With George W. Bush having a little over a week in office left to go of what has been a very long eight years, it’s timely to turn to the question of the long term implications for the political strength of the right of stances which refuse to engage with reality. In that context, John Quiggin has an interesting post on science and the right. I don’t agree with all he says about the “science wars”, but I think he’s spot on both with his lapidary analysis of the affinities between climate change denialism and right wing politics and in this observation:
The issue is not going to go away, regardless of the short-term success or failure of attempts to reach a global agreement to stabilise the climate. The more clearly the political right is identified with the anti-science side of this debate, the harder it will be to salvage any of its existing institutions.
Kevin Rudd’s rhetoric in 2007 recognised that Australian politics deals particularly badly with long term issues. Our statist political culture means that interest groups of all kinds seek to cut deals for whatever their short term interests require, and the veneer of “ideas” – particularly neo-liberal ones – is particularly thin, hardly sufficing to pave over the cracks of corporate self-interest. Rudd, of course, has hardly fulfilled the hopes he himself aroused. But surely it’s worth wondering what long term costs the right will bear after the time passes when denialism loses any patina of plausibility.
Perhaps we should also ponder what long-term costs the global warming advocates will bear, after the time passes when global warming loses any patina of plausibility.
The denialist patina of palusibility? I’m afraid that’s crumbling about as fast as the Fox Glacier.
Maybe if we pass the hat around and all chip-in a few dollars, we can pack some of these denialist wankers off to NZ, with a free glacier sight-seeing trip thrown-in for good measure.
With a bit of luck, the next ice-fall will bury a few of the bastards.
SatP, why do you think that mainstream science is wrong, and that you’re right? What sources convince you that the people who do this for a living are wrong? What’s their data? And is it that they’re corrupt, or not academically rigorous, or is there some other reason why the denialists’ messages aren’t believed?
(The “they’re” above refers to climatologists and others who study this data for a living – sorry, my sentence was not clear).
If the political right is identified with climate change denialism (quite fairly), then the political left are equally guilty of climate change adaption and mitigation denialism. For example; nuclear power, GMOs, clean coal etc,. If the Wilson/Windshuttle hoax has demonstrated anything, it is that neither the political right nor Left has a mortgage on corrupting science for their own ends.
Global warming advocates? Must be talking about the Cato Institute.
Nexus 6, perhaps you can point to the working clean coal plants, or even the plans that would allow clean coal to be in operation within five years? And before you do that, perhaps you can adequately define “clean coal”? As for nuclear power, the same time problems exist for that as they do for clean coal, and nuclear is hardly greenhouse neutral either. This is before we get to the issues of waste generation and storage.
“The denialist patina of palusibility? I’m afraid that’s crumbling about as fast as the Fox Glacier.’
Fox Glacier is actually extending in size rather than decreasing and has been since 1985.
Glaciers constantly move – they’re ice rivers – which is why there is constant “crumbling” in the ice flow.
Nexus 6 @ five
Eh?
Surely this “The right are denialists, the left are mitigators” would vary immensely country to country?
For example, the left-wing coalition in Germany between the SPD and the Greens between 1998 began phasing out nuclear power and replacing it with renewables, primarily solar and wind. That’s not mitigation, that’s prevention.
And the EU with their recent 20-20-20 announcement have shown that they aren’t denialists despite consisting mainly of conservative governments.
In Australia we might have the “left-right” schism in terms of climate change, but in the UK for example the Tories tried to pass a more stringent Climate Change Bill that would have seen targets set every year. The bill that passed, by Labour, including only a 2050 target.
So I don’t buy into this “the left has a monopoly on climate change” argument. Especially when the religious-conservatives of Europe have a stronger climate change policy then our “left-wing” government.
A fair point, Oz. There is a good case to be made that greenhouse denialism (like various other forms of ideological anti-environmentalism) is a disease of the Anglophone Right rather than the Right in general.
I also take this opportunity to repeat the question of what the co-founder of Quadrant, James McAuley, might have done had he lived his full span of years and therefore been alive and active when the campaign to save his beloved south-west Tasmanian wilderness was in full swing.
Oz, I made the same point in the linked article – it’s only in some English speaking countries that we see this. The picture in the UK is mixed, most of the rightwing press is delusionist, but the Tory leadership is pretty good.
Alister: here you go – a working prototype clean coal plant.
