Globaloney: The Statist Push Continues
In an April PJ Media exclusive, conceding that doing so in 2007 or 2008 would have paid off handsomely, Ira Stoll wondered whether it might still be a good time to short carbon credits. His fear was that, despite the mountain of inconvenient facts in the way, Congress will still “impose a vast new regulatory regime on energy consumption.”
It has become clear that the current Congress isn’t willing to do that. If the House were to get its way, dumb ideas like the ban on incandescent bulbs would be repealed. But the House probably won’t get its way — because Harry “coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick” Reid still runs the Senate, and Barack “Green Jobs, Clean Jobs” Obama is still the president.
In the face of clear congressional opposition to going any further with regulating and taxing energy consumption, the administration has decisively shifted to a posture of “We don’t need Congress to impose our ‘green’ will on America.” Readers will see why shortly.
What’s amazing is that the scientific justification for doing so, never really there in the first place, has virtually evaporated. Meanwhile, the frightening economic costs of “going green” have never been clearer. All one has to do is visit the website of The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), home of the indefatigable Dr. Benny Peiser, to see how true these assertions really are.
On the science side, here are just a few items which appeared in the week preceding the writing of this column:
- On July 9, GWPF excerpted a post by climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, noting that the global average sea surface temperature is a tad lower than it was in 2002.
- A July 6 article reported that British scientists who study the sun, which sane people realize has the predominant impact on our planet’s temperature, are concerned that it might be “coming to the end of a ‘grand solar maximum,’” meaning that we could be heading towards colder winters, not warmer ones. What they found essentially corroborates sun-related concerns raised by American scientists that the earth “may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade.” What was that about the supposedly “settled science” that the earth is warming?
- On July 4, Dr. David Whitehouse of the foundation’s academic advisory council observed that even global warming true believers have been forced to admit that “there has been no global temperature increase since 1998,” but that they’re making up the most bizarre of excuses — Chinese coal dust! — to assure cultists that the earth is still fundamentally warming, but we somehow aren’t seeing it.
Even though the bogus science of global warming is on the retreat, its effects on citizens’ pocketbooks are being felt around the world — and politicians are beginning to feel serious electoral heat as a result:
- A July 11 post on UK carbon taxation linking to the UK Daily Mail reveals that the government is establishing “minimum price guarantees, higher than the normal market price, for the electricity generated by new wind farms and nuclear power stations.” This will cost UK households as much as £1,000 (about $1,600 U.S.) per year. President Barack “Energy bills will necessarily skyrocket” Obama will be likely be pleased to know that this is described as “send[ing] bills rocketing.”
- A related entry which links to a two-weeks-earlier Daily Mail item predicts that the heavy overpayments for “green” energy sources “could push tens of thousands of households into fuel poverty but do nothing to reduce emissions.” As a result, “30,000 to 60,000 more households will be [...] spending more than 10 per cent of [...] disposable income on heat and light.” It’s reasonable to believe that this estimate is low.
- GWPF links to a July 11 Australia Herald-Sun report on that country’s Labor Party’s “Suicide Sunday,” which describes the blowback from Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s $24.5 billion (about $26 billion U.S.) carbon tax announcement. Specifically, “More than 70% of voters” in a plebiscite “said they now planned to vote for the Coalition (the opposition party) at the next election while just 8.51 per cent said they would support a Labor government.”
What’s happening in Australia, along with the well-deserved opprobrium the United Nations is receiving for telling the world it will “only” need $76 trillion to enable the world to comprehensively “go green,” explains why the Obama administration is trying to do all it can to impose its green will under the radar.
All of this makes me think that all this ‘green jobs’ talk was just one giant political blow job
Succinct, to-the-point, clear.
A+
If you sit down and talk with a Greenie, they can’t even tell you why they want these things. They just do, and very, very, very, badly.
For California or England or any other relatively small region to knowingly bankrupt themselves to MAYBE lower their CO2 emmissions slightly, knowing that it will make no measurable difference in the world average CO2 concentration, is simply insane. Instead, why not just launch our nuclear missiles at our own cities? At least it would be over quicker.
Even though a child could immediately grasp concepts like these, try and explain them to a Greenie. I am getting old, and I have never seen so many people who seem to have completely lost the ability to reason, and lost the ability to tell plainly obvious lies from the common sense truth.
