Collectivism, Climate Change, and Economic Freedom
An individual kills someone—for money, out of jealousy, as an act of revenge, or because he doesn’t like his victim’s looks. A chorus of left-“liberals� rushes in to excuse his act, especially if he is poor. He is not responsible, they say. The real criminal is “Society,� for having allowed him to live in the conditions that led him to kill.
Another individual owns a refrigerator, an air conditioner, and an automobile or SUV. This time, a chorus of left-“liberals� rushes in and pronounces him guilty. He is allegedly guilty of causing “global warming,� by virtue of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by the burning of the fossil fuels required to produce and operate his goods.
The “innocent� killer is not to be punished but “rehabilitated.� The “guilty� owner of the appliances and automobile or SUV, however, is to be punished. He is to be prohibited from continuing with his evil ways. He is to be compelled by the force of law to do his part in reducing global carbon dioxide emissions, which means, he is ultimately to be deprived of his goods or, at best, to be made to accept radically smaller, less effective substitutes for them.
Clearly, there is something very wrong here. What is wrong is the influence of the philosophy of collectivism.
Collectivism considers the group—the collective—to be the primary unit of social reality. It views the collective as having real existence, separate from and superior to that of its members, and as thinking and acting, and as the source of value. At the same time, it regards the individual as an essentially inconsequential cell in the superior, living collective organism. It is on this basis that the loss of an individual’s life is considered to be of no great consequence, with the result that whatever the killer of an individual might be guilty of, it is viewed as not all that serious in the first place. And then, the killer’s actions, it is held, do not emanate from within himself but from the collectively determined circumstances in which he lives.
By the same token, if the collective, consisting of billions of individuals consuming fossil fuels over two centuries or more, is responsible for releasing enough carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere to raise the average surface temperature of the Earth, then each and every individual now alive and who consumes fossil fuels is held to be responsible for the phenomenon, because no distinction is made between the individual and the collective. This is the basis on which the owner of the appliances and vehicle is held to be “guilty.� His individual emissions of carbon dioxide are seen as part and parcel of the emissions of carbon dioxide by all the members of the carbon-dioxide emitting collective taken together and as responsible for their effect.
There is a different, diametrically opposed philosophy, which has all but been forgotten. It is rarely, if ever, taught in our “culturally diverse� educational system, whose diversity consists in the teaching of numerous varieties of collectivism and the employment of many varieties of collectivists, all the while almost totally excluding this fundamentally different point of view. The name of this different philosophy is individualism. Its most important advocates are Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand.
According to individualism, only individuals exist; collectives consist of nothing but individuals. Only the individual thinks; only the individual acts; only the life of the individual has value and is important. All rights are rights of individuals.
On the basis of individualism, the life taken by a killer is the worst possible loss to the victim and an enormous loss to anyone who loved him. Moreover, that loss of life is the result of action that the killer chose to perform and did not have to perform. He is therefore responsible for a terrible loss and deserves to be severely punished, even to the point of losing his own life.
In contrast, no individual, and no voluntary association of individuals acting for a common purpose, such as a business corporation, is responsible for any perceptible rise in the surface temperature of the world or for any harm that could result to anyone from such a rise. When it comes to global warming, the human individual is innocent! Nor is the human “race� guilty. There is no human race apart from the individuals who comprise it. Any attempt to punish an allegedly guilty human race reduces to the attempt to punish innocent individuals.
Thus everyone must stand back and keep his hands off our appliance and vehicle owner. He has done absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, the very existence of his possessions implies that he has done a considerable amount that is right and good. He has improved his own life and probably that of family members and friends by his acquisition and use of his goods. And he has had to do good to others, in order to be able to earn the money that enabled him to buy his goods. To earn that money, he had to produce goods and services that others judged to be of more value to them than the money they paid him.
The conclusion that follows from this is that we should wish this individual well and hope for his continued and even greater success and good fortune in the future, and wish the same for all other peaceful individuals. This is known as having good will toward one’s fellow man.
Having introduced the perspective of individualism, let us now concede for the sake of argument that there actually is global warming and that the currently prevailing estimates of its future extent and consequences for rising sea levels are all perfectly accurate. (In case anyone has forgotten, those estimates are a rise in average temperature of 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, accompanied by a 1 to 3 feet rise in sea-levels by that time, culminating in a cumulative rise in sea-levels of 13 to 20 feet in following centuries.) Let us also concede that if the human race did not exist or existed in the much smaller numbers and abject poverty and misery characteristic of the pre-industrial era, there would be no global warming or at least significantly less of it.
We have shown that this global warming, and any damage it may do, is still not the product of any individual human being. Nor is it the product of any such actual entity as “the human race.� There is no such actual entity. At the very most, global warming is a cumulative, unintended byproduct of human behavior for which no one is responsible.
A phenomenon for which no human being is responsible is an act of nature. That is the category to which all global warming belongs. It is an act of nature. It is an act of nature whether it comes about, as it did more than once in geologic time, in the absence of human beings from the planet, or in the presence of human beings. To repeat, it is an act of nature even when it is the unintended cumulative byproduct of the actions of billions of human beings. None of those human beings is responsible as an individual and there is no human “race� that is responsible.
With the interfering cobwebs of collectivism out of the way, and seeing global warming now as a phenomenon of nature, we are in a position to consider the question of how human beings should deal with global warming and with the wider question of how they should deal with climate change in general. For someday, there certainly will be climate change. If not global warming in this century, then, certainly, in some other century. And if not global warming, then a new ice age, which, according to some accounts is already overdue, and which mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions may have served merely to postpone.
The question of how to deal with climate change, in turn, is subsumed by the broader question of how should human beings deal with physical reality in meeting their needs and wants. It is part of that question.
And that question has already been answered—by the science of economics—and answered beyond all honest dispute. The only way for human beings to meet their needs and wants in an efficient and progressively improving way is if they produce under a system of division of labor and monetary exchange, which in turn rests on a foundation of private ownership of the means of production and economic freedom. The name for this system, of course, is capitalism. (A much smaller number of human beings than are now alive could survive without this system, as our ancestors survived, namely, as essentially self-sufficient farmers. But they would live in the poverty and misery of our ancestors, and, as stated, their number would be relatively small—a billion or so versus our present six billion or more.) For the present number of human beings to survive and to be able to enjoy the comforts, conveniences, and luxuries now found throughout the modern, industrial economies of the world, capitalism and its economic freedom are essential.
Economic freedom is what is required to cope with global warming, global freezing, or any other form of large-scale environmental or social change. If global warming turns out to be a fact, the free citizens of an industrial civilization will have no great difficulty in coping with it—that is, of course, if their ability to use energy and to produce is not crippled by the environmental movement and by government controls otherwise inspired. (This applies even to responses to natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods, that allegedly will occur in connection with global warming. The response of a free market would be typified by that of the Biloxi, Mississippi gambling casinos in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Within months of being freed of restriction to riverboats and being allowed for the first time to locate on land, they sprang into existence ready and eager for action, in the midst of otherwise unrelieved devastation and paralysis, as most property owners waited for government aid from FEMA. The casino owners were fortunate in being ineligible for such aid and so took immediate action on their own. On this subject, see my blog post of March 14, 2006.)
The seeming difficulties of coping with global warming, or any other large-scale change, arise only when the problem is viewed from the collectivist perspective of government central planners. It would be too great a problem for government bureaucrats to handle, as is the production even of an adequate supply of wheat or nails, as the experience of the whole socialist world has shown. But it would certainly not be too great a problem for tens and hundreds of millions of free, thinking individuals living under capitalism to solve. It would be solved by means of each individual being free to decide how best to cope with the particular aspects of global warming that affected him.
Individuals would decide, on the basis of profit-and-loss calculations, what changes they needed to make in their businesses and in their personal lives, in order best to adjust to the situation. They would decide where it was now relatively more desirable to own land, locate farms and businesses, and live and work, and where it was relatively less desirable, and what new comparative advantages each location had for the production of which goods. Factories, stores, and houses all need replacement sooner or later. In the face of a change in the relative desirability of different locations, the pattern of replacement would be different. Perhaps some replacements would have to be made sooner than otherwise. To be sure, some land values would fall and others would rise. Whatever happened, individuals would respond in a way that minimized their losses and maximized their possible gains. The essential thing they would require is the freedom to serve their self-interests by buying land and moving their businesses to the areas rendered relatively more attractive, and the freedom to seek employment and buy or rent housing in those areas.
Given this freedom, the totality of the problem would be overcome. This is because, under capitalism, the actions of the individuals, and the thinking and planning behind those actions, are coordinated and harmonized by the price system (as many former central planners of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have come to learn). As a result, the problem would be solved in exactly the same way that tens and hundreds of millions of free individuals have solved much greater problems than global warming, such as redesigning the economic system to deal with the replacement of the horse by the automobile, the settlement of the American West, and the release of the far greater part of the labor of the economic system from agriculture to industry.
This is not to deny that important problems of adjustment would exist if global warming did in fact come to pass. But whatever they would be, they would all have perfectly workable solutions. The most extreme case would be that of the Maldive Islanders, in the Indian Ocean, all of whose land might disappear under water. The population of the Maldive Islands is less than two hundred thousand people. In 1940, in a period of a few days, Great Britain was able to evacuate its army of more than three hundred thousand soldiers from the port of Dunkirk, under the threat of enemy gunfire. Surely, over a period of decades, the opportunity for comfortable resettlement could be arranged for the people of the Maldives.
Even the prospective destruction of much of Holland, if it could not be averted by the construction of greater sea walls, could be dealt with by the very simple means of the United States and Canada joining with the European Union in extending the freedom of immigration to Dutch citizens. If this were done, then in a relatively short time, the economic losses suffered as the result of physical destruction in Holland would hardly be noticed, and least of all by most of the former Dutchmen.
For densely populated, impoverished countries with low-lying coastal areas, like Bangladesh and Egypt, the obvious solution is for those countries to sweep away all of the government corruption and underlying irrational laws and customs that stand in the way of large-scale foreign investment and thus of industrialization. This is precisely what needs to be done in these countries in any case, with or without global warming, if their terrible poverty and enormous mortality rates are to be overcome. If they do this, then the physical loss of a portion of their territory need not entail the death of anyone, and, indeed, their standard of living will rapidly improve. If they refuse to do this, then nothing but their own irrationality should be blamed for their suffering. The threat of global warming, if there is really anything to it, should propel them into taking now the actions they should have taken long ago.
Indeed, it would probably turn out that if the necessary adjustments were allowed to be made, global warming, if it actually came, would prove highly beneficial to mankind on net balance. For example, there is evidence suggesting that it would postpone the onset of the next ice age by a thousand years or more and that the higher level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is supposed to cause the warming process, would be highly beneficial to agriculture by stimulating the growth of vegetation. Growing seasons too might be extended. Furthermore, any loss of agricultural land, such as that which is supposed to take place in low-lying areas as the result of higher sea levels, would be far more than compensated for by vast quantities of newly useable land in central Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and Greenland.
Whether global warming comes or not, it is certain that nature will sooner or later produce major changes in the climate. To deal with those changes and virtually all other changes arising from whatever cause, man absolutely requires individual freedom, science, and technology. In a word, he requires the industrial civilization constituted by capitalism. What he does not require is the throttling of his ability to act, by the environmental movement. If it really is the case that the average mean temperature of the world will rise a few degrees in the next century as the result of the burning of fossil fuels and of other modern industrial processes, the only appropriate response is along the lines of being sure that more and better air conditioners are available.
In absolutely no case would the appropriate response be that of the environmentalists, who seek to throttle and destroy industrial civilization by means of massive restrictions on the use of energy. The environmentalist solution to global warming is the diametric opposite of economic freedom and the pursuit of material self-interest that it allows and the economic success that that pursuit brings. The environmentalist solution is the massive violation of economic freedom and the imposition of massive economic sacrifice, in the insane belief that the way to cope with the destructive forces of nature is to deprive man of his means of coping with them, as though he, and not nature were the cause of those destructive forces, as though nature, left to itself, were benign.
Yes, man’s economic activity can sometimes have negative by-products, on the scale of droplets of harm compared with tank-car loads of good. There have been two centuries of the most rapid economic progress and improvement in the history of the world, elevating the lives of hundreds of millions of people above that of the kings and emperors of history, and holding out the potential for the whole population of the world to be similarly elevated. If the price of this scale of good is to be the existence of higher sea-levels and some very bad weather, that is a tiny price indeed. And the answer to the bizarre fears of such things is that under capitalism, man will deal with any such negative forces of nature resulting as by-products of his activity in precisely the same successful way that he regularly deals with the primary forces of nature.
Primitive man, the ideal of the environmentalists, was incapable of successfully coping with climate changes. Modern man, thanks to industrial civilization and capitalism, is capable of successfully coping with climate changes. To do so, it is essential that he ignore the environmentalists and not abandon the intellectual and material heritage that elevates him above primitive man. The grandchildren of those who endured World War II and its massive air raids and battles on land and sea, to preserve the freedom and way of life of the Western World from tyranny, should not now run away in terror from the threat of hurricanes and floods. Moreover, adopting the program of the environmentalists and throttling the production of energy, will not save the condos in South Florida or the Malibu beachfront, or any thing else of value. They will be useless without the energy production required for people to access them and enjoy them. And when hurricanes and floods come, as they inevitably do, those who have adopted the environmentalists’ program will simply be unable to cope with them.
Marxian “scientific socialism� was collectivism in its boisterous, arrogant youth. Environmentalism is collectivism in its demented old age. It will be much easier to overcome than was Marxism. Marxism, however falsely and dishonestly, at least promised major positives: the unlocking of human potential and the achievement of future material prosperity. Environmentalism is reduced to trying to find terrified people with less than the mentality of children, to whom it can offer the prospect of avoiding wind and rain. It is the intellectual death rattle of collectivism. When it has been overcome, a world-embracing capitalist economy will be able to come into existence and be capable in fact of achieving unprecedented economic progress and prosperity across the entire globe.
This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. The last portion of this article was adapted from pp. 88-95 of the author’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996). The author is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics
Comments (184)
TokyoTom
I don't know if I've ever seen such a muddle-headed piece of economic reasoning.
Replace references to greenhouse gases and global warming with "name your pollutant" and "air or water pollution" and you have a perfect prescription for doing nothing about any modern environmental or natural resource problems involving externalities or public goods - problems that we have learned that we can deal with quite capably without being hijacked down the road to serfdom.
Perhaps a bigger concern than those "collectivist environmentalists" whom you imply are out to ruin our economy are those industrial groups and regulators/legislators who prefer to run economic and environmental policy piecemeal in a manner that serves their respective private interests.
The reasons why the US has not acted to date has to do with complicated issues relating to coordinating behavior that affects global commons - where there are no clear property rights or market mechanisms to allow private choices to work (free rider effects; intergeneratinal aspects). We have already introduced market mechanisms under the Clean Air Act to permit efficent trading in emissions rights; it is these mechanism that underly those currently provided under the Kyoto Protocol.