“it’s only in some English speaking countries that we see this”.
Not true.
Vaclav Klaus, for starters, is as denialist as it is possible to be, is a regular speaker on the denialist conference circuit and has tried to stymie European mitigation efforts at every turn.
There is no such thing as clean coal. Lower emissions coal maybe, but certainly not clean. The theoretical capturing of 100% of coal emissions would almost certainly be more costly than current renewable energy options. “Clean” coal is a red herring buying time for our very own factories of death – coal fired power stations.
The right will have no problem as it has a variety of methods to dispose of any adverse future criticisms.
Ignore them, control of the media will make the errors of the past non-existent. A week is a long time in politics and a decade or a generation is forever, outa sight outa mind.
Rewrite history, its done all the time, isn’t that part of what the Windy issue was all about?
Insist they were right, as in correct, all along. A bit of selective editing of the facts, a spin or two and voila it was the left that got it all wrong doncha know?
Concentrate on some minor esoteric detail and forget the forest of fault.
No problem at all.
Spiros, one conjecture we could make is that there’s an “Old Europe/New Europe” divide at work, whereby Western European conservatives’ responses to the issue would be framed within their own national traditions whilst Eastern European right-wingers post-1989 might be more eager to borrow ideas from people they regard as their Cold War benefactors and/or their enemy’s most ardent enemies.
Paul, that is certainly true of Klaus, who thinks that anyone who doesn’t share his world view is a clone of Leonid Brezhnev.
The general picture is more complex. Even in the United States, we see Republican politicians like the Governator who are not too bad on the subject, while Democrat politicians from coal states are equivocal at best.
Paul Norton # 11
James Mcauley, Bob Santamaria and David Stove and the other legends of Australias post-Evatt “Old Right” would be scathing and contemptuous of the war-profiteering, money-changing and nature-trashing crowd that poses under the name of “Right-wing” these days.
The most important thing to remember about the ideology of the Anglophone* post-modern^ Right# is that it is addicted to constructivism+ rather than conservatism•. That goes for matters ecological, anthropological and plutological.
As Stalin would have put it, “it’s no accident” that the post-modern Right is populated with (or related to) many former Left-wing revolutionary types. These guys are in a big hurry to make a big score. Call them Trotskys children who got in first to consume the Revolution.
The notion of adherence to proper forms to preserve identity is alien to it’s philosophy of governance.
* Anglophone = ex-Howard who was the lone genuine sociological conservative
^ post-modern = “anything goes” that can be sold by marketing spin
# Right = establishing the higher status (Left = empowering the lower status)
+ conservativism = preservation of tradition
• constructivism = promotion of fashion
d
It will be no problem for the denialists.
They’ll just morph from “the climate isn’t changing” to “the climate’s changing but it’s nothing to with us” (a move already visibly in progress) to “the climate has changed due to carbon emissions but its too late to do anything about it, and anyway it was all the fault of teh Left (Stalin murdered millions of people, you know)”.
Geoff Honnor @ 8: “Fox Glacier is actually extending in size rather than decreasing and has been since 1985.”
And retreating for most of the century before that. All of which goes to show that the position of the glacier foot is actually not a useful indicator of overall response to climate change. Yes, warming tends to speed up crumbling/melting at the foot. But it also softens the ice in the body of the glacier, lubricates the bottom surface with a film of meltwater, and hence speeds up the flow of the glacier. So if a glacier is flowing faster than it can melt at the foot, it will indeed advance as a result of warming.
The real indicators of what’s happening are (i) the total volume of ice in the glacier (going down, but stretched thinner?) and/or (ii) the thickness of ice up at the head (going down, if the ice is flowing away faster than new snowfall can replenish it).
This provides a beautiful example of a system where denialists can present accurate observations in a very misleading way, taking advantage of the fact that the observed phenomenon actually behaves in a more sophisticated way than is immediately obvious.
“This provides a beautiful example of a system where denialists can present accurate observations in a very misleading way, taking advantage of the fact that the observed phenomenon actually behaves in a more sophisticated way than is immediately obvious.
I’m not denying anything. I was pointing out that the initial comment about Fox Glacier retreating and hence “crumbling” wasn’t entirely accurate.
I think Evan @ 2 was thinking about the two Australian brothers killed in an ice fall at Fox recently.
