Aragorn: agreed on all points.
[quote]nik133 wrote:
Cmon a carbon tax, what for? Global Warming is the biggest farce here, do you realize that we can’t even predict the weather for 7 days and yet we somehow are able to predict it 10-50 years down the line? [/quote]
You’re confusing two things here: weather and climate. The first is the day-to-day conditions of clouds and temperature and humidity, the second is the prevailing trend in weather for a particular area during a particular part of the year. We can do a pretty good job at predicting the second without being great at predicting the first for the same reason that I can’t tell you if the next coin you flip will be heads or tails but I can be confident that if you flip it 1000 times you’ll get between 450 and 550 heads.
[quote]quidnunc wrote:
nik133 wrote:
Cmon a carbon tax, what for? Global Warming is the biggest farce here, do you realize that we can’t even predict the weather for 7 days and yet we somehow are able to predict it 10-50 years down the line?
You’re confusing two things here: weather and climate. The first is the day-to-day conditions of clouds and temperature and humidity, the second is the prevailing trend in weather for a particular area during a particular part of the year. We can do a pretty good job at predicting the second without being great at predicting the first for the same reason that I can’t tell you if the next coin you flip will be heads or tails but I can be confident that if you flip it 1000 times you’ll get between 450 and 550 heads. [/quote]
Ok well if you want to get into a global warming debate I have way better facts, please don’t fall for this because “going green” is the in thing now. Al Gore is a fraud and the earth goes through periods where it cools and it warms, this has all be recorded. Did you know that over 30,000 scientist (9000 PHDS) and the owner of the weather network filed a suit against Al Gore for fraud for his film “The Inconvenient Truth?”
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
However, this is a shitty bill, it was pushed through the House in a shady manner, and most of all, we don’t have the money!! If something like this is pursued, it should be when our economy is kicking ass and taking names, not whimpering in the corner with broken legs. The things this bill will do to us right now are just catastrophically bad IMO.
We don’t have the money. [/quote]
What are we comparing the bill to? A platonic ideal that has no pork or giveaways, eliminates the regressive effect, hits gas-guzzling cars more and sets more aggressive goals in cutting emissions? Or the status quo? I totally agree that the bill is deeply flawed, but I strongly believe it’s better than nothing. A world in 2100 with unlimited emissions is not a livable world. This bill limits emissions. And I don’t think a significantly better bill is possible, because of a little thing known as the Republican Party (plus a spineless Dem Senate that accepts the very novel idea that every piece of legislation needs 60 votes).
Can you explain what you mean by “we don’t have the money”? If you’re referring to the federal deficit, the bill is revenue-neutral, so it doesn’t affect that at all. If you’re referring to the general state of the economy, keep in mind that the targets are phased in gradually, so the effect in the first few years will be pretty small.
[quote]nik133 wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
nik133 wrote:
Cmon a carbon tax, what for? Global Warming is the biggest farce here, do you realize that we can’t even predict the weather for 7 days and yet we somehow are able to predict it 10-50 years down the line?
You’re confusing two things here: weather and climate. The first is the day-to-day conditions of clouds and temperature and humidity, the second is the prevailing trend in weather for a particular area during a particular part of the year. We can do a pretty good job at predicting the second without being great at predicting the first for the same reason that I can’t tell you if the next coin you flip will be heads or tails but I can be confident that if you flip it 1000 times you’ll get between 450 and 550 heads.
Ok well if you want to get into a global warming debate I have way better facts, please don’t fall for this because “going green” is the in thing now. Al Gore is a fraud and the earth goes through periods where it cools and it warms, this has all be recorded. Did you know that over 30,000 scientist (9000 PHDS) and the owner of the weather network filed a suit against Al Gore for fraud for his film “The Inconvenient Truth?”[/quote]
You know, back there I tried breathing deeply, counting to ten, and responding to you in complete good faith. Evidently, that didn’t do much. For my own sanity, I’m promising myself to not debate people who deny overwhelming scientific consensus, because experience has taught me that denialists are immune to reason. But I do have to ask, could you link that claim there?
As for myself I immediately ascribe zero value to the declamations of those who chant their precious-though-false mantras of “overwhelming scientific consensus,” “the debate is over” and so forth. You are simply a person with fingers in your ears singing La, la, la.
“All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.”
Try looking into CO2 levels and temperature vs time for the last few hundred thousand years, and try learning something about solubility of gases in water. Come back when you know something besides mantras. Thanx
[quote]quidnunc wrote:
nik133 wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
nik133 wrote:
Cmon a carbon tax, what for? Global Warming is the biggest farce here, do you realize that we can’t even predict the weather for 7 days and yet we somehow are able to predict it 10-50 years down the line?
