, MOX poses a large proliferation risk as it is much easier to process into weapons grade material than uranium.
DH,
So, this MOX stuff, is it energy efficient? I’ve never heard of it before, but I don’t know very much about nuclear reactors.
shit. they’re on to us. hide!
@#138:
“Normal” reactor fuel is UOX (uranium oxide), only a portion of the uranium actually being fissionable (this fraction can be raised, i.e. enriching the fuel, or lowered, i.e. depleted uranium). The point of MOX is that only a small amount of the fissionable material is burnt (something on the order of 95-99% is left depending on the reactor) before the reaction is poisoned by some of the reaction products. Reprocessing into MOX removes those poisons (this is the part that can’t go back in) and is called mixed oxide because the uranium is now mixed with other fissionables produced in the reactor. Depending on the source, it is said that you can make the same amount of original fuel go anywhere from 10-100 cycles instead of one. So I’d say very energy efficient.
Drawbacks though, are that you can make weapons grade plutonium out of MOX with a high school chem set if you know what you are doing. Also, not all reactor designs are able to burn MOX without extensive modifications, or at all. That being said, some designs (like the CANDU used here in Canada) don’t need any modifications.
If you’re interested in the science behind nukes.. then you should check this video out, it’s a lecture by Richard A. Muller, one of the authors of the Nemesis theory. If you want more just search for “Physics 10”
crap. nm. it won’t let me embed videos.
ok… well… just go here:
It was very good of you to include this. Unfotunately, it’s incorrectly placed.
Stylistically, it’s generally better to put the bit where you conclusively prove your own cluelessness closer to the beginning of the piece. Doing so saves the reader time and energy.
Physics for Future Presidents!
I second the recommendation. The whole series is good actually.
I’m from Manitoba… Carman isn’t too far from our main bible belt area, so you’re bound to see some crazy stuff like this. But don’t worry, there’s enough more or less sane people in Winnipeg to keep this province in order.
Mentioning crazies… here’s an interesting question when it comes to our wonderful democratic moral absolutes…
Freedom of Speech.
It is absolute? Should lying to people be covered under freedom of speech? It isn’t covered if it causes monetary damages… but is intentional misinformation that much different?
*cough*answersingenesis*cough*
I don’t want to spoil the party, but all signs signal immanent cooling.
Sad for all the alarmists, but reality is sometimes harsh.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/WashingtonPolicymakersaddress.pdf
PZ Myers:
Yes, but it certainly has a very large market share!
OMG that’s where I’m going next weekend. Almaguin Township is where I have some cousins: one sibling is in thrall to TV evangelists, one is an atheist, and a sibling now deceased was an alcoholic Catholic. I have a cousin for any occasion! I note that the writer of the letter was from another province and the editor just dropped it into some “content hole,” either without thinking about it or agreeing with it.
There’s also the small problem that we have enough uranium for the current reactors for about 200 years. If the US were to, oh, double the number of reactors to reduce the dependence on oil, we could run out of viably retrievable uranium in 80 years or less.
So no, nuclear energy is not a viable option.
On the other hand, with a crash program the US could be producing almost all its electricity needs by wind power in 20-30 years. But of course that won’t work, because Al Gore is fat.
aye… methane emissions from fat asses may be a significant contributor to global warming. we need studies done immediately!
Is nuclear energy more or less risky than fossil fuels, and, is it possible to reasonably meet energy needs without either? – Jams@134
Technically, I would think it would be possible to shift out of fossil fuels fast enough to (probably) avoid catastrophic climate change, while also phasing out nuclear power and leaving most people as well or better off than they are now – through use of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and a reduction in some high-energy-demand activities like rapid long-distance travel and having children. Realistically, neither fossil fuels nor nuclear power are going to disappear in the next few decades. Oil is going to remain the fuel for most road and air transport, Russia has lots of gas to sell, China and India have large reserves of readily accessible coal – it’s most unlikely they won’t use them. As for nuclear power, Japan and France are both too deeply committed to change course quickly. The top problem with nuclear power is simply that it just can’t be built up fast enough – China and India are both investing in nuclear power programmes, but these will still only meet a few % of their energy needs up to mid-century. (Other problems include proliferation, resource limitations and waste disposal.) Little as I like it, this means that carbon capture and storage (CCS) from fossil fuel use (in powerstations and factories at least) is likely to be crucial to reducing emissions fast enough – but there have only been a few real-world trials of CCS technology. However, the more we can gain through demand reduction, energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, the less the world will need CCS and/or nuclear power.
@147
I don’t want to spoil the party, but all signs signal immanent cooling.
Gee, “all” signs, eh? And (sic) immanent? Do you have a degree of any kind? Is there a reason we should care what you think, as opposed to say … all the signatories of IPCC?
The way I understand it, nuclear energy could be used to create electricity in the short term future, but we have no effective method of disposal for the radioactive waste it generates. So, we could patch the fossil fuel hole, but we’re just creating a much bigger problem.
