Congrats to US and China on Climate Change

[shickingbrits]

What evidence? You said BC has a $30 per tonne CO2 tax and they transfer %100 back to the people. I worked in BC last year and didn't see any tax, nor did I get any compensation. I was planting trees, living in a tent.

How is that any evidence that your plan will do the same? You openly admit that you don't care who takes you up on it. You openly admit you want a tax of ten times that.

How will it be determined and which body will oversee it? You don't have an answer, because you can't. All you are, should I capitalize this so you'll get it?, is a little part of a marketing campaign to take more of people's money and give it to the government.

"It means cheap healthcare isn't a fantasy for one"

It's a fantasy in America.

[BigBallinStalin]

The underlined statements are true.

Because the underlined statements are true, the bold statements making a sob story is to insult someone's intelligence, acting as if the underlined statements are false.

I'm assuming you are addressing me.

"In other words, X and Y are true."
Why?
[Silence].
Crap argument.
-1000 Saxbucks.

lolwut does that even?
[ad hominem, strawman]
Crap argument + fallacies
-1500 Saxbucks.


Well, that was easy, sabotage. No one should take you seriously.

[shickingbrits]

What is a lobbyists job? To get their group favors from the government. Which part of the description means they have to believe in what they are doing?

Let me put it another way.

If I paid a lobbyist to go to DC and plead the case for my cause, and instead of using a rational argument, he came up with a sob story, I would fire him.

He has failed to present any useful data and comes with what if I really believe?

What if I really believe that aliens are coming and we need to burrow beneath the seas?

Should I hire a lobbyist and get the government to tax everyone 10k forever?

[BigBallinStalin]

What is the moral motivation behind the signing of a free trade agreement, or the building of a new high speed railway? What is the moral motivation behind demanding another country cede territory to yours? There are gajillions of policies that do not have an underlying moral motivation.

Each of those outcomes have emerged from a series of interactions among voters, bureaucrats, politicians, and special interest groups. Obviously, policies, states, or markets themselves have no moral motivation because they are not acting entities. The individuals within them purposefully act, and (nearly) all individuals are influenced intellectually and emotionally through their interactions with others. From childhood, people tend to have certain moral habits instilled with them, and these habits can become practices which further reinforce them (of course, moral sentiments can change). Nevertheless, moral sentiments guide the application of reason to various objects of inquiry.

Yeah, sure, a lot of laws and policies are in place because a lot of people feel there is some moral imperative for those laws and policies to exist. I agree with that

(1) So, like I said, it depends on the means for attaining those goals. Your choice over the means is influenced by your moral sentiments. Nearly everyone has a vision of the Good/Ideal Society and the Correct Means to obtain it, and very few are totally apathetic about these issues. Part of that judgment is intellectually driven and part of it is morally driven. You don't need to explicitly refer to your moral sentiments; the moral sentiments have already driven your reason into envisioning a certain range of means.

For example, adhering to libertarianism (a moral philosophy) will make one more hesitant to advocate for state intervention to attain the 3 Goals. Look at anti-government types: there's the kind which primarily rely on emotion to refute climate change (and its consequent state intervention), and there's the kind which try to discuss means, rely on logic, blah blah blah. The presumption toward less state intervention has underlying moral principles (seriously respect other people's property; don't initiate violence except in self-defense).

Then consider the quasi-socialists with their adherence to a social contract (a moral justification) which makes one less hesitant about state intervention. What's a social contract about? A contract is essentially a promise; it resonates with the moral principle of 'keeping one's promise'. Why bother to keep one's promise? Because you shouldn't lie. The presumption toward more state intervention has underlying moral principles.

(2) Ya get 'em from childhood. I view emotions/sentiments and moral principles as two sides of the same coin. For example, most people who view a video of an ISIS soldier slitting an American journalists' neck think: "this is awful! It's not right! Somebody (government) must set things right." I tend to think: "the killer is maximizing utility at the expense of the victim's utility. Zero-sum exchange. Actually, it's probably negative-sum; the extent of the market has decreased by 1. Anyway, why did he slit his throat? What's his goal? Are the chosen means effective in attaining that goal? etc. etc."