“Greenies” fall into three categories;
1. Fanatics who hate civilization and wish to destroy it. They are evenly split between those who want a “return to Eden” (who would strenuously deny that it had anything to do with Christianity), and those who simply want humanity to vanish from the Earth forever (except, perhaps, for themselves).
2. Socialists who, having failed at every other ploy to create a Brave New World run on their principles (which are difficult to distinguish from feudalism with them as the nobility and everyone else as the serfs), have latched onto “environmentalism” as the best tool for the job- mainly because most of its claims are essentially theological in nature, and thus incapable of being refuted by facts.
3. People with zero knowledge of science, who are environmentalists because they want to feel good about themselves. Many of this subset also enjoy having a creed which allows them to hate others (“climate deniers”) while maintaining their self-image of open-mindedness and “compassion”. Gun-control advocates have the same sort of relationship with gun owners; they get to feel “superior” because those they gleefully despise are so obviously “sub-human”. (Any parallels with racism you draw here are your own look-out.)
Most of the leaders of the “environmental movement” fall into one of the first two categories. Those in the third are mainly follower types, not leaders. They want someone else to make the decisions, and tell them how wonderful they are for agreeing with them.
I’d say you are encountering the less virulent members of the third category. You are probably fortunate that you have not yet encountered any of the more seriously unhinged examples of any of the above.
clear ether
eon
Loved your post! After seeing Mike Judge’s short-lived cartoon “The Goode Family”, I imagine most greenies are of your third variety
There’s an excellent episode of the original Star Trek series (before it was derailed/prostituted by Rick Berman who loved to espouse the wonderfulness of a purely socialist society) called “The Way To Eden”: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708482/
Space Hippies commandeer the Enterprise to warp off to a planet called “Eden” that they believe exists but in the end turns out to be more poisonous and toxic than the supposed unhealthy society and worlds they currently decry. It’s not a great episode, acting-wise, and the viewer can do well without the “jam session” with Spock on his distinctly Vulcan (logical) musical “talent” but the show describes the hippie uptake of seeking utopia by screwing up what is already good about things and seeking instead the unattainable.
Agreed. And please note that after using an (unauthorized) modification of Enterprise’s intercom system to sonically stun the crew so they couldn’t interfere, Dr. Sevrin (Skip Homeier) set a second timer-initiated “broadcast” that would have killed all 430 crewmembers after he and his merry band had scarpered in a shuttlecraft. To avoid anyone being able to find out where he was and what he’d done. Once someone convinces themselves that they are “superior”, this sort of thing becomes all too easy to rationalize, as Sevrin did speaking to his acolyte, Adam (Charles Napier). (Sevrin was the sort who valued worshipers over friends, as you may have noticed.) Fortunately for all concerned, Spock managed to shut it off before it “went off”.
Khan Noonian Singh and the other eugenics “supermen” would have loved this guy, I’m sure. Just I suspect that more than a few modern-day real-life “environmentalists” privately idolize him.
(NB; as militarily feckless as Starfleet was, I’m sure sooner or later somebody would have noticed that one of their only 10 remaining heavy cruisers had gone missing, and come looking for her. Once they’d picked up the ship’s ELB, aka the “my crew is dead” beacon, Sevrin and company, if still alive, might have gotten an unpleasant surprise. Especially if the CO of the incoming ship was Kirk’s friend, Commodore Wesley, from “The Ultimate Computer”.)
cheers
eon
As usual eon, you are on the money. However, #2 should be #1. They are the driving force behind the policy making side of the green movement and by far the most dangerous type.
It is impossible to overstate how important the congressional elections in 2010 were. If the house had not gone to the republicans/conservatives we would already be up a green creek with solar panels instead of a paddle.
In all fairness to those in group 3, which is a very large chunk if not the majority of the American population, they “know” global warming is a “fact” because 9 out of 10 mainstream media outlets still regularly proclaim that “virtually all” scientists say so. Those such as the ones cited here are isolated cranks, bought and paid for by the oil industry.
I’m just saying that as long as the MSM takes this line, anything can happen. It seems to me y’all are underestimating this factor.
True, but I categorize them as (2) because they didn’t create the “environmental” movement; that was done by those in category (1). The socialists and other authoritarian types latched onto it when they realized that it was a dogma that was based entirely on theory and promulgated by propaganda. Thus, it was nearly invulnerable to refutation, something their efforts on purely economic and political grounds weren’t.