Shorter Strocchi: The Anglophone Right is being “mugged by reality” in ecological, financial and martial policy. This is what happens when you deny, delay and deride the “reality-based community”.
Ironically the Right has, until recently, still occupied office or excersised power throughout the Anglophone world. So it’s institutional political success is now tethered to epic intellectual policy failure. Leading to a series of inelegant back-flips on a range of key
policies. such as the attempt to subjugate Mesopotamia and self-regulate Wall Street. Good luck and good bye to all that.
In some ways, given how far Bush st al have already retreated on martial and financial policy, there is not a whole lot more room for Obama to tack much further to the Left. I am not convinced that he will turn into a leader on ecological policy. A true leader would have let one or more of the Big Three fail.
Which is why I predicted that he will be a Centrist – “Clinton without the sleaze”.
B
I have a question for Robert Merkel and Geoff Honour .
Recently there was a thread over at Club Troppo which was started by an article from The Australian by David Evans.
The article was not directed at a specialist audience but was the basis for a long thread debating the scientific validity of a couple of the benchmark changes that Global Warming is predicted to produce.
How do you both think that debate ended?
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I found the explanation of the troppause / sphere hotspot pretty clear but how was the debate about the divergence of the radiosonde evidence for the computer models resolved?
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If Robert hasn’t read the thread I apologise for asking him but he was commenting there at one point I think.
Robert (all the way up at 13), it’s certainly interesting to see a clean coal plant. I didn’t get a great working definition of clean coal out of it – is it zero emissions or just very low? And do we know what the projected price of electricity from a working implementation would be, or even whether a working implementation is possible?
But I’m mostly interested in why AGW deniers think that most people who work in the relevant fields are not deniers of AGW. I don’t see this addressed in any of the comments above.
“I think Evan @ 2 was thinking about the two Australian brothers killed in an ice fall at Fox recently.”
Agree Brian. And because of that, I thought it was worth making the point that glaciers are dynamic entities irrespective of AGW effects.
I don’t know if Robert Merkel at 13 is being ironic by advising Alister of “a working prototype clean coal plant”.
Perhaps Robert may be interested in having a look at a recent article in Time headed “Exposing the Myth of Clean Coal Power” (www.time.com/time/health/article.0,85599, 1870599,00.html). The following is a quote from the article:
“The “clean coal” campaign was always more PR than reality — currently there’s no economical way to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal, and many experts doubt there ever will be. But now the idea of clean coal might be truly dead, buried beneath the 1.1 billion gallons of water mixed with toxic coal ash that on Dec. 22 burst through a dike next to the Kingston coal plant in the Tennessee Valley and blanketed several hundred acres of land, destroying nearby houses.
“The accident — which released 100 times more waste than the Exxon Valdez disaster — has polluted the waterways of Harriman, Tenn., with potentially dangerous levels of toxic metals like arsenic and mercury, and left much of the town uninhabitable.
“More than two weeks after the spill, workers and machines are still trying to clear the estimated 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash from around the plant. The breach “is an environmental catastrophe that reveals not only the dangers of burning coal and mismanaging coal combustion waste, but also the need for federal regulation,” said Steven Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, at a Senate hearing on the spill on Jan. 8. After Kingston, coal may be considered many things — but it’s hard to see how “clean” could be one of them.”
I find it hard to disagree with that assessment. However, because the livelihood of too many people depend on coal as a source of cheap electricity (as well as national economies such as Australia), the hope that technology will find a way to make coal clean is worth pursuing. It’s even worth spending money to encourage research into converting this hope into reality.
In the meantime, the economic dislocation of eliminating coal as a primary source for electricity production means it won’t happen quickly. In the absence of any technological breakthrough, phasing out of coal has to be gradual. The first step must be a carbon trading regime which enables clean power alternatives to compete ever moe favourably.
Since my thoughts would shatter, rather than breech, the 3-para rule, I’ve put them here .
Dammit
http://rapturousthinking.blogspot.com/2009/01/climate-change-relativity-and-right.html
Time will, in due course, expose the AGM hypophysis for the rubbish it is. In the meantime let us not wreck western economies by arbitrarly increasing the cost of energy. If the polititians were honest they would go to the electorate and propose a new carbon tax as John Howard did when he introduced the GST some years ago which, incidently, the Labour Party has never recinded in spite of having opposed it, tooth and nail, when in opposition. Imagine the fincial crisis when all these carbon credits which will be on company’s balance as assets are, suddenly overnight, worthless. The sub prime fiasco will loolike peanuts.
