UN 95% certain that climate change is caused by humans

[thegreekdog]

Screw liberty or death, GIVE ME CAKE!

Cake or death?

Ultimately, nobunaga cares because the science is being used by others to try to impose small (or big) changes in society. Erego, he should be arguing against those changes because that's really what he cares about.

[Dukasaur]

Screw liberty or death, GIVE ME CAKE!

Would you rather have a lifetime supply of cake, or....



oh, never mind.

[Lootifer]

Screw liberty or death, GIVE ME CAKE!

Cake or death?

Ultimately, nobunaga cares because the science is being used by others to try to impose small (or big) changes in society. Erego, he should be arguing against those changes because that's really what he cares about.

No offense to the guy but he's doing a similar thing in the Common Core thread too.

[Nobunaga]

Okay nobunaga, let me try a different tactic.

Why do you care about climate change science? In other words, how is your life affected if you can prove climate change is incorrect?

Can I re-phrase your question? Obviously I can prove nothing of the sort. How about:

Okay Nobunaga, ... How is your life affected if persons with the appropriate qualifications could prove climate change is incorrect, and actually do away with the policies based on current beliefs"?

1. I could quite possibly earn more money where I work, as my company would no longer be burdened with the regulations. I say "quite possibly", as I work with more than a few emotional incompetents, and coming promotions are likely to be mine.

2. I could pray that the V8 comes back into style with a new line of heavy, inefficient, and absolutely beautiful cars (cafe standards lose a lot of their foundation).

3. Life would be easier for my children.

4. I would have more belief that my country isn't disintegrating into a shopping center for left wing crony special interest and socialist ideologues.

5. It would be one step toward living again in a vibrant, wealthy nation, where people have confidence in their country and its leaders.

6. It would do much to end the propaganda being fed the low information (aka ignorant) types and our children in public schools - since this is personal, I suppose the "children" part of this answer more qualifies as a response.

...

[Nobunaga]

Screw liberty or death, GIVE ME CAKE!

Cake or death?

Ultimately, nobunaga cares because the so-called science is being used by others to try to impose small (or big) changes in society. Erego, he should be arguing against those changes because that's really what he cares about.

If you had said the above, you would have been correct.

...

[thegreekdog]

Okay nobunaga, let me try a different tactic.

Why do you care about climate change science? In other words, how is your life affected if you can prove climate change is incorrect?

Can I re-phrase your question? Obviously I can prove nothing of the sort. How about:

Okay Nobunaga, ... How is your life affected if persons with the appropriate qualifications could prove climate change is incorrect, and actually do away with the policies based on current beliefs"?

1. I could quite possibly earn more money where I work, as my company would no longer be burdened with the regulations. I say "quite possibly", as I work with more than a few emotional incompetents, and coming promotions are likely to be mine.

2. I could pray that the V8 comes back into style with a new line of heavy, inefficient, and absolutely beautiful cars (cafe standards lose a lot of their foundation).

3. Life would be easier for my children.

4. I would have more belief that my country isn't disintegrating into a shopping center for left wing crony special interest and socialist ideologues.

5. It would be one step toward living again in a vibrant, wealthy nation, where people have confidence in their country and its leaders.

6. It would do much to end the propaganda being fed the low information (aka ignorant) types and our children in public schools - since this is personal, I suppose the "children" part of this answer more qualifies as a response.

...

And see, I agree with most of all of those things. I've chosen not to argue about the science when there are not many dissenters in the scientific community and I'm not a scientist to be able to determine this of my own accord. Instead, I've chosen to argue against the responses to climate change. I'm trying (unsuccessfully in real life and CC) to get people on board with me.

[john9blue]

what are the motives of people on both sides of this debate?

what are the consequences of both hypotheses in this debate?

if you consider those two questions, the correct stance on climate change should be obvious.

[Metsfanmax]

what are the motives of people on both sides of this debate?

what are the consequences of both hypotheses in this debate?

if you consider those two questions, the correct stance on climate change should be obvious.

If we applied that logic to all of science, think of how much better off the world would be. Obviously our theory of gravity must be wrong because Elon Musk has a lot of money in SpaceX! Those physicists in universities have been pulling the wool over our eyes too long and stealing hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

[BigBallinStalin]

what are the motives of people on both sides of this debate?

what are the consequences of both hypotheses in this debate?

if you consider those two questions, the correct stance on climate change should be obvious.