It’s easy to torpedo somebody who makes claims about economics 10 years down the road that don’t pan out. It’s more difficult to show that someone predicting the climate a century from now, or telling you what they believe it was in the 10th Century AD, is full of… hot air.
Environmentalism is the con that never gets rumbled. Because they can keep changing the spiel, while keeping the same demands. Ponzi wished he had it so good, I’m sure.
cheers
eon
Good post. For fun find an AGW activist site, there are plenty out there or just go over to one of the socialist statist sites like Moveon.org. What you will find are activist ranting about AGW endlessly and mocking people like you Eon, and never ever coming up with any meaningful solutions to the issue they hammer and hammer on or discussions of any alternatives like non-AGW globabl warming by other factors. They don’t have any solutions other than wind, solar, hydro and of course cap and trade or more simply stated “your money in their pocket”.
Stay vigilant, these kooks are always looking for an opening to destroy us, they lost this one, but will find another one soon enough. If Blumer is right it looks like the next scare will be global ice age theory. Then what, should we start burning more carbon. Boy this gets old hot, then cold, hot, then cold, which the hell is it.
Spot on.
re point 2, feudalism…it’s the political norm of post-agricultural humanity. It’s been called a lot of things; royalism, devine right, knights of the round table, oligarchism, communism, socialism, European Union, sharia law, now progressivism…but it’s always results in the same thing…absolute power and wealth for 1%, slavery and serfdom for 99%.
Greenism is just the latest in a long line of magic acts to lure the serfs into the spider’s net…magic, declaring oneself a sun god, the devine right of kings, marxism, pan-nationalism, now AGW (and Islam). AGW is the most sophisticated because it cloaks itself in the concept of saving humanity, but like the others, it’s simply a ruse to convince the people to enslave themselves to their rulers. All of the tricks have worked pretty well by the way. America is the only place on earth for the last 10,000 years that has broken out of jail and become free. Amazingly, the ten-fold+ improvement in living conditions has coincided with the rise of our country. Perhaps it’s all just a coincidence. Perhaps the geniuses like Gutenburg and Newton who arose every hundred years or so from the aristocracy’s commissar servants were poised to convert the world from buggy whips and leaches to i-phones and MRI’s in 12 generations. Yeh that’s the ticket. In today’s terms, Obama’s thousand or so Harvard geniusses have somehow mastered science and human nature and are poised to lead the next ten-fold leap. Let the greenies lead the way.
Excellent analysis, eon. But your outline refers to more than the ‘greenies’; it’s valid for all leftist, progressive, socialists..who all live within their own Virtual Reality made up of their own words, beliefs, opinions. All unconnected to the real world. All unconnected to the realities of science.
And all, totalitarian in their utopian religious ideology.
Yes. Right on, Eon.
Of the thousands of people I have known, I do not think that any have been anti-environment. It is like being against crime…or sin. When the issues get defined to support a radical agenda and everything goes nuts.
About the time the EPA had finished some basic reforms we also won the Cold War. The left simply reorganized into the green movement. This perverted real environmental issues as took over regulation of pollutants that even the most libertarian voice is usually willing to accept. And, of course, with government power in places like the EPA, it grew into a leftist monster.
It reminds me of the first time I saw leftists siding with radical Islamists. This was shortly after 9-11, and I initially thought that no one would follow that nonsense. The media and the academic establishment are to blame for this type of destruction gaining traction. I wish they all would have to get a real job and take care of themselves doing something productive.
Well, if you’re referring to our largest cities, I’d consider nuking them a great idea. Look at the ’08 voting-maps by county. If Mohammedan terrs knew anything about the US, the last place (well, after Dearborn, MI, of course) they’d ever nuke would be NYC — ground-zero of the anti-American Left. The Left is our enemy. If you understand this, then, like the strategic-bombing campaign of WW II, you begin to identify their strongholds, and definitely not to protect them. This article is a good example of the fact that our Left is proposing reductions in our freedom that make George III look like Harry Browne Jr. Act accordingly.
The articles of PJ media are excellent and thought provoking. However, when will a brave, committed journalist write on the real ISSUE?
There is compelling proof of barry soetero forging his way as putative president. That is to say, his perjured oath, his falsified birth record, his signature on 50 DNC state forms claiming qualifications to run as POTUS on each ballot,etc.
Where is integrity? Where are the journalistic heroes of yesteryear that actually reported? You know stuff like Watergate? Government deception? Cover ups? Is Breibart & James O’Keefe the only ones left to tackle exposing fraud?