We can just build a ‘mass driver’ and shoot all that pesky radioactive waste into the moon! The resulting explosion will send thousands of pounds of useful moon minerals careening into the atmosphere. Those sun blocking shields could double as giant nets to catch the moon rocks and extract the useful materials then send them down a massive space elevator into our homes!
or not…
Thanks to those who better explained nuclear energy. I hadn’t really thought about uranium being a finite resource…
btw don’t forget the massive coal stores in the US. We’re not using alot of our coal because it’s low grade and filthy. Hang out in some of the regions with crappy, dirty coal and listen to people bitch about the Clean Air Act sometime. You’d think that being able to breathe the air around you is a silly luxury!
@ 153:
Silly BC, you should know that denialism automatically equals debate. Come on, this is fundamental stuff! If somebody asks something that questions the foundation of a commonly held position based on libraries worth of data, you should know that automatically means there’s all kinds of debate and controversy left to unearth! All of this untapped opposition energy must be sorted out before any man, woman or group dare do anything!
The lesson is, it doesn’t matter how much the sciency people study and collect data, they are still sinning, flawed human beings with limited minds, that can’t be trusted. Therefore, explaining away their hard work is most definitely in order! Tell those smart-pantses where to put their core samples! Burn their books! Shout over them in auditoriums! Lock them in their ivory towers!
See how much sense that makes? You see how the big bad scientists are ruining your life?
# 153
Typo, should have been imminent. Do you really need an argument from authority to prove your point?
Just wait a little, contrary to the Ipcc predictions, the cooling predictions are falsifiable in short time.
Start saving to heat your home in winter!
Regarding FH:
As a physics teacher, I would like to point out that a greenhouse is easy, being a passive device to convert “high-order” energy (high-frequency radiation) to “low-order” energy, and as such does not need anything but the sun. A “reverse greenhouse” would need an external power source, as it is pumping heat against a temperature gradient.
Perhaps the hot air of antiscience people would do it.
That said, while I agree that global warming could kill us, and conceivably every creature we consider worths saving on the Earth, it will not “destroy the Earth”
Compare the predicted temperatures due to global warming and the temperature of the Triassic/ Jurassic period and you’ll get what I mean.
Not that it’s not serious, but overselling your case often weakens it instead.
So… What about that .pdf that Jepe linked to? Are Don Easterbrook and his analysis credible and accurate? Easterbrook has been criticised in the past for his misrepresentation of parts of Al Gore’s book.
Clearly, Easterbrook is saying what Washington policy makers want to hear – but as events of the last eight years have shows, that often has little correlation with the conclusions of unbiased scientific research.
Not paying any attention at all, but I believe that would be “Gregg” Easterbrook. He’s a liar.
But hey people, what are you doing over here on this puny <200 comment thread? We need help pushing the thread to 1000 so we can all see what happens when PZ gets (as he has promised) “very, very cranky.” It’s an experiment! ALl scientifical ‘n’ shit. So lend a hand, whaddaya say?
oops…nope…different Easterbrook entirely. Told you I wasn’t paying attention. WOTI again *sigh*
A quick look at the pdf in question though; I’ll point out that the “prediction” for the PDO index for the next 30 years (Fig. 4) was simply the data from 1945 to 1975, copied ‘n’ pasted! As far as I can tell, that’s extrapolating from a single measured cycle and making the assumption that it will keep on cycling exactly the same way in the future. Basically arguing from an n of 1, pretty poor form in science.
Maybe he’s right, and the (seemingly unexplained) PDO runs the entire global climate, trumping all other factors and swamping out the expected greenhouse effect of anthropogenic CO2.
But that would be…surprising.
woah…comment # 160 is what happens when you pepper a bunch of greater-than and less-than signs into a comment and don’t freakin preview. Should read:
‘K.
#71,72
Migration and colonization of space is not the only option that I considered as “expanding off the earth.” These two will only be feasible in the long term, if ever. However, if our species is to survive in the same said long term, it will be required.
But something as simple as harvesting solar energy from near earth orbit would do wonders, and should not be difficult to achieve within a reasonable amount of time, if we made the effort.
#124
Solar energy is the major energy source of this planet, but it is not the ONLY one. Geothermal is not solar. Its source is gravitational, from the initial formation of the earth, augmented by natural fission. In fact, if something ripped the earth out of orbit and ejected the planet into deep space, microbial life could probably survive around geothermal hotsprings (even as the rest of the oceans and atmosphere froze) for an estimated 50 billion years at least. That’s actually 10 times longer than life will endure on this planet if we remain in solar orbit, when the red giant sun melts the entire planet circa 5 billion AD.
Uranium is absolutely NOT from the sun! All the fissionable heavy elements were forged in supernova explosions. It’s stellar, but it isn’t solar. Fusion, if we ever succeed in developing it, will also not be from the sun.
Aww, man, I just hate how the environment screws up our free market. Mortgage crisis, banks going belly up, poverty, bad education – all because there’s too little money. And why is that???