The AGM hypophysis eh. Well I reckon here’s one JWH friend who has let the cat out of the bag.
“Time will, in due course, expose the AGM hypophysis for the rubbish it is.”
Time currently is creating more proof of AGW as its effects are being felt right around the world.
You might not feel them in your comfortable Western abode, but that means shit all.
Hannah’s Dad @ 16:
“Rewrite history, its done all the time, isn’t that part of what the Windy issue was all about?
Insist they were right, as in correct, all along. A bit of selective editing of the facts, a spin or two and voila it was the left that got it all wrong doncha know?”
They’re doing this already in the economic stimulus debate, the New Deal was actually a failure don’t you know?
Christopher Pyne has learned how to count up to 51.
Interestingly enough, the Murdoch papers haven’t picked up on this story.
Hannah’s Dad has it – history will be rewritten such that they were always the voice of moderation and reason, and it was evil lefties that proposed solutions that ruined the economy before the problem could be affordably fixed.
Almost wants to make me believe in an afterlife. Fookers can rot in hell.
Look, all of the talk about the truth ,or otherwise of the science becomes entirely moot when you consider the political impossibility of achieving the carbon reduction prescription that Warministas claim is required to save the planet.
In the end it will come down to people having to adapt to the climate as it changes because any attempt to stop it doing so are bound to fail.
Good to see you’ve come all the way round the denialist three-step Iain.
1)It’s not happening.
2)It is happening but it’s not due to carbon emissions.
3)It is due to carbon but we can’t do anything about it.
So convenient! At no point do you need to do anything but make unsupported assertions! So much easier than science and reading and giving the slightest shit.
Warministas
FAIL
derrida derider at #20, take a bow.
FDB
I have argued a sceptical position about AGW for a long time and we could go around the houses forever but if you can’t get you solution up in the real world what does it matter that one side or the other is right or wrong?
It is the Warministas who are in denial here they are in denial that this is a problem that can be fixed even if they are right about the science please explain to me just how you would get the carbon reductions that you think are necessary because I’m very keen to here how it can be made to happen and it seems to me that short of a new global green dictatorship that all of this talk of ‘addressing Climate change” is just pissing into the wind.
Fine is right. Derrida Derider is a prophet.
“what does it matter that one side or the other is right or wrong?”
Only someone who’s been consistently shown to be wrong would find any comfort in this. If not for the efforts of denialists like yourself, much could have been done long ago. Now you propose further inaction. Surprise surfuckingprise. You’re still wrong, by the way.
“It is the Warministas who are in denial here they are in denial that this is a problem that can be fixed even if they are right about the science please explain to me just how you would get the carbon reductions that you think are necessary because I’m very keen to here how it can be made to happen and it seems to me that short of a new global green dictatorship that all of this talk of ‘addressing Climate change” is just pissing into the wind.”
I’m not sure I can be bothered deciphering that claptrap.
Iain, could you please explain why it’s advantageous for us to take a skeptical position on the evidence of AGW?
Sure – any evidence has room for interpretation; what is the advantage of saying we can’t do anything about it/it’s too late/too hard?
And a bonus question – do you take this position on other problems like rape/domestic violence (that it’s just too difficult)?
and what Liam said.
FDB
what a cop out!!!
To put as simply as I can: If you are so sure that carbon emission reductions are the answer to climate change just how can it be made to happen in the time frame that you believe is necessary.
DK.au
The essence of all science is to be sceptical about every theory until there is enough empirical evidence to support the hypothesis.
Look at the state of the world , the war , the poverty the suffering,and show me any global organisation that actually manages to significantly succeed in solving any of these problems. If humanity lacks the ability to address lesser problems on a global level then how on earth can you expect us to solve something that requires (according to the Warminsitas) a sustained and consistent effort for centuries into the future?
In a word No
“If humanity lacks the ability to address lesser problems on a global level then how on earth can you expect us to solve something that requires (according to the Warministas) a sustained and consistent effort for centuries into the future?”
All it really requires is a single change: a move to a society of zero net emissions. Now that’s a big change but it’s comparable to the advent of the Internet. It’s something that might reasonably take a decade, not “centuries”, and once it’s done, it’s done, you can move on to other things.