You’re confusing two things here: weather and climate. The first is the day-to-day conditions of clouds and temperature and humidity, the second is the prevailing trend in weather for a particular area during a particular part of the year. We can do a pretty good job at predicting the second without being great at predicting the first for the same reason that I can’t tell you if the next coin you flip will be heads or tails but I can be confident that if you flip it 1000 times you’ll get between 450 and 550 heads.
Ok well if you want to get into a global warming debate I have way better facts, please don’t fall for this because “going green” is the in thing now. Al Gore is a fraud and the earth goes through periods where it cools and it warms, this has all be recorded. Did you know that over 30,000 scientist (9000 PHDS) and the owner of the weather network filed a suit against Al Gore for fraud for his film “The Inconvenient Truth?”
You know, back there I tried breathing deeply, counting to ten, and responding to you in complete good faith. Evidently, that didn’t do much. For my own sanity, I’m promising myself to not debate people who deny overwhelming scientific consensus, because experience has taught me that denialists are immune to reason. But I do have to ask, could you link that claim there?
[/quote]
Overwhelming Scientific Concensus??? The Ipcc?? Well the majority of that group aren’t even scientist and quite a few of the members disagree.
â??Warming fears are the worst scientific scandal in history. When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.â?? â?? UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Kiminon Itoh, an award-winning PHD environmental physical chemist.
"C02 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another. Every scientist knows this, but it doesnâ??t pay to say so.â?? Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research in Japan.
Here is an article relating to what I am talking about, if you want more just google and I even put in a video of the weather network founder:
http://www.politics.com/news/12344/al-gore-is-being-sued-by-twc-founder-and-30000-scientists/
Please post your evidence, global whining is a disease taking over much of the nation and I think people should stop it before it costs you thousands of dollars for something that plants breath (carbon). I suggest we start taxing trees for the oxygen they emmit.
Not to mention all the damned ozone.
(Or more precisely, isoprene, leading to increased ozone.)
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
As for myself I immediately ascribe zero value to the declamations of those who chant their precious-though-false mantras of “overwhelming scientific consensus,” “the debate is over” and so forth. You are simply a person with fingers in your ears chanting La, la, la.
“All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.”
Try looking into CO2 levels and temperature vs time for the last few hundred thousand years, and try learning something about solubility of gases in water. Come back when you know something besides mantras. Thanx[/quote]
I’m trying, I really am trying, to understand things from your point of view. You’re not a “bad person.” I’m sure you think that your proposed policies (or lack of polices) would be better for the world than mine. But honestly, how did you go about forming your opinions? In the modern world it’s impossible for anyone to be a master of more than one or two narrow disciplines. We have to trust the expertise of others, and to do this, we have to recognize what sources of information are trustworthy.
In the context of the global warming debate, tens of thousands of scientists gathered in several dozen regional, national and international scientific bodies in a variety of disciplines have all concluded that there is overwhelming evidence anthropogenic global warming is real. Against them are perhaps ten or twenty scientists (in the sense of having relevant PhDs), nearly all of whom are funded by organizations like Exxon Mobil, and some of whom were the very same people whom RJ Reynolds paid to prove that tobacco isn’t a carcinogen.
Now, given this, how can you seriously do anything but accept that the first group is the correct one? Please keep in mind that I am only talking about accepting a scientific fact (global warming is real), not a political position (we should do X to fight global warming). Science can show us what policies will be effective or ineffective at achieving certain outcomes, but it can’t indicate what the right thing to do is. But as the President said, everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, just not their own facts.
Really, what I think people need here is a dose of humility. We could sit here for days trading talking points that we’ve grabbed from some website or another. Now, I’m pretty confident that my talking points would be factual and backed by peer-reviewed data, and yours wouldn’t, but that’s beside the point. Neither of us is remotely qualified to make original arguments. The only thing that really matters is where our arguments are coming from - which side is supported by the evidence gathered by the people who are qualified. And I have trouble understanding how people can believe that that side is the denialist side.
Obviously you completely ignored my post, other than deciding you needed to reflexively regurgitate your mantras again. You did not bother to learn the necessary things I pointed out: but I think we all knew you wouldn’t.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Obviously you completely ignored my post, other than deciding you needed to reflexively regurgitate your mantras again. You did not bother to learn the necessary things I pointed out: but I knew you wouldn’t. [/quote]
I’m trying to talk to you like a human being, not like an internet-argument-person. I could certainly shoot down your arguments, but that isn’t the damn point. Five more would sprout up like heads of the Hydra. What I’m talking about is where we get our arguments from. It’s not just the IPCC, it’s every major scientific group in a relevant discipline that agrees that global warming is mostly anthropogenic (you’re probably going to mock me for citing Wiki, but the list here is accurate and fully sourced: Scientific consensus on climate change - Wikipedia ). The climate scientists - as opposed to politicians, or mechanical engineers, or particle physicists, or whatever - who disagree are vanishingly few, and mostly funded by corporations with a very strong vested interest in obfuscating the truth. Since neither of us is qualified to debate this formally, why don’t we accept the conclusions of those who are?