I’ll tell ya: cuz we’re not chopping down enough trees to print more $$$, that’s why.
Why can’t those commie-liberal-tree-hugger lefties get it? Why?
“but rather to use technology and capitalism.
Exactly! We’ll just pay someone to build us some new icecaps.”
Hey man, that’s a great idea! Let’s build millions of fridges, hook ’em up in the Arctic on some huge generator, and let’s leave the doors open! Maybe the caps will grow.
“but rather to use technology and capitalism.
Exactly! We’ll just pay someone to build us some new icecaps.”
Hey man, that’s a great idea! Let’s build millions of fridges, hook ’em up in the Arctic on some huge generator, and let’s leave the doors open! Maybe the caps will grow. ;-)
FH… whew, that’s a lot of stupid in one post! You really have no effing clue what you’re talking about. Not a single one of your recommendations is feasible, efficient or likely to be of any help on the scales needed. Was that a parody? Is there a “Poe” equivalent for AGW?
Someone mentioned T. Boone Pickens. I’m wary as well, but I suspect he’s just trying to be first on the bandwagon. He’s got a ton of land in prime wind harnessing areas. He made billions on oil, I figure he just wants a few billions more from wind. He’s been buying land and water rights as well, hoping to sell water to Dallas next time there’s a bad water shortage. So, no, he’s no hero of the environment, but he’s got the need to switch to alternative energies right. Personally, I’d be happy if more of these guys would get in on this. Once they realize there’s real money in solar or wind or whatever, the industries will get a big kick.
Nucular… on top of uranium being a limited resource, extracting it isn’t too clean a process from what I understand, and will quickly become even less so as we have to dig deeper for less. Plus the disposal issue. Plus that it takes a long time to get a plant designed, approved, and built. Somewhere in the ballpark of 10-20 years IIRC. We could be getting a large percentage of our energy from wind and solar by the time the first new plants came online, eliminating the need for the plants and avoiding the negatives that accompany them.
Sometimes I like to sit and think what the money we blew on Iraq could have accomplished in terms of alternative energy research and implementation… then I get depressed and have to pour myself a drink and crank some Rush or Zappa.
Ah…old ICECAP…
Just a note, ICECAP are fairly well know climate change deniers
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ICECAP
While I’ve not got te time to go into depth… the paper linked to by Jepe is pretty speculative and is really not supported by any other literature. PDO, while undoubtedly a real phenomena, its root cause is not yet know, and it is, more or less, impossible to predict its future evolution at this point.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/pdo-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation/
Another point is that, whatever the PDO may be doing, it doesnot change the effect that increasing green house gases have on the atmospheres radiative balence. For some reason, people seem to think that if one effect is causing the Earth to warm/cool, then all other effects take a break and don’t effect the atmopshere. Increasing concentrations of GHGs make the atmosphere more opaque to out going long-wave radiation… regardless of what upwelling in the Pacific may be doing.
Oops..
Wanted to respond to Jepe too. I don’t have time to peruse the .pdf you linked to, but I have read that a slight cooling trend is expected. However, as ChrisC says above, it has nothing to do with greenhouse-induced warming. Yup, in no way does it mean that CO2 or methane aren’t obeying the laws of physics and trapping heat in our atmosphere. Warming will continue, only be slightly dampened in the short-term. So, while we might get a small respite from warming, the cooling will be less than would have otherwise occurred, and when the trend ends, we’ll get a bigger rebound wallop as the effects of the crap we’ve pumped into the atmosphere in the meantime take hold.
Sorry to bust your AGW denying bubble.
Ah yes, taxes… the least Christian of all things.
…wait.
just a post to see if I got the dungeon
The amount of natural uranium in the US does not limit the power potentially available from nuke plants. A breeder reactor, like the type France uses, makes more fuel than it uses from depleted uranium. The fuel cycle involves reprocessing, which is messy but doable. Nukes might be a necessary evil during the transition phase through the next 100 years or so.
A three eyed squirrel with tentacles beats a blind squirrel no doubt.
Not enough sun outside, let’s make one here. After all, the engineers can be trusted.
glub glub…. last words from blind granny nuke floozy before her tragic death in her own attic-Katrina.
If you insulate your house and don’t turn down the heating YOUR HOUSE WILL GET WARMER.
If you insulate your planet and don’t turn down the heating YOUR PLANET WILL GET WARMER.
The reason greenhouse gases are CALLED greenhouse gases is because they let in visible light and block infrared. They insulate the planet.
This is not rocket science.
Stephen Wells (#175)
A very quiet sun coupled with a negative PDO will bring real COOLING.
That will have some very negative effects on food production (because of a shorter growing season).
AGW is a House of Cards starting to fall apart.
A breeder reactor, like the type France uses, makes more fuel than it uses from depleted uranium. – Blind Squirrel FCD
Except they don’t: France has no breeder reactors currently supplying electricity. No country has yet succeeded in making them work reliably and cheaply enough for more than experimental use. Breeder reactors are very unlikely to contribute much over the crucial next few decades.