If we applied that logic to all of science, think of how much better off the world would be. Obviously our theory of gravity must be wrong because Elon Musk has a lot of money in SpaceX! Those physicists in universities have been pulling the wool over our eyes too long and stealing hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

Recall that study about the 'liberal' math kids opting for gun control when the data didn't support that position.

Don't you think the same kind of bias applies to the environmental issue as well?

[Lootifer]

Obviously all scientists should be like me then. Along with professors and politicians...

[BigBallinStalin]

Oh, but that rob them of all their fun. You wouldn't want to be known as the Tyrant of Boredom, would you?

[Lootifer]

We already are i'm afraid

[PLAYER57832]

6. It would do much to end the propaganda being fed the low information (aka ignorant) types and our children in public schools - since this is personal, I suppose the "children" part of this answer more qualifies as a response.

...

So to you, "propoganda" has nothing to do with evidence and proof (can't be because you said yourself you "don't understand the science").. if you don't like it, its "propaganda"

[PLAYER57832]

And see, I agree with most of all of those things. I've chosen not to argue about the science when there are not many dissenters in the scientific community and I'm not a scientist to be able to determine this of my own accord. Instead, I've chosen to argue against the responses to climate change. I'm trying (unsuccessfully in real life and CC) to get people on board with me.

LOL...
So, maybe the problem IS real, but you don't like what it takes to fix it, so you just argue against the fixes?

Not much of a legal argument, that. Or rather, it is JUST that -- a legal argument that makes esoteric sense, but not in the practical world. Its one thing to argue to set a murderer free, because you are his attorney, its how our system works.. etc, etc.
Its something else to tell your kid to "go ahead and play in the yard, that water isn't rising very quickly", in the middle of a flood.

[thegreekdog]

And see, I agree with most of all of those things. I've chosen not to argue about the science when there are not many dissenters in the scientific community and I'm not a scientist to be able to determine this of my own accord. Instead, I've chosen to argue against the responses to climate change. I'm trying (unsuccessfully in real life and CC) to get people on board with me.

LOL...
So, maybe the problem IS real, but you don't like what it takes to fix it, so you just argue against the fixes?

Not much of a legal argument, that. Or rather, it is JUST that -- a legal argument that makes esoteric sense, but not in the practical world. Its one thing to argue to set a murderer free, because you are his attorney, its how our system works.. etc, etc.
Its something else to tell your kid to "go ahead and play in the yard, that water isn't rising very quickly", in the middle of a flood.

Well, to be fair, I want to argue about the fixes, not against the fixes. I have specific things I don't like (for example, taxes and government regulation) and specific things I do like (free market solutions).

[Metsfanmax]

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

[thegreekdog]

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

Hmm... that doesn't make any sense at all. The free market does, in fact, have to pay for the damage it causes. But I'd like to understand why you think the participants in a free market don't have to pay for damages they cause.

[Metsfanmax]

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

Hmm... that doesn't make any sense at all. The free market does, in fact, have to pay for the damage it causes. But I'd like to understand why you think the participants in a free market don't have to pay for damages they cause.

A number of reasons.

1) If you count up the total amount of economic damage that will be caused by global warming, a disproportionate amount is caused by people from the United States, India and China relative to the damage that they will suffer. Developing nations will suffer a much greater amount of damage but will have contributed basically nothing to the severity of global warming. You can be sure that Exxon Mobil is not going to compensate the people of the Maldives for the flooding of their island nation.

2) This also applies internally to developed nations as well. Certain sectors of the population are responsible for a very large share of greenhouse gas emissions, but they are doing damage to all of society. Society collectively will be forced to pay for the reparations of the damage.

3) The people who are doing the damage are not the ones who are paying for it, due to the delayed time-scale of the problem. The actual damage will fall mostly on the children and grandchildren of the current adult generation, yet they are not the ones who caused the problem.

4) What I really meant, though, is more fundamental than any of these. An economic externality is, by construction, a cost that is not factored into the price of a product on the free market. When the damage is done by global warming, the market is not what pays for reparations. Rather, a tax will be levied on residents of the various nations and the government will pay for it. This tax exists external to the market, which is why it is fair to say that the market is not paying for the damage.

[Night Strike]

1) If you count up the total amount of economic damage that will be caused by global warming, a disproportionate amount is caused by people from the United States, India and China relative to the damage that they will suffer. Developing nations will suffer a much greater amount of damage but will have contributed basically nothing to the severity of global warming. You can be sure that Exxon Mobil is not going to compensate the people of the Maldives for the flooding of their island nation.

That doesn't even make sense. How will developing nations suffer much greater damage than others? Besides, aren't the successful countries the ones that have the largest ports that would be forced under water in your predictions? Seems like those countries would be disproportionally harmed.