Your essay here is simple an ideologically driven effort in denial, and is no contribution to economic or political discourse, and certainly not to science. The climate is now changing quite rapidly; even if we chose not to regulate GHG emissions for reasons of cost, delayed impact etc., we ought still to be thinking about how to prepare for the continuing climate change that has now become unavoidable.
I am happy to load you up with references on climate change science, economics and politics if you wish.
Sincerely,
TT
Published: March 29, 2006 3:54 AM
averros
TT - the "pollution" which does not harm anyone is not a pollution.
If the climate change is real and does have victims they can go against the polluters and demand compensation for their current and projected losses - considering that they can prove that there are losses. The fact that the victims of the human-made climate change are many and dispersed does not make this course of action impossible - there's a thing called "class-action lawsuit".
The current problem with environmental protection is that "nobody" owns the environment. The lack of ownership makes what could've been straightforward action against vandalism and tresspassing into a muddle of legistlation by disinterested govenment busybodies weakly responding to the pressure from emotional and generally misinformed environmental activists who are not at all concerned about the rights of other people.
Also, if you think the Clean Air Act is a "market mechanism" you're in a serious need of learning what the market is. The library on this site has a lot of texts on the subject.
Published: March 29, 2006 4:09 AM
Graeme Bird
Ho Ho. Good one TT.
Listen. The natural tendency is toward glaciation. And glaciation is WHITE DEATH. If you want to waste my time instead of the professors load up birdsnewworld@mac.com with all these 'scientific' studies.
But you can save yourself some time in this way. Ask yourself this one question:
Do the advocates for the campaign against warmer winters for the Siberians know for an absolute fact that CO2 release will stave off the next glaciation?
If the answer is yes, no or maybe then not one dollar can be spent restricting the release of CO2 which is afterall what plants breathe.
I never thought I'd see as irrrational campaign as this one in my lifetime. By the way if they were sure that glacition was now an impossibility and we risked some sort of vast overheating and they were absolutely sure about this then some tax substitution might be justified. But none of these 'science workers' is making such a claim.
There have been twenty-plus glaciations in the last 3 million years. Most of that time the planet has been a nasty inhospitable place. This is the real reason (I believe) for the unprecedented evolution of our species.
We get 6,000-10 000 years to run rampant then the white death comes for 60,000-100,000 years and thins down our numbers and splits us into clans. Its a disaster every time but this series of holocausts is what has made us what we are (or so runs my thinking).
So from my perspective all this fuss about warming could not be more bizzare. We can only put this down to the socialisation of science. Which probably had some benefits early on but which now has led us to this nonsense.
Published: March 29, 2006 5:14 AM
Nick Bradley
TT,
First off, pollution is nothing more than a violation of property rights. If you look at what is polluted today, it is your precious "commons", where there is a clear lack of property rights. Private property is rarely polluted; and if it is, a lawsuit is usually right around the corner.
Water (and land) pollution is an easy fix: get rid of commons and allow privately-owned waterways and such. Onwers of waterways would work hard to keep the value of their property high by keeping it clean.
Air pollution is more difficult. It is perhaps the only "commons" in existence. However, it is still not a diffiult problem to solve. Pollution Protection Insurance (PPI) would go a long way towards solving this little problem of externalities:
-- Suppose you move into a new home and want to be sure that your air is not being polluted by the factory across town. Simply acruire a PPI policy that states that your air will not be polluted above x amount (dependant on the consumer of the PPI, of course), and if it is polluted above x amount, you will be compensated. If pollution occurs, the insurance company negotiates a settlement with the polluter. There you go, externality solved! All without government interference. Of course today, government regulation of the issue and public courts crowd out such insurance policies in many spheres of life.
Secondly, your assertion that the "climate is changing rapidly" is unfounded. You probably haven't done any research on the issue at all. Here are some facts:
-- Today, it is not nearly as warm as it was during the Medieval warm period that ended 700 years ago.
-- CO2 levels are 1/7th of what they were during the Jurassic Peiod.
-- The sun is currently undergoing one of its "warm phases".
-- The VAST MAJORITY of CO2 that is pumped into the air is absorbed into the oceans, although it can take a century or so.
Most scientists that believe in Global Warming look at the lab and see that CO2 traps heat. Therefore, more CO2 = warmer temperatures. Little else is taken into consideration.
Published: March 29, 2006 8:16 AM
Fred
TT,
You do realize this is Mises.org and not Time Magazine's website, don't you?
Published: March 29, 2006 8:25 AM
TGGP
I have a problem with this piece. Much of it is good, but confusion results from the collective vs. individual responsibility. It is assumed (for the sake of argument) that the economic activities of humans causes global warming. It is stated as resulting from humanity as a collective, but then because the author does not believe in collectives as units, says nobody is responsible and that it is naturally occurring. Wouldn't it be more fitting with individualism to say that individuals all contribute to varying extents carbon emmisions that (it is assumed) are a significant factor in climate change?
Published: March 29, 2006 8:40 AM
Brad Dexter
My take on the issue of individualism, and the cumulative effect of disbursed actions, versus collectivism is that even if it can be proved that such actions will have negative effect X at time A, the collectivist response usually means a negative effect 10X now. Creating whole nests of bureaucrats, and taxes, and regulations, and the corruption that goes with it, and the huge misallocation of resources and cross-purpose and negating legislation so that producers have no idea if they are doing the "correct thing", causes more misery than the likely alternative.
Simply put, when the "problem" is so oblique, any solution is a medicine that causes more harm than the disease.
Published: March 29, 2006 9:52 AM
Graeme Bird
Yeah I'm with you on that Brad. But if there WAS shown to be a problem then it could be dealt with very easily by tax substitution alone. Which could never justify us not reducing the government footprint ASAP.
You would slash a whole bunch of other taxes and just have this carbon tax.
But the campaign against warmer winters for the Siberians hasn't even made a case yet. Since none of them has shown that the natural tendency for glaciation has been SO OVERMATCHED that the balance of risks is now with overheating and not glaciation.
Imagine not wanting the Ukranians to have less frost on the crops? Just bizzare.
Published: March 29, 2006 10:50 AM
The Crawling Chaos
Burn fossil fuels until there are none left... problem solved. Peak Oil is the cure for Global Warming. How perfect is that?
Published: March 29, 2006 1:07 PM
Sione Vatu
Excellent article. Prof Reisman gets it spot on.
For all you collectivists who are into the global warming nonsense, here is the complete solution. Take responsibility for your own actions. Every time you exhale you are adding CO2 to the atmosphere. You should stop breathing out at once.
Now the results of this are interesting. Collectivists would no longer produce CO2 and so couldn't be held responsible for addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. They would no longer be contributing to the problem that concerns them so much. Collectivists would no longer be worried about the issue. For them, the problem is over. Nothing to worry about.
Everyone else would still be around doing whatever it is they do. They are not worried about the problem either. Everyone is happy.
Sione
Published: March 29, 2006 3:01 PM
Paul Edwards
And it would, incidentally, reduce the number of living breathing performative contradictions out there.
Published: March 29, 2006 3:39 PM
Graeme Bird
"Burn fossil fuels until there are none left... problem solved. Peak Oil is the cure for Global Warming. How perfect is that?"
Peak Oil according to the theory occurs when the accesable oil is about halfway through. And whereas we may be closing in on that when it comes to oil and natural gas we are centuries away when it comes to coal.
So its a cute idea you bring up but not really relevant.
This campaign against warmer winters at the tree-line is much more pernicious then most people realise. Because it will prevent localised coal burning for industrial use and coal-electricity generation.
Sending electricity miles and miles down the wires is not only a massive security risk. But its such a tremendous waste of accesible resources (I would say scarce, but ultimately our resources are unlimited. Its their expense that we have to consider).
To stop this outrageous wastage we want clean-burning coal generation in every suburb. Or even in individual factories and large buildings.
We (Australia) just had a cyclone in North Queensland. And it was a good time to reflect on just how much better we would have dealt with it under economic liberty.
Two key things the people in Innisfail lacked when the wind calmed was CASH (due to fractional reserve banking) and ELECTRICITY (due to the failure to have localised coal-to-electricity generation.
We may one day face multiple nuclear attacks. We better let any potential aggressor know that after such an attack we can function and calmy and surgically remove the relevant regimes after such an outrage if we never want this to happen.
So we ought to start deregulating the energy sector and increasing reserve requirements right away.
Published: March 29, 2006 5:38 PM
quincunx
"You do realize this is Mises.org and not Time Magazine's website, don't you?"
That's funny, because I have a free subscription. The cover of Time Magazine was so ridiculous, I almost burst out laughing: "BE WORRIED, VERY BE WORRIED".
They include a diagram of a few phenomena that increases global warming - excluding the factors that would reduce it. In other words, no equilibrium exists - it's pure chaos as time passes.
Published: March 29, 2006 5:49 PM
quincunx
"You do realize this is Mises.org and not Time Magazine's website, don't you?"
That's funny, because I have a free subscription. The cover of Time Magazine was so ridiculous, I almost burst out laughing: "BE WORRIED, VERY BE WORRIED".
They include a diagram of a few phenomena that increases global warming - excluding the factors that would reduce it. In other words, no equilibrium exists - it's pure chaos as time passes.
Published: March 29, 2006 5:52 PM
Roy W. Wright
"Be very worried," was it? That is funny.
Published: March 29, 2006 8:22 PM
Sione Vatu
Guess what? Peak oil is a load of good ol' dog. Most of the oil in the known fields is left in the ground when they stop producing. We reckon that in our outfit's stripper wells around 90% of the crude is still down there even when it comes time to turn the nodding duck off and sell it or move it to another well head. All it'll take is some new technology and...
Anyway all this global warming wax made me remember a story that happened in the Islands a while back. I have a friend there. Siotu is his name. We used to tease him that he was the cause of global warming.
The TV news would report nightly that rising CO2 was causing global warming and that would be a disaster for the Islands. Since the TV said Siotu was responsible, we reckoned he must be the one to blame! He took the ribbing quite well. Anyway this thing took on a life of its own. All in good fun.
Some wag said Siotu ought to remain in bed and stop rising in the morning, that way global warming would stop.
RISING OF SIOTU DELAYED. GLOBAL WARMING HALTED! (I wish I'd thought of that startling line of logic.)
I know Siotu stayed in bed some mornings as he was a good man for a torrid night out on the bottle from time to time. Still it would appear that Siotu's failure to rise has not stopped the global warming industry. That must mean our "science" was mistaken. And we had a consensus as well.
Don't you hate it when that happens?
Sione
Published: March 29, 2006 11:24 PM
Graeme Bird
Right Sione. But is there some sort of point behind this retreat into satire?
I mean irony is one thing. But it really amounts to chickening out if you don't also reveal where you are actually coming from.
Published: March 30, 2006 3:28 AM
TokyoTom
averros, thanks for your comments. I’m sympathetic with your concerning that government regulation could make a hash of finding ways to cut GHG emissions, as I noted in my first comment. However, I see no practical solution outside of government – and the problem is compounded of course by the fact that we are talking about a global commons issue, and not one confined solely to the US.
You misread my comment on the CAA; there is much to criticize about the Act, but the 1977 amendments included the establishment of emissions trading for SO2. http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/arp/. At the insistence of the US, Europeans and other signatories to the Kyoto protocol included mechanisms to allow the trading of GHG emission allocations.
Published: March 30, 2006 3:39 AM
Graeme Bird
"....However, I see no practical solution outside of government – and the problem is compounded of course by the fact that we are talking about a global commons issue, and not one confined solely to the US."
If more government is the answer then someone is asking the wrong bloody questions.
BUT WHAT IS THE PROBLEM YOU ARE SPEAKING OF?
If the problem is make-believe its hardly a justification for more governmental depredation. And in any case the first step to solving any AUTHENTIC national or international or economic crisis is ruthless financial triage of non-defense spending.
But what is the problem?
You are going along with the perfect storm of unreason. And you had no answer to my comments. So living in a world of make-believe you simply decided to ignore them.
Published: March 30, 2006 4:11 AM
TokyoTom
Graeme:
Thanks for your many and interesting comments.
Glaciations have payed a very important and little understood role in human evolution. Ever read anything by William Calvin? Here's a link to his book on precisely this: http://williamcalvin.com/BrainForAllSeasons/.
Your reference to "warmer winters in Siberia" is interesting - nobody wants an ice age, so some climate change has obviously been good. Scitific American and other have recently indicated that the human shift to agriculture over the past 5000+ years may be get credit for delaying the onset of the next glaciation (by increasing mathane emissions). But human climate forcing over the past century have been even more pronounced, and has resulted in a marked warming trend that has clearly swamped any incipient cooling (that seemed eminent in the 70s due to heavy particulate pollution).
Also it is fair to note that no everone's ox will be equally gored by the negative effects of climate change - there may some regions or countries that benefit while others may be clear losers, while others are in between. This is one factor that complicates analysis.
But your position that we shouldn't do anything about climate change since taking action may simply accelerate the next glaciation is irresponsible - what, we should continue our uncontrolled climate experiment, heedless of present and near-term costs, because of a much further off possible benefit? Obviously we should conduct a present term analysis with discounted values in mind.
The real question is at what point "we" - the myriad of actors involved with what is essentially an unregulated global commons - will decide to take meaningful action about runaway climate change. Please note that it already is too late, as even if we immediately halved global human CO2 emissions, this will have minimal effects on total CO2 levels for decades, and meanwhile the oceans will continue to warm and tundras will contuine to thaw, which will put even more potent GHGs – water vapor and methane - into the atmosphere. The Arctic and the Greenland ice cap are melting rapidly, and the American Geophysical Union believes that we will soon have a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean for the first time in millions of years. There is enough certainty about what is happening now and what is likely to come down the pike to justify action now - both in terms of limiting GHG emissions and to abate the effects of unavoidable warming.
You seem not to want to discuss the science, so I'll save that for a response to another poster.
I like your suggestion of carbon taxes, by the way. They seem to be one efficient mechanism to deal with the problem - as well as certain others that the US and the rest of the developed world face (energy insecurity, heavy flow of oil dollars to unstable regimes, inefficient energy use, subsidies to oil and natural gas industries and lack of consistent incentives for alternatives and, in the US, tax policies that favor present consumption at the expense of investment and the need for new revenues to fill huge budget deficits).
Your final comment about energy policy in Australia in the context of the latest typhoon also seems to point to a productive area for discussion - we can take advantage of the huge supplies of coal in the US and Australia and deal proactively with climate change by focussing on coal gasification (which leaves no pollutants) projects that are coupled with carbon sequestration. The US power industry favors a carbon tax precisely for this reason.