Well the only lingering area of legitimate uncertainty was over discrepancies between land and Satellite measurements, which were accounted for some years ago now. What other evidence would suffice?
You appear to have contradicted yourself the latter pars. On the one hand, you’re all emo about ‘lesser’ problems – apparently we haven’t been able to do anything about them because there are still instances of war etc. breaking out. Then you deny they’re too big.
mitchell porter
If it were as easy to do as it is to say then I would agree with you but my question is not about “what” it is about “How” and I think your answer makes it very clear that you have not got the foggiest idea about that.
dk.au
You are kidding aren’t you? the amount of doubt about the theory of AGW reaches into just about every aspect of the theory.
As for my later paras If you can;t grasp that our impotence in the face of eternal war and conflict means any attempt to do something larger is less likely to work than our peacemaking then you must truly be from another planet.
“Well the only lingering area of legitimate uncertainty was over discrepancies between land and Satellite measurements, which were accounted for some years ago now. What other evidence would suffice?”
.
This is similar to the basis of the argument over at Troppo.
The computer models which produce a hotspot in the troposphere are worked at levels of C02 double today’s but there isn’t any evidence from satellite or radiosonde that confirms the predicted warming trend after 1998 albeit at much lower levels of C02 in the atmosphere.
Certainly there isn’t a debate that the historical record shows a warming from 1700s but the slow rate of change apparently accelerated over the period 1978-1998 . The satellite recordings which I understand began in 1978 aren’t corroborated by the radiosonde data of the same period.
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And as Tim Lambert patiently explained the trend is best looked at on a multidecal
basis but the problem is that there isn’t a hotspot now.
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There might be one in future , the computer modellers might be able to rework the radiosonde data from 1998 to some how come up with one but as of now we are are all waiting to see if one eventuates.
Is is too blase by half to just dismiss debate about the hockey stick and the ice core samples as being ” resolved ” because that plainly isn’t correct.
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Before I’m accused of being a denialist I would like to see evidence that is conclusive .And remember that historically there is a warming trend but the reason for all the commotion for more action from mankind is because of the worrying change in the trend for a short period only.
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The weirdest thing about this debate is the presence of a sense that the debate is over and now a political side has to be defended. AGW may exist but scientific effort must continue to examine all aspects of this phenomenon and not have areas of enquiry cut off as somehow sacrosanct.
That’s true, but the amount is very small.
AGW is not the only known influence on the climate system, but no model can explain recent warming without including AGW, there are specific observations strongly suggestive of AGW, and there are no observations that are, within our levels of uncertainty, strongly disconfirmatory of AGW.
In this context proper scepticism means accepting, on a provisional basis, that AGW is highly likely to be contributing to recent warming and is projected to increase warming in the future.
Does anyone think this post is more than a bit full of itself, written with elaborate yet intentionally vague language and sneering hatred of neo-liberals ?
How does anyone in their right mind think George Bush represents the “right of ideas”?
He’s just introduced the New New Deal – the biggest expansion of socialism in decades. He has expanded the welfare state, the warfare state, given unprecedented powers to the Treasury and the Federal Reserve which leads to government destruction of the currency and a spiralling deficit.
We’ve had the biggest growth in global socialism in the past year, as a response to financial problems created by socialism.
I think its a terrific thing that our politicians don’t deal with long term issues. Because if they even attempted a 5-year plan or 10-year plan, it would fail as miserably as Mao’s and Stalin’s glorious revolutionary plans.
How can a bueraucracy, even with the smartest technocrats in the world, hope to plan for things that are entirely unknown and unpredictable ? The economy and the climate are but two examples.
And another point – just who are these neo-liberals ?
The Liberal Party is occupied by socially conservative statists who occasionally talk about free markets while they double the size and scope of government every decade.
Mitchell porter.. the internet was not planned by government, and it certainly was not invented by Al Gore.
It was the accumulation of decades of knowledge, entrepreneurship and free markets that created the PC and network technology.
Moving to a society of “zero net emissions” is not a single change, but rather a coercive government plan to change every single transaction in the economy. You can’t just will it into existence.
Just like you or I cannot simply wish into existence the next big technological breakthrough to rival the internet.
“the internet was not planned by government”
Oh yes it was. By the Pentagon, to be precise, which as government as it gets.