1 - My choice over means is influenced by what I think will most likely help us arrive at that destination. If ‘libertarians’ or ‘socialists’ want to base their respective economies on the lyrics from their favorite Disney song then that is their choice, but not mine.

2 – ‘this is awful! It's not right!’ Conflating those two things is dumb. I’ve intervened in a couple of attempted rapes I’ve seen in the street. Both were pretty unpleasant, but I don't think the attackers were behaving in a way that was 'wrong'. Falling back on ‘herp this is WRONG’ is just a cop out to avoid having to think any more critically about things which one finds uncomfortable.

As Deng Xiaoping said: ‘It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.’ Meaning, successful achievement of your end goal is what is important. If all you want to do is catch mice then your only criteria for choosing a cat should be how good the cat is at catching mice. Likewise, my only goal is a stable society in which I am prosperous and so the only thing that matters (in terms of policy) is that my government follows policies which create a stable society that I am able to live comfortably in.

I never actually said that no one refers to morality when designing policies, voting or whatever. I merely said that I think appeals to ‘morality’ are fallacious and not a useful line of argument, and I still think that.

Okay.

1. do morals/"the normative" influence one's decision-making?

[Metsfanmax]

What evidence? You said BC has a $30 per tonne CO2 tax and they transfer %100 back to the people. I worked in BC last year and didn't see any tax, nor did I get any compensation. I was planting trees, living in a tent.

Well, that clearly proves it doesn't exist! The tax applies directly to fossil fuel products that you purchase, like a sales tax, so it's not necessarily obvious that you'd be paying for it if you weren't looking for it.

How is that any evidence that your plan will do the same? You openly admit that you don't care who takes you up on it.

I don't know what you mean. I'm specifically working on getting it to happen by the US Congress.

You openly admit you want a tax of ten times that.

Never said that.

How will it be determined and which body will oversee it? You don't have an answer, because you can't.

I propose a tax starting at $15 per ton and rising $10 per year. The EPA already monitors greenhouse gas emissions, and the IRS will be responsible for collecting the fees and distributing the revenue.

It's a fantasy in America.

Going to prove you wrong on this one.

[shickingbrits]

Well I paid fuel tax and I didn't get any back, I guess I must have been emitting loads of CO2 while planting 2000 trees a day and sleeping in a tent.

You are specifically working on getting it to happen in US congress. Mets, there are people specifically working at getting guns off the streets in congress. Do they ever get what they hope for?

They may be happy to collect your tax. But that's about all they would be happy with. And they may even name the tax after you. But you have no idea and absolutely no say in how it will be collected, used or rated or the rate of increase. It's kind of like what you know about CO2 and warming.

[Metsfanmax]

It's kind of like what you know about CO2 and warming.

Do you consider yourself well informed on that issue?

[shickingbrits]

I think pages of discussions with you wouldn't make me any more informed, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Does it give you pause when you base everything you know about CO2 induced climate change on models which have not once been right?

[Metsfanmax]

I think pages of discussions with you wouldn't make me any more informed, but hindsight is always 20/20.

That is not the question I asked. I asked if you think that you are well informed on this issue. A straight answer will suffice.

Does it give you pause when you base everything you know about CO2 induced climate change on models which have not once been right?

That would give me pause, if it were true. Needless to say, it is not. There are many ways of directly verifying that CO2 has had, and is having, a significant effect on climate that don't make recourse to complicated climate models. Furthermore, these complicated climate models have been extensively validated by comparing to historical data.

[BigBallinStalin]

Mets, what effect do trees have on reducing C02 emissions and the overall impact on climate change?

Depending on the effect, wouldn't subsidizing 'tree production' achieve similar goals?