3) The people who are doing the damage are not the ones who are paying for it, due to the delayed time-scale of the problem. The actual damage will fall mostly on the children and grandchildren of the current adult generation, yet they are not the ones who caused the problem.

Kind of like how our country is spending trillions of dollars it doesn't have and then forcing children and grandchildren to handle the repercussions?

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

You mean how the free market has cut carbon dioxide emissions back to 1992 levels without any new government regulations? Nope, it doesn't work at all.

LOL...
So, maybe the problem IS real, but you don't like what it takes to fix it, so you just argue against the fixes?

The government's mandated solutions don't work....and in fact make things worse....so I don't understand why you're constantly demanding MORE government solutions. Unless you only care about controlling others.

[Metsfanmax]

1) If you count up the total amount of economic damage that will be caused by global warming, a disproportionate amount is caused by people from the United States, India and China relative to the damage that they will suffer. Developing nations will suffer a much greater amount of damage but will have contributed basically nothing to the severity of global warming. You can be sure that Exxon Mobil is not going to compensate the people of the Maldives for the flooding of their island nation.

That doesn't even make sense. How will developing nations suffer much greater damage than others? Besides, aren't the successful countries the ones that have the largest ports that would be forced under water in your predictions? Seems like those countries would be disproportionally harmed.

Pay attention to what I said. I was talking about the proportion of damage relative to the contribution to the problem. Suppose a developing nation like the Maldives and a developed nation like the United States suffer the same damage relative to their GDP. This would be unfair because the Maldives contributed a vanishingly small amount of greenhouse gas emissions. But even that scenario is fictitious -- some parts of the island of Manhattan will go underwater eventually, for instance, but there's plenty of land left for Americans to retreat to. The Maldives is an island nation that will be swallowed up by the ocean entirely in a couple of centuries. Not only is there more damage relative to what they can afford to pay for, there is more damage than they deserved given how little they contributed to the problem.

3) The people who are doing the damage are not the ones who are paying for it, due to the delayed time-scale of the problem. The actual damage will fall mostly on the children and grandchildren of the current adult generation, yet they are not the ones who caused the problem.

Kind of like how our country is spending trillions of dollars it doesn't have and then forcing children and grandchildren to handle the repercussions?

If you care about this issue, then caring about the effects of global warming is obvious. Of course, one difference between the two situations is that 97% of the research from people who study the global warming issue agrees on that issue, whereas the situation is much more muddled when it comes to how to effectively deal with the debt problem. Let's at least solve the obvious ones.

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

You mean how the free market has cut carbon dioxide emissions back to 1992 levels without any new government regulations? Nope, it doesn't work at all.

1) Please read more on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The United States would need to decrease emissions to way lower than 1992 levels. and actually start sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, to reverse the effects of global warming.

2) Carbon dioxide emissions in the last few years fell because of the economic recession. I don't think that indefinitely extending our economic troubles is a sustainable solution to global warming.

[BigBallinStalin]

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

Hmm... that doesn't make any sense at all. The free market does, in fact, have to pay for the damage it causes. But I'd like to understand why you think the participants in a free market don't have to pay for damages they cause.

It depends on how privately owned courts would work in a free market system.

[BigBallinStalin]

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

Hmm... that doesn't make any sense at all. The free market does, in fact, have to pay for the damage it causes. But I'd like to understand why you think the participants in a free market don't have to pay for damages they cause.

A number of reasons.

1) If you count up the total amount of economic damage that will be caused by global warming, a disproportionate amount is caused by people from the United States, India and China relative to the damage that they will suffer. Developing nations will suffer a much greater amount of damage but will have contributed basically nothing to the severity of global warming. You can be sure that Exxon Mobil is not going to compensate the people of the Maldives for the flooding of their island nation.

2) This also applies internally to developed nations as well. Certain sectors of the population are responsible for a very large share of greenhouse gas emissions, but they are doing damage to all of society. Society collectively will be forced to pay for the reparations of the damage.

3) The people who are doing the damage are not the ones who are paying for it, due to the delayed time-scale of the problem. The actual damage will fall mostly on the children and grandchildren of the current adult generation, yet they are not the ones who caused the problem.

4) What I really meant, though, is more fundamental than any of these. An economic externality is, by construction, a cost that is not factored into the price of a product on the free market. When the damage is done by global warming, the market is not what pays for reparations. Rather, a tax will be levied on residents of the various nations and the government will pay for it. This tax exists external to the market, which is why it is fair to say that the market is not paying for the damage.

