Global Warming - On Mars...

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Wreckless wrote:
…

And when I warn people not to gamble with my future, or I would start gambling with theirs, I was thinking more along the lines of forcing them to play Russian roulette. Like in the Deer Hunter. You know, put your money where your mouth is. Or more precisely, put your life where your money is.
…

EXCERPT:

[i]The global warming “crisis” is misguided. In hubristically seeking to “control” climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that “doing something” (emitting gases) at the margins and “not doing something” (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.[/i]

Do read the whole thing, as it’s quite pithy.[/quote]

I am seeing much more of this being reported on the MSM websites but it hasn’t trickled to the soundbyte news shows yet.

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[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:

EXCERPT:

[i]The global warming “crisis” is misguided. In hubristically seeking to “control” climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that “doing something” (emitting gases) at the margins and “not doing something” (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.[/i]

Do read the whole thing, as it’s quite pithy.[/quote]

Pithy? That’s a guy who’s never published a single scholarly article on the issue. The “article” is based on the false premise that 1)the people who battle against pollution are harming the chances of some regions to ever get access to clean water and,
2)that pollution has anything to do with the way wealth is distributed on the planet. Newsflash: Factories aren’t owned by workers and the fat portion of the profits end up either in the pockets of the filthy rich or flies to NY/London.

Oh, and did I mention that your emeritus professor think that the Amazon rainforest is overrated and that the “lungs of the Earth business is nonsense”?

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[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:

EXCERPT:

[i]The global warming “crisis” is misguided. In hubristically seeking to “control” climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that “doing something” (emitting gases) at the margins and “not doing something” (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.[/i]

Do read the whole thing, as it’s quite pithy.

lixy wrote:
Pithy? That’s a guy who’s never published a single scholarly article on the issue.[/quote]

Umm: So?

pith?y /ˈpɪθi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pith-ee] Pronunciation
?adjective, pith?i?er, pith?i?est.

  1. brief, forceful, and meaningful in expression; full of vigor, substance, or meaning; terse; forcible: a pithy observation.
  2. of, like, or abounding in pith.
    [Origin: 1300?50; ME; see pith, -y1]

?Related forms
pith?i?ly, adverb
pith?i?ness, noun

?Synonyms 1. succinct, pointed, meaty, concise.

Unless you’re trying to imply that it is impossible for anyone who has not published a scholarly piece on a subject to write anything of substance on such subject?

[quote]lixy wrote:

The “article” is based on the false premise that 1)the people who battle against pollution are harming the chances of some regions to ever get access to clean water and,
2)that pollution has anything to do with the way wealth is distributed on the planet. [/quote]

If one is to assume finite resources and then look at how they are being distributed, the premise that we are misdirecting money (both direct and indirect costs) toward global warming while ignoring or under-responding to problems of water and cleanliness (which is different than your straw-manned premise) seems quite sound.

[quote]lixy wrote:
Newsflash: Factories aren’t owned by workers and the fat portion of the profits end up either in the pockets of the filthy rich or flies to NY/London.[/quote]

Developing countries are increasing their greenhouse gas emissions at a much greater rate than developed countries. So, poor countries are going to be large contributors to any greenhouse effect going forward, particularly China, India and Brazil – but also other countries going through industrialization. In point of fact, China should pass the U.S. in total greenhouse emissions this year or next. While the communist government of China does get the bulk of that revenue, it’s kind of beside the point when thinking about how effective is money spent by developed countries in reducing their C02 emissions. India has a fairly socialist government as well, though less so than it used to be.

The point is best utilization of resources. And a good argument can be made that resources are best utilized in providing other forms of aid, rather than in implementing large-scale, Kyoto-type controls. [As noted above, investing in cleaner technologies and other less heavy-handed methods are a different matter].

[quote]lixy wrote:
Oh, and did I mention that your emeritus professor think that the Amazon rainforest is overrated and that the “lungs of the Earth business is nonsense”?[/quote]

It is overrated as the “lungs of the earth,” if you compare it against oceanic plankton. Professors like to be precise.

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On the point of the science being unsettled, from the NYT (of all places):

EXCERPT:

[i] Other critics have zeroed in on Mr. Gore?s claim that the energy industry ran a ?disinformation campaign? that produced false discord on global warming. The truth, he said, was that virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits. But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

"Hardly a week goes by," Dr. Peiser said, "without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory," including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

"Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet," Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. "Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change."

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore's claim that "our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this" threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to "20 times greater than the warming in the past century."

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore's assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. "I've never been paid a nickel by an oil company," Dr. Easterbrook told the group. "And I'm not a Republican."[/i]
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[quote]lucasa wrote:
In the past, the IPCC has thrown out these models as unreliable and as of AR3 doesn’t account for ‘non-linear’ responses. And in spite of the recent additions of things like dynamic vegetation and global dimming on top of the virtual ignorance of cloud cover (relatively), lead me to believe the science is still pretty “soft”.[/quote]

Well, we’re basically living on our only sample. It makes coming up with “hard” facts a lot more difficult. I guess it becomes a question, like in civil law, of which side seems to have the preponderance of evidence.

Personally, I think that even if the evidence was 100 times more convincing, we’d still do nothing about it until it was too late. Human nature is reactive, not proactive. We deal with problems after they happen, rarely before.

Getting a global consensus on the right course of action? Yeah right, that will happen.

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“The surprising thing about academics is not that they have their price, but how low that price is.” ? Sir Humphrey Appleby