Published: March 30, 2006 4:35 AM
TokyoTom
Nick:
I'm with you generally on developing more refined approaches to environmental regulation, including private alternatives. I'd love to turn alot of our laws upside down, and am in favor of the types of approaches discussed in these places:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_environmentalism
http://commonsblog.org/about_freemkt.php
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/vcems/papers/ELRVersion2.pdf
http://www.yale.edu/envirocenter/cv_dce.pdf
http://home.earthlink.net/~jhadler/freegreentext.html
However, given the tragedy of the commons aspects to climate change - free riders, information difficulties, myriads of parties and no shared juriusdiction, purely private "solutions" clearly won't work, will they?
Sadly, you're dead wrong on the science of course. Can I ask you to peruse with an open mind these links to what the US/other leading scientific bodies/climate change scientists have to say?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=240#Responses
http://www.redstate.com/comments/2006/2/17/85716/1778/228
http://www.redstate.com/comments/2005/11/30/223549/05/14
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: March 30, 2006 4:45 AM
TokyoTom
Fred, yes I realize where I am. Do you mean to imply that Prof. Reisman was looking only for applause, and not discussion?
I have enough respect for the thoughtfulness of this group generally – and concern about the issue - to protest Reisman’s surprisingly uninformed and unsophisticated argument. Or is this a“Flat Earth�group that also believes in Intelligent Design?
Published: March 30, 2006 4:53 AM
TokyoTom
Brad and Graeme:
I share your public choice theory skepticism in general – we could handle a lot of regulation better than we do, and look at how even under Republican federal discretionary spending has grown rapidly.
But don't we know enough about the problems inherent in externalities, public goods and common or unowned natural resources, to recognize the need for governmental involvement in finding solutions? Solutions are particularly hard to come by in the case of international resources, as there is no global regulatory and the politicians of hundreds different countries, with differning interests, may have to be prodded into action.
I think that this is a case where even imperfect solutions, such as to air and water nationally, are better than none at all. Climate change is a sufficiently serious and difficult issue that I think it irresponsible simply to dismiss it because we think government will not handle it well (that of course is a given, but there is no alternative).
The problem in the case of market failures in the case of negative externalities is that the pricing mechanism simply doesn't reflect true costs. If we taxed greenhouse gas emissions, even at a very modest level, and taxed imported fuels, we could very easily spur private decisions the would lead to higher fuel efficiency, investments by utilities in nuclear power plants and coal-gasification power plants that generate zero pollution (the US is the Saudia Arabia of coal), and investments in co-generation (capture of waste heat by generating electricty) by industry, etc.
I think that we're foolishly pushing off to the future a problem that by its very nature will only be aggravated by our procrastination. The multi-national, global commons aspects of the problem make coordinated action essential. Let's at least admit the intractable aspects of the problem we face, rather than simply throwing our hands up at it and pretending it doesn't exist.
More in-depth discussions of the application of environmental economics in the context of climate change are here:
http://www.aei.org/books/bookID.664,filter.all/book_detail.asp
http://www.aei.org/books/bookID.211,filter.all/book_detail.asp
http://www.issues.org/issues/20.2/stewart.html
http://www.issues.org/issues/20.3/forum.html
For those who are interested, I've fleshed out my thoughts a little further here: http://www.redstate.com/comments/2005/12/3/204530/429/76
http://www.redstate.com/comments/2005/11/30/223549/05/36.
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: March 30, 2006 5:20 AM
TokyoTom
Sione, thanks for your note of levity – but don't hold your breath waiting for me!
Of course your do-nothing, know-nothing approach is sheer foolishness. Kindly tell all resource economists that they are idiots; problems through human history over water rights, salinization, pollution, over-fishing, extinction of species, tropical deforestation never happened, and or if it did, it was all for the best.
Published: March 30, 2006 5:23 AM
TokyoTom
Paul, did you know that all living breathing performative contradictions are
Published: March 30, 2006 5:29 AM
Nick Bradley
TokyoTom,
I have an open mind and I USED to think that (1) global warming was a realtiy and (2) the impetus must be on a free market solution to the problem. However, I have came across so much information that makes me question the long-term global warming thesis.
Ever heard of the vostok ice core? According to the ice core, there have been so many severe fluctuations in global temperature over time that today's slight increases pale in comparison:
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Vostok_long.gif
Solar temperatures fluctuate as well. Ever heard a climatologist talk about high temperatures on the sun? Or how about rising temperatures on other planets?
The truth is that when people in general statistical trend, they tend to extrapolate it far into the future. Hence, the dire predictions.
But I go further. Even if their predictions for massive CO2 increases ARE true, oceans will mitigate teir effect by absorbing a TON of it!
Thanks for the links tho.
Published: March 30, 2006 6:21 AM
Keith
Qoute from TokyoTom: "Please note that it already is too late, as even if we immediately halved global human CO2 emissions, this will have minimal effects on total CO2 levels for decades, and meanwhile the oceans will continue to warm and tundras will contuine to thaw, which will put even more potent GHGs – water vapor and methane - into the atmosphere."
If its already too late, then what is your point? That we should have a greenhouse AND massive economic depression due to the government control of the economy to prevent something we can't prevent?
You can't make statements like this and expect us to take your arguments seriously. You're making giant predictions about future outcomes in chaotic systems that are not fully understood or predictable.
Published: March 30, 2006 6:39 AM
Graeme Bird
Much better Tokyo Tom. Much better.
But your latest still lends itself to some criticisms even now that you are taking a more reasonable tack.
"But your position that we shouldn't do anything about climate change since taking action may simply accelerate the next glaciation is irresponsible ..."
Justify this. If a White Death holocaust is the major threat then what is irresponsible is forcing other people, in some giant social experiment, to incur costs to restrict the output of plant food (ie CO2).
You know I quite like nature. I hate the mass slaughter of the natural world of course. Nature is a nazi. But aside from that I like the idea of animals (excluding predators who prey on larger brained animals) getting about as a sort of great and sacred museum. And nature likes CO2. CO2 makes plants grow more quickly.
So if you take my (qualified) pro-nature position you would not want to close down the one major good thing that the humans have done for the other species. But most of all you ought not be so uppity as to want to steal money off your fellows for the purpose of restricting the ability of plants to grow.
Of course there will be some downside to the overwhelming benefits that CO2 based warming will bring. But its economic liberty and generous immigration that is the key to allowing people to cope with whatever transitions are in store.
You and the other supporters of this gigantic scientific fraud are the ones who wish to impose extra costs on people. And you couldn't have picked a worse time. Since now is the time we have to substitute away from oil to a greater or lesser extent. So anything that gets in the way of coal particularly will impose great hardship everywhere. Much more authentic suffering then anything we are likely to get from interim warming. And this is before taking the possibility of glaciation into account.
Published: March 30, 2006 12:24 PM
Graeme Bird
"I have enough respect for the thoughtfulness of this group generally – and concern about the issue - to protest Reisman’s surprisingly uninformed and unsophisticated argument. Or is this a“Flat Earth�group that also believes in Intelligent Design?"
Right. It didn't last long did it.
There was nothing uninformed about what the Proffesor said. Now you have shown that you understand the problem of glaciation. And yet you continue on with this willful stupidity.
"If we taxed greenhouse gas emissions, even at a very modest level, and taxed imported fuels, we could very easily spur private decisions the would lead to higher fuel efficiency, investments by utilities in nuclear power plants and coal-gasification power plants that generate zero pollution (the US is the Saudia Arabia of coal), and investments in co-generation (capture of waste heat by generating electricty) by industry, etc."
True enough. At least if you are talking tax-substitution rather then a tax increase. BUT YOU ARE YET TO SHOW THAT THERE IS A PROBLEM. You have already shown that you understand that to take such action may be to push things in the wrong direction.
Explain this continued irrationality then. Irrationality is the ONLY word for it. You know what's going on. Yet on you go with a conclusion that does not stack up with the facts that you have already acknowledged.
Published: March 30, 2006 12:35 PM
Sione Vatu
Graeme
Two things for you to remember.
#1. Most of the oil is still "down there" ready for us to get. (BTW I'm intending to get some of it.)
#2. A consensus of opinion does not necessarily correspond with the truth.
Simple enough, even for okkers, maaaaaaaate!
The story about Siotu is correct. I reported it pretty much as it occurred. It was funny at the time. It's interesting that some of us "ignorant islanders" were so rapidly able to see through the global warming hype and identify the reality of the situation so quickly. I suppose that's could be because for well over a century the islands of Polynesia (Melanesia and Micronesia as well I guess) have been visited by palangi selling various ideologies and the like. Always they say the same things. Stuff along the lines of, "If you 'boons do not do as we say then you are evil and bad things will happen to you." Unfortunately THEY were usually the bad things that happened.
Once you see through the lie (and the accompanying threats) it becomes a matter for ridicule. Rather than turning to violence we laughed at it. Mostly people relax and live together peacefully after that (some call it "going troppo"). In the village you learn to get on. Anyway, I still do tend to make fun of mental silliness. But I understand you want an explanation. Since you don't appear to have been around for very long I'll elaborate a little.
Global warming is little more than junk science dressed up with some social metaphysics aimed at socialist ends. As far as I am concerned socialists are liars and wilfully dishonest people who should be dismissed from polite society at the first available opportunity. They are not to be trusted. Since it is the socialists who tout global warming to further their ends, then that topic requires most careful analysis. Sure enough we find that global warming theories are incomplete and there is considerable latitude for contention and alternative interpretation. For example, you have a particular interpretation and it differs to that of many others. Fair enough.
There are two issues to address:
1/. What is the scientific truth? I'm not seeking the consensus of opinion. I'm after fact.
2/. Can coercive collectivism be justified by global warming theories? I'm not seeking emotion, only truth.
For the first question the jury aint in yet. Lots more knowledge required. Currently the store of knowledge on the topic is sparse and incomplete (there is nothing wrong with admitting that).
As for the second, what can be rapidly concluded is that there certainly is no justification to use global warming theory to impose the burden of socialism on individuals. There never has been.
Sione
Published: March 30, 2006 7:03 PM
Sione
TokyoTom
To get anyone responsible to accept the global warming sect's calls for action there are several steps to be taken and tests to pass. I've challenged people with these on numerous occasions and not one of them has satisfied the tests. This is your chance. Here be the chain of scientific logic necessary:
1/. Prove the Earth's climate is getting warmer.
2/. Prove that it is an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere that is solely the cause of the warming (there are at least three things to show in this step)
3/. Prove that the activities of Man are the sole cause of the increase in CO2 levels and that in his absence there would not be an elevation of CO2 levels (two steps)
4/. Prove that the results of the warming climate are necessarily bad and deleterious (very large task)
5/. Prove that a serious situation is developing which would lead necessarily to great harm to people
Even should all these proofs be accomplished none of them justifies continued expansion of the state. Nor do they justify continued funding of state sanctioned science. There are more tests to be applied long before we ever arrive at coerced collectivism.
A proper course of action is what individual people choose to do voluntarily. The best approach may well be to adapt and not to worry about the climate alteration (bad weather, as Reisman succinctly puts it). Another approach may be to begin developing better technologies and new products (if anyone really believes in global warming why aren't they actively supporting efforts to do this? Let's see the colour of your money!). It may be to change behaviours or habits (if anyone really believes in global warming why aren't they actively doing this? Let's see them quit electricity and the car and the computer etc. etc. Is it too hard to be consistent?). All power to them.
Unfortunately you appear to be more interested in big national scale programs. That means you need to show collective action is required and not just any collective action but the compulsory and coerced variety. So there are some more tests for you to satisfy. Consider these:-
6/. Prove that collective action must be taken (this is a big task akin to proving that communism is necessary and good for Man- important to understand the magnitude of what is required to accomplish this).
7/. Prove that it is YOUR great plan that should be followed. There are many, many steps to prove that ANY solution you propose is sound. Individuals may still reject it. They may choose someone else's approach (like mine for instance). You still need to justify forcing people to do as you order.
TokyoTom, I don't think you'll ever be able to get over the line. Not in my lifetime and not in yours either.
What is more likely to occur is that gradually new products and technologies will become prevalent. They will be superior to what is available today. Perhaps some of these may rely on renewables or home brewed fuels. Perhaps some will be extremely sophisticated and very clever (like using microbes to produce energy from "waste"). I don't know for certain which ones will be available. I do have some favourites though.
What I do know is that govt action will delay or even prevent products based on these technologies from being available to us. I also know that govt actions will reduce my and other people's wealth; many will be impoverished. I know that life on this planet is always changing. Trying to roll back time to "protect the environment" (in the politically green sense) is like trying to keep a baby locked in its mother's uterus, resisting the changes that must eventually occur.
So, TokyoTom, best start on your prep. Before there is any more promotion of big tax or (inter)national schemes or govt spending nonsense, let's see those proofs.
Sione
Published: March 30, 2006 7:09 PM
TokyoTom
Dear Nick:
Thanks for your response; I hope you will keep working through the links. Are you aware that Pres. Bush readily admits that climate change is a serious problem, is spending $5 billion on it annually and announced the Asia Pacific Partnership last year in an attempt to rein in rapid GHG emissions from China and India? More is obviously needed, but is ideologically and politically unpalatable in the US.
I’m quite aware that there are many long-term factors at work and have been dramatic changes in the past. However, the massive GHG forcing related to industrialization is undeniable and the accelerating climbs in temperature over the past few decades is clearly linked. We are already witnessing remarkable changes in the Arctic, as I have already noted.
As to the oceans, I’m afraid there are multiple effects that are not uniformly positive. Oceans are carbon sinks, but the sink effect is lagging for behind the human generation of CO2 (http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040719-124526-9990r.htm
) – only a third to date. Of course heating also throws water vapor – a potent GHG - into the air, and also threatens massive releases of methane from hydrates on ocean floors and thawing permafrost areas.
One of the ironies of the Arctic melting is that it runs the risk of flipping the switch on oceanic thermohaline circulation and shutting down the Atlantic current - this could lead to a sharp cooling in Europe (which lies further north than the US), and appears to have happened in the past.
Published: March 30, 2006 8:24 PM
Peter
Thanks for your response; I hope you will keep working through the links. Are you aware that Pres. Bush readily admits that climate change is a serious problem, is spending $5 billion on it annually and announced the Asia Pacific Partnership last year in an attempt to rein in rapid GHG emissions from China and India?
Are you aware that Pres. Bush readily admitted there were WMDs in Iraq, Saddam was involved in 9/11, etc., and is spending vastly more than $5 billion annually on fighting in Iraq? Pres. Bush is a moron and a liar of the highest order. If he readily admits that climate change is a serious problem, that's about 90% of the evidence I need to know it isn't!
Published: March 30, 2006 9:20 PM
TokyoTom
Come on Keith, be serious. Acknowledging that the patient is already ill doesn’t mean we shouldn’t treat the patient. An ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure, but obviously we should be BOTH getting ready for what cannot be avoided (or what Graeme would say is desired) and to make rational efforts at prevention.