[quote]quidnunc wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
However, this is a shitty bill, it was pushed through the House in a shady manner, and most of all, we don’t have the money!! If something like this is pursued, it should be when our economy is kicking ass and taking names, not whimpering in the corner with broken legs. The things this bill will do to us right now are just catastrophically bad IMO.
We don’t have the money.
What are we comparing the bill to? A platonic ideal that has no pork or giveaways, eliminates the regressive effect, hits gas-guzzling cars more and sets more aggressive goals in cutting emissions? Or the status quo? I totally agree that the bill is deeply flawed, but I strongly believe it’s better than nothing. A world in 2100 with unlimited emissions is not a livable world. This bill limits emissions. And I don’t think a significantly better bill is possible, because of a little thing known as the Republican Party (plus a spineless Dem Senate that accepts the very novel idea that every piece of legislation needs 60 votes).
Can you explain what you mean by “we don’t have the money”? If you’re referring to the federal deficit, the bill is revenue-neutral, so it doesn’t affect that at all. If you’re referring to the general state of the economy, keep in mind that the targets are phased in gradually, so the effect in the first few years will be pretty small. [/quote]
The reason that Waxman-Markey is worse than doing nothing is that it doesn’t reduce emissions. According to the CBO it will reduce US emissions just 2% over the next ten years:
If we consider that the rest of the world will get richer over those ten years, especially China, that small reduction in emissions may well be canceled out globally. This is not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; it would be a stretch to call this good.
The best hope for the bill is that it will somehow inspire other countries to follow suit, but that seems to violate logic. Game theory: if you have a group of self-interested actors, and you want them all to cooperate, then unilaterally offering to be the first to cooperate, without any bargaining, is going to get you played for a sap.
Here’s the thing. Waxman-Markey is a bad bill. What we want is a better bill. More effective cap-and-trade, or a carbon tax, or simply an aggressive R&D program for clean energy (that’s Jim Manzi’s idea; he thinks the cost of a carbon price outweighs the costs of global warming, and that’s an idea worth taking seriously.) The question is, how do you get a better bill? By passing Waxman-Markey today, or by not passing it? I think passing it will diffuse political will to do anything further. It’ll set up a big regulatory organization that will be hard to change or eliminate. I’m hoping it fails and the next try is better.
[quote]quidnunc wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
Obviously you completely ignored my post, other than deciding you needed to reflexively regurgitate your mantras again. You did not bother to learn the necessary things I pointed out: but I knew you wouldn’t.
I’m trying to talk to you like a human being, not like an internet-argument-person. I could certainly shoot down your arguments, but that isn’t the damn point. Five more would sprout up like heads of the Hydra. What I’m talking about is where we get our arguments from. It’s not just the IPCC, it’s every major scientific group in a relevant discipline that agrees that global warming is mostly anthropogenic (you’re probably going to mock me for citing Wiki, but the list here is accurate and fully sourced: Scientific consensus on climate change - Wikipedia ). The climate scientists - as opposed to politicians, or mechanical engineers, or particle physicists, or whatever - who disagree are vanishingly few, and mostly funded by corporations with a very strong vested interest in obfuscating the truth. Since neither of us is qualified to debate this formally, why don’t we accept the conclusions of those who are?
[/quote]
Oh, what crap. “I could certainly shoot down your arguments, but…” and so forth with yet more of your mantras, many of which are utter falsehoods.
Goodbye. Fool. You have repeatedly proven incapable of doing anything but precisely what it was that I said in the first place that you were doing, thus there is no point in reading anything further from you.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
The reason that Waxman-Markey is worse than doing nothing is that it doesn’t reduce emissions. According to the CBO it will reduce US emissions just 2% over the next ten years:
If we consider that the rest of the world will get richer over those ten years, especially China, that small reduction in emissions may well be canceled out globally. This is not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; it would be a stretch to call this good.
[/quote]
Well, it phases in slowly. You can certainly say it should phase in more aggressively (I would agree!), though the slowness does invalidate the “How can we pass this in a recession” question. But it does phase it steadily - in 2020 we have a 10% reduction below business-as-usual, and the reduction continues to 80% by 2050.
