One of the most exhausting subjects that I have discussed (other than the bane of rationality, abortion) is the non-debate over climate change, AKA Manmade Global Warming Hysteria. The reason it's such a pain in the very deepest reaches of my ass is because there are two sides that have abandoned sense for absolutism.
The first side are the MMGWH acolytes. These are the unthinking that have tasted of the (un)holy manjizz of Algore and believe wholeheartedly that Man and his sinful carbon-burning ways have begun the ultimate decline of the Earth (which would, paradoxically, solve the whole "evils of Man" thing). Now the majority, to be fair, do give a damn about the environment, and want the best for everybody. Unfortunately, they empower the very people who are doing the least to "save the planet" from the pseudo-crisis.
The other side, with whom I most often agree, is fixated only on the threats that the MMGWH leaders present, discounting the idea that, while MMGWH is bullshit, the study of the global climate does indicate there may be some reasons to look at real steps to address problems that may occur.
So before I get into my points, let me clarify: I am damned skeptical of anyone who screams we're all going to snuff it unless we do everything RIGHT NOW! to stop the impending disaster. They've already made plenty of movies full of ridiculous what-if scenarios that are more damned entertaining (I didn't see The Day after Tomorrow (and will see 2012) for any reason other than the kickass destruction). But I am willing to look at the data and work toward a cleaner world. Because nothing global moves that fast.
"You've hacked mail..."
The significance of the leaked emails from East Anglia University cannot be dismissed. In essence, it confirms that the goal of MMGWH researchers has not been to rigorously check and recheck the data, but to make the data fit the conclusion. This fails science so profoundly that it makes me want to hurl, because that means that the debate is not, and should never have been declared, over. And while it does not conclusively disprove MMGWH, it does reveal, without question, that there is an agenda involved other than the relentless search for FACTS.
Not that the pursuit of facts stops the EPA, also known as the freedom rapists, from declaring CO2, a gas we exhale and is used by plants to grow (and die and turn into fossil fuels), as a "danger to human health." Perhaps it is if we seal ourselves in a box, but short of that, we'd have to do a lot more damage before it would be even close to making us snuff it. But politics is as politics does (us bent over without lube) I guess. It goes with the territory of an administration that appears committed the the MMGWH agenda.
Which brings us to the vile agenda itself, and two glaring examples of it:
Bend Over and Cap and Tax
One of the hot potatoes working its way through the Imperial Congress is the "Cap and Trade" bills. Specifically, I'm going to look at the effects of S. 2191, the Senate's attempt to kneecap a weak economy currently on the table (because I don't have time to widely research everything while at work).
For those that missed it, or those that think a cap and tax scheme will help save the planet, here's how the scam works: Artificial caps on the amount of allowed emissions by a company are established by a Washington bureaucrat. Those that, due to their production, exceed this, can buy the unused portion of another company's allowance. This involves people like the late Enron criminal Ken Lay to facilitate the shell game. Over time the governmnet cranks down those numbers.
The result is an increase in the price of energy, which also means an increase in the price of EVERYTHING! And those costs come long before any proposed or theoretical reduction in total emissions, because somebody (probably Algore) will always have emissions credits to sell. The net result of cap and tax, therefore, is not to "save the planet" but to hobble businesses and collect cash. And since Europe has been doing it for a while, their lack of progress at a high price should indicate how damned stupid this "solution" is.
And yet, we continue skipping down the path to the suicide of our sovereignty.
Copenhagen, OK To Chew, Not To Do
First of all, here's the most recent draft of the Copenhagen treaty. This is the basis for my information, and it may change significantly in some way in the interim.
there are two things to look at here. There's the stated goals of this POS, and the unstated effective goals of this TP. First, the stated goals (gratefully condensed by me):
1. Continue the MMGWH ball rolling from prior agreements to future goals.
2. Increase cooperation in this regard.
3. Decrease global emissions.
4. Except for developing countries, who can spew carbon like motherfuckers.
5. Blame developed countries for fucking everything up.
6. Adjust global investment patterns to facilitate this (shell game).
7. Developed countries have to pay for undeveloped countries to go green.
8. Work with the best available (and aganda slanted (see above)) data available.
And now, the unstated effective goals:
1. Transfer wealth from rich countries to poor countries, because the rich are evil and the poor are noble, and it's not faaaaaaaaaaaair.