Jepe@176,
Go play with your toys. The grown-ups are talking.
In fact, if something ripped the earth out of orbit and ejected the planet into deep space, microbial life could probably survive around geothermal hotsprings (even as the rest of the oceans and atmosphere froze) for an estimated 50 billion years at least. – amphiox
Now there’s a science fiction scenario!
# 178 (Nick Gotts)
Sorry, I forgot you are the anointed.
AGW is a House of Cards starting to fall apart.
IDiots having been saying the same thing about TOE for about 30 years. Tell me Jepe are you some kind of religious nut? Christian, Deist whatever? Because if you are not, I’m curious to know on what basis you reject the substantial consensus of the relevant scientific community on this issue?
I hasten to add, not the specific detail (unless you have a Ph.D in climatology, then ok), but rather the philosophical underpinnings of your position. On what basis do the opinions of a lay person trump the position of the majority of experts in a complex discipline? This is what I’m keen to understand; of course if you are a religious nut, then no explanation required:-)
I didn’t get past the line, “church of global warming”.
I wonder if they have crackers in their service?
Yup. Fresh-baked daily in solar ovens.
#181
Ah, another anointed! For a start, Alarmist number one: James Hansen has no “PH.D in climatology”, but that seems to be no problem when he gives his opinions.
My philosophical underpinnings is/are that the AGW theory is not falsifiable. So it is not science. It’s speculation.
Although it’s none of your business, I am an atheist and a sceptic.
Of course I would gladly see your ultimate proof that Co2 is ruling the temperature (not in the lab, but in the real world) and if you can prove it, the Ipcc will be very glad, because they can’t until now.
In science, the standards of evidence are given. Now why on earth should these standards not be used when a hypothesis like “AGW” is proposed?
The current evidence does not support the AGW hypotheses.
My philosophical underpinnings is/are that the AGW theory is not falsifiable. So it is not science. It’s speculation.
You can’t falsify AGW, or evolution, or quantum mechanics or indeed any theory. Science is by its nature provisional. However, you CAN falsify the components of any theory. AGW is based on assumptions all of which are falsifiable. Your mission, or perhaps more correctly, the mission of dissenting experts with the relevant expertise, is to falsify them. At the risk of condencesion, this is broadly how the process works.
The bottom line is simply this; The relevant community disagree with you completely.
Why should I as a non-expert, by swayed by your amateur opinion, when the actual experts disagree so completely with you? Are you claiming to be some kind of lone genius that has grasped truths hidden from the rest of us?
For example, do you have dissenting opinions about Quantum Mechanics, Relativity or other complex disciplines, or is it just the one area you’re especially gifted in?
# brian
If it gets cold, don’t blame me boy.
“IDiots having been saying the same thing about TOE for about 30 years.”
30? Try well over 100. I’ve got a link somewhere to a collection of claims that the TOE is “falling apart” dating back into the late 1800s…
“, Alarmist number one: James Hansen has no “PH.D in climatology”, but that seems to be no problem when he gives his opinions.”
Jepe, you’re right, James Hansen’s PhD was not in climatology. It was in Physics. His PhD was in the physics of radiative transfer of planetary atmospheres. His research 40 years ago was relevant to climatology, and has had direct applications in the field of climatology, meteorology, atmospheric science and geophysics. You’re point is stupid and not worth considering.
Also, I’d point out that in the mid 60s, climatology was a very young science. Often there were not departments in universities focused on atmospheric sciences. Thus, in orer to pursue a research interest in these fields, one generally performed research in a physics, geology or mathematics department. This really isn’t so uncommon today. A friend of mine whoes PhD thesis was in observational meteorology was awarded a mathematics PhD, as the meteorology dept. at her university was part of the mathematics department. Kapisch?
Of course, browsing his CV online would clear this up with a click of a button, but denialists such as yourse;f can rarely be bothered to do the leg work
#187 (ChrisC)
Muddleheadedness doesn’t help you. Check the thermometer the coming years. It will show serious COOLING.
@#185 If it gets cold, don’t blame me boy.
Jepe, you are still not grasping the question, or avoiding it. It doesn’t bode well for your position as boy wonder genius, overturning the status quo. Let me try and reformulate.
I’m not an expert in this particular field. Like all well informed adults, I look to the relevant community to distill a digestible summary of the science to the general public, which I can grasp with a modest level of effort, but without needing to become a climatologist myself. It’s merely a question of practicality.
The relevant community has done a fairly decent job of this, despite efforts (quite overt, no conspiracy here) to have the message distorted. Of course I don’t live in the US, so most of the media reports I see are based on the consensus of the relevant experts, rather than some misguided attempt to be balanced. Lucky me:-)
This consensus is really very clear. Is there some compelling reason I should consider this a lie, or a mistake of some kind? What rational can you offer for your views being at odds with the relevant community? This is the critical point.