You accuse me of being overdramatic, but what about you – why do you think that fixing market failures will trigger “massive economic depression due to the government control of the economy�? Is this the lesson you learn from your study of the impact of environmental regulation to date? If so, it’s wrong – fixing market failures improves the economy, as I’m sure Lornborg would tell you. Granted, we could do a better job with our environmental regulation, but even with the obvious inefficiencies the special interests competing for tax dollars produce, we are surely better off now than if we had simply thrown our hands up and hoped that other market failure problems would cure themselves.
Because of the global commons aspects, coordinated international action is needed, but there is a lot that the US can do alone that would actually improve the US economy, and it is possible to take steps outside of Kyoto with respect to China and India that would be more meaningful than what we have embarked on to date.
Simply imposing a tax on fuel consumption, even if limited solely to imported fuels, would do a lot to rationalize fuel consumption and accelerate the economics of coal gasification, nuclear power, biofuels etc. This would also fill an enormous budget hole, and would more accurately reflect the true costs of imported fuels (not limited to our huge military spending). http://www.redstate.com/comments/2005/11/16/83949/551/83#83.
The Bush Administration has recently embarked on the Asia-Pacific Partnership, by which the US, Japan and Australia agreed to shove R&D tax money at China and India, precisely because we realize it is in our interest to have them use the latest and cleanest technologies as they industrialize. Have we consider whether, as part of our trade deals with these countries, that we could require that they accept GHG emissions caps?
We should not use the difficult nature of resolving climate change issues as a justification to deny the issue. This was noted recently by Steven Hayward of the AEI, in his piece Is "Conservative Environmentalist" an Oxymoron?:
"the sweeping portentous language we hear from orthodox environmentalists reflects not a deep and serious attachment to Rousseau or Heidegger, but is rather a reflection of the unhappy truth that there are a lot of environmental problems, especially on a global scale, about which we simply don’t know what to do. Even the problem of climate change, which in the abstract appears straightforward, is obviously proving very hard to deal with. What about much more complicated problems like species extinction and habitat loss? There is scarcely the beginning of an answer to this problem on the global scale. It is at this point that orthodox environmentalists figuratively throw up their hands….
[C]onservatives have overreacted to these radical-sounding tendencies in conventional environmentalism. Now, why should anyone who is not a conservative care especially whether conservatives have anything serious to say about the environment, or care whether the issue is a liberal monopoly? I think people should care because the liberal monopoly on environmental issues is a disaster for the environment. … The environment is much too important to be left to environmentalists—they’ll just screw things up.� http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.22934/pub_detail.asp
The environmentalists are making noises because there are obvious market failure, tragedy of the commons issues that confront us, and very little is being done to address them. We can tell the environmentalists that they do not understand the institutional underpinnings of the problem or the appropriate cure, but responsibility lies in acknowledging that a number of problems exist that we should be working to cure.
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: March 30, 2006 9:44 PM
TokyoTom
Graeme, thanks for engaging me. I’m happy that we’ve managed to put off one ice age, and hopefully we’ll at some point know enough to keep them permanently at bay, but in the meanwhile there is just the small problem that our collective effects on global ecosystems is unregulated by feedback mechanisms – except where we use laws and regulations – as we are dealing with regional and global common resources for which there are no clear owners and accordingly are not subject to market pricing. Isn’t this the key insight that economics bring to the analysis that so stumps guys like Jared Diamond, what can see problems but not understand them?
More particularly, the consensus from climate change models is for a further increase of global temperatures in the next 100 years of from 3 to 10+ Fahrenheit, and we can already see the Arctic melting and the Great Barrier Reef bleaching. There will be lots of regional affects as we heat up the system – stronger weather events, regional droughts, less predictable waterflows as glaciers and snowpacks disappear, countered in some regions by more favorable growing conditions. These relative rapid changes, even if we get more plant growth overall from the additional CO2, will likely be quite disruptive to many species (on top of the many problems already caused by invasives). Sorry, but I think this is a problem, and worth trying to fix the underlying market failures through intelligent unilateral and multilateral action.
There is lots of creative thinking out there on resource law and economics from guys on the right like Terry Anderson at the Political Economy Research Center, and from places in the field like NZ. Surely your aware of these efforts? The bigger problems relating to species and global commons are just tougher nuts to address; let's not pretend that they don't exist at all.
Published: March 30, 2006 10:15 PM
TokyoTom
Hey, Peter, you talking to the wrong guy if you're looking for a defense of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. They've proven to be more adept at pork-barrel politics than the Dems and have also learned that demagoguery (wars, gays etc) is handy at winning elections and keeping serious thought at bay. Discussions about the shocking lack of effort to put our fiscal and current account deficits house in order are off thread, so I'll leave that here.
Tom
Published: March 30, 2006 10:25 PM
Graeme Bird
"I’m happy that we’ve managed to put off one ice age, and hopefully we’ll at some point know enough to keep them permanently at bay, but in the meanwhile there is just the small problem that our collective effects on global ecosystems is unregulated by feedback mechanisms."
Hang on a minute. Are you claiming that you know for sure that the balance of risks is no longer with glaciation?????
You cannot be serious.
Look you are just going to have to accept that the campaign against warmer winters for the Laplanders is a ridiculous fraud.
If it wasn't you would have been able to come up with something here. But you haven't.
Now it may be astounding for you that you found this out on an economics site. But find it out you did. Unless you are simply going to continue with this irrationality you have to go with what you have found out here.
The relevant question is: DO WE KNOW THAT THE GLACIATION THREAT HAS BEEN ENTIRELY OVERMATCHED BY HUMAN CO2 RELEASE.
Now you don't know that. You aren't pretending to know that. And neither are any of the fraudsters that you might care to site.
So you will just have to wake up to yourself and accept that the movement is an irrational fraud and likely inspired by the sort of philosophical stupidity that the proffessor outlined.
Now don't slime out of this. You can run but you can't hide.
Published: March 30, 2006 10:44 PM
TokyoTom
Sione:
Thanks for your response, the length of which belies your ready dismissal that “Global warming is little more than junk science dressed up with some social metaphysics aimed at socialist ends.� Given your firmly stated opinion it is clear that I can’t change your mind – you will have to change it yourself, and will only do so when there is sufficient cognitive dissonance generated between your existing model of reality and the information that you are willing to let in. So you’ll have to do your own proofs. But is your person jury still willing to weigh the information, or has it gone on strike?
Allow me just to note that there are plenty of economists and political economists on the right who acknowledge not only (i) the increasingly convincing and consistent information being provided by climate scientists but (ii) the market failure aspects that require – yes! that shibboleth! - “collective� action to address. I have already provided numerous links upthread to thinkers on the right at the AEI and elsewhere on the economics; perhaps you may be willing to peruse them?.
On the science, do you dismiss the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, Wood’s Hole, the American Geophysical Union and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee as all crackpots? Here is a link to statements by these groups: http://www.redstate.com/comments/2005/11/30/223549/05/14. Do you not find it interesting that those who profess to be rationalists are those who are the science deniers? It seems that those who, for very good reason, are chary of the misuse of economic regulation, prefer to throw the baby out with the bathwater by taking a simple Luddite approach.
Allow me a brief bite at some of your “tests�, which are actually unreasonable “traps� rather than an invitation to reasoned discussion:
1/. Prove the Earth's climate is getting warmer.
TT: See the science. Especially look at what is happening in the Arctic and Greenland, and to growing seasons.
2/. Prove that it is an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere that is solely the cause of the warming (there are at least three things to show in this step)
TT: The wrong things to prove. Atmospheric levels of methane, water vapor, and SO2 are also important. These levels have all gone way up over the past 300 years.
3/. Prove that the activities of Man are the sole cause of the increase in CO2 levels and that in his absence there would not be an elevation of CO2 levels (two steps).
TT: Much easier – see the science. Are you denying the pulse of GHGs from human activities? And don’t forget how particulates have had the opposite affect – for a time producing a cooling in the northern hemisphere that has been swamped by the GHG effects, although there is still a significant reduction in insolation in Asia due to air pollution (see Asian brown cloud).
4/. Prove that the results of the warming climate are necessarily bad and deleterious (very large task)
TT: Again, the wrong thing to prove. There may be positives in some regards – as Graeme notes, CO2 is a limiting factor on plant growth, so higher levels may aid forests and agriculture. But there are plenty of serious negative effects to be concerned about and those who will benefit are likely to differ from those who will gain. Is this the same question you ask your wife when she asks you to slow down on the freeway? With GHGs, we are speeding up, but have no steering mechanism and no brakes. Tell me again why it’s a CONSERVATIVE approach that we wait until we crash, and then say, okay, let’s get brakes? This how the tobacco industry has continued to buy off Congress.
5/. Prove that a serious situation is developing which would lead necessarily to great harm to people
TT: See 1 and 4.
6/. Prove that collective action must be taken (this is a big task akin to proving that communism is necessary and good for Man- important to understand the magnitude of what is required to accomplish this).
7/. Prove that it is YOUR great plan that should be followed. There are many, many steps to prove that ANY solution you propose is sound. Individuals may still reject it.
TT: These show that you’ve taken an inflexible ideological position. I like the ideology of minimizing governmental mucking around with the economy – frequently goes wrong, Congressmen and industry line their pockets, creates “necessary� bureaucracy that tends to grow etc - but it’s the inflexibility that bothers me. Just like we needed air and water pollution laws to deal with those cases of market failure, there are other cases of market failure that also justify action. Corrective measures that allow the pricing mechanism to work efficiently IMPROVE people’s wealth (I acknowledge there is a balancing with the public choice negatives). The instances that require international action – global and regional commons – are particularly sticky. That doesn’t mean the problems don’t exist, or that the responsible thing to do is to ignore them, as you would have us do.
I agree that “that life on this planet is always changing� – competition for fitness within and among species makes such change inevitable. However, it is also undeniable that man’s industrialization is causing a pulse of extinction that equals that caused by prehistoric meteor strikes. These other species don’t vote – just as the people in poorer countries mentioned by Prof. Reisman have no political voice over actions taken in our countries (often not even in their own), and we have no obligation to take them into account. In my own view, however, it is desirable for us, for our own selfish benefit, to act deliberately to moderate our effects on the global environment. Denial of this leaves humans “collectively� in a position not much different from mold on a slice of bread – racing individually to consume our environment before others do. Or, to use a different metaphor – to drive blind on a highway without brakes, while the mother and the unborn baby have neither a way to get the driver to behave responsibly or to safely exit the vehicle. I leave discussion of the morality of this for another day.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:59 PM
Paul Edwards
Tom,
"Paul, did you know that all living breathing performative contradictions are..."
...(in this context) showing a demonstrated preference for continuing to live and continuing to contribute to CO2 in the atmosphere, over the taking the alternative action?
Yes, it has occurred to me. I do applaud the choice. Next step: adopt a consistent philosophy.
Published: March 31, 2006 12:20 AM
TokyoTom
Graeme, I understand that you're not a climate scientist, but can I take it that your positin is that man's activities ARE changing the climate, thankfully so, and are willing to take the blast of heat and all the damage that it can do just to make sure we never have another ice age? Is that a fair summary of your position?
But if warming can cause damage, and it takes a long time to reverse course, when do you decide to act?
Allow me to make a person note on this:
Now it may be astounding for you that you found this out on an economics site. But find it out you did. Unless you are simply going to continue with this irrationality you have to go with what you have found out here.
The relevant question is: DO WE KNOW THAT THE GLACIATION THREAT HAS BEEN ENTIRELY OVERMATCHED BY HUMAN CO2 RELEASE.
Now you don't know that. You aren't pretending to know that. And neither are any of the fraudsters that you might care to site.
So you will just have to wake up to yourself and accept that the movement is an irrational fraud and likely inspired by the sort of philosophical stupidity that the proffessor outlined.
Now don't slime out of this. You can run but you can't hide.I'm not running and I'm not hiding, but I think your tone here is way out of line and essentially telling me you don't want a discussion. In that case, I will oblige you, and respond to anyone else who chooses to explain my errors.
Tom
Published: March 31, 2006 12:28 AM
TokyoTom
Paul, you're smart guy. You must realize that the anthrogenic GHG forcing under consideration is largely due to human industrial and agricultural activities; the portion contributed by human respiration and flatulence are an insignificant portion (we are simply displacing other animals).
So it really won't help if all those who actually are concerned about climate change simply drop dead. Can you put your thinking cap on and come up with a more productive approach?
Published: March 31, 2006 12:50 AM
averros
Tokyo Tom --
However, I see no practical solution outside of government – and the problem is compounded of course by the fact that we are talking about a global commons issue, and not one confined solely to the US.
Actually, the government is what created the problem in the first place and keeps perpetuating it by preventing private parties with the interest in protection of their own environment from taking over the "commons".
According to the government I do not own air in my house. It also prevents me from defending my own property. Accordingly, I cannot go and extract compensation from a nearby polluter - I have to use political means to convince some government bureaucrat to side with me on this case.
And because polluters tend to have paid buddies in the governement, guess who usually wins?
Published: March 31, 2006 1:45 AM
Paul Edwards
Ok, fair enough, Tom. How about this: Not only are human respiration and flatulence an insignificant influence on the temperature of the planet, all human activity also is insignificant. It was not a lack of human breathing, lack of flatulence or lack of human industry that put the world into the little ice age in the 1300's, and it is not human activity that continues to bring it out of that ice age today.
The forces that put the planet into an ice age are the forces that take it out of one. We are presently coming out of one. In one, out of one, in and out; whatever way the earth goes, one thing remains constant: it is not human activities that have dictated them and it never will be. Come to grips with that, and relax. The best way to deal with big swings in the weather is to allow technology to advance unhindered by world government style regulation.
In summary; want to keep the world off a crash course with unmitigated disaster? Stop advocating regulation on a global scale. If national governments can wipe out millions of lives at a go-round i do not want to imagine what havoc an organized world government could accomplish even in the name of global warming.
Published: March 31, 2006 2:14 AM
TokyoTom
averros:
I'm afraid I'm not following you. In addition to the pollution laws to which you seem to object, the government creates and maintains courts and other means by which you can seek redress from a nearby polluter, to which common-law principles of "nuisance" may provide you some sort of remedy. Consumers still have access to the court of public opinion, and can influence corporate behavior particularly if they voluntarily band together.
However, it is the very limited usefulness of common law principles in providing you with a meaningful remedy that led to popular demand for environmental laws.
In some cases, informal or formal private or group action to enforce private property and "common property" rights remain very effective, in which case regulatory law is undesirable.
Published: March 31, 2006 3:22 AM
TokyoTom
Paul, thanks for giving me a little more to chew on.
"All human activity is insignificant". Shall I'll assume you mean only with respect to man's aafect planetary temperatures? In other ways, I think it's fairly easy to demonstrate man's massive impact on the planet - and I suppose Prof. Reisman would agree and say that we are simply and "naturally" shaping the world in the way we'd like it be. If there's some part of that "other", significant impact you'd care to contest, please let me know.