But doesn’t this go against your it’s-too-insignificant argument? Let’s say that the cost of excess C02 to the world is roughly quadratic to the total concentration (you could argue it’s exponential, which makes my point stronger), let’s further grant your argument below and say that Waxman is fixed and the US will never pass a stricter standard. If there’s an optimal balance for the world of cutting-emissions-versus-boosting-GDP, then by taking a relatively “greedy” (GDP-biased) position early on, aren’t we increasing the incentives to others, for their own good, of taking a “nice” (low-C02-biased) stance? (Since the marginal cost of CO2 emission is increasing)
And as a matter of fact, in the industrialized world at least we know that cap-and-trade inspires other countries, because we’re doing this partially because Europe has already done so!
[quote]
Here’s the thing. Waxman-Markey is a bad bill. What we want is a better bill. More effective cap-and-trade, or a carbon tax, or simply an aggressive R&D program for clean energy (that’s Jim Manzi’s idea; he thinks the cost of a carbon price outweighs the costs of global warming, and that’s an idea worth taking seriously.) The question is, how do you get a better bill? By passing Waxman-Markey today, or by not passing it? I think passing it will diffuse political will to do anything further. It’ll set up a big regulatory organization that will be hard to change or eliminate. I’m hoping it fails and the next try is better.[/quote]
I think this is a great point, but I can think of two rebuttals:
A carbon tax is not happening, because 30 years of Republican propaganda have made any proposal involving the word “tax” impossible to implement in this country (look at the outrage over Obama returning income tax to less-than-Clinton levels).
Second, as the hardcore libertarians in here will angrily concur, there’s a pretty strong precedent for timid government proposals being steadily strengthened over the years. Passing minimal labor regulations (12 hour days, no child laborers…) in the 1890s didn’t sap political will for more substantive reform, it paved the way for the success of later years. Establishing a bare-bones Social Security system in the 1930’s laid the groundwork for substantial expansion of the program in the 50’s and 60’s. Putting a barely-visible health warning label on cigarette packs in the 60’s was the first step toward the gruesome warnings and heavy taxes found today.
I think the last example is the most pertinent one. There’s been a noticeable tendency in the last few decades for things previously viewed as being at worst foolish or unnecessary now being considered downright evil. Think about cigarettes, or junk food, or (in the right circles) SUVs. It’s a bit silly, but I think we’re adopting a new commandment: Thou Shalt Not Get Away With Negative Externalities. If we can get carbon consumption - which certainly has a large negative externality attached - associated with the same sort of disapproval, we’ll create much more political will to address global warming. And passing a bill like this might just do the trick in creating that link.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
quidnunc wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
Obviously you completely ignored my post, other than deciding you needed to reflexively regurgitate your mantras again. You did not bother to learn the necessary things I pointed out: but I knew you wouldn’t.
I’m trying to talk to you like a human being, not like an internet-argument-person. I could certainly shoot down your arguments, but that isn’t the damn point. Five more would sprout up like heads of the Hydra. What I’m talking about is where we get our arguments from. It’s not just the IPCC, it’s every major scientific group in a relevant discipline that agrees that global warming is mostly anthropogenic (you’re probably going to mock me for citing Wiki, but the list here is accurate and fully sourced: Scientific consensus on climate change - Wikipedia ). The climate scientists - as opposed to politicians, or mechanical engineers, or particle physicists, or whatever - who disagree are vanishingly few, and mostly funded by corporations with a very strong vested interest in obfuscating the truth. Since neither of us is qualified to debate this formally, why don’t we accept the conclusions of those who are?
Oh, what crap. “I could certainly shoot down your arguments, but…” and so forth with yet more of your mantras, many of which are utter falsehoods.
Goodbye. Fool. You have repeatedly proven incapable of doing anything but precisely what it was that I said in the first place that you were doing, thus there is no point in reading anything further from you.
[/quote]
Look. Here’s what you want to happen:
I go to realclimate.org. I get rebuttals to the points you made above, backed by peer-reviewed evidence, and post them. You ignore my responses or insult me, and post ten new arguments. I get more scholarly rebuttals. And so on and so on, in the ten-millionth game of Denialist Whack-A-Mole.
And what’s the point of that? You’re regurgitating stuff from Michael Crichton or Rush Limbaugh or god-knows-who. I’m regurgitating stuff from patient, world-weary climatologists. But at the end of the day, all we’re doing is puking on each other.
And that’s that. Absent a really obviously terrible point (“how can the ice caps melting raise the sea levels when melting ice occupies the same volume??”), neither of us is going to do much thinking, for the plain reason that neither of us is qualified in this field. So once again, I ask you, shouldn’t we listen the people who are?