Been there, done that.
Oh, my. What a compelling argument. Way to insult Chris, though. By the way, Jepe, skepticism doesn’t mean “the practive of glomming on to the least well-accepted theory”. You can look it up.
Brian Coughlan:
I’ll try to answer your very interesting question regarding reasons why a lay person might doubt AGW.
First, I am not a climatologist and I do recognize the need in many cases to defer to authority (doctors, car mechanics etc). That’s simply common sence and intellectual division of labour. I am not strictly speaking a denier, rather I’m highly sceptical of AGW, the supposed apocalypse it would bring about, and their proposed means of preventing it.
Here are my main reasons:
1. I utterly despise the philosophy of enviromentalism. The view that nature, biodiversity etc has intrinsic value. That it’s somehow endowed with some mystical “value” unrelated to and apart from mans use and enjoyment of it.
Many enviromentalists might reject the Bible as being the word of God, but note that they accept it’s most toxic premise: That man somehow is sinful by his nature. That the only life he has is not desirable and that he is not worthy of happiness. This is clearly stated by the movements leaders who constantly wish for “the right virus to come along” and calls mankind “the AIDS of the earth”.
How is this depiction of man diffrent from what you might have seen in medieval art where where he is presented as a deformed, helpless, evil creature?
And what is it about man that they hate so much? Think of it this way: Man, unlike other animals do not simply live of whatever we might find, the things we need does not exist – they have to be created by us. It is mankinds distinctive feature, reason, that allows us to do this. By figuring out how best to _change_ our surroundings to suit our needs.
We live precisely by cutting down trees to build houses, construct hydroelectric damms, coal burning powerplants and skyskraper-high oilrigs for energy, dry up filthy swamps (“wetlands” as they are now called..) for agriculture, invent vaccines, build sportcars with thundering V12 engines, themeparks, concert halls etc.
When enviromentalists call on us to “rejoin nature” this is what they want us to give up.
In other words the only value they see in reason is for creating fancy computermodels to persuade the rest of us to forgo its use =)
Some of them cleverly disguise their hatred of man by a professed concern for his wellbeing. They say we must mearly take care of the earth and care about future generations.
This is a thin fig leaf indeed, note their complete lack of concern for those of us living today. Their complete lack of concern for the millions who die each year from malaria because we untill resently were not allowed to kill mosquitos with DDT. Or the people dying because of the drugs that _weren’t_ invented because we were forced to spend enormous sums of money on expensive alternative fuels and solar pannels when we could have gotten the energy more cheaply from coal and oil.
How is all this worship of nature any less irrational than religion?
2. As to the science behind it all, not being an expert myself I can’t comment on the specific points they make, but I put about as much trust in the United Nations as most Liberals would in a report published by a collaboration between Oil- tobacco- and pharmaceuticalcompanies in cooperation with Republicans for child labour.
I also beleve many scientists attracted to the field are themselfs crusading enviromentalists. Given my low evaluation of them my scepticism for what they might publish should not surprise anyone.
I’ve also been given the impression that a scientists who cast doubt on AGW are ostracised in many of the relevant fields, which ofcourse further diminishes my respect for this supposed “concensus”.
And finally, I must say I find the whole idea of us having reached a point where we can confidently predict the climate somewhat implausible in light of how complicated a system the earth is.
* I would be willing to change my view of the validity of AGW if there was a substantial body of people with the relevant expertise who beleved in it. These people must also not be completly crazy. By, that I mean they must be: pro capitalism, progress, enjoyment, money, corporations, etc. I know of no such people.
3. The meassures they propose to prevent this secular armageddon are detrimental to human life and happiness. The kyoto protocol, even if fullfilled, would hardly do anything to stop global warming if we are to beleve the current predictions. It would take the wholesale destruction of industrial civilization to do so. If this is correct it is obviously not a very benevolent prospect nor the right way to go.
I would be intrested in others view of these issues.
This is clearly stated by the movements leaders who constantly wish for “the right virus to come along” and calls mankind “the AIDS of the earth”. – FH
Crap. Which “leaders” are you referring to.
note their complete lack of concern for those of us living today. Their complete lack of concern for the millions who die each year from malaria because we untill resently were not allowed to kill mosquitos with DDT.
Barefaced lies, followed by more crap. There is a great deal of cooperation between environmental and poverty-reduction groups, precisely because the two issues are inextricable: the rich can buy their way out of environmental problems. With regard to DDT, the Stockholm Convention of 2001 restricted the use of DDT to vector control – that is, control of the mosquitoes that spread malaria and similar dangerous pests. Its non-use in agriculture means the development of resistance is far less likely.
As to the science behind it all, not being an expert myself I can’t comment on the specific points they make
So fucking well take the trouble to educate yourself.
I put about as much trust in the United Nations as most Liberals would in a report published by a collaboration between Oil- tobacco- and pharmaceuticalcompanies in cooperation with Republicans for child labour.