Are you auditioning for a gig with Quadrant by any chance?
Iain Hall: ‘If it were as easy to do as it is to say then I would agree with you but my question is not about “what” it is about “How” and I think your answer makes it very clear that you have not got the foggiest idea about that.’
Au contraire mon frere, how it could happen looks clearer every day. The 2010s are going to be a decade of gently but steadily declining emissions in the developed world, and of slowing growth in emissions from the developing world – that is the realistic outcome to expect from the current round of climate diplomacy, it is the degree of climate change mitigation we presently have the political will to achieve, whether it is achieved through a U.N.-wide agreement like Kyoto, or through great-power bilateralism, as occurred in trade after the WTO began to seize up. Most of these grand blueprints for limiting atmospheric CO2 to 550 parts-per-million or 450 parts-per-million feature a much more rapid rate of reduction from 2020 forward, and one need only posit that, after another decade of technical progress and another ratchet upwards in measured global temperatures, the will and the means will be found to go all the way to zero emissions in the 2020s, in which case that would be the decade in which CO2 levels finally peak and, consequently, the problem stops getting worse.
So that is the politics of it. As for the technical feasibility of a zero-emissions economy, I do not have a complete blueprint to offer, and even if I did it would be rejected as a fantasy of central planning that would never happen because people resist being told what to do. However, one can see the outline of a solution if one first sees the outline of the problem.
http://www.wri.org/image/view/9529/_original
The problem is very approximately one-third land use, one-third energy (transport and electricity), and one-third industry (energy not included). So in a slogan, the answer is clean energy, clean industry, and carbon-neutral land use – and that’s not even taking into account the possibility of dedicated sequestration industries which chemically create artificial carbon sinks, for example by accelerating mineral carbonation. We all know that clean electrical generation is possible, whether from nuclear or from renewables. For transport, the basic solutions are electric vehicles and clean fuels. Industry I admit I have not studied, but I even hear of ideas for carbon-sequestering cement, and emissions from cement manufacture are the largest single industrial contribution. With respect to agriculture and forestry, again I am relatively ignorant, but the hardest thing to deal with here may be the N2O emissions coming from fertilizer use. If we can’t feed the world without generating those, then we may just have to rely on offsets from other sectors (such as the dedicated sequestration sector) in order to counteract their effects.
Jono: ‘Moving to a society of “zero net emissions” is not a single change, but rather a coercive government plan to change every single transaction in the economy. You can’t just will it into existence.’
I think the development of the wired world we have now is an excellent model for how this stuff is likely to happen. There was no U.N. millennium development goal saying that half the world must have a mobile phone by the end of 2007, and yet it happened anyway. The spread of mobile phones was a far more hedonic process than will be the adoption of sustainability, but it’s not as if people lack the motivation. Every day, the fraction of the world population who expect to be alive in 2050 and beyond, and thus who expect to personally experience the long-range consequences of climate change, is increasing. Climate change mitigation is increasingly a matter of simple self-interest.
Calm down everybody. Just wait and see. Twenty years should suffice.
Michael Porter
Just two very big flies in your ointment China,and India
You can cite all of the optimistic pie in the sky stuff that you like but even Kyoto is an expensive total failure and its aims were rather modest by comparison to those suggested by the Warministas.There is no way in the world that the two rising giants of the east are going to “get on board” any time soon and it is even less likely in the third world.
But on top of that if the weather keeps going the way that has been doing lately many of the things that you dream of may end up being actually bad for the environment.
In all the rubbish Iain Hall is spouting its hard to know where to start, but its worth noting that his arguements about our inability to solve wars, poverty etc are rubbish.
While these things exist they are in long term decline, at least in regard to the proportion of the population affected. The decline started round about the time the UN and EU were founded. The fact they haven’t solved the problem instantly doesn’t mean these institutions have not contributed to massive declines. The same will be the case with Global Warming, the question being whether we act quickly enough to avoid the most severe effects.
Ignore Iain’s debating tactics. Whether or not an emissions trading scheme will work is not what the post is about. Being your classic denialist, Iain is so incompetent at arguing the science he instead diverts it to issues he thinks he can score a win with, the ETS being one of those issues.
As Tim Lambert wrote: If your roof was leaking, but you couldn’t afford to fix it, would that mean you could pretend your roof wasn’t leaking? No. Pretending global warming doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.