[Metsfanmax]

Mets, what effect do trees have on reducing C02 emissions and the overall impact on climate change?

It is a large effect. As you likely know, trees are great storage-houses of carbon. After all, trees form basically out of carbon dioxide from the air. Most estimates indicate that deforestation is therefore responsible for an amount of emissions comparable to or greater than all of the global transportation industry (so, in the ballpark of 15 percent).

Depending on the effect, wouldn't subsidizing 'tree production' achieve similar goals?

I am no expert but it sounds theoretically conceivable that if you planted enough trees it could make a substantial dent in carbon emissions. The problem is that the trend is precisely in the opposite direction. Most deforestation happens so that land is available for planting crops (usually for the purpose of feeding to animals). Since demand for food is growing, not declining, it's very hard to reverse that trend without a great shift towards more sustainable food production purposes. Also, it's happening in countries that the US doesn't have direct control over. Many of these are industrializing nations like Brazil and Indonesia that would very much take offense to the idea that they should stop developing.

That being said, any long term effort to reverse this trend will definitely require more care with tree life on the planet. Many of the higher quality services that allow you to offset your own carbon footprint are tree-planting efforts.

[shickingbrits]

Better informed than you.

[Metsfanmax]

Better informed than you.

So you won't give a straight answer?

[BigBallinStalin]

Mets, what effect do trees have on reducing C02 emissions and the overall impact on climate change?

It is a large effect. As you likely know, trees are great storage-houses of carbon. After all, trees form basically out of carbon dioxide from the air. Most estimates indicate that deforestation is therefore responsible for an amount of emissions comparable to or greater than all of the global transportation industry (so, in the ballpark of 15 percent).

Depending on the effect, wouldn't subsidizing 'tree production' achieve similar goals?

I am no expert but it sounds theoretically conceivable that if you planted enough trees it could make a substantial dent in carbon emissions. The problem is that the trend is precisely in the opposite direction. Most deforestation happens so that land is available for planting crops (usually for the purpose of feeding to animals). Since demand for food is growing, not declining, it's very hard to reverse that trend without a great shift towards more sustainable food production purposes. Also, it's happening in countries that the US doesn't have direct control over. Many of these are industrializing nations like Brazil and Indonesia that would very much take offense to the idea that they should stop developing.

That being said, any long term effort to reverse this trend will definitely require more care with tree life on the planet. Many of the higher quality services that allow you to offset your own carbon footprint are tree-planting efforts.

How to Increase the Demand for Trees:

(a) Recycling paper products reduces the demand for creating new paper products, whose inputs are mainly trees. So, stop recycling paper products. (Try selling that to environmentalists; they'll hate it, but it makes sense).

(b) Remove all tariffs and quotas on imports, so the least efficient uses of domestic land do not go to food production. (To what else, I'm not sure).

(c) Remove all subsidies on food production, but same question from (b).

(d) Offer tax credits to land developers who pay the additional cost of not totally clearing the old trees

[BigBallinStalin]

Better informed than you.

So you won't give a straight answer?

Of course not. He's sabotage. He wants the freedom to dodge, so he can always appear correct.

[mrswdk]

What is the moral motivation behind the signing of a free trade agreement, or the building of a new high speed railway? What is the moral motivation behind demanding another country cede territory to yours? There are gajillions of policies that do not have an underlying moral motivation.

Each of those outcomes have emerged from a series of interactions among voters, bureaucrats, politicians, and special interest groups. Obviously, policies, states, or markets themselves have no moral motivation because they are not acting entities. The individuals within them purposefully act, and (nearly) all individuals are influenced intellectually and emotionally through their interactions with others. From childhood, people tend to have certain moral habits instilled with them, and these habits can become practices which further reinforce them (of course, moral sentiments can change). Nevertheless, moral sentiments guide the application of reason to various objects of inquiry.