As to anthropogenic effects on temperatures, you are using the internet, so I presume you live in the modern world, which reflects human technology which in turn is based on human understanding of the physical world. I cannot explain to you how most technology works, and there is still an awfully lot to know, but I imagine you share my understanding that technological devices don't work by magic, and that we live in a physical world that isto a large comprehendable based on scientifi principles.
If you are with me so far, then can you please go back and look at what our major scientific organizations are telling us, and explain to me why you think they are all lying to us, or are simply high priests of a cool-aid drinking voodoo cult?
What I read tells me that our "puny" activities have increased CO2 concentrations by something like 50% and more than doubled methane concentrations. There are certainly many other factors at play, but we know we're pushing the accelerator on the car, it's going faster, and we have no brake. Even Prof. Reisman seems willing to concede this, and says let's just get ready to enjoy the ride.
I totally agree that we want private individuals rather than the government dictating what actions to take in respect to unavoidable climate, but (i) I'm not yet willing to concede that nothing can or should be done to control spiraling GHG emissions and (ii) the problem with adaptation, as environmental economists point out, is that the market pricing mechanism doesn't fully reflect externalities. There are sensible, market-oriented approaches to natural resource and environmental problems, as noted on my links to conservative economist groups like the AEI, CEI and PERC.
I share the desire for caution in finding the right policy tools and fear of misuse by industry, bureacrats etc., but I don't that wise caution should lead one to complete dismissal of any problem.
We already have enough inertia in dealing with climate change due to the free rider effects (no one willing to maike a meaningful international commitment unless others do as well) that you guys really don't need to hyperventilate over the climate change enviros - we've already got Crichton and the whole political orthody on the right doing that. Instead, Prof. Reisman and the rest of you should be focussed on rolling back our environmental laws - by which Republican "collectivists" from the 70s have so shackled American citizens and manufacturers. (On the serious side, my links above note that despite these laws clearly being a net plus for America, they have also been unnecessarily rigid and expensive, and can and should be fixed!)
In summary, capitalism, individual freedom and the "free hand" of the market work great and should be as unfettered by government meddling as possibile - but it's also well known that markets tend to over-destructive exploitation where there are inadequate property rights, externalities and consequently imperfect pricing. The answer is to have as light a hand as possible, by taxing or by creating meaningful property rights in public goods, thereby allowing the market to work. Without such regulation, we end up shooting ourselves in the foot.
Published: March 31, 2006 4:07 AM
TokyoTom
Professor Reisman, thanks for testing my email address. For anyone who wishes to engage me off-line, it is tokyo-tom[-AT-]NOSPAMexcite.com.
It is relatively easy to brush away "collectivist" environmental strawmen - most environmentalists have no clue how an economy works. But you paint with far too broad a brush for useful argument – there are real environmental problems and quite an established body of environmental and resource economics work. Besides, environmental thinkers on the right make more challenging opponents. Perhaps you are aware of this criticism of your book "Capitalism" by David Henderson at The Objectivist Center?
"While this section on environmentalism is among Capitalism's greatest strengths, it is marred by Reisman's unfortunate lumping together of all environmentalists. He writes again and again about "the environmentalists" as if there are no major differences among them, and he fails to acknowledge the economically literate environmentalists at the Political Economy Research Center in Montana and at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Those environmentalists see government as the major cause of environmental problems, and freedom as the natural solution to such problems."
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-31-Making_Known_Capitalist_Ideal.aspx. I think to that list you can safely add the economists at the American Enterprise Institute.
Allow me to address some specific weakenesses in your argument, other than points I have addressed above with other posters on this blog. Serious economic analysis would recognize that climate change and other issues where regulatory action is needed are cases of market failure where property and pricing mechanisms do not adequately reflect the costs of public goods consumed or externalities generated by individual or corporate behavior. Government action is justified not as some collective “punishment�, but in order to allow a private market between individuals and companies to function efficiently by reflecting externalities.
Many environmentalists may misunderstand the issue, but it hardly helps when economists do as well. Climate change is an example of a “tragedy of the commons� phenomenon, writ large. Governmental action is needed only because of the external aspects to individual behavior; this is all rather humdrum and mundane stuff that you have with no small degree of melodrama inflated to be a collectivist threat to our entire way of life. Well, take a deep breath and relax.
You correctly observe that (i) no one individual is responsible for the fossil fuel consumption that is leading to climate change, but then illogically conclude that (ii) “global warming is a cumulative, unintended byproduct of human behavior for which no one is responsible.� Yes, the scientific claim is that climate change is a cumulative, unintended byproduct of human behavior, but do you conclude that no one has responsibility for it merely because it was unintended and the result of the actions of many individuals rather than a single individual?
This seems to directly defy objectivist principles because you irresponsibly and generously (i) release all individuals and companies of responsibility for the consequences of their unintended acts and (ii) provide an ironic “collectivist� absolution on the basis that it is impossible to blame one or more identifiable groups for the whole of the problem.
You then state that “a phenomenon for which no human being is responsible is an act of nature� and that “all global warming … is an act of nature even when it is the unintended cumulative byproduct of the actions of billions of human beings.� Having absurdly absolved individuals and society more broadly for playing a role in creating a problem, you neatly avoid any discussion as to whether any policy is needed to regulate fossil fuel consumption or other industrial, agricultural or individual behaviors that contribute to climate change, and jump to your desired conclusion that any reactions to the "natural" phenomenon of climate change should be left to the actions of individuals in a free marketplace.
Nice, but surely you can see that your conclusion that climate change that is caused by humans is "natural" is a far too facile, deus ex machina device, rather than a justified conclusion? We could similarly deny any role for government in any case where a number of unidentified individuals have contributed to a problem, without particularly intending a bad result that negative affects others. In that case, we could do away with government altogether (and leave individuals to agree with each other to reconstruct the public governing infrastructure that makes possible the technologically advanced and wealthy capitalist society we have today. We have government precisely because that there are public goods that will be either undersupplied or overconsumed by the market because of lack of clear ownership and free rider effects.
You state that “Economic freedom is what is required to cope with global warming, global freezing, or any other form of large-scale environmental or social change� and that“Given this freedom, the totality of the problem would be overcome. This is because, under capitalism, the actions of the individuals, and the thinking and planning behind those actions, are coordinated and harmonized by the price system.� I agree that economic freedom is the system best suited to adapting to changes (just look at the environmental ruin produced by communism), but it is not well-suited to dealing with externalities – where the cause of the large-scale change is the negative consequences of individual economic behavior. Here, market intervention (with as light a hand as possible) may be needed to establish property rights (in fisheries and other public resources) and to adjust pricing signals. There is a wealth of literature on this, as I have already noted. Unfortunately real-world difficulties, large and small, are not so simply defined away.
Immigration may solve some problems, particularly with respect to citizens of wealthy countries who can bargain for admission. In the case of poor, overpopulated countries you very correctly note that these countries’ corrupt and mismanaged governments are in fact the chief problem faced by their citizens in dealing adapting to climate change. Given the difficulties poor and relatively powerless citizens face in pushing for significant institutional change, perhaps a more engaged foreign policy by the industrialized nations may be more enlightened and productive than your “sink or swim� approach?
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: March 31, 2006 6:42 AM
Graeme Bird
"Graeme, I understand that you're not a climate scientist, but can I take it that your positin is that man's activities ARE changing the climate, thankfully so, and are willing to take the blast of heat and all the damage that it can do just to make sure we never have another ice age? Is that a fair summary of your position?"
I have a problem with this:
"...and all the damage that it can do just to make sure we never have another ice age?...."
Not JUST to make sure we never have another ice age. But that's important DON'TCHA THINK??????????????
And what damage do you speak of. The intellectually sloppy amongst us would talk of net rather then gross damage.
But in fact nothing could be more benign then CO2 based warming. Its like a blanket. It reduces the highs and lows and the virulence of extreme weather events.
Solar activity increase based warming is another story entire.
CO2 is plant food. And plants grow faster the more CO2 they have.
So what is this damage you are trying to sell here. Its a myth. You are only trying this on because you won't admit to yourself its all a myth. And even a fourteen year old science student can figure out that CO2 release ought to be considered a net benefit until proven guilty.
Now comes the running and hiding and before that I saw your relentless filibuster:
"I'm not running and I'm not hiding, but I think your tone here is way out of line and essentially telling me you don't want a discussion. In that case, I will oblige you, and respond to anyone else who chooses to explain my errors."
You are running and you are hiding and I expected it and the ridiculous assumption above is my proof.
As is this shitrain of words since I last booted up. Every last word running from the relevant question:
ARE YOU CLAIMING THAT YOU KNOW FOR SURE THAT HUMAN CO2 RELEASE WILL OVERMATCH THE NATURAL TENDENCY TOWARD GLACIATION.
Now all the rest of most climate change discussions are irrelevant policy-wise since they amount to a constant evasion of this most basic of issues.
Believe me no-one around here is going to buy into that lame excuse for running and hiding that you tried on. They are too smart for that. They will see it instantly.
"Graeme, I understand that you're not a climate scientist, but can I take it that your positin is that man's activities ARE changing the climate, thankfully so......"
THANFULLY SO.
You bet thankfully so. Its the best dumb luck the human race ever had. On our side of the fence our intellectuals often tell us that man is good. But still I don't know whether we deserved to stumble into such a lucky break.
Now if you were honest you would have by now tentatively admitted to me that the movement is quite likely a fraud.
But instead you have manufactured the most implausible of outs. So that you can now bury your evasion in words.
Published: March 31, 2006 8:04 AM
Keith
Quote from TokyoTom: "Acknowledging that the patient is already ill doesn’t mean we shouldn’t treat the patient."
Your previous statement was that its "already too late". Continuing to treat a patient that's already dead seems a little silly. Anyway, that's your position, not mine. I don't think its too late. I also think your treatment will only make the patient worse.
Quote from TokyoTom: "... fixing market failures improves the economy, ..."
Where are these market failures? Markets don't fail. And tell where these so called maket fixes have ever improved an economy for any sustained period of time? Government distortions of the market cause distorted outcomes and make it easy for socialists to say that the market has failed (e.g., education, welfare, minimum wage, etc.).
Quote from TokyoTom: "Because of the global commons aspects, coordinated international action is needed, but there is a lot that the US can do alone that would actually improve the US economy, and it is possible to take steps outside of Kyoto with respect to China and India that would be more meaningful than what we have embarked on to date."
This proves my point above (i.e., an excuse to intervene and "plan").
Quote from TokyoTom: "We can tell the environmentalists that they do not understand the institutional underpinnings of the problem or the appropriate cure, but responsibility lies in acknowledging that a number of problems exist that we should be working to cure."
The ideas I've heard you throw out to "cure" our "problems" are little more than nibbling at the edges. Incorporate GHG caps with trade agreements? Tax fuel consumption? Do you honestly think any country is going to significantly slow down its economic progress because of a rider on some trade agreement. Do you think people are going to stop heating their homes or transporting things (including themselves) because the tax on fuel is prohibitively high. Look at the public outrage when gasoline prices get up to $3 a gallon. You'll have to tax gas much more than that to get a real effect. How long will that tax last? Not past one election, I'd bet.
If you really want to "cure" these "problems", you need to attack the real cause: population. So unless you're willing to do something about that, you're not being serious.
But to reiterate my original position, I don't think the "patient" needs any "cure". You want to "cure" a "patient" that isn't sick, but simply changing. Change isn't sickness, its only change.
Published: March 31, 2006 8:14 AM
Graeme Bird
Get ye to a church Tokyo Tom. For it might be that ye harbours a secular religion of sorts. And not all of us are fit to be atheists.
To a church I sez Tom.
And don't be insulting any 20th Century heroes on the way.
Published: March 31, 2006 8:29 AM
Paul Edwards
Hi Tom,
I like to convince myself first that the truth differs substantially from whatever the consensus is in the community of the establishment, before speculating on why this should be so.
For instance, are you convinced, as i am, that the planet cooled in a dramatic fashion in and around the 1300's to such an extent as to have glaciers displace entire previously thriving communities. Are you convinced as i am that the cooling in the world's temperature at that time wiped out profitable grape and wine industries and other agriculture in southern England in that same period which is yet still to recover? Are you convinced, as i am that this cooling probably had a role to play in major world health problems that occurred subsequently?
Until you are, and believe, as i do, that these things are simple facts of history, and furthermore when you consider it "odd" that no one ever discusses them in the global warming debate, you will not be inclined, as i am, to suspect there is something foul at play behind this movement that is not meeting the eye.
Once at this stage though, one becomes ready to entertain explanations of why the establishment, the elite, the media, the politicians, and the most prominently parroted scientists all seem to speak in unison and with the same or similar arguments.
Global warming plays well into the argument for the need for a world government. And the very powerful are very convinced world government is necessary and that they could be even more effective if only they could control such an entity. These same fanatics scoff at the idea that aversion to lying to and misleading people on any particular issue should get in the way of advancing their wonderful agenda.
I once doubted that truth could be stranger than fiction. But i stuck around, and that changed.
Published: March 31, 2006 11:29 AM
tokyo-tom
Keith, I think that with your logic (?), we should do away with the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and all environmental and antimonoply laws altogether. Not merely that, but tolls on roads.
Let me quote you:
"If you really want to "cure" these "problems", you need to attack the real cause: population. So unless you're willing to do something about that, you're not being serious.
But to reiterate my original position, I don't think the "patient" needs any "cure". You want to "cure" a "patient" that isn't sick, but simply changing. Change isn't sickness, its only change."
Or have I misunderstood your position?
Cheers,
Tom
Published: April 1, 2006 9:44 AM
Tokyo-tom
Paul:
There are no collectivist conspiracies, but merely masses of venal people acting in their own selve interest. That`s why public choice theory so potently explains how government freauently goes wrong.
There may be folks who want a global government, but to some degreee don`t you see that modern society is the product of the voluntary expansion of government among nation-states? Why did we adopt the Constitution except in realization of the failures of economic warfare between the confederated states? Why is Europe integrating? What are the global trade treaties all about? They are all about establishing agreed rules - and burying destructive wars - that allow free marekts to flourish globally. If all problems could be solved by individual nations, there would be no treaties, international standards, etc. What are you hyperventilating about?
I think it`s painfully obivious that none of the individual countries want to lose their sovereignty to others or to a bunch of bureaucrats. But it`s trade that`s pushing globalization, not environmentalists that want to destroy trade, capitalism or individual freedom.
As I note in repsonse to Prof. Reisman on his nest post, I`m quite aware that climate can change quite rapidly and has in the past. What`s undeniable now is the unprecedented HUMAN forcing of CO2, methane and water vapor from industrialization. These have rapidly increased levels of greenhouse gases (far beyond natural fluctuations) and we are seeing rapid temperature increases as a result. This is unmistakable - go visit Alaska, or note the acceleration of growing seasons in N. America, or the fact that this is the first year on recorn\d that the Great Lakes didn`t freeze.