Oh, sure there are plenty of objective writers. But don’t get to close the forbidden Alinsky fruit of barry’s illegal usurpation. Why, you might be called a “birther” or a “fringe wing nut”. Really? The 4th estate is fringe you cowards. The master of Globaloney is the liar-in-chief himself. He wroked for them, remember?
Just remember, GREEN IS THE NEW RED.
If you have not heard of or looked into the UN’s Agenda 21, please do. The last four presidents have quietly and secretly given away more and more of our sovereignty to the UN. We must change the conversation from the shenanigans going on in Washington about debt to our relationship with the UN. It might be too late to pull the plug on the UN.
Its never too late to pull the plug.
All the carbon is making me sick! I’m going on an organic, gluten-free diet!
This was never, ever, about the environment. It was about control. The Federal government, especially the far-left statists, want to control every aspect of your life, from what type of health insurance you have to what type of light bulbs you can buy. This whole “green” movement is nothing more than the old communist disire for overall government control of your lives. It’s just dressed up and given a new, “caring,” image. It must be stopped and it must be fought in every election by conservatives throughout this land. This is really a scary movement that liberals have thrown at us and it must be stopped, now.
As I stated several years ago here and to my friends and relatives, IT’S THE SUN, STUPID. I was and am severely reviled by all of them and even though I bring my own cloth bags to the grocery store, it’s for the convenience and ease of use as much as if not more than, ‘saving the planet’ from plastic or saving trees, etc. In addition to the link mentioned in the article for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, may I recommend Watt’s Up With That, http://wattsupwiththat.com/, an excellent site managed by Anthony Watts. You’ll have to copy and paste since I can’t seem to figure out a way to link it, sorry.
Coeurmaeghan in 29 Palms, CA
I would also recommend http://junkscience.com/ which covers other scams such as ozone and DDT, perpetrated on us by the greenies, costing us billions of dollars and millions of human lives.
How can it be the sun when it has again been proved that it is mainly emissions
that cause CO2. For the last few years the Mars rover has been criss-crossing the planet and look what happened, 95% carbon dioxide atmosphere and the polar ice caps
are shrinking.
The green leftists have tried to tell us that carbon dioxide is a poison. This is what they’re teaching our kids in school. The fact is that, without carbon dioxide, we would all be dead. CO2 is essential for plant life; it is food for plants. If plants don’t get their food, we don’t get oxygen.
Look up the Medieval Warm Period (600 AD to 1400 AD). During this period, the average global temperature rose 2.4 degrees Celsius. This is an enormous increase in temperature. What caused this rise in temperature? Was it all the SUVs? Or maybe it was all the factories spewing pollutants into the atmosphere? Anthropologists and archaeologists who have studied this period have reported that, during the MWP, all life on earth thrived. The polar caps did NOT melt. The ocean levels did NOT rise.
During climategate, Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania wrote in an e-mail to his colleagues that “we must get rid of the MWP.” This did it for me. This man and his colleagues are willing to revise scientific history and pull the wool over the world’s eyes in order to push their global warming theories. Why? Money is the answer.
I learned in science classes all through my school career that the earth operates in cycles of warming and cooling. You never hear this from the global warming loons. They want to ignore established science and push their agenda on you and me and everyone else so that they can continue to get their big pay-outs.
Read Ian Wishart’s excellent book, “Air Con,” and you will see how the global warming crowd, including Al Gore, are trying to dupe all of us. This book presents the hard-core scientific facts, meticulously researched and well-presented. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in learning the truth about global warming.
Global warming, cap and trade, EPA regulations, all of it, are just schemes to redistribute wealth from rich nations like the U.S. to third-world countries. And that wealth will not go to the people. It will end up in the Swiss bank accounts of dictators of these third-world hell-holes.
The Vikings colonized Greenland during the MWP. Today, in order to study those Viking farms, archaeologists must dig through permafrost.
Bring this up with a AGW advocate if you want to see someone tie themselves in knots, or just outright deny facts.
“….95% carbon dioxide atmosphere and the polar ice caps
are shrinking.”
Conditions on Mars are different. Atmospheric density is much lower. The “ice caps” you are referring to are dry ice, made of frozen CO2. The size of the caps constantly varies with seasonal temperatures which may vary from 81F to -275F. The sun, which controls climate on earth, also controls climate on Mars. When the sun causes global warming on earth, it also controls warming on Mars.