Yeah, sure, a lot of laws and policies are in place because a lot of people feel there is some moral imperative for those laws and policies to exist. I agree with that

(1) So, like I said, it depends on the means for attaining those goals. Your choice over the means is influenced by your moral sentiments. Nearly everyone has a vision of the Good/Ideal Society and the Correct Means to obtain it, and very few are totally apathetic about these issues. Part of that judgment is intellectually driven and part of it is morally driven. You don't need to explicitly refer to your moral sentiments; the moral sentiments have already driven your reason into envisioning a certain range of means.

For example, adhering to libertarianism (a moral philosophy) will make one more hesitant to advocate for state intervention to attain the 3 Goals. Look at anti-government types: there's the kind which primarily rely on emotion to refute climate change (and its consequent state intervention), and there's the kind which try to discuss means, rely on logic, blah blah blah. The presumption toward less state intervention has underlying moral principles (seriously respect other people's property; don't initiate violence except in self-defense).

Then consider the quasi-socialists with their adherence to a social contract (a moral justification) which makes one less hesitant about state intervention. What's a social contract about? A contract is essentially a promise; it resonates with the moral principle of 'keeping one's promise'. Why bother to keep one's promise? Because you shouldn't lie. The presumption toward more state intervention has underlying moral principles.

(2) Ya get 'em from childhood. I view emotions/sentiments and moral principles as two sides of the same coin. For example, most people who view a video of an ISIS soldier slitting an American journalists' neck think: "this is awful! It's not right! Somebody (government) must set things right." I tend to think: "the killer is maximizing utility at the expense of the victim's utility. Zero-sum exchange. Actually, it's probably negative-sum; the extent of the market has decreased by 1. Anyway, why did he slit his throat? What's his goal? Are the chosen means effective in attaining that goal? etc. etc."

1 - My choice over means is influenced by what I think will most likely help us arrive at that destination. If ‘libertarians’ or ‘socialists’ want to base their respective economies on the lyrics from their favorite Disney song then that is their choice, but not mine.

2 – ‘this is awful! It's not right!’ Conflating those two things is dumb. I’ve intervened in a couple of attempted rapes I’ve seen in the street. Both were pretty unpleasant, but I don't think the attackers were behaving in a way that was 'wrong'. Falling back on ‘herp this is WRONG’ is just a cop out to avoid having to think any more critically about things which one finds uncomfortable.

As Deng Xiaoping said: ‘It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.’ Meaning, successful achievement of your end goal is what is important. If all you want to do is catch mice then your only criteria for choosing a cat should be how good the cat is at catching mice. Likewise, my only goal is a stable society in which I am prosperous and so the only thing that matters (in terms of policy) is that my government follows policies which create a stable society that I am able to live comfortably in.

I never actually said that no one refers to morality when designing policies, voting or whatever. I merely said that I think appeals to ‘morality’ are fallacious and not a useful line of argument, and I still think that.

Okay.

1. do morals/"the normative" influence one's decision-making?

The prevailing moral values of whatever society one is currently in will sometimes need to be taken into account during decision-making, regardless of whether one believes that moral framework is legitimate or not.

[shickingbrits]

I don't want freedom to dodge, I just see no benefit in providing an answer.

I have examined the topic as I said from an uninformed perspective and basically took it for granted without any understanding of the issue. I was a casual headline reader and sometimes would delve into an article.

What really woke me up to it was having a son and becoming a concerned parent. I took a few courses in it. What I came to see is that no one is very well informed. Many people are capable of making superficial remarks, but few can add those remarks together in any meaningful way.

I have since examined the issue from multiple directions and learned a few things along the way:

It is almost impossible to get an alarmist to discuss a solution
Deniers find it very difficult to say that CO2 causes any warming(with good reason, they are immediately included in a consensus whose objectives and qualification of the threat they disagree with)
The deniers are much more likely to present data, the changists are much more likely to make personal attacks
The changists have repeatedly falsified information
The changists will attack anyone who agrees with them to a certain extent but offers an alternate proposal
The media prints the changists point of view
Both sides are willing to manipulate data
The changists are ideological involved (it's like a religion to them)
Most practical solutions come from neither side
The consensus from either side is far from scientific
Changists will refute observational data

What I was able to learn about CO2s actual ability to warm the planet based on concrete, unbiased data is very little.

