This sentence is totally worth the laughs.Originally Posted by 07490
This sentence is totally worth the laughs.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
Spend at least 50 hours researching the science of climate change, study all the claims and counter-claims, the accusations and refutations. Watch a few documentaries both supporting and debunking global warming, then get online and read commentaries on these documentaries. Which side do the facts ultimately seem to support?
Then, consider who stands to win and lose from each side of the debate. Find out who the 7 richest corporations in the world are (6 are oil and gas companies, the 7th is Walmart) and think which side they might be supporting and why.
Then, look at individual climate scientists' opinions on the subject of global warming: do they privately think it is more or less serious than the public is made to believe (answer: they actually downplay the risks for the public in order to not depress them)?
Look at the leaked e-mails. Read analysis from both sides. Look at the e-mails themselves: do the questionable e-mails demonstrate that the climate scientists involved do not believe in global warming, or anthropogenic global warming? or do they demonstrate unethical conduct?
Find out what the Australians' view of global warming is: is it happening or not? What do the Europeans think? What do the leaders of China and India think, whose countries are just getting on the fossil fuel track to success? Surely of all countries in the world China and India would be most interested in debunking the threat of anthropogenic global warming. What do the poorly educated African nations think?
Finally, just thinking logically, could the conversion of billions and billions of tons of extremely energy-dense fossil fuels into kinetic energy and ultimately heat over the course of many decades somehow affect the Earth in any tangible way?
Hmmm....
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now who the hell is going to spend 50 hours, or 50 minutes, doing any of that?
mhm...
Posts I wrote in the past contain less nuance.
If you're in this forum to learn something, be careful. Lots of misplaced toxicity.
~an extraverted consciousness is unable to believe in invisible forces.
~a certain mysterious power that may prove terribly fascinating to the extraverted man, for it touches his unconscious.
Anyone who wants to have a basic command of climate change science and form an independent opinion on the issue of anthropogenic global warming. Anyone who claims to know more than the IPCC and yet has not done this is just full of hot air (pun intended).
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
there are few things that are conspiracies, man landing on the moon in 1969, alien's communication with the government, the war in Iraq, etc... I agree that a lot of companies have financially benefited from global warming, but it doesn't prove that the ice is melting, but how damaging it is, I am not sure.
(D)IEE~FI-(C)SLE~Ni E-5w4(Sp/Sx)/7w8(So/Sp)/9w1(sp/sx)
Last edited by xkj220; 12-01-2009 at 01:07 PM.
I acknowledge your post, but I am in the process of finishing up a paper for a college course. I would like to check out the links and ideas in your post, but I am not going to respond until Wednesday.
For the start, no I have not spent 50 hours or more reading about man made climate change; I have spent something like a total of 20 to 30 hours. And I will explain why the IPCC would be dishonest.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-- Mark Twain
"Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in."
-- Confucius
What most people don't realize is that there is a whole suite of interrelated problems, of which anthropogenic global warming is just one. These include Peak Oil (we are there right now) and environmental degradation, which can be broken down into ten or so categories, each of which is potentially lethal to modern civilization, if allowed to continue unchecked.
For whatever reason, global warming has piqued media attention in recent years, rather than, say, deforestation, topsoil erosion, salinization of irrigated croplands, or loss of biodiversity. I think that is because it captures people's imagination better and can more easily be cinematized.
Even if anthropogenic global warming turned out to be false, or even if the warming trend (which is currently indisputable) abruptly ended, we'd still have to face all the other problems whose solutions are remarkably similar, sometimes identical, to the solutions for global warming.
Here's a good synopsis of how to adapt to the reality that likely awaits us when our fossil fuels begin to run out (i.e. now):
Definancialisation, deglobalisation, relocalisation | Energy Bulletin
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Market will take care of it.
There is a whole set of reasons why this may not be true.
Take oil consumption, first of all. Because the use of fossil fuels, specifically oil, lies at the core of our economic system, its elasticity is very low. Modern agricultural production requires enormous inputs of oil and natural gas for fertilizers, harvesting, storage, and transportation. Instead of producing less food, agribusiness will buy the oil at any price and pass on prices to consumers. The same goes with transportation and production of consumer products. Workers will also not go to work less because of higher gasoline prices. Look at the recent price spike of $4/gallon and how much it affected oil consumption -- hardly at all.
Oil-based infrastructure is so pervasive and built-up that it would take many years of concentrated effort to modify it in such a way as to not be dependent upon oil. Furthermore, even the energy necessary for modifying the infrastructure currently can only be obtained from oil. That is why a lot of doomsayers (i.e. energy analysts who aren't paid salaries by the government or oil industry) are saying we only have a decade to make the switch to a non-oil economy. All of suburban America as a residential type is dependent upon cheap oil for its existence. Rather than effortlessly switch to "other forms of housing" as soon as oil reaches X dollars per gallon, people will stick it out in their energy guzzling homes and slowly go bankrupt.