You get these problems with government courts too, but I hardly see any work toward innovation and efficiency in a government-run sector (gee, what a surprise). It's not like a carbon tax is the only cost imposed on businesses--as some corrective. For example, after accounting for all their subsidies/write-offs--generously given by government, I doubt that the private costs would still remain equal to social costs.

In short, I don't see how the government actually resolves your points because it doesn't--or at least, it's not effective in inducing the right amount of changes.

[Lootifer]

Yeah but I too can make up straw men involving free market entities who have branded themselves perfectly as voluntarily saving the proverbial world, yet are as equally terrible at actually addressing social costs as any hypothetical government.

[Night Strike]

3) The people who are doing the damage are not the ones who are paying for it, due to the delayed time-scale of the problem. The actual damage will fall mostly on the children and grandchildren of the current adult generation, yet they are not the ones who caused the problem.

Kind of like how our country is spending trillions of dollars it doesn't have and then forcing children and grandchildren to handle the repercussions?

If you care about this issue, then caring about the effects of global warming is obvious. Of course, one difference between the two situations is that 97% of the research from people who study the global warming issue agrees on that issue, whereas the situation is much more muddled when it comes to how to effectively deal with the debt problem. Let's at least solve the obvious ones.

Because the government can't solve that issue, if it even is an issue. Everything the government has mandated has made global warming worse, by your own standards, so why should the government keep being involved?

The "free" market (as in, a completely unregulated market) cannot solve global warming because the free market does not have to pay for the damage it causes.

You mean how the free market has cut carbon dioxide emissions back to 1992 levels without any new government regulations? Nope, it doesn't work at all.

1) Please read more on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The United States would need to decrease emissions to way lower than 1992 levels. and actually start sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, to reverse the effects of global warming.

2) Carbon dioxide emissions in the last few years fell because of the economic recession. I don't think that indefinitely extending our economic troubles is a sustainable solution to global warming.

1) You're right, ALL pieces of technology throughout the world would have to be immediately shut down and no carbon dioxide can ever again be released from the ground in order to drop the world's temperature by less than 1 degree. That's clearly not worth the damage the lack of technology would cause to the world.

2) You'll have an economic recession worse than even the Great Depression when you use the government to absolutely destroy all forms of reliable energy.

[Metsfanmax]

Because the government can't solve that issue, if it even is an issue. Everything the government has mandated has made global warming worse, by your own standards, so why should the government keep being involved?

I never claimed that government mandates have made global warming worse. The government is the only thing standing between our market and completely unconstrained fossil fuel burning. I don't think government mandates are the optimal way to solve the problem because they don't abide by market principles and this is primarily a market problem -- but I have stated on multiple occasions that government interventions in the environment have very often improved the situation (again, I direct you to the Montreal Protocol/Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 and the subsequent reduction in acid rain).

1) You're right, ALL pieces of technology throughout the world would have to be immediately shut down and no carbon dioxide can ever again be released from the ground in order to drop the world's temperature by less than 1 degree. That's clearly not worth the damage the lack of technology would cause to the world.

2) You'll have an economic recession worse than even the Great Depression when you use the government to absolutely destroy all forms of reliable energy.

Why do you keep strawmanning my position? I already explained quite clearly to you that I want us to transition to a different type of reliable energy, instead of shutting down any existing technology. We already went over this in a different thread:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=178259&p=4283202#p4283420

All I want is an additional tax to be levied on fossil fuels. This would ultimately be approximately a $2 tax per gallon on gasoline (compare to our current 50 cent net tax). No technology needs to be destroyed -- we just need to pay the correct price on carbon. In fact, I believe in the carbon tax so much (and the power of the market to solve problems when the price signal is right) that I would be fine with removing all existing EPA regulations on the oil and natural gas industries in return for implementing the tax. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, even ExxonMobil agrees, right on their website:

Keeping in mind the central importance of energy to economies of the world, ExxonMobil believes that it is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the risks to society associated with increasing GHG emissions.

Effective strategies must include putting policies in place that start the world on a path to reduce emissions while recognizing that addressing GHG emissions is one among other important world priorities, such as economic development, poverty eradication and public health.

...

If policymakers do move to impose a cost on carbon, we believe that a carbon tax would be a more effective policy option to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions than alternatives such as cap-and-trade. And to ensure revenues raised from such a tax are indeed directed to investment, and to assist those on lower incomes who spend a higher proportion of their income on energy, a carbon tax should be offset by tax reductions in other areas to become revenue neutral for government.