What`s happening in the physical world is not an illusion, nor a conspiracy by greens or industrialists (which is it anyway?) who are pining away for a global government. I certainly don`t want one, but I see the need for coordinated action to deal with a looming problem. This is just classic self-interest when I need to the cooperation of someone else to achieve a personal goal - and is why the US has signed any number of international treaties.
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: April 1, 2006 10:06 AM
Paul Edwards
Hi Tom,
I appreciate the dialog. I guess there are three things that we are either in disagreement on, or we haven't yet decided.
1. Did the earth experience a little ice age around the 1300's? I say yes, i'm not sure where you stand on this.
2. Is the earth cooler now than it was in the late 1100’s? I say yes, i'm not sure where you stand on this.
3. Did human activity play a significant role in the warm temperature of the earth in the 1100's, and the arrival of, or the subsequent departure of the little ice age of the 1300’s? I say no, i'm not sure where you stand on this.
Now from where i stand, the most important aspects of the global warming discussion (the above three points) have yet really to be discussed between you and i. I am interested to know if we see eye to eye on them or not. As you can imagine, if one such as myself, is convinced that human action neither induces, nor relieves ice ages, that such a person is not susceptible to the idea that changing human action can avert global warming or global cooling for that matter.
We are also far apart, in places, in how we interpret the motivations behind the small group of individuals running various nation states and the thinking of the masses who acquiesce to the manifestations of their leaders’ machinations. However, the question at hand is simply do my points 1, 2 and 3 mean anything to you. Do you disagree or agree with them?
Published: April 1, 2006 5:30 PM
Sione
TokyoTom
What nonsense you wrote! YOU FAIL to provide any proofs whatsoever. All you do is regurgitate a position statement over and over again. That is simply not good enough.
You are asserting that every individual's activities should be restricted and that they all be ruled according to a centralised collectivist system of regulation (economic regulations, tax codes, price controls, social policy etc. all part of a grand central plan set arbitrarily and enforced by threat and violence). To derive the necessity for that political system from an alleged problem (the uncertainty of climatic conditions) you were asked to supply a chain of proofs. You certainly did not get anywhere near fulfilling the requirements you were challenged with. All you demonstrated is that your premise is coercion. A poor effort from you and I'm not really surprised.
Let's go through your post.
First point. The length of a post does not prove or disprove the validity of the content. Why don't you restrict yourself to the matter at hand and stop playing the man? Stick to the topic and quit sly-dogging. It's dishonest.
Next. Quoting, "You'll have to supply your own proofs." This is so intellectually sparse I had to laugh. What you are expecting me to do is provide proof for YOUR assertions and lusts. Not good enough. The burden of proof falls directly and solely on you, as you are the one making the assertion that global warming requires coerced collectivisation of individual people. What you have been asked to do is follow a basic requirement of philosophic discourse. You'd do well to learn it and abide by it.
Next point. Appeals to authority ("plenty of economists and political economists..." etc. and all the "numerous links upthread...etc.") are not proofs. What they are is a form of social metaphysics which is exactly what I mentioned in a previous post. You are attempting to rely on the notion that if a number people agree with a contention (especially if they are famous or belong to a prestigious group of other prestigious people), then that in itself makes the contention correct. No TokyoTom, it does not. It just means that you have located some people who agree with each other. It is certainly not a proof.
Look, I could have found dozens of sites such as those you quoted should I have wanted. But that's not what I was after from you. I wanted proofs.
Do you understand what a proof actually is?
Next point. Avoid ad hominem, which is what most of the next section of your post appears to consist of. Nevertheless I would remind you that I am not a rationalist. Nor am I a "science denier" in the smearing sense you intend. I doubt there would be many on the VMI blog who are but VMI blog contributors can speak (or write) well enough for themselves so I'll leave to them to disclose their thoughts on the matter should they so wish.
Let's confirm I swiftly expel unsupported assertions, especially ones that conflict with reality or promote compulsory enforced behaviour. To show your ideas & assertions correspond with reality you MUST provide proof or fully expect them to be dismissed out of hand. You have been offered an excellent opportunity here. So far you are failing dismally as your responses to the requests for proofs demonstrate.
In brief:
1/. Perhaps the Earth is getting warmer. Perhaps not. You need consistent evidence. What if the climate is actually altering but overall the averages are constant? Are current climatic conditions part of a cycle? Do you really know? I reckon not.
How do you know whether the data you quote is correct? What assumptions were made during its collection, statistical manipulation, normalisation, renormalisation, collation, analysis, report and publication? What are the uncertainties and error bands? Are any artefacts present (that infamous "hockey stick" comes to mind)? What about the outliers? What is the significance of this? What is the context? Do you know? I reckon not.
2/. OK. You can recast the proof to include other gases should you wish. This makes the task more difficult for you. You are still required to show the increase in "level" is the CAUSE of your global warming. But what if the cause is solar or something else entirely? You remain silent. So far you have not even started to address this test.
3/. If, as you state, this is an easier proof to provide, then why not provide it? You talk a lot, yet you fail to front up with anything.
Is Man the major contributor? Provide proof.
4/. You have admitted that climate changes may or may not be necessarily bad and deleterious. That admission alone shuts your position down right there. You do not KNOW whether the climate changes which you fear may be occurring WILL NECESSARILY be bad and deleterious, yet you are fully prepared to apply force and coercion against individuals. That WILL be bad and deleterious especially those who do not agree with your ideals and want to live according to other choices.
The car analogy is irrelevant and makes no sense. This is not an emergency.
5/. No proof provided. Not even an honest attempt.
6/ & 7/. You certainly have not achieved much in the way of a proof here save demonstrating that you support and promote coercive collectivism. That is, initiations of force against other people. Clearly collectivism is your premise. I'd say you have proved that. It's not what I asked for though.
Let's be very clear on this. The "corrective measures" you write of with evident fondness represent coercion, force and ultimately violence initiated against other people. Now, how do you know that your great plan is going to work? How do you know it is any good? By what standard? WHY should ANY individual be forced to obey your orders and ideas? You remain silent on all this.
But a few lines further on we see your admission that you are not really sincere about improving people's wealth (let alone well being) as there "is a balancing with public negatives." Yes, I know exactly what you mean and where you are heading with that statement.
TokyoTom, the gaps in your chain of logic and your inability to seriously seek a single proof are most disturbing. Your promotion of coercive measures against other people's lives is unfortunately typical of collectivist thinking. In essence the premise is that people who would make decisions contrary to your values should be prevented from so doing. You seem to think you know better than other people how they should live their lives, what they should be forced to value and how they should behave. What conceit. You don't even know how to sort out your own position or even attempt a proof of its veracity and validity. I for one want nothing to do with the likes of this type of nonsense. It is a criminal enterprise you are promoting and one that should be resisted in determined manner.
Note. I am not one of your collective. I do not belong to your "we" or "us". You speak for yourself ONLY. Remember that next time you get the urging to start telling other people what to do. Leave them alone.
You failed utterly to make a case for yourself.
Sione
PS. Just because I know it annoys green fascists, today I decided to take the Merc for a drive into town; all twelve cylinders and twin turbo-chargers of it. I thought I should increase entropy a little & so I did; nearly three gallons worth. Life is good.
Published: April 1, 2006 5:54 PM
tokyo-tom
Paul, thanks for your further questions and observations; I’m happy to explain my limited view of reality further.
I am with you on points 1 and 2, and so of course are the climate scientists – take a look at this Wood’s Hole link that I provided to Professor Reisman at his request on my comment on his next post: http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/climatechange_wef.html. As for point 3, I already noted upthread to Graeme that it appears that the advent of human activity several thousands of years ago (CO2 first in removing forest cover, methane as rice cultivation was introduced) may have been responsible for forestalling a new glaciation period. I will gladly concede that the significant ramping up of CO2 and methane levels as part of industrialization was subsequent to the 1100s and 1300s, and so cannot be responsible for those climate shifts. But whether or not humans did not cause noticeable climate change in the past has no bearing on whether we are affecting climate now.
I am no scientist, but I understand that the climate system is tremendously complex, and is too big for me to get my head around, much less explain it to you. However, my understanding is that despite differences of opinion as to all of the factors affecting climate, scientists are very much of a consensus view that the marked and continuing pulse of GHGs from industrialization (with feedbacks from water vapor etc) are driving a warming trend that is overwhelming other cyclical factors. It is also clear that many of the changes will be negative and costly. Of course, you will make up your own mind on these issues. I would encourage you to follow the links I`ve provided above; another useful thread is here: http://timlambert.org/2005/04/gwsbingo/.
My larger point is that human induced climate change – assuming arguendo that it is occurring – is not different from other consequences of economic activity where markets and pricing mechanism do not work due to lack of appropriate property rights structures. This is why we have environmental problems, road congestion, overfishing, tropical deforestation, and undersupply of public goods. Professor Reisman`s preoccupation with Red or Green “collectivist� “thugs� is simply not helpful in diagnosing the problem or crafting solutions, if any are needed – solutions that I agree should allow maximum freedom to markets and minimize the effects of rent-seeking behavior and the growth of bureaucracy.
Have already conceded that many environmentalists don’t understand economics, and clamor excitedly for “solutions� that may be worse than the problem. Wise economists would try to see if there is a problem to which they could fruitfully apply their expertise, rather than missing that there may be problem in an excited rush to smack down economic Neanderthals.
Published: April 1, 2006 8:33 PM
tokyo-tom
Sione:
Your long-winded response, despite being full ad hominems, strawmen and conceit, is gratifying in the sense that it shows that you are struggling with yourself on how to deal with environmental problems that arise from market failure.
While we can argue for a long time about the facts on one issue or another, such as air and water pollution or climate change (sorry, it is NOT my job to convince you – I have limited time and prefer to persuade those softed-headed people who have not substituted ideology for reason), I wonder if we can at least agree on the paradigm through which pollution problems should be analyzed. As you know, what is referred to as pollution or environmental degradation today is really nothing more than the Tragedy of the Commons. These problems arise because of inappropriate property rights, control over access, informational problems (who did what) and difficulties with enforcement.
Do you agree that there are tragedy of the commons problems, and acknowledge that there is a legitimate role to be played by the state in resolving any property rights problems? Or are you essentially an anarchist, and would like to do away with government altogether? In which case, how would you suggest that common resources (and the vast holdings of government property) be allocated, and transactions relating to/violations of the resulting private property rights be enforced? Doesn`t a market require a (gasp!) collective agreement to have laws, policemen and courts?
I share your distrust of government mechanisms, as I have noted any number of occasions above. If any government action is merited in respect of environmental problems, the solutions should be those that are best at getting the market between private actors to work effectively, and minimize bureaucracy and rent-seeking by rule-makers and interest groups. We may honestly disagree whether climate change is one of those problems that merits governmental action, but I hope we share common ground on environmental problems generally.
Or have you adopted a rigid intellectual position? If I can paraphrase another commentator, beware that faith of any kind is not a short-cut to knowledge but leads to a short circuit of the mind. Are you letting an emotional attachment to an ideology obscure your search for truth? Think about it.
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: April 1, 2006 10:12 PM
Graeme Bird
"But whether or not humans did not cause noticeable climate change in the past has no bearing on whether we are affecting climate now."
But the human involvement is not the issue. Unless this is some warped facsimile of the doctrine of original sin.
There was almost no ice on the planet 40 million years ago. Then I think about 38 million years ago we had the land hitting the poles. I think that's right. So that's what sparked off the ice age and made the Malinkovitch cycles relevant to climate on earth.
Then three and a half million years ago or so, so I'm told, the final fusing of North and South America came with the Panama Isthmus squeezing up against the other land body (I must confess to not having a good mental picture going here and could have some detail wrong).
Anyway since then planet earth, for the most part, has been a pretty horrid place to live. We have had twenty-something glacial periods lasting about 60 000 to 100 000 years each. And interglacials lasting usually only 6000 to 10 000 years each. Except for ours and perhaps one other. Ours (the Holicene period) is dated at about 13,000 years already. But this is a bit arbitrary as no-one has decided at what ice level we say an interglacial begins and a glacial period ends.
OK so I'm being repetitive and long-winded. But lets look at your quote again:
"But whether or not humans did not cause noticeable climate change in the past has no bearing on whether we are affecting climate now."
But for three and a half million years WITHOUT human influence the planet has been a disaster area. So what is the problem with human influence? (at least in THIS context).
Its not minimizing human influence we want. Its good outcomes.
You have got to get away from this.......... HUMAN-INFLUENCE-NECESSARILY-BAD rap.
Published: April 1, 2006 10:36 PM
tokyo-tom
Graeme:
I`m perfectly aware that the Earth`s climate has been rather inclement in the past, to put it mildly. But we should give credit to the challenges and opportunities presented by the cycle of ice ages for our own emergence as modern humans.
I have no problem in principle with human influence on the Earth or its climate. I have specifically noted that I appreciate that our development of agriculture has apparently warded off the onslaught of another glacial period. There may be some "back to the past" types who think that "HUMAN-INFLUENCE-NECESSARILY-BAD", but that ain`t me - you have got to get away from that rap.
My problem is that it is clear that markets don`t always work perfectly and bilions of consumers as a result can in fact do great damage. These problems should be considered and addressed rationally (balancing the need versus the likely harm that regulatio itself is likely to cause), and not be chased away by shibboleths.
It seems you are not ready to take action on climate change; as I have not separately, this is a difference in judgment, not a disagreement on principles.
I think moderate tinkering is already justified in the US, purely on a national basis, even if we do not wish to coordinate with others. A tax set a consistent levels on imported fuels would present consumers with the real expenses of fuel consumption (at least in terms of energy security and "defense"), would call out new energy sources and would improve rather than damage the US economy, and much more efficiently than a welter of inconsistent, pork-barrel government spending on favored special interests.
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: April 1, 2006 11:43 PM
Graeme Bird
You acknowledge everything and integrate nothing. One notices this with Keynes when one re-reads the General theory. He points out some weaknesses with Gesel and then goes on right ahead and committs the same errors.
In some circles acknowledging a reality means you can thereafter safely disregard these acknowledged realities. But in other circles this is the opposite of how one should work. Which is the correct epistemology in your view?
"My problem is that it is clear that markets don`t always work perfectly and bilions of consumers as a result can in fact do great damage."
But we are talking about CO2. Why is it clear that in THIS case there is a problem?
If markets don't work then we would seek social innovation to correct this absent of extreme time pressure. But look I don't want to get into that.
The problem is why do you want action HERE. When the raw facts as we know them lead us to the conclusion that, at a best guess, CO2 release is a good thing.
Focus.
Published: April 2, 2006 12:11 AM
Paul Edwards
Tom,
“I will gladly concede that the significant ramping up of CO2 and methane levels as part of industrialization was subsequent to the 1100s and 1300s, and so cannot be responsible for those climate shifts.�
So we are with each other on points 1, 2 and 3. This is a big deal in my opinion.