Another difference between oil and most goods that economists examine is that the cost of oil production per barrel is continuously rising -- invisibly to end consumers. As the best oil fields become depleted, more and more energy must be invested in obtaining each successive barrel. I've read that we're now at the ratio of 5:1 (barrels extracted per barrels invested). Agree that a 1:1 or even 1.5:1 ratio would make no sense to producers. That means there is a minimum price of oil that is economical for oil producers to continue their production. I've read that this minimum price now is roughly $70, and rising.
Furthermore, there exists a maximum price of oil at which economic collapse occurs in oil-dependent economies where oil is an inelastic commodity. For the U.S. this price is probably around $150 per barrel -- near where it peaked last year. Consumers continue buying the oil, but their profits from economic activity are eaten up by the high price of energy. Financial collapse ensues.
Conclusion: Oil extraction and consumption can't just be turned on and off at will in response to price fluctuations. Its transfer from producer to end consumer is a complex, many-stage process. We're dependent on it just like we are on food.
Will market forces protect renewable natural resources such as forest, soil, and clean water? Only in special cases. There are plenty of deforested areas, such as Haiti, where private citizens acted in personal interests to cut down all the trees, thanks to personal need and market forces. You don't have to cook with firewood -- you could use solar cookers, etc., but Haitians didn't know that.
99.999% of American buffalo were destroyed in the 1800s. Only thanks to just a few people did the species survive at all. There are countless extinct species -- like the once superabundant Passenger Pigeon -- that were not saved by market forces. It usually happens so quickly that people don't realize what's happened.
Easter Island used to be forested with the largest palm trees in the Pacific. All were cut down within a few centuries of arrival by Polynesian settlers. Meanwhile, soil degraded, they lost their ability to make canoes out of palm logs and thus lost a critical food source -- fishing -- and the society collapsed, and most islanders died. You'd think that as they realized there were fewer and fewer trees left, the price of each would have risen correspondingly to infinity, but that was clearly not the case.
Iowa has lost half its topsoil due to erosion from modern farming methods. You'd think that would affect the value of the remaining topsoil, but it doesn't. Agriculture today is managed by corporations with diffused ownership and responsibility. Shareholders come and go and are only in it for the money. Who of them can be made to care that the agricultural practices employed by the company they own 1/10,000 part of are gradually depleting the soil in a distant land? By analogy, how can a first-world consumer whose lifestyle contributes 1/100,000,000 of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas be expected to change his lifestyle when its effects are being felt in distant lands and may or may not reach him in his lifetime? (and people like Rush Limbaugh are telling him that it's all a hoax designed to allow the government to control his life and get rich at his expense)
Resources tend to be exploited, not carefully managed, in the absence of one of two conditions: 1) perfect central control, 2) perfect private ownership (by individuals, not corporations). Both solutions require perfect information via continual monitoring of the resource. In the case of global warming, we wouldn't even know it were happening if it weren't for scientific monitoring and the ability to deduce climate conditions back millions of years, because our own lifetimes are too short. Only in rare instances is climate change fast enough to observe with certainty within one generation.
More and more economists are realizing is that the full costs of resources have not been figured into their prices. To know the full cost, you have to know the environmental consequences of using the resource, which is only possible if a single person or small group of closely knit people own the resource and observe it on a daily basis, or if there is centralized management with sophisticated environmental monitoring that is immune from populist decision making. If the full cost of extracting, processing, and replacing each resource had been included, perhaps market forces would have done a better job at encouraging sustainability. Right now virtually every aspect of the "American lifestyle" is unsustainable, right down to lawn maintenance. Everything we do is possible only because of cheap energy whose full long-term environmental costs have not been figured into the price because of our own ignorance about the costs. That is why market forces have failed to produce a sustainable economy and are continuing to fail us.
Last edited by Rick; 12-01-2009 at 12:53 PM.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
There is literally not one reason why it might not be true. I'm sorry to sound like a jackass, but all of your arguments consist of fallacies that betray a lack of understanding of how the market functions.There is a whole set of reasons why this may not be true.
First of all, oil demand is nowhere near as inelastic as you seem to be saying. Look at how the price of gas has plummeted. Nine out of ten of the previous recessions have been followed by a plunge in the price of oil. I understand the difference between demand and quantity demanded, but the bottom line is that prices fell because oil producers had to charge less to make more money.