The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its reports are drawn up by scientific experts, and approved by governments – not the UN, although it is a UN-affiliated body. How about the national scientific associations of the G8, China, India, Brazil; practically every relevant scientific association in the US, politicians from across the political spectrum, and many big business leaders (150 large corporations recently put out a call for urgent action). All part of the evil environmentalist conspiracy?
It would take the wholesale destruction of industrial civilization to do so.
Yet more crap. Urgent action is certainly needed, but no expert or serious commentator is calling for “the wholesale destruction of industrial civilisation”.
FH, your problem is that you have allowed an irrational hatred of a bogeyman you call “environmentalism” to warp your judgement, and prefer not to risk disturbing your prejudices by actually looking at the evidence – as is quite obvious by the degree of ignorance you have exposed and in part, admitted to. If you are open to reason, go tohttp://www.realclimate.org , and click on the “Start Here” button.
FH:
The ‘philosophy of environmentalism’?
You really haven’t got this, have you? When the chips are down, and everyone is being truly honest – environmental sciences are the most anthropocentric, selfish (in terms of survival) science there is.
This isn’t about ‘saving the world’. The world does not give a damn. The world is a ball of part-radioactive, part-liquid, part-compressed at unimaginable pressures metal and molten rock, hurtling at mind-breaking speed around a nuclear furnace so big it makes the human brain reboot when trying to really think about it. We, the humans, the self-centred, theoretically-cognitive apes that have such a high view of ourselves, are a pile of interestingly complex chemical interactions trying to keep ourselves going while clinging to the tiny layer of solid rock and reactive gasses gravitationally trapped against the surface of said ball of rock.
The Earth isn’t some mother-gaia figure, the rocky avatar of a benevolent guiding force; it isn’t a Made garden or a promised land. It’s the spiralled-together collection of dead stars just at the right distance for the process we’ve called ‘life’ to really get going. Each and every one of us is a somewhat-conscious fragment in galactic time, a moment in the semi-conservative, ever-going reaction that started with the first self-replicating molecule. As a process you, your family, your friends, the tree in your garden, the mites in your eyelashes, the bacteria under your nails, the viruses assaulting your respiratory tract – from the assigned, theoretical point of view of the that star, or the ball of rock, they’re all the same thing.
Life creates life. We’re as much a part of the global ecosystem as anything else, and for all our effects, all our words of anthropocentric climate change and our grand ideals, we’re just a very bright sort of upright, furry lizard-descendant. The difference is we’ve got a chance, a tiny, tiny chance of realising the destructive cycle of life before we run out of environment, make it too different for ourselves, and bow out of time while the cockroaches take over (figuratively).
This is our ecosystem. All of it. It’s intrinsic value is the same as our own – that there damn well might not be another thing like it in the universe. The Earth doesn’t give a fuck if we live or die.
I, personally, would rather that our ecosystem was a varied and pleasant place to live in, with new things to learn about, to use for enjoyment or health or a myriad of other reasons, because if we think we completely understand this planet we’re arrogant beyond belief. We’ve got to be very, very sure that some part of a system isn’t needed for it to function before we rip it out and destroy it utterly, because we cannot get it back.
If we screw up our system, by ignorance, apathy or blind arrogance that we are somehow Above it all, then we are utterly fucked. Nature does not give second chances, you do not get points for good intentions; there is no prize for the runner-up. We have seen what we do to islands, to finite resources of space and food and everything else, and the only hope we have for humans to be around for and length of future is to try to change the cycle, maybe act more like our odd ideals for our weird species than the hairy lizard we once were.
We’ve crafted the concept of responsibility. Not to God, or Fate, but to our own ability to even envision the concept. There’s no one else to turn to, nothing else to call on. It is cataclysmically stupid to continue behaviours we know are destructive to the only place we can exist.
Now, to your specific points:
Don’t tell me about the ‘toxic’ premise of man being ‘sinful’ by nature. As a metaphor, with ‘sin’ defined as ‘a behaviour that is inherently self-destructive’, then it’s quite a good one. Life destroys itself, organisms exploit and alter their environment to the point they can’t live there anymore, and something else takes over. It’s called ecological succession. It isn’t evil, it isn’t wrong, it’s just how life happens. We like to think we are somehow ‘better’ than that, that we won’t ultimately destroy ourselves, and if we want to be then we need to do something about it. Admit what we are, and decide what we want to be. Real long term – something that, as far as we can tell, nothing else has ever managed to do.
Environmental science does not call on people to ‘rejoin nature’. What does that even mean? You seem to think there’s some call to give up knowledge – this is not the point. The point is to work with, not against, not to needlessly destroy parts of something we don’t fully understand, exercise some caution and some wisdom in our actions, and don’t expect that ‘someone else’ – be it ‘God’, or ‘science’, or ‘the gov’ment’ – will pick up after us when it all falls apart.