“But whether or not humans did not cause noticeable climate change in the past has no bearing on whether we are affecting climate now.�
That is a hasty conclusion, in my opinion, and it depends on what weight one gives to the physicist’s explanation for these previous climate changes and what factors they indicate are the most significant influences on world temperature changes. The forces that cause them are understood much better than the mainstream media would have us believe or ever aludes to. As you suspect it isn’t human activity; the little ice age we are talking about was put into motion by a super nova event which resulted in the cooling of the earth. What the earth is doing presently is simply coming out of that ice age.
Published: April 2, 2006 4:36 AM
tokyo-tom
Graeme:
I am pleased that we seem to agree on principles, which is that there are cases of market failure that justify collective action. Many of the howling mob of environmentalists can`t understand or verbalize this, but economists can, and finding market-friend solutions to such problems may be justified when then benfits exceed the costs of the cure. This is not "collectivism" and Professor Reisman speaks with too much passion and haste in dismissing environmental problems merely because those loudly proclaiming them don`t understand property rights and market failures.
This is my chief point.
As to the facts, we will have to keep on arguing. I am very worried about what scientists are saying, and I have a little more trust in their abilities - the marvelous technological society in which we live is a testament to the reliability of a scientific understanding of the world. You don`t agree with the current, hard-earned mainstream view; that is your privilege. However, I think it is undeniable that mankind - as an aggregation of individual economic actors acting in their own self-interests - is debasing global commons due to inadequacies in our property rights systems. I think it make sense to fix a number of these problems, in a way that makes markets work better.
In the case of climate change, scientists are saying that anthropogenic GHG forcing is swamping all other cyclical influences. This concerns me.
Sincerely,
Tom
Published: April 2, 2006 7:01 AM
Graeme Bird
"I am pleased that we seem to agree on principles, which is that there are cases of market failure that justify collective action."
Under time pressure. In the context of reducing governmental depredation overall. When the case is overwhelming that an utilitarian disaster looms.......perhaps.
"... This is not "collectivism" and Professor Reisman speaks with too much passion and haste in dismissing environmental problems merely because those loudly proclaiming them don`t understand property rights and market failures."
I have a problem with the word 'merely' here. He's got his act together. What are we supposed to think? There are collectivists. And there are those who are getting towed along in their tsunami. Or so it seems.
"As to the facts, we will have to keep on arguing."
Why? Where do we disagree on the facts? What about your interim assessment? I don't get it. Its not the facts. The facts say one thing. You choose to be swept the other way as to the conclusion. Or the tentative conclusion.
" I am very worried about what scientists are saying, and I have a little more trust in their abilities"
Abilities? How about their reasoning skills outside their narrow specialities. Why do you trust them? If they were worthy of that trust you would have the killer factoid that would turn everything 180 degrees around right now.
"- the marvelous technological society in which we live is a testament to the reliability of a scientific understanding of the world."
I think so too. I have a scientific understanding of the world. You and these lunatics campaigning against better crop yields in the Ukraine don't seem to.
But in any case the technological explosion is not much of a testament as to the objectivity of scientists when politics intrude. You might think so. You might think there is something implied here. But that isn't the case as we have seen. Its no different on any other forum. The case never comes up. They never do make the case. They dance around and use a number of dodges.
" You don`t agree with the current, hard-earned mainstream view; that is your privilege."
Hard-earned? Now you are just being silly. It appears mindless to me. In this case its TOTALLY MINDLESS. As we have seen to the nth degree. There is just nothing there. Thousands of words and there isn't a damn thing there.
I look at the facts stripped of opinions. Everyone can have opinions. Are you abusing the priveledge as Trotsky might have said.
"However, I think it is undeniable that mankind - as an aggregation of individual economic actors acting in their own self-interests - is debasing global commons due to inadequacies in our property rights systems."
But not with CO2. And THAT is the issue at hand.
"I think it make sense to fix a number of these problems, in a way that makes markets work better."
What is the problem?
"In the case of climate change, scientists are saying that anthropogenic GHG forcing is swamping all other cyclical influences. This concerns me."
All others?
I......DON'T......THINKSO!!!!
I do not think they are saying that at all. But why does this imaginary 'fact' CONCERN you. It should make you very happy.
I must be polite. Have you read that masterful little novel. The one called TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE.
Give me an interim verdict. Are you claiming that CO2 release should be restricted? Why? All this time and you have not made the case.
Published: April 2, 2006 8:03 AM
tokyo-tom
Paul, it should not be a surprise to you that I agree with you on points 1, 2 and 3; climate change scientists will certainly acknowledge them, even while lay people may be unaware.
That`s what underscores their present concern - despite past cycles, and the realization that the other cyclical factors had been pointing to a cooling, we are now rapidly warming, based on GHGs. I`m might not be able to convinve you, but the only "conspiracies" I see are stupidity by enrironmentalists as to the economics of externalities, and some knee-jerk reactions on the right to refuse to believe that there may be a problem worth trying to solve. In other words, no surpise - ideology is the common "blinding" factor.
On this blog, I hope at least we can reach some consensus as to the economics of environmental problems, if not the science.
Regards,
Tom
Published: April 2, 2006 10:18 AM
Graeme Bird
You are just being stubborn about the science. Its not how you claim it.
Are you claiming that the scientists know for sure that CO2 based warming will definitely overmatch the natural tendency towards glaciation. That is the relevant policy question. And in fact any serious scientist would likely tell you that it might not.
Harm De Blij thinks it WILL not. Gaia fanatic Lovelock thinks the planet has just got a fever and will shrug it off (he seems happy about this, callous fellow) or at least he said that at one time. No ones claiming that we even have much of a chance of shrugging it off. They 'will not stay for an answer' like jesting Pilate. Or they somehow think we should fight global warming and then stoically accept our fate with the White Death.
I heard Milt Rosenberg say that his brother reckons that Chicago will be deep under ice within 2000 years.
Stop pretending the science says something it does not. It is worse then that and in fact it must be very close to what the Professor says.
That people can be callous about the planet freezing over and advocate courses of action that might risk this shows a willingness to tolerate more deaths then the communists ever planned for. What else can it be but the old evil collectivism coming back with a new disguise?
You think its something else? Well show it then. Show where the science points the other way.
We have what is called the latent heat of freezing and the latent heat of evaporation. So when water goes to ice it lets off a lot of heat even though the surrounding water and the ice may both be pretty close to 0 degrees Celsius.
And likewise to melt it. To take it as ice close to 0 degrees and then turn it to water close to 0 degrees there is a massive latent energy barrier to overcome.
So what we have in all this ice is something akin to a BANKING SYSTEM OF COLDNESS to be paradoxical about it.
If we allow ourselves to get iced over any time in the next 10 000 years then it will take a further 60 000 years (ie it will be 70 000 years) before all the Malinkovitch conditions are ripe for the planet to thaw out on its own.
But the latent heat of melting and the latent heat of evaporation means that the melting that the wonderful CO2 plant food magic gas (thank you industrialists) is doing now is in no way wasted.
As evidence consider that while the planet was pretty much iced over 70 000 years ago and the human race seems to have dwindled down to the thousands we did not hit the ice maxima until just before the big melt 18000 years ago.
So in the interim the ice oscillates back and forth. So if we could have magically melted the ice by 70 000 years ago we likely wouldn't have had much in the way of catastrophic glaciation in the interim.
And likewise if capitalism does this for us and we get through the next 10 000 years we should be home free.
There is a limit to this BANK OF COLD model. The ice isn't ever going to get near the equator. And if it was all melted and the oceans warmed one would expect the amount of heat radiated off to increase. So such a model can only go so far and be relevant to some degree.
But it ought to be good enough to say that if one is coming up to the danger time period then its helpful to get all the ice melted off in advance.
Published: April 2, 2006 1:12 PM
Sione Vatu
Tom
All I have asked you for are some proofs. As it is you who have made certain assertions of the positive, it is important for you to provide the supporting proofs. Yet you consistently fail to show anything along the lines of a proof. Now you are evading the requirement.
Before you proceed any further let's see your proofs.
It's a simple enough request. Surely.
Sione
Published: April 2, 2006 4:02 PM
Tokyo-tom
Sione:
Go ahead and dismiss me, Sione - you're an anarchist and have your mind set in stone. You don't want to be persuaded, as I noted before.
Why do you dodge my last email, which is designed to see if we share any common understanding of microeconomics of environmental problems?
You insist on proofs of climate change, but simply as a way to avoid a rational discussion. I am not a climate change scientist, as you know, and this is not a scientist blog - you could as easily ask me to prove that mad cow disease is caused by - take your pick - bacteria, viruses or prions, or that moern life forms EVOLVED from pervious ones, and I could spend the rest of my life trying to explain it to you and you would still not be satisfied with any "proof". The proof by the way, is not in arguments, but in the real world. Good and look at the Arctic and tell me it's not melting.
Rahter than debating the facts, to which I needs must defer to scientist and second-hand reports, I had presumed it would be more fruitful here, on an economists' blog, to discuss - surprise -economics! But very strangely, neither you nor Professor Reisman want to discuss the economics of market failure (environmental and natural resource problems). Why is that? Why can't we disagree on facts but still discuss economics? I can only conclude that for the both of you ideology is getting in your way.
Let's put climate change aside and talk about economics in the case of air pollution laws. Is there no problem here except as created by the government? Are we better off doing away with our "collectivist" air pollution laws completely? Or is there a market failure problem that the government can address - either inefficiently and ahm-handedly by insisting on best technology, scrubbers and the like, or more efficiently by creating propoerty rights (tradable emission permits) and letting the market work out least-cost compliance?
If you are unwilling to discuss the economics, then please explain why you post here - I must fail to understand something fundamental about this blog.
Hopefully, Tom
Published: April 2, 2006 8:44 PM
Tokyo-tom
Graeme:
On the issues of science, your views are interesting, but as I've noted before, we are not able between us to resolve this factual and scientific issue. I agree that we've come through some very tight population bottlenecks in the past, but we are much better equipped today with technology and capitalism to deal with both cooling and heating - Professor Reisman is surely correct in that.
My personal view is that we're mucking up the global commons because of market failures - you disagree about GHGs, but I imagine you agree about other air, land and water problems - and that in principle we are quite justified in turning to government to craft appropriate, "market-enabling" solutions. That does not make me, you, environmental economists and others who want to find solutions "collectivists".
Professor Reisman may be correct about the science - fortuitously, not because he has any superior scientific knowledge or understanding - but he is clearly wrong about the economics.
Regards,
Tom
Published: April 2, 2006 8:56 PM
Graeme Bird
Forget proofs Tom. Evidence would be nice. And its evidence that CO2 release will overmatch glaciation that we are after. Lets not change the subject.
How do you like this for an essay title?:
CO2. LORD OF CREATION.
Published: April 2, 2006 9:01 PM
Graeme Bird
Its not relevant that you disagree. What is relevant is WHY you disagree. Whereas many scientists might support your position science itself does not. Or else you would have been able to muster the evidence.
Published: April 2, 2006 9:21 PM
Sione Vatu
Tom
Stop being so dishonest. I asked you for several proofs, as I recall. You are not going to twist out of your responsibility. Go read what I actually asked you to provide. Where are your proofs?
To argue with you in the absence of grounding the debate in reality may be fun but it would be pointless and in the end futile. Nothing could be achieved. It would be analogous to arguing about the economic system operated by the fairies at the bottom of the garden. Unless such fairies can be shown to exist and that the principles to be applied to them are valid, then such arguments are mere abstractions without the necessary element of reality. Nothing of validity could be concluded OR APPLIED.
The reason I requested the necessary proofs is to examine your chain of logic and to see whether your ideas were anchored in reality. I wanted to see how you identified a potential problem or issue. I also wanted to see how you got from there to coercive collectivisation of all individuals (indeed an economic and political matter) as a necessary outcome (the "solution" to your problem).
I note that you enjoy prosecuting endless on-going arguments against other people. I'm not so interested in debating, rather getting at the underlying truth of the matter at hand. I'm interested in establishing whether there is ANY valid element to your approach, not arguing floating abstraction.
Prior to debating economics or anything else it is necessary for you to show proof of your contentions. And as YOU are the one asserting the positive, the burden indeed falls on you to show your proofs.
Sione
Published: April 7, 2006 1:24 PM
Lee
Oh, my good heavens!
"According to individualism, only individuals exist; collectives consist of nothing but individuals. Only the individual thinks; only the individual acts; only the life of the individual has value and is important. All rights are rights of individuals."
"Nor is it the product of any such actual entity as “the human race.� There is no such actual entity. At the very most, global warming is a cumulative, unintended byproduct of human behavior for which no one is responsible."
"Even the prospective destruction of much of Holland, if it could not be averted by the construction of greater sea walls, could be dealt with by the very simple means of the United States and Canada joining with the European Union in extending the freedom of immigration to Dutch citizens. "
-----
Uhh... but you just claimed that collective entities dont exist. Therefore, the United States and Canada do not exist; they are collective entities and there are no collective entities. Therefore, being devoid of existence, they cannot act. Therefore, your statement is meaningless on your own terms.
Not to mention the absurdity in the "if no one else did it, it wouldnt be a problem, therefore it isnt a problem if everyone does it" line of reasoning. If I give Reisman a milligram of arsenic, it isnt a problem, therefore if 10,000 of us get together and all give him a milligram of arsenic, and he dies, it isnt murder by Reisman's own logic. In fact, none of us is responsible; my actions didnt kill Reisman, nor did the action fo any of the 10,000 who conspired to kill him; only the collective action killed him, and collectives cant be responsible, so none of us is responsible.
And his continued implicit insistence that if we expect people to take responsibiility for the consequences of our actions, or to cease actins that harm others (including me) then we are punishing them. Aparently, taking responsibility is punishment, pointing out that actins have harmful consequences is the infliction of punishment, and if I expects others to cease actins that create harm to me or my family, I am engaging in evil by inflicted unearned punishment.
And don't even get me started on the multiple straw men in this alleged argument, including the one that forms the opening illustration. It is entirely possible to hold an individual rsponsible for his actions, and to punish the murderer, while simultaneously holding a collective entity such as the nation (yes, the United States does exist, as does my home state and city) responsible for failing to address conditions that lead to too many people making those kind of evil choices. These are not mutually exclusive actions.
I got over Randism when I started to learn to think, well before my 18th birthday. It was muddle-headed arguments like the one in this article that first taught me to recognize muddle-headed arguments; for that do have to thank Ayn.
Published: April 10, 2006 4:09 PM
Marcus
1/. Prove the Earth's climate is getting warmer.
Look at CCSP product 1 for the latest synthesis of this kind of work ("detection"). The last 4 decades of warming are accepted by the general scientific community.