Recently, the Royal Society of Britain, one of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world, whose past members included Newton, Faraday, Watt and Darwin, and Stephen Hawking today, has made a formal statement that there has been no global warming in the past 10 years, even though the CO2 content has been rising. The relationship between CO2 and global warming has been broken. I believe the Royal Society more than charlatans such as Al Gore, Obama or the suspect UN IPCC, who all want to enrich and empower themselves at out expense.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1316469/Royal-Society-issues-new-climate-change-guide-admits-uncertainties.html
Sorry, the above was submitted by “jarmo”, not “anonymous”.
The surface pressure on Mars is roughly 0.64 kPa. The surface pressure on Earth is 101 kPa. If you don’t know what those numbers mean, you shouldn’t be commenting on anything related to CAGW.
Thank you for the great article. When I realize how close the world came to being taken over by a theory promulgated as fact it makes me shudder to think how easily people are manipulated by the media. I know we are still fighting this agenda which is no more than one of many fronts with the sole intent of enforcing world governance an invalidating the US Constitution.
The irony is that the same people who want to raise taxes on the rich will support all kinds of environmental initiatives that directly impact the poor.
Wealthy people can easily absorb higher energy costs. Who cares if it costs an extra $30 bucks a week to get to work when you are making high six figures? It matters very much when your job is making sandwiches at Subway.
Tax on plastic grocery bags? Lightbulb laws? All of this stuff hits the poor.
Not only on an individual level but the same thing happens on a global scale. Developing nations need cheap fuel.
One question I have been trying to figure out for years is how many thin disposable grocery bags = one reusable bag in terms in environmental and energy cost. I cant because all the information I find just assumes that reusable ones are better. I suspect that it would take years to come up with any net savings and well beyond the expected life of the bag. It is just a feelgood for greenies that again only impacts those struggling economically.
Thats a good question Spindok! Iam sure someone most know because the industries that make them would figure energy costs in their bottom line.
Be sure to include the cost of diseases that reusable bags carry in your analysis. Use a figure of about $1M for each death that results from reuse.
The greenies never think about stuff like that. I was reading one site advocating reusable bags. The author was going on about how long his has lasted and stays clean because he washes and dries it in his laundry machine. I am sure he never even thought about the impact of an extra load of laundry.
It is like those “buy local” folks who will drive an hour into the country to buy a pound of tomatoes and pat themselves on the back for being all green and natural when they could have bought the same thing at the grocery, with a fraction of the environmental impact due to efficiency of transportation when you scale up.
Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophesies come true, but can also lie and make their lies come true–
Eric Hoffer
Control people’s health care access (Obamacare) and their jobs (environmentalism), and you control them. Obamacare & environmentalism isn’t about a benevolent government wanting what’s best for you – it’s about statism, power & control. Period.
The totalitarians control the schools, the universities, the media. They are not gonna stop now, nor tomorrow.
We have to roll them back, like we did with the USSR.
It takes time and (cultural) missiles (like this forum).
Global warming was never about anything other than control of the masses. Hitler wanted to do the same thing.
At Lucis Trust inside the UN building, they call on all New Agers to pray during full moons for the return of Nimrod. Lucifer’s man on earth. Because, the earth is alive, and hurting due to the global warming by humans.
The thesis is correct, facts don’t matter inside the statist push.
The fact that green technology is not economically viable (once the subsidies or the “stimulus” run out) doesn’t bother Barack Obama or his statist minions over at EPA, poster child being the agency’s head, Lisa Jackson.
(When Lisa speaks, all you hear is statist ideology barely dressed up in her highly limited understanding of “science”.)
The fact that Spain’s green push shot its economy into the crapper doesn’t bother them, either.
JK at #8 above reminded me of my favorite video
During climategate, Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania wrote in an e-mail to his colleagues that “we must get rid of the MWP.” This did it for me. This man and his colleagues are willing to revise scientific history and pull the wool over the world’s eyes in order to push their global warming theories. Why? Money is the answer.
Money, prestige, so called status inside the Warmist hothouse…
Michael was very distressed at this use of his “image” and threatened to sue
Atheists seem unnaturally obsessed with condemning the ways and habits of non- Atheists.
Warmists seem wildly obsessed with making rules and controlling the habits of non-Warmists.
Statists seem to be perennially PO’ed at your freedom.
Atheism, Warmism, Statism (toss in Communism or Islamism or any other “ism” of your choice)…they’re all followed with the same rigor and fanaticism.