Based on what I have learned about CO2 and it's actual ability to warm:

If we consumed our known financially viable reserves and didn't have any preventative measures in place then the temperature would warm by about 1 degree F.
This doesn't mean much because climate is in constant flux.
With or without this warming, humanity faces more and more challenges based on population, population density, and struggles between populations.

You can decide for yourself if you deem that understanding CO2's warming well.

[Metsfanmax]

Mets, what effect do trees have on reducing C02 emissions and the overall impact on climate change?

It is a large effect. As you likely know, trees are great storage-houses of carbon. After all, trees form basically out of carbon dioxide from the air. Most estimates indicate that deforestation is therefore responsible for an amount of emissions comparable to or greater than all of the global transportation industry (so, in the ballpark of 15 percent).

Depending on the effect, wouldn't subsidizing 'tree production' achieve similar goals?

I am no expert but it sounds theoretically conceivable that if you planted enough trees it could make a substantial dent in carbon emissions. The problem is that the trend is precisely in the opposite direction. Most deforestation happens so that land is available for planting crops (usually for the purpose of feeding to animals). Since demand for food is growing, not declining, it's very hard to reverse that trend without a great shift towards more sustainable food production purposes. Also, it's happening in countries that the US doesn't have direct control over. Many of these are industrializing nations like Brazil and Indonesia that would very much take offense to the idea that they should stop developing.

That being said, any long term effort to reverse this trend will definitely require more care with tree life on the planet. Many of the higher quality services that allow you to offset your own carbon footprint are tree-planting efforts.

How to Increase the Demand for Trees:

(a) Recycling paper products reduces the demand for creating new paper products, whose inputs are mainly trees. So, stop recycling paper products. (Try selling that to environmentalists; they'll hate it, but it makes sense).

Not sure if that's the whole story. Recycling is less energy intensive than new production. A substantial fraction of that energy savings comes in the form of unburned fossil fuels. So the net effect on the climate may not be positive.

(b) Remove all tariffs and quotas on imports, so the least efficient uses of domestic land do not go to food production. (To what else, I'm not sure).

(c) Remove all subsidies on food production, but same question from (b).

(d) Offer tax credits to land developers who pay the additional cost of not totally clearing the old trees

(e) Stop eating meat

[Metsfanmax]

You can decide for yourself if you deem that understanding CO2's warming well.

I wanted your own opinion of your own knowledge, because it helps in determining how vocal you should be on the scientific issue. You should decide for yourself whether you really know enough about the issue to think that your opinion should matter in any discussion of climate science. If that decision is that you don't know enough, then you should carefully consider publicly challenging experts on the issue. I am not here to tell you whether you do or do not know enough, because I can tell that it won't sway you one way or another. But you should be able to evaluate the state of your knowledge and determine whether you truly have an accurate understanding of what the current state of climate science actually is.

I will give you a hint, though: if you're only reading press releases and not digging into actual published research articles, it's very unlikely that you'll have meaningful things to contribute.

[shickingbrits]

http://phys.org/news183304619.html

While it shouldn't be a surprise, since forests are made with carbon, static carbon which has thermal barriers to heat transfer, that they actually...retain heat.

"By reflecting sunlight and releasing infrared radiation, desertification of semi-arid lands over the past 35 years has slowed down global warming by as much as 20%, compared with the expected effect of the CO2 rise over the same period."

[shickingbrits]

Yes, I believed in global warming when I just skimmed articles, and have come to understand it much better since I delved deeper.

Your ability to decipher information is impressive.

[shickingbrits]

here are the models vs real world

[Metsfanmax]

Do you understand what the vertical axis is actually measuring in that figure? Think about it, and then understand what kind of manipulations might have been made to produce it.