2. Have more meetings.
3. Give the UN some actual power over shit.
That's about as far as I can get before the quintuplespeak starts to hurt my brain and other appendages. But the agenda is clear, as best as I can tell. The goal is not to clean up the planet (because that's the responsibility of all the EEVIL rich countries to do), but to make all countries equalized in terms of wealth and power, as they are in the otherwise powerless United Nations (that hate America).
Thankfully, since it is a treaty, ratification of this noose requires a supermajority in the Senate. That's 67 sweet votes in a body that has problems managing 60 on anything other than handing out money for votes. And if they can't pass cap and tax, then they're sure as shit not going to convince all the Dems and 7 Republicans to give up power to the UN scamsters. In short, the Founding Fathers, in requiring the more deliberative legislative body to overwhelmingly agree to anything that could threaten our sovereignty, may haves saved our dumb asses from ourselves, thank Me (or God, or Darwin, or who/whatever you're worshiping (preferably Me)).
In short, those who are skeptical of the MMGWH movement and the "unquestionable science" (an oxymoron in itself, as truths are unquestionable, but facts are only verifiable) have every reason to distrust and fight this movement that is NOT about saving the planet. And those who give a shit about saving the planet need to join us to make good changes, not politically neutering ones.
13 comments:
"The result is an increase in the price of energy, which also means an increase in the price of EVERYTHING!"
According to this article the price of goods in 2050 will increase very little, except for airline travel. Here are the figures:
* 1% on clothing: A £500 men's suit will become £5 more expensive
* 2% on electronics: A £1000 laptop would cost £20 more
* 1% on food: The average UK household spends £50 a week on food. This increases by less than £1
* 15% on electricity: A typical UK household spends £400 a year on electricity. This will jump by roughly £60
* 0% on communications: UK phone bills will be essentially unaffected
* 140% on air travel: A return flight from London to New York would jump from £350 to around £840
* 2% on tobacco: Barring new taxes, the cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes will rise by roughly 10 pence
* 2% on alcohol: The cost of a pint of beer will rise by about 6 pence by 2050
* 1% on cars: A new Toyota Prius, currently about £20,000, will cost £240 more in a low-carbon 2050
* 2% on household goods: The price of a washing machine will rise by a few pounds
Jerry: The problem here is that we're dealing with calculations and estimates, which as the whole climate emails scandal has shown, can be skewed depending on the desired result.
For example, there's the Heritage Foundation's examination of CBO numbers. In this, the damage of a cap and tax scheme are obvious:
It is also worth noting that, of the 24 years analyzed by The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis (CDA), 2020 had the second lowest GDP loss. Furthermore, the CDA found that for all years the average GDP loss was $393 billion, or over double the 2020 hit. In 2035 (the last year analyzed by Heritage) the inflation adjusted GDP loss works out to $6,790 per family of four--and that is before they pay their $4,600 share of the carbon taxes. The negative economic impacts accumulate, and the national debt is no exception. The increase in family-of-four debt, solely because of Waxman-Markey, hits an astounding $114,915 by 2035.
We can do battle of the links all day here (which is ultimately futile). But increasing the cost of energy, which will increase the cost of everything (how much will be debated until hard numbers come in), on an issue that may or may not need to happen NOW to save us all, especially in a recession atmosphere, is insanely misguided.
I enjoy a good global warming discussion Patrick. Lakes I fish up north have changed since I was a kid. The ice caps are melting sending cold water into the ocean. Thus the paradox of warmer temps but colder water.
It's difficult to to believe that our pollution is not a contributing factor.
My concern is tempered with my human selfishness. I like to drive and pollute as much as the next guy and wonder is there anything we can do to slow or stop climate change?
We can't seem to stop nuclear proliferation or terrorism either.
Jerry: That's a lot, actually, and it compounds. There's really no excuse for any of it. It's all greed: rich government elites who are already awash in money, seeking to plunder us even more.
Get rid of all "special" taxes on energy, so everyone can pay as close to the real value as possible.
I've said a thousand times at least that to think we can continue to fuck with an established system is naive and ultimately self-serving.
The best analogy for the earth as a series of intimately interconnected systems is the homeostasis of the body.
Most of the various systems of the body work within fairly small tolerances; for example, the normal range of serum potassium is 3.5-5.5. In order to keep to this narrow range, the body has to not only self-monitor (outside of conscious awareness), but to also react to bring an out-of-whack level within tolerances.