What do they all have in common ?
Compulsion and control.
“In the grip of all the isms, ohmygod, it feels like prison.”
CAGW is only the latest of a long list of environmental myths perpetrated by liberals, in general, amplified by the media and embraced by regulators at the behest of Congress. Luckily, just as the CAGA noose was about to be tightened Congress got enlightened. Amazing how that works. Now, if only what began as a trickle in 2010 can evolve into a full-fledged tsunami and wipe out every sitting liberal before they hear the early warning sirens.
It’s all about Leftists getting their hands on a lot of other people’s money so they can do the “good things” they are absolutely incompetent to deliver in the first place. But let’s say the dems make it intact to Election Day and the Bamster gets himself reelected; there is no way they will have gotten there honestly and many, many millions of people will be angry as hell about it. At this point the laws of unintended consequences kick in and soon thereafter the dems will be begging the American people to cooperate with them. But it won’t happen unless serious structural reforms to the way Washington operates are passed into law–something they can’t do unless forced to. The dems would be better off dumping Obama instead of trying to save him. But that’s the best case scenario for them; the worst case would be that they and their party go to the bottom with SS Obama.
Glad to see the AGW denying is still on the right’s agenda. Along with the birthers and the Pledge of Allegiance to Grover Norquist, it’s a continuing reminder of how nuts the right wing of the GOP has become.
Joseph;
First of all, I’m not “on the Right”. Conservatives hate me. I’m opposed to “creationism” and “creation science”, don’t care about abortion one way or another, and don’t give a damn what consenting adults, married or otherwise, do in their bedrooms. Nor do I go to church. (And those are some of my less “radical” positions by “conservative” standards.)
On your favorite hobby horse, global warming (or “weirding”, or whatever the acceptable name is this week), here’s the deal; I’ll support your lot’s “carbon-neutral” ideas as soon as you stop opposing nuclear power, stop demanding the demolition of hydroelectric dams to “make rivers wild again”, make the People’s Republic of China play by the same rules as everybody else (and quit with the “China’s emissions are a good thing” jazz- even Monbiot can’t be that stupid- can he?), and stop claiming that solar and wind power will do everything. Because they won’t, and anyone who can do basic math knows it. If you want to “Save Holy Mother Gaia”, do it in a way that will actually work.
I won’t ask you to admit to the existence of the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Ages, as long as your crowd stops trying to run everyone else’s lives on a combination of demagoguery, Utopian delusions, and wishful thinking.
Do we have a deal?
cheers
eon
It’s beneath your usual caliber to equate the word “conservative” with such fixed belief systems.
Conservative to me means that governments at all levels concern themselves with their limited, assigned duties and quit attempting to step outside of those boundaries into every aspect of our lives.
True, but remember, I’m trying to communicate with someone with a far more fixed view of conservatism that you or I have.
I have had self-described “liberals” who previously regarded me as “one of their own” due to my “egalitarian” views (their word, not mine) turn on me like rabid dogs when they discovered I was a registered Republican. By the same token, I’ve had Republicans who called themselves “conservatives” demand my scalp for not supporting a total ban on abortion, and not supporting their demands for teaching “intelligent design” in school science classes.
In each case, the fact that I agreed with one or the other group on other things was immaterial to them. If I was not with them 110% on everything, I was The Enemy. (Proving that along with everything else, ideologues of any stripe are generally poor at math.)
My attitude is trending toward “a plague on both their houses”. If neither side can be bothered to think, or make sense, I can’t be bothered to apologize for them.
BTW, you may have noticed that Joseph hasn’t responded to my offer. This surprises me not in the least. Ideologues tend to balk at giving up on any of their demands, no matter how ridiculous. That’s one way you can tell that they are ideologues.
cheers
eon
@Joseph “Glad to see the AGW denying is still on the right’s agenda.” Your assumption brings a smile to my old hippie face. Apparently you need to do some homework. Try this empirically-based, eminently thorough and scientifically sound website for starters (additional details available upon request):
http://www.climate4you.com/
obiwan, kemosabe, in your infinite wisdom, you know Joseph doesn’t want to learn anything beyond the knee jerk set of maxims his handlers stuffed into his skull.
It would give him a headache.
But thanks for the cool link.
@tanstaafl
I’ve met many a lib like “Joseph” in my profession and, believe it or not, have actually used my extensive science background to help a limited number of them to see the proverbial light. You’re most welcome for the “cool link”. Its author, a Physical Geographer from U of Oslo, actually measures and documents this stuff.