If the government wants to look at this as a national security issue, then fine; it can do some R&D and maybe come up with some innovations. Otherwise, there is no way--literally, no way--the government will be able to actually implement any of these changes anywhere near as efficiently as the market.That is why a lot of doomsayers (i.e. energy analysts who aren't paid salaries by the government or oil industry) are saying we only have a decade to make the switch to a non-oil economy.
Rubbish. Some people will do this, certainly, but many people will do things like move in with family and share costs, thus lowering demand and thus prices.Rather than effortlessly switch to "other forms of housing" as soon as oil reaches X dollars per gallon, people will stick it out in their energy guzzling homes and slowly go bankrupt.
Yes, but as people stop buying the more expensive oil that can now be drilled, oil companies will figure out cheaper ways of drilling it. This has already happened several times.Another difference between oil and most goods that economists examine is that the cost of oil production per barrel is continuously rising -- invisibly to end consumers. As the best oil fields become depleted, more and more energy must be invested in obtaining each successive barrel. I've read that we're now at the ratio of 5:1 (barrels extracted per barrels invested). Agree that a 1:1 or even 1.5:1 ratio would make no sense to producers. That means there is a minimum price of oil that is economical for oil producers to continue their production. I've read that this minimum price now is roughly $70, and rising.
Nonsense. When prices rise to unsustainable levels, the market responds by lowering demand. Guess what lowers after that?Furthermore, there exists a maximum price of oil at which economic collapse occurs in oil-dependent economies where oil is an inelastic commodity. For the U.S. this price is probably around $150 per barrel -- near where it peaked last year. Consumers continue buying the oil, but their profits from economic activity are eaten up by the high price of energy. Financial collapse ensues.
A brief appraisal of the market of the past year immediately refutes this.Conclusion: Oil extraction and consumption can't just be turned on and off at will in response to price fluctuations. Its transfer from producer to end consumer is a complex, many-stage process. We're dependent on it just like we are on food.
Of course there are (rare) instances in which the government much manage externalities, but cutting down trees in Haiti seems trivial. Who cares if they cut down all their trees?Will market forces protect renewable natural resources such as forest, soil, and clean water? Only in special cases. There are plenty of deforested areas, such as Haiti, where private citizens acted in personal interests to cut down all the trees, thanks to personal need and market forces. You don't have to cook with firewood -- you could use solar cookers, etc., but Haitians didn't know that.
This begs the question.99.999% of American buffalo were destroyed in the 1800s. Only thanks to just a few people did the species survive at all. There are countless extinct species -- like the once superabundant Passenger Pigeon -- that were not saved by market forces. It usually happens so quickly that people don't realize what's happened.
I am open to the idea of man-made global warming, but that's not the point. The point is that the science so far being paraded in the mainstream media is utterly bogus, just like your analogy. The socioeconomic/ecological/whatever conditions on Easter Island are not a good microcosm for all of civilization, especially without further information about why the Polynesians destroyed all the trees (i.e., whose decision it was to do it).Easter Island used to be forested with the largest palm trees in the Pacific. All were cut down within a few centuries of arrival by Polynesian settlers. Meanwhile, soil degraded, they lost their ability to make canoes out of palm logs and thus lost a critical food source -- fishing -- and the society collapsed, and most islanders died. You'd think that as they realized there were fewer and fewer trees left, the price of each would have risen correspondingly to infinity, but that was clearly not the case.
Again, you beg the question. Who cares if Iowa loses its topsoil?Iowa has lost half its topsoil due to erosion from modern farming methods. You'd think that would affect the value of the remaining topsoil, but it doesn't.
They can't, because it is basically a hoax.By analogy, how can a first-world consumer whose lifestyle contributes 1/100,000,000 of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas be expected to change his lifestyle when its effects are being felt in distant lands and may or may not reach him in his lifetime?
I agree, but the problem is that there is no evidence of any problem.In the case of global warming, we wouldn't even know it were happening if it weren't for scientific monitoring and the ability to deduce climate conditions back millions of years, because our own lifetimes are too short. Only in rare instances is climate change fast enough to observe with certainty within one generation.
It is impossible to do more than theorize on the "true" cost of anything.More and more economists are realizing is that the full costs of resources have not been figured into their prices.
You can say this about anything. The Sun is technically unsustainable. Pretty much every system in the Universe, as far as I know, is unsustainable.Right now virtually every aspect of the "American lifestyle" is unsustainable, right down to lawn maintenance.
The business cycle, and the recessions that come with it, are caused by the Fed, not the market, etc., etc., etc.That is why market forces have failed to produce a sustainable economy and are continuing to fail us.
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