On a normal day your body has no difficulty compensating for the various fluctuations in, for example, the amount of potassium you take in, or the amount of liquids; it can adjust accordingly. However, if you develop a gastrointestinal virus that causes severe diarrhea, in most cases the body can't compensate fast enough to prevent problems of varying degrees from happening. These can range from mild to fatal.
The point is that you cannot inflict a huge change (and spewing millions of tons of co2 into the atmosphere daily, chronically, over 150+ years, over and above any natural process)into a stable system and expect the system to just take it in stride.
The cumulative effect of increasing greenhouse gas pollutants while at the same time stripping the planet of billions of acres of forest (which would at least assist in the mitigation of co2) is causing changes in our climate. Going back to the homeostasis analogy, it is irrational and illogical to expect that you can load a body down with potassium while simultaneously crippling the body's ability to excrete it and expect that no adverse reaction will occur.
The people who so vehemently deny this all do so on the basis of 'freedoms' and 'money' and 'economics'. They're ever so worried that they might have to give up something or pay something. It boils down to selfishness: if we can deny that something's happening loudly enough, we won't have to sacrifice anything personally to fix it.
You cannot fuck with a complex system on a large level (and the cumulative total of what we are doing to the earth is a large level) and expect it to maintain itself endlessly. To believe so is either naive to the point of ignorance or plainly intellectually dishonest.
Saty: I'm going to assume you saw the MMGWH and just typed a response, because otherwise you are ignoring the whole point of the post.
The point of the post is that the moves with cap and tax, and with Copenhagen HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUALLY ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM THEY PURPORT TO ADDRESS!
And I think I covered the fact that I'm skeptical but not a fucking denier. If there were no questions (and the whole email scandal opens an assload of new ones), then it would be a different story. Did you ever consider actually not just reiterating the same damned talking points when the discussion is NOT about whether there is or is not global warming?
Strangely, the word "obtuse" seems to want to float to the surface here. To expand on that:
One of the most exhausting subjects that I have discussed (other than the bane of rationality, abortion) is the non-debate over climate change, AKA Manmade Global Warming Hysteria. The reason it's such a pain in the very deepest reaches of my ass is because there are two sides that have abandoned sense for absolutism.
The first side are the MMGWH acolytes.
101: I'm losing it, I missed your comment entirely there for a minute.
To your point, there's still a debate on the whole situation, as to how culpable we might be, as well as if we really have that much influence or if the Earth will counterbalance us easily.
And that's the ongoing discussion we really need to have, not the obsessive screamings of MMGWH kooks, not people who have no interest in MMGWH than to secure their own power and not address any problems, and not the people who have no intellectual honesty to say that it's not impossible.
I wonder how much Al Gore would be shilling the global warming thing if he wasn't making a lot of money off of it.
Yes, Al Gore. The king of pseudoscience, who recently said that the Earth's temperature was millions of degrees, just a mile into the crust.
dmarks,
Reference please to the million degree comment. That seems too stupid even for Gore.
The roaring boob who falsely took credit for inventing the Internet lays down another whopper.
Thanks, dmarks. While he didn't actually say that the earth was millions of degrees 2 kilometers (about 1 mile), he did say it was millions of degrees at the core. Minor distinction. Still, a very stupid thing for him to say.
Sounds like he was getting the earth and the sun mixed up. As we know, people do mis-speak from time to time. I suspect this was one of those cases.
"Sounds like he was getting the earth and the sun mixed up"
Gee, I never knew that Gore was one of the pre-Copernicans. But it doesn't surprise me, I guess.
Dmarks:
How much money do you think Exxon and other oil companies, ComEd and other utilities put behind the "climate change is false" claim?
There are a lot more people who stand to lose money by acting like climate change isn't real than Al Gore stands to make is pointing out the simple concept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, since civilization began, we haven't seen this much CO2 and methane being pumped into the atmosphere by Man, and that the sole reason Venus, which is twice the distance away from the Sun, has a higher average temperature than Mercury is because of mainly CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Now, I agree that it is bullshit that shit like Kyoto said the US had to cut its emissions but China, Mexico, Nigeria and India didn't.
But Patrick,
In some cases it is our fault other peoples of the Earth are poor. Maybe not always us Americans but certainly Western Countries and specifically when it comes to the West and Africa...perhaps even India/Pakistan and other regions of the former British Empire or other former European colonies. Vietnam may be another one that comes to mind but certainly not China.
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