Finally, the opening few lines at Climate4you (all the science sans the rhetoric) sorta’ puts everything into perspective:
The diagram above (Fig.2) shows a reconstruction of global temperature based on ice core analysis from the Antarctica. The present interglacial period (the Holocene) is seen to the right (red square). The preceding four interglacials are seen at about 125,000, 280,000, 325,000 and 415,000 years before now, with much longer glacial periods in between. All four previous interglacials are seen to be warmer (1-3oC) than the present. The typical length of a glacial period is about 100,000 years, while an interglacial period typical lasts for about 10-15,000 years. The present interglacial period has now lasted about 11,600 years.
According to ice core analysis, the atmospheric CO2 concentrations during all four prior interglacials never rose above approximately 290 ppm; whereas the atmospheric CO2 concentration today stands at nearly 390 ppm. The present interglacial is about 2oC colder than the previous interglacial, even though the atmospheric CO2 concentration now is about 100 ppm higher.
Oops. #21 post was me, inadvertently posted anonymous which more accurately describes who I really am.
Mea culpa,
obiwankenobi
Green tech DOES work if done correctly. Humans know how to make spaceborne solar power. Unlike windmills and PV (the faves of the green luddites) this stuff works and can be scaled to replace older power plants.
What stops us from doing this is merely cheap access to space (i.e. politics) where the landborne green is intertwined with enrichment. Politicians make more money for themselves. Pretty simple: put hidden money into the stock of company “A” making technology “X” and then ban the “X” precursor so that “A” generates a massive profit by legal fiat. Instant zillionaire. Note that electrial utilities must now purchase n% of their power from windmills by state law. Everyone knows windmills can’t deliver. Somebody though is making a huge profit…
The notion that green = marxism and control is silly, although it’s easy to see how this conclusion is reached. Done correctly (space!) green is a RIGHT wing agenda because it creates (actual) jobs, raises the technology bar, and delivers wealth (energy = wealth.)
If as side effect CO2 emissions are reduced in doing this then that’s probably not a bad thing; man does emit CO2 and nobody knows for a fact what this will lead to. The only thing that is known are the Arrhenius equations, which point to some warming. Whether this is good or not is guesswork. As such any tech which doesn’t add to this (spaceborne solar) is benign by definition, which then takes any argument from the green luddites.
I tend to agree that the free market left alone would mine coal for the conceivable future and needs to be guided — with subtlety! — into the direction of replacement tech that works (spaceborne) but not because of anything other than so many American jobs were shipped overseas. The best way to accomplish this would probably be X prizes, which are a reasonable right wing strategy; compare this to the idiotic and clumsy left which would ban coal mining or put a 500% tax on mining equipment. Leftist “inducement” is always hamhanded and destructive.
Pretty simple: put hidden money into the stock of company “A” making technology “X” and then ban the “X” precursor so that “A” generates a massive profit by legal fiat.
You mean like the Obama régime pumping up GE making CFL’s and then stating it will veto lifting the incandescent ban so that CFL’s come to generate massive profits by legal fiat ?
Reportedly, GE’s 2010 tax bill was something like nil on profits of billions. Jeffrey Immelt chastised businessmen a couple of weeks ago for whining about government.
I’m very uncomfortable at such incestuous relationships between business and government.
The notion that green = marxism and control is silly, although it’s easy to see how this conclusion is reached.
Green is good. I’m green, more or less. But Greenism and Marxism and Warmism do co-exist quite nicely inside the agendas of many individuals who are not to be trusted.
@randomengineer “Green tech DOES work if done correctly. Humans know how to make spaceborne solar power. Unlike windmills and PV (the faves of the green luddites) this stuff works and can be scaled to replace older power plants.”
First I’ve heard of space-based solar as a viable electricity generating option despite reading >2 dozen books over the past couple of years on the topic of future electrical generating capacity. However, I’m willing to read about it; if you have a reference that’d be super.
BTW: UK’s climate czar and physicist, David MacKay (“Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air” … free download at: http://www.withouthotair.com/) quantifies every renewable alternative (from tides to solar to wind to biomass) to coal and nuclear in the UK and surmises that if one does not like coal nor nuclear then one had better be ready for a whole lot of something else (i.e., lots and lots of offshore windmills and lots and lots of pump storage).