Don’t claim that trying to think ahead is hating mankind. So, all the money spent on solar cells could have been poured into malaria research? Sure. And the money on wars, weapons development, Hollywood, make-up, DVDs… this was Determined For Ever and couldn’t possibly have been spent on anything else? Give us full control of the world’s funding, then complain about where the funding is spent.
And when the finite resources run out, what precisely do you intend to burn? How many will die because the lights don’t work anymore, or the heating system doesn’t function in winter. Oh, and where would you put recent developments in pesticide research, focusing on making things that actually don’t cause massive ecological damage, but do the job damn well? Because destroying every other insect in range with DDT has some very interesting effect on things like nearby farming and people’s tendency to starve to death.
You don’t ‘believe’ the scientists attracted to the field, because they might feel it is an important area to research. So, what, you wouldn’t trust someone working on cancer drugs if they were actually keen on their work? Passion does not mean a lack of scientific rigor – it can often mean more, as you damn well want to be sure what you’ve found is correct so you can really get behind it.
“These people must also not be completely crazy. By, that I mean they must be: pro capitalism, progress, enjoyment, money, corporations, etc. I know of no such people.”
Now, who could that possibly say more about?
Because the vast majority of scientists really do work for free, hate everything even resembling fun, believe that everything was just so much better in the 1400s, feel that effort-input and rarity actually decrease the value of an item and will only ever purchase such (that they will derive no enjoyment from, mind) from the most local of localities. Also we hate economies of scale.
And kittens.
To prevent Poe’s Law violations, please note that in the above I am being somewhat sarcastic.
3. The meassures they propose to prevent this secular armageddon are detrimental to human life and happiness.
(Secular Armageddon?)
So ‘measures to try and prevent serious, potentially huge problems at most a few generations down the line, based on predictions and analysis from a lot of very, very smart people, even at a slight decrease in the already so-high it’s causing its own problems (see: Diseases of affluence) levels of resource use in the developed world’… is detrimental to all human life and happiness? So it isn’t even worth trying; after all, better to know you’re doomed than have any of this bothersome ‘making an effort’, right?
You are lumping every environmental initiative, science, and suggestion under the same umbrella of random things you personally dislike about your own views on certain segments of it.
Well, these are mine. For reference, and whatever conclusions about my ‘crusading’ nature you wish to make, I’m an entomologist.
Hmmm… was about to give up onn this thread, but I really can’t help to respond to FH. So, further ado:
“First, I am not a climatologist and I do recognize the need in many cases to defer to authority (doctors, car mechanics etc). That’s simply common sence and intellectual division of labour. I am not strictly speaking a denier, rather I’m highly sceptical of AGW, the supposed apocalypse it would bring about, and their proposed means of preventing it.”
– Well thanks for admitting that, but do you have any valid scientific reason, other than a dislike of some of the proposed solutions to the problem of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) to dispute the science? Fine, be skeptical, but do so with reasons. Disliking the conclusion is no reason to reject the premise.
– “I utterly despise the philosophy of enviromentalism. The view that nature, biodiversity etc has intrinsic value…”
For one, you have an exceptionally skewed view of environmentalism, and one based not in reality. Many of those who seek to address environmental concerns out of nothing more than pure, self interest in the effects that environmental degradation have on the human species. Take for example the book “Collapse” by Prof. Jared Diamond, who points out that in the past, great civilisations have brought about their own downfall partially through depleating resources and harming the environment that they rely on to survive. Take for another example, the London Fog of 1952 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952), in which air pollution caused the deaths of thousands through repiratory tract infections and hypoxia.
As too your claim “nature, biodiversity etc has intrinsic value…”, well, from a purely selfish, human point of view, it does. For example, the Amazon rainforest has yielded a number of exotic compunds now found in today’s pharmaceuticals. Large ocean predators manage ecosystems, including commercial fisheries that would collapse wihtout an apex predator. And the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the countries largest tourism resource, as hundreds of thousdands of people visit each year just to snorkel and dive. Whole communities in Australia rely on a health reef for their livlihood.
Your concept of environmentalism really doesn’t apply to any that I’ve met or worked with.
“We live precisely by cutting down trees to build houses, construct hydroelectric damms, coal burning powerplants and skyskraper-high oilrigs for energy, dry up filthy swamps (“wetlands” as they are now called..) for agriculture, invent vaccines, build sportcars with thundering V12 engines, themeparks, concert halls etc. ”
Yes…all well and good. When it comes to “cutting down trees to build houses” you may have overlooked a simple mathematical fact. If one harvests a resource faster than it regenerates, siad resource begins to become depleated. CSome of the arguments for “sustainability” specifically address this point. With regard to forests, Imperial Japan worked it out centuries ago.
“Construct hydroelectric damms, coal burning powerplants and skyskraper-high oilrigs for energy,”
I’m sure that you are aware of the economic concept of an “externallity”. Each of these examples contains externallities that are passed on to the community and are not adequately accounted for by the economic system. For example, buring coal for energy passes on costs to the wider community, such as air pollution, acid-rain, destruction of farming land for mining ect… that are not accounted for. You seem to be agruing that “if it feels good, do it” when it comes to technology, without taking account of any possible downsides.
