That was an impressive spray. My Rabbi will be most amused at the prayers you’ve prescribed for me. And thanks for the lecture about how the world is different from high school. Most helpful.

I’ll happily accept your injunction to grow up, j_p_z. You go first.

but please, I’m beggin’ ya, Jerry, get a goddamned gravatar

Do as the clown says, Zed. May I suggest this friendly visage (as you yourself suggested a long time ago, IIRC)?

Brian — well you’re certainly entitled to set the rules, sir, so I can’t fault you for that. But consider for a moment the idea of competing claims: sometimes one’s moniker comes with a lot of baggage, which might predispose the reader, especially on an avowedly partisan site, to a prejudicial view. In the interest of getting a “clean read,” so to speak, there’s options one might consider. But of course the thing remains at your discretion. I will ask you to note, however, that I’ve done no “sock-puppeteering” in the sense of creating bogus personae who support one another.

I knew who you were – your style is too distinctive – but please, I’m beggin’ ya, Jerry, get a goddamned gravatar.

Mies van der Rococo – heh.

If the world took the problem seriously, then 25% in 10 years would not seem impossible. You might like to look at Jo Romm’s (Climate Progress) 14 wedges plus his recent update.

Sheesh! and they call people who accept the AGW science “alarmists”!

Secondly, any vague belief of this sort would vanish as soon as examined. God promised not to destroy the Earth by flood, but nobody takes that to mean that nobody will ever die in a flood, that sea levels will never rise and fall, — if several billion of us end up clinging to the Himalayas for life, that’s still not complete destruction!

The only denialist I know well (my Dad) simply doesn’t believe that the puny efforts of humans can make such an impression on such a vast world.

Hannah’s Dad, a nitpick: Conservative Christian theologians understand that human dominion of the earth ought to reflect the dominion of a loving creator-redeemer — ie, exploitation is wrong, stewardship is right. I imagine conservative Jewish theologians have similar views.

Yes, that’s entirely possible. (Heeey, didn’t that knock ya for a loop, I actually sort of agreed with you there… almost. Kind of.) Nevertheless it isn’t quite what we’re talking about in this case, is it. The human race could manage such a transition in its own sweet time, depending on the (pretty sturdy) pace of techno-innovation, if left to its own devices… unfortunately, if the AGW theory is true, it sort of puts a hard time-frame on things, yes? That’s what makes matters so complicated, wouldn’t you say?

If you wanted to cut global GHG emissions by say 25% over the next 10 years (or whatever figure is fashionable these days), and I mean in the real NEXT ten years, not some hypothetical UN-run future ten years, then in practical terms you are talking about cutting global industrial production by a significant margin on a VERY steep time curve. Since nothing like this has ever before been managed gently or even competently, it seems safe to say that millions would die as a result, possibly tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions. I think you should face that probability. IF you’re really serious and certain about your theory and its dire implications, then maybe that’s a price you’re willing to own up to. My question then is: just how serious are you? Or another way of putting it is: just how accurate are your modelling predictions? Are they as accurate as the predictions made every day by say heliocentricity or aerospace-travel science? If not, why not? What are you willing to bet on them?

This would ordinarily lead me to an even more grave concern, but it would be read here as snark so I’ll skip it.

Brian — well you’re certainly entitled to set the rules, sir, so I can’t fault you for that. But consider for a moment the idea of competing claims: sometimes one’s moniker comes with a lot of baggage, which might predispose the reader, especially on an avowedly partisan site, to a prejudicial view. In the interest of getting a “clean read,” so to speak, there’s options one might consider. But of course the thing remains at your discretion. I will ask you to note, however, that I’ve done no “sock-puppeteering” in the sense of creating bogus personae who support one another.

Mercurius — eh, more misdirection. But hey, it’s okay, man — just say 5 Sancta Marias, whoo! Five Hail Marys and you’re back on the street, with Father Rivera. I bet you were a regular champ on the high school debating team. Funny, ain’t it, how those rules no longer apply in the big bad world.

Helen I heard Paul Gilding too. I think everyone should read the transcript when it goes up. He has the same sense of urgency as Climate Code Red.

Officials from Beijing told a UN conference in Bonn yesterday that China would increase its emissions to develop its economy rather than sign up to mandatory cuts.

The refusal is a setback for President Obama’s efforts to drum up support for an agreement at Copenhagen in December on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. As argument erupted between rich and poor nations at the Bonn talks, Yvo de Boer, the UN climate change chief, said that a worldwide pact to prevent global warming was “physically impossible”.

Hopes that Copenhagen might deliver tougher carbon reduction targets were dashed further when Japan failed to make a significant commitment to reduce emissions. Taro Aso, the Japanese Prime Minister, said on Wednesday that Japan would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent by 2020 from levels in 2005. The Japanese commitment is a mere 2 per cent improvement on its commitment under Kyoto.