2/. Prove that it is an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere that is solely the cause of the warming (there are at least three things to show in this step)
First: CH4, N2O, black carbon, and other anthropogenic emissions also contribute to warming in addition to CO2. We can measure radiative forcing (watts/meter^2) from changes in atmospheric gas concentrations in the last 40 years, and compare that to radiative forcing from the sun. Furthermore, we can "fingerprint" the warming pattern and show that areas of cooling and warming generally match what we expect. And we can examine short term events like the Pinatubo eruption and show that the temperature changes resulting from that can be explained by the same science. This isn't perfect - the earth is a complex system - but the evidence is compelling. This is known as "attribution" in the field (as versus "detection from point 1)
3/. Prove that the activities of Man are the sole cause of the increase in CO2 levels and that in his absence there would not be an elevation of CO2 levels (two steps)
The fact that you even require a proof of this shows that you know nothing about this area of science. This is a slam-dunk case. See this blog for a quick summary. Highlight: we emit 6+ gigatons of carbon each year. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere increases by 2-4 gigatons per year (oceans and ecosystem take up the remainder). This plus isotope analysis shows that we are responsible.
4/. Prove that the results of the warming climate are necessarily bad and deleterious (very large task) (I'm combining this with point 5)
5/. Prove that a serious situation is developing which would lead necessarily to great harm to people
This is complicated. If you read Nordhaus et al., he posits that small temperature increases will result in net benefits for several regions. The problem arises from the fact that we've built up a lot of infrastructure around the current climate (plus minus a degree or two). If we see 3+ degrees celsius warming in the next century (50% chance according to models) there will be a lot of large weather changes. Plus sea level rise. And much of humanity lives close to shores.
So even in places that might benefit under a new climatic equilibria in the long term (eg, Siberia) in the short term life will suck because all their buildings and railroads are built on permafrost which will melt and require rebuilding everything. Similarly, a couple degrees warming in New England isn't inherently bad, but it will cause the maple tree zone to move north, killing the maple sugar industry in the region.
And there are a lot of natural ecosystems that won't be able to adapt, unlike humanity. I would not be surprised if we lost most coral reefs, alpine ecosystems, and tundra ecosystems in my lifetime, and that would be sad.
So basically, if we can spread the warming out over a long enough period of time, then, sure, no problem. But if we are getting all this warming in a century or two - that will suck. And we are talking about a level of warming equivalent to the last ice age to interglacial transition. That's not small change.
6/. Prove that collective action must be taken (this is a big task akin to proving that communism is necessary and good for Man- important to understand the magnitude of what is required to accomplish this).
Two key concepts: "Tragedy of the Commons" "Free rider". If there is a global warming problem, you are unlikely going to solve it through many individuals acting individually, because the incentive structure isn't there. If (as in the Coase theorem) you could allocate property rights to the atmosphere (and allow future generations to purchase in), then you would see the right incentives. Alternatively a GHG tax could give the right incentives. Or any one of a number of other approaches. But you aren't going to solve global warming by waiting around waiting for individual solutions any more than you could have solved Hitler's invasion of Europe by sitting around and waiting for non-organized, non-collective action to happen.
7/. Prove that it is YOUR great plan that should be followed. There are many, many steps to prove that ANY solution you propose is sound. Individuals may still reject it. They may choose someone else's approach (like mine for instance). You still need to justify forcing people to do as you order.
There are plenty of ways to solve the problem, there is no one right way. In fact, we probably have to use several approaches (carbon taxes plus energy research subsidies plus education plus...). But again: free rider problems mean you can't just sit around hoping everyone will suddenly decide to do "the right thing". If I choose not to graze my cow on the commons because I want to save it, that won't help me because my neighbor will just graze one more of his cows. We need a collective agreement of some sort to fix the problem (whether it is allocating the commons as property or setting up a government agency or whatever your preferred solution is).
ps. Graeme Bird: You mentioned the Milankovitch cycles in one of your posts. Do you realize that the change in forcing from the gases that we've released is already comparable to what we expect from the trough to the peak of a Milankovitch cycle? This is why climate scientists are no longer worried about ice ages. Not that (going by the cycles) we'd need to worry for several thousand years even without human influence.
Published: April 10, 2006 4:33 PM
quincunx
"Two key concepts: "Tragedy of the Commons" "Free rider". If there is a global warming problem, you are unlikely going to solve it through many individuals acting individually, because the incentive structure isn't there. If (as in the Coase theorem) you could allocate property rights to the atmosphere (and allow future generations to purchase in), then you would see the right incentives. Alternatively a GHG tax could give the right incentives. Or any one of a number of other approaches. But you aren't going to solve global warming by waiting around waiting for individual solutions any more than you could have solved Hitler's invasion of Europe by sitting around and waiting for non-organized, non-collective action to happen."
So instead of removing the barriers to get property rights further defined (a la 1830's style) - you want to continue using "collective action" to further destroy the property rights we do have? That's brilliant.
It seems you understand the solution - but why go down the path that is further away from it? The more time spent on the wrong path the harder it will be to get back to right one.
Published: April 10, 2006 6:41 PM
Lee
I simply dont understand or buy this insistence that property rights will fix everything.
If I own every last tree on Easter Island, for example, it may be in my best interest to manage them responsibly to pass them on to my children. Or it may, just as reasonably, be in MY personal best interest (me being the property owner) to cut down every last tree, and use the resulting flush of income to buy up the only two inshore fishing access sites, since no one will now be able to build boats to fish at sea and those sites will become much more valuable, and I'll be quite rich and powerful.. but the society overall wil be dangerously impoverished, and even endangered.
If I own the fishing rights to North Atlantic Tuna, again, it may perfectly reasonably be in my personal best interest to fish them to extinction in 5 years, to create a huge income stream for other purposes. And with strong property rights in place, there is NOTHING to stop me from doing that.
This entire strong-property-rights are the best protection libertarian argument seems to me to be faith based and awfully damned short on logic, at best.
Published: April 10, 2006 8:15 PM
Sione
An honest attempt but not proof. For example if we turn to the scientific literature (try articles in Science such as this "Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antartic temperature changes across Termination III", Science 299: 1728- 1731 [2003] for one and there are many, many, many more) we see that scientists are completely uncertain about whether the climate is being affected by Man or not, let alone whether Man's contribution to the atmosphere, such that it is, is significant enough to cause a measurable alteration in climate.
Then there is the Oregon Petition which attracted 18,000 scientists as signatories. They stated that there was not sufficient evidence to show proof of causal link between Man's activbities and the bogey of climate change. The so-called "scientific consensus" is a gross misrepresentation (oh, all-right, a dirty low-down lie then). Most important is that we can rapidly conclude the proofs for which I asked are not available.
More information that casts doubt on the Man's doin' it assertion; the Maunder Minimum (1645- 1715) occurred when sunspot activity was almost non-existant, certainly not the case these days! So is there a true causal link between climate change and the activities of Man? Certainly it is noted that Man's contribution to CO2 runs at about 3.5% of the total emission (as an aside I read that about a seventh of this is thought to come from automobiles while on a per capital basis public transport contributes 60% more than do private cars). Is that significant enough to cause the climate to alter? More important, is it a direct cause? No proof yet provided.
What is disturbing is how effortlessly and without any serious though whatsoever certain commentators travel from the bald assertion of a problem to dire warnings that coercive collectivisation is a real necessity for all individuals. This is about on a par with a mad sect (obey me and follow me with all your worldly goods or you will burn in hell). Appealing to some but not proof. An example of thoughtless unreason.
Let's take a look at an interesting quote which is by no means unusual. Chris Folland of the UK Meterological Office says, "The data doesn't matter. We're not basing our recommendations upon the data. We're basing them on the climate models." Incredible! And there are plenty just like him. On the basis of a computer game people are expected to accept coercive collectivisation? And if they say no, then that's too bad, they'll be forced. People like Chris (and TokyoTom) will justify it.
Those seven proofs I requested form a chain of logic that it is absolutely necessary to establish if anyone is ever, ever to be able to validate a planned coercive collectivisation of individual people. The most important proof (and the most difficult to establish) is item number six. So far no-one has even got close to establishing the first proof let alone that one. Heck, no-one can even show that climate change is going to necessarily be harmful anyhow. How bad is that!
Well, I appreciate all the effort but, really, you guys would be far better off doing something productive (or to be consistent, you should stop using anything which may have contributed to adding CO2 to the atmosphere). I'll respect that. After all there would be two features of such an action.
1/. It would be voluntary.
2/. You'd be doing it with your own property and person and not someone elses.
"By your example you shall be known."
Talofa!
Sione
Published: April 11, 2006 2:06 AM
silburnl
quincunx said:
"So instead of removing the barriers to get property rights further defined (a la 1830's style) - you want to continue using "collective action" to further destroy the property rights we do have? That's brilliant."
In response to a posting by Marcus which advocated no such thing. Indeed Marcus explicitly mentioned extending property rights to the atmosphere as one tool that could be mobilised to address the issue of externalities in this area.
Regards
Luke
Published: April 11, 2006 7:47 AM
silburnl
Paul Edwards wrote:
"1. Did the earth experience a little ice age around the 1300's? I say yes, i'm not sure where you stand on this.
2. Is the earth cooler now than it was in the late 1100’s? I say yes, i'm not sure where you stand on this."
On the first point I think Paul is being a bit aggressive with his dates. Some people mark the start of the little ice age as sometime in the C14th, but more generally accepted bounderies are the C16th through C19th.
On the second point the data is patchy. FWIW the data we do have points to the current global average temperature being significantly higher than anything we can reconstruct for the last 1000-2000 years (how far you go back depends on what size of error bars you are happy with).
Both points are talking to the transition from the Medieval Climate Optimum to the Little Ice Age. It should be noted that although they were originally thought to be global phenomena, as more data from outside Europe and the North Atlantic basin have become available it is now thought that they are regional in scope. By contrast the current warming anomaly is (i) global and (ii) larger than the MCO. Given this, I would respectfully disagree with Paul on both points.
For a brief discussion of this and a short bibliography I refer you to the NOAA:
Regards
Luke
Published: April 11, 2006 9:13 AM
Paul Edwards
Hi Luke,
Fortunately, people documented crop yields and prices prior to the little ice age. This is why we know so much about the impact of and the fact of the little ice age. It is a known historical documented fact that, for instance, there was a thriving grape and wine industry in southern England prior to that cooling of the earth that no longer exists. And they are presently discovering 14th century relics of civilization that has been buried under ice in Greenland for the last few centuries.
What is also important is that the physicists understand with a good deal of certainty what caused that cooling, and it wasn't decreases in CO2 production suffice it to say.
The best science very convincingly indicates that the factors that influence substantial global temperature swings are well out of human hands. Therefore, it's best that we hamper the market with spurious regulations as little as possible so that technology advances quickly and we are therefore best equipped to deal with the next major weather change, whatever they are.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:29 AM
Lee
Paul you either missed or ignored his most salient point.
As we collect global datawe are getting more and more evidence that the little ice age was regional, not global. Luke made thsi point explicitly. Yet, in yro response, you explicitly refer to it as a global pehnomenon ("that cooling fo the earth").
Also, no one dispute that there are non-anthropogenic mechanisms that cause global temperature variations. What is at issue is whether there is ALSO anthropogenic mechanisms,a nd what their contribution will be -in addition to- natural variation.
Published: April 11, 2006 11:58 AM
Paul Edwards
Hi Lee,
I admit i sort of ignored it, but i did notice it. I just think when entire northern communities are overrun by glaciers, and entire forms of agriculture are wiped out, that it is not very convincing, or perhaps not meaningful to argue that it was just a little regional thing.
Ice didn't overtake populations closer to the equator because when the earth cools a degree or two, the communities closest to the ice already present will be impacted the most dramatically.
I think some people are perhaps attempting to understate the significance of the little ice age, given that it obviously was not caused by human activity. The fact is it was devastating to northern communities on a colossal scale. The more i think about it, the more i would prefer a little warmer earth than a cooler one.
Published: April 11, 2006 12:59 PM
tz
Let me give an example of a commons problem. I don't know if Global Warming is or is not (I've seen no conclusive evidence, but a lot of fearful and paniced people who worry about potentials).
Before doing so, I should not that most government scientists tend to be Keynesian and are causing an economic and monetary train-wreck. Just because most economists vote that keynesianism or monetarism is right (and just economists, not sociologists or psychologists) does not make it so. The Austrians are right and will take pains to prove themselves. The climatologists should do the same, but only those who say there is no certainty in global warming are doing so.
Assume you and 99 other people live far downstream from an old dam that that will collapse soon. Basically in two years, unless a 100 year drought intervenes, i.e this years rains will stress it, and next years (normal) rains will collapse it. It would be too expensive to rehabilitate.
You need to build a local dam or levee, and everyone will be fine. If you do not build the levee all 100 properties will be flooded.
10 properties lie along the bank. It doesn't matter if the people in the center of town would accept the levee, all 10 owners along the bank must agree unanimously to have it built across their land, everyone will be inundated.
One of the owners has a long strip he uses for hunting (no expensive permanent structure) and does not want the levee as it will damage his use, and it won't be reclaimable (too many old trees will be uprooted and he won't live to see them grown back). Does he have a veto?
(In other posts I've posited irrational or actually evil owners who obstruct a good project, in this case I'm positing a person for whom action to preserve the 99 is rationally against the interest of the one - the keystone who must bear all the weight - I also use a levee instead of a road because someone actually tried to argue geometry - you can reroute some roads, but water flows according to physical, not traffic laws).
Many in town can't afford the levee but could afford a bond on their property which would be paid when it was sold or some other form of indirect "tax" or assessment. You cannot checkerboard the flood to only those who didn't pay, so it is assess all or none.
So you require collective action, and some of it will discriminate against some specific persons (Whom you can compensate, or apply a lein, but not simply leave alone).
With "Global Warming", some are saying the dam is stable, some are saying it will collapse next year, but no one can say for certain which side is right. That makes such things more complicated as you can't begin to resolve the conflicts of rights before you are sure you really need to do so (and note I consider state action as an evil, but when such evil is both unintended and necessary I allow for it).
The action required to preserve property from a collapse of the upstream dam is likely to require compensated theft and other acts of force which would require doing a lot of evil acts. We should be very sure the dam will collapse before doing so.
Those who believe the flood will happen soon have a duty to prove it, not just conjure fearful images and shout we must act before it is too late. Evidence can be gathered. Convincing a reverend with no engineering knowledge to preach on Noah is not evidence.
Bush is probably repressing positive evidence, but does anyone - even on the other side - doubt Gore would suppress negative evidence? The problem with big government is it contaminates everything with politics. Truth can not be found there, only spin. Environmentalism is merely used to buy votes. Yet what is needed is the truth.
Did Y2K disasters happen? Why were so few saying the NASDAQ was too high at 5000? Why wasn't 9/11 prevented? - is GW an illusion or real - I don't know but won't find the answer in DC or on CableTV.
Or we can simply wait for the maybe flood - those with little invested in the property will be less hurt - the shacks washed away will be easily replaced, the palatial homes will also