I’ve tried to remain agnostic about the climate change issue but I hafta say this bloke does make a good case for at least getting prepared to be prepared to deal with the possibility.
John
Now it is very clear that you are stalking me, probably because I have shown you up elsewhere. But I will very carefully address your comment none the less.
Ignore Iain’s debating tactics. Whether or not an emissions trading scheme will work is not what the post is about.
Well that much is true, Your problem lies with the fact that I am not talking about any ETS scheme either. I am arguing that it will be politically impossible at a global level, to achieve the reduction in carbon emissions in the time frame that AGW enthusiasts, like yourself, believe is necessary.
Being your classic denialist, Iain is so incompetent at arguing the science he instead diverts it to issues he thinks he can score a win with, the ETS being one of those issues.
We both know that when it comes to the science that you actually have a great deal of trouble just enunciating the fundamentals of the scientific method Even so this post is not about the fundamentals of the science it is about response to the issue from the right side of politics. As such opinions about the viability of the proposed panacea to the perceived problem is as much a legitimate direction for the debate as the considering the veracity of the science is.
As Tim Lambert wrote: If your roof was leaking, but you couldn’t afford to fix it, would that mean you could pretend your roof wasn’t leaking? No. Pretending global warming doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.
This is a rather poor analogy actually, because even I don’t deny that climate change is happening. The climate of our planet is dynamic, chaotic and ever changing. The real questions are all about whether we can prove that human activity is the cause of that change and if it is, can human activities be altered enough to deliberately modify the climate towards some thing that is more beneficial to humanity.
My default position on this issue is that even if the climate is warming that we will have to adapt in any case so that focusing to much on futile efforts to “stop” climate change is just a very silly waste of money and effort when really we need more of this approach to the planets climate,
Iain, your entire comment is hogwash.
“We both know that when it comes to the science that you actually have a great deal of trouble just enunciating the fundamentals of the scientific method ”
We both know that? Really?
“As such opinions about the viability of the proposed panacea to the perceived problem is as much a legitimate direction for the debate as the considering the veracity of the science is.”
LOL, way to run your sentences through the Microsoft Word thesaurus. You are completely wrong here. The “proposed panacea to the perceived problem” is just another right-wing meme from denialists who have embarrassed themselves again and again in global warming threads, and want to throw the disucssion off on another tangent. It is a legitimite discussion, but not one for this thread.
“My default position on this issue is that even if the climate is warming[,]
thatwe will have to adaptin any caseso that focusing to[o] much on futile efforts to “stop” climate change is just a very silly waste of money and effort[.]when really we need more of this approach to the planet[']s climate[.]”Of course that’s your argument! You get to hedge your bets either way! But what if it is human activity is the cause? What if the planet does get too hot for humans to survive on? Of course, it will go back to normal eventually. Last time it took a speedy 60,000 years.
*that is the cause.
John
Yes we do, but you are in denial of that most pertinent fact.
I have no idea how to even access “Microsoft Word thesaurus” But then I don’t need to, because I have a very good command of English and I can write sentences that are clear and cogent. The first one that I quote above is yet another example of your inability to do likewise. (suggested correction in brackets)
Strangely for all of your sound and fury about those you claim have “embarrassed themselves again and again” it is their message that is taking the shine of the hyperbole that passes fro AGW advocacy and religious fanatics like your own good self just can’t stand that.
Is this your attempt to try to redeem your credentials as a master of English language? Now I’ll concede the “too” and my unfortunate habit of adding a space in front of punctuation marks (which is of no consequence at all) But you missed my failing to capitalise “When” and you wrongly cite my using the possessive case for “planet’s” as an error. If you insist on making a big deal about my very minor typos then please proof read your own writing more thoroughly to avoid embarrassing yourself as you do in teh previous passage that I quote above .
Just where did you get the figure of 60,000 years? As far as I am aware all AGW enthusiasts claim that the current warming is “unprecedented” and last time I looked “unprecedented” means that it has never happened before. So please cite your source for that figure and just when the “last time” actually was.
I’ll remind commenters of the Comments Policy.
Iain, I’m curious: even if we’re unable to stop 2 degrees of warming, shouldn’t we try to stop 3 or 4?
Scratch my last question – this thread has outlived its correspondence with the post topic within the bounds of the Comments Policy.