Now…, it’s here that you step of the reality ride and enter cloud-cuckoo land…
“Some of them cleverly disguise their hatred of man by a professed concern for his wellbeing. They say we must mearly take care of the earth and care about future generations.
T… Their complete lack of concern for the millions who die each year from malaria because we untill resently were not allowed to kill mosquitos with DDT.
To your first point, you’ve just swallowed nothing more than a lie. DDT was never banned for vector control. It is still widely used:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/09/did_who_change_its_ddt_policy.php
However, in some areas, such as Sri Lanka, excessive use of DDT for agriculture resulted in the developement of DDT resistance mosquitos. Even Rachel Carson in silent spring argued for the continued use of DDT for vector control. In Silend Spring, she argued:
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease “should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story–the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting. … What is the measure of this setback? The list of resistant species now includes practically all of the insect groups of medical importance. … Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes. … Practical advice should be ‘Spray as little as you possibly can’ rather than ‘Spray to the limit of your capacity’ …, Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible.”
“Or the people dying because of the drugs that _weren’t_ invented because we were forced to spend enormous sums of money on expensive alternative fuels and solar pannels when we could have gotten the energy more cheaply from coal and oil.”
I find this ridiculous. I know of no such instances, and remain very skeptical until you showed me some verifiable evidence. My girlfriend, who has worked in third world developement projects, notes that there has been significant interest in rural third world communities in using wind or solar electricity, to insultate them from rising oil and electricity costs, and avoid costly grid connection by generating power locally. Eg:
http://www.climate-l.org/2008/05/undp-gef-releas.html
As for the drugs that weren’t invented, take it up with drug companies spend millions to develope anit-obesity medication for fat Americans and Europeans.
Now let’s continue…
“As to the science behind it all, not being an expert myself I can’t comment on the specific points they make, but I put about as much trust in the United Nations as most Liberals would in a report published by a collaboration between Oil- tobacco- and pharmaceuticalcompanies in cooperation with Republicans for child labour.”
For one, the IPCC is a part of the WMO, an international scientific body that is funded by the UN, but is completely independant.
Now…I would ask why you would be so skeptical of the UN, but I’m afraid the answerwould more than likely be some conspiracy theory with scant evidence. One world gubbmint… world communism or some such crap. The UN is constrained by the individual government from which it is composed… most notably the countries with a Veto.
“I also beleve (sic) many scientists attracted to the field are themselfs crusading enviromentalists. Given my low evaluation of them my scepticism for what they might publish should not surprise anyone.
I’ve also been given the impression that a scientists who cast doubt on AGW are ostracised in many of the relevant fields, which ofcourse further diminishes my respect for this supposed “concensus”.”
My, my…I suppose you’ve got evidence for each claim? Of course, people could not be convinced by the evidence of AGE and THEN decide to take action…oh no. This comment shows a complete lack of knowledge about how science works. Evidence comes before rational argument, and rational argument comes before opinion.
“And finally, I must say I find the whole idea of us having reached a point where we can confidently predict the climate somewhat implausible in light of how complicated a system the earth is.”
Yet you say that you have little knowledge of the science of climatology. WSo how did you come to this conculsion. If I were to ask you if it was likely to be warmer on average during July than January, what would you answer? This kind of reasoning is similar to how climate predictions are made.
“I would be willing to change my view of the validity of AGW if there was a substantial body of people with the relevant expertise who beleved in it. These people must also not be completly crazy. By, that I mean they must be: pro capitalism, progress, enjoyment, money, corporations, etc. I know of no such people.”
I could argue with you about your definition of crazy, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just point you here:
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus.htm
And lastly:
“The meassures they propose to prevent this secular armageddon are detrimental to human life and happiness. The kyoto protocol, even if fullfilled, would hardly do anything to stop global warming if we are to beleve the current predictions. It would take the wholesale destruction of industrial civilization to do so. If this is correct it is obviously not a very benevolent prospect nor the right way to go.”
This is both 1)an incorrect premise, and 2) and incorrect conclsion. Have a browse through the Stern report or the thrid working group of the IPCC to see how AGW offers opertunities to maintain sustainable developement. There are numerous posible solutions to AGW that enable humanity to maintain material prosperity and economic sustainability. After all, AGW is not primarily an environmental problem, it’s an economic one.
As for Kyoto, remember, it was just a first step to get things started, it was never designed to “hardly do anything to stop global warming if we are to beleve the current predictions”. It was designed to kick things off.
I’m a research meteorologist, working in private industry. So if you’ve got any questions about the science, I’ll try to help. But your objections to AGW, as specified in this blog post, are silly.
We certainly do have our share of nutbars and religious fanatics here in Canada….per capita probably as many as across the line…