[DoomYoshi]

You can decide for yourself if you deem that understanding CO2's warming well.

I wanted your own opinion of your own knowledge, because it helps in determining how vocal you should be on the scientific issue. You should decide for yourself whether you really know enough about the issue to think that your opinion should matter in any discussion of climate science. If that decision is that you don't know enough, then you should carefully consider publicly challenging experts on the issue. I am not here to tell you whether you do or do not know enough, because I can tell that it won't sway you one way or another. But you should be able to evaluate the state of your knowledge and determine whether you truly have an accurate understanding of what the current state of climate science actually is.

I will give you a hint, though: if you're only reading press releases and not digging into actual published research articles, it's very unlikely that you'll have meaningful things to contribute.

Actually max, what's his name proved that stance on climate change is irrespective of education level.

For example, climate change deniers and those of us tethered to reality are equally likely to answer the following question correctly:
True or False: melting icebergs will cause the sea level to rise.

Instead, stance on controversial issues is almost entirely correlated with social group. Climate change denial etc. are treated religiously. This is further evidenced by the way in which he vociferously argues it. The other what's his face says all systems of organization only exist by way of repression. What is being repressed could simply be other systems, black people, alcoholism in a family setting, whatever. What shickingbrits is repressing to keep his thought system intact is reality. Anytime reality starts to show through, he reacts negatively (as Biblical literalists act out about evolution).

However, not all is lost. Since shickingbrits approaches the idea religiously, we can dissuade using the same tactics that can be used to steer religious people to positive ends. We could either genocide the entire religion, continuously try to shine new light in the hope that they see the true light, or try subversion. Personally, I prefer snide and biting remarks over the internet

snicker, snicker, sneer, sneer

[Metsfanmax]

Actually max, what's his name proved that stance on climate change is irrespective of education level.

What I am asking SB here is to indicate whether he feels educated on climate change specifically. It is certainly plausible, as you are probably hinting here, that reading even more about it would reinforce his view specifically on AGW, rather than change it. However, if he did so, at least I could have a discussion with him where we start from some of the same basic assumptions about how the climate works.

For example, climate change deniers and those of us tethered to reality are equally likely to answer the following question correctly:
True or False: melting icebergs will cause the sea level to rise.

Those of us tethered to reality, and those of us who aren't, that don't feel confident that they are sufficiently well informed on the issue, should all shut up about the science. This doesn't just apply to global warming, it also applies to other issues like nuclear power and genetically modified foods. Random lay people inserting their (usually incorrect) opinion about how global warming works into this debate, usually do not help.

Instead, stance on controversial issues is almost entirely correlated with social group. Climate change denial etc. are treated religiously. This is further evidenced by the way in which he vociferously argues it. The other what's his face says all systems of organization only exist by way of repression. What is being repressed could simply be other systems, black people, alcoholism in a family setting, whatever. What shickingbrits is repressing to keep his thought system intact is reality. Anytime reality starts to show through, he reacts negatively (as Biblical literalists act out about evolution).

I agree with the first statement, but don't get carried away with the analogy to religion. Since liberals too often have some pretty crazy ideas about the way the world works (cf. reiki) that can't be dissuaded by actual evidence, we instead want to use this information to find other ways to convince conservatives to change their opinion on climate change. One promising avenue, I think, is to have prominent conservatives (George Shultz, Bob Inglis, Greg Mankiw, Art Laffer, etc.) describe their preferred solution to climate change, and convince their compatriots that we can approach these problems without abandoning their principles of governance. Because of the backfire effect, liberals trying to convince conservatives about global warming will likely have a counterproductive effect. I mean, look at how much of SB's worldview is, from his own words, from the exaggerations he thinks that "changists" are making. So I know that my chances of changing SB's mind are approximately nil, given that he thinks I support it only as a tool for the government to take his money. Fortunately, that's not my goal, so I don't mind when he doesn't budge.