Responding to the Japanese proposal, the UN chief made no attempt to hide his disappointment. “For the first time in my two and a half years in this job, I don’t know what to say,” he said. “We’re still a long way from the ambitious emission reduction scenarios that are a beacon for the world.” The Chinese rejection of cuts emerged after talks in Beijing between Todd Stern, the US climate change envoy, and the Chinese Government, in which Mr Stern appears to have backed down from earlier calls that China make a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions.
Qin Gang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that China was still a developing country and its priority was to develop its economy, alleviate poverty and raise living standards. “Given that, it is natural for China to have some increase in emissions, so it is not possible for China to accept a binding or compulsory target,” he said.

The climate negotiations have been dogged by debate over which nations should take primary responsibility for cutting carbon emissions from the fuels such as coal and oil.

The Bush Administration had insisted that it would not agree to mandatory cuts as long as developing nations increased emissions. The Obama Administration has taken a softer line, accepting that China and India could not be expected to make equal commitments to developed economies. However, Mr Stern recently said: “They do need to take significant national actions that they commit to internationally, that they quantify and that are ambitious.”
Yea well good luck with that plan. Time for Mercurious to widen his satire to buddhists , animists and groups with weird self identification attitudes?
And these groups aren’t denying that there is a problem – it just seems to be they think it is someone else’s.

For those who haven’t been to the BB site before, they provide a transcript in the days following each program, which is handy if you haven’t time to listen to the audio.

Well then, to Cats-Paw @110, Grumpius, and van der Rocco.

I apologise for committing the twin sins of being Inconclusive and Not Having Reached A Firm View About Everything. This is a large field, with big ideas, and they don’t all neatly fit into my tiny little head. Obviously your head is much larger because you encompass the entirety of this debate with such elan. I shall try to be more dogmatic in future, the better to satisfy your preferences.

Plenty of people on this thread were quite capable of polite disagreement with me, and simply stated why they thought the article was off-beam. Why you also feel the need to lambast me for being Insufficiently Adamant is beyond me.

Here I was thinking the purpose of discussion is to explore ideas and see where they lead, whereas all along I failed to understand the important thing is To Be Very Sure Of Oneself In The Loudest Of Voices.

See comments policy about maintaining a consistent identity.

The topic is a pretty serious one (I mean AGW, not all this gas about Noah): if it’s real then it is of course the main issue of our era, and if even if it’s not real, it does turn out to be consuming a considerable amount of intelligent people’s time. And the risks to world economic production and the well-being of many millions of people hang in the balance, so it’s serious even if it doesn’t pan out.

Only if you make it out to be zero sum as you do here, Japerz. The fact is that we ALSO have a slight problem of diminishing resources vis a vis human demand. Transitioning to a renewable energy economy will be necessary anyway. Continuing as we are is not an option.

That’s all I’m going to say about that on this thread. The debate has been less than seemly at times and it’s time for me to move on. If Mercurius wants to scrub it that’s his prerogative.

Razor, I’ve got a post in the can that I’ll finalise and let out about the Bonn talks which picks up the point you make about China. In short we’ve got another 6 weeks of solid talks this year with all countries involved, so it’s not over till it’s over.

Anyway, it’s just a speculative thought.

“Give us control of the global economy to dismantle as we see fit, or else we’ll call you a crazy Xtan loony, whatever your actual objections may be.” Gee whiz, what’s a gamblin’ man to do in a situation like that?

Oh, and what #95 said, except that ‘evil’ is probably a bit much, when other objections will suffice.

The topic is a pretty serious one (I mean AGW, not all this gas about Noah): if it’s real then it is of course the main issue of our era, and if even if it’s not real, it does turn out to be consuming a considerable amount of intelligent people’s time. And the risks to world economic production and the well-being of many millions of people hang in the balance, so it’s serious even if it doesn’t pan out. That being so, one would like to see more laymen’s debate that is genuinely forthright, that takes its opponents seriously, that doesn’t resort to ideological finger-pointing, old debater’s tricks, and misdirection; let Penn and Teller handle that stuff.

The net effect of arguments like the one in this post is to make non-True Believers think twice about signing on to the Good Ship AGW, because this all just reads like a partisan swipe, of a kind that is drearily familiar and historically too often on the wrong side of reality. Swipes we will have always with us, true, but if AGW believers are as serious as they claim to be, then they might try acting the part.

Why did you pick this post, rather than the 50million other global warming posts that deal with specifically Global Warming rather than the participants, to dazzle us with stuff/debate that you suppose we’ve never seen before (we have BTW, those denailist links, we’ve seen them a million times before, they’re everywhere, and it’s why I got narky back there – the “the climate change is natural” and “I’m open minded” when every one of the >5000 climate change scientists say it’s not natural, but you obviously think they’re nongs and they and we can’t find the ‘evidence’ you have in your bookmarks)

Mercurious, I apologise for participating in taking this thread off topic – feel free to scrub this exchange or archive it off to teh debate corner or somesuch

Here’s just one link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange

History shows that once a regime of punishment begins it tends to continue down the line to anyone holding the “wrong” beliefs.

Michael Mann’s (in)famous hockey stick graph certainly attempted to rub out the Medieval Warm Period.