That is the only argument I’m going to make, because, being a philosophical point rather than a scientific one, we’re actually qualified to address it. Do you or do you not accept that climatologists who accept global warming outnumber, outpublish and outresearch those who don’t by something like a 100:1 margin?
Do you or do you not accept that a great deal of denialist research is funded by companies with a vested interest in that position? (see ExxonMobil continuing to fund climate sceptic groups, records show | Climate science scepticism and denial | The Guardian , http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/exxonsecrets/2009/05/26/exxon_admits_2008_funding_of_global_warm )
My bad on the gradual phase-in; that does look stronger. I don’t know (and nobody knows) whether it’s strong enough.
On international cooperation: that’s clever. But by your argument, though, it looks like an even better to encourage the rest of the world to cut CO2 would be to do nothing at all! (And it would be cheaper.) You’re right that the weaker Waxman-Markey is, the less bad it will be (from the global incentive perspective) but that doesn’t show that it has a positive effect.
As for us following Europe, that’s a different thing – it seems like trend-following. Especially since their carbon exchange was a failure, and we seem to be following their bad policies (like giving permits away for free.) Maybe we can inspire the world in a PR sense (the Obama effect) but it may well be an “inspiration” to draft other weak and inefficient emissions-reduction plans. I worry about this just being checking off a box.
You’re right that timid programs can expand. But timidity isn’t my only problem with Waxman-Markey. It’s convoluted. There are a million little regulatory standards that distort incentives all over the place, favoring some industries over others. It’s not a cap-and-trade bill, it’s a cap-and-trade-and-everything-else bill. The deadweight costs are a lot higher than they ought to be.
Administering the exchange is going to be expensive, and open to abuse. And my point still stands: if the “better bill” means not having an exchange at all, which I think it might, then passing Waxman-Markey is going to make it very difficult to get rid of the exchange. By the same hardcore libertarian reasoning you cite, having a cap-and-trade system means it will be hard to tear it all down and try a tax, or a green “Apollo program” with no carbon price. Established regulatory organs don’t like to go away.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
…Established regulatory organs don’t like to go away.
Hmmmm? Now what do we call an entity like this one with such a savage appetite for power?
[/quote]
17Alpha-hydroxyandrostoligarchy-4plutocracy-en’gov-3-one
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
I don’t have a problem with pursuing greener fuels or getting away from carbon and lessening our impact on the environment. In fact those are things I rather like. We need to lead the world again, and changing technologies has a very, very large number of positives attached to it if we can get through the transition period.
However, this is a shitty bill, it was pushed through the House in a shady manner, and most of all, we don’t have the money!! If something like this is pursued, it should be when our economy is kicking ass and taking names, not whimpering in the corner with broken legs. The things this bill will do to us right now are just catastrophically bad IMO.
We don’t have the money. [/quote]
Well-stated. Even if this bill was chock full of good faith policy that would lead to good results, the cost is too high. Despite it being advertised as “revenue neutral”, it i sno such thing, and it isn’t policy neutral either, since it favors/disfavors its subjects.
Unemployment is approaching 10% - businesses need to be focused on finding bottom and improving their hiring and production prospects, not appointing internal task forces to begin to make sure they comply with the Byzantine code of the new bill.
While the politicians tout “revenue neutrality” - and they have such a convincing track record of financial predictions (see the stimulus bill) - they aren’t telling you about the enormous compliance costs that the private sector must undergo before they trade one single credit.
A ghastly bill - ill-timed, and unserious.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
<<< the cost is too high. >>>[/quote]
The thing about this though is that if what these alarmists are claiming were actually true and a bill would accomplish what it claims then NO cost could possibly be too high.
What difference would anything else make if the planet were actually being made uninhabitable?
The hypocrisy on the part of most of the loudest and most hysterical proponents of this is astonishing. They proclaim the literal extinction of the human race caused by others while they personally conduct themselves with abandon. If I really believed I was causing the world to end. I would at least live my own life in accordance with that belief.
Our international competitors are salivating over this. Obama is in the midst of some very instructive lessons. He lives in an alternate universe where his powers of charm and goodness persuade the world community to join us in his leftist utopian vision. In reality they are and will continue to tell us to eat shit. The UN is not going to really call for equal participation from countries like China and India and others and even if they do they’ll them to eat shit too.
The United States is morally responsible for saving the world she has been destroying by her presence for so long and our CEO agrees. The rest of the world will do what it needs to strengthen itself while we voluntarily disarm ourselves economically.
Just wait until some of these groovy “progressive” European countries find out they’ve only been able to carry on their grooviness because we have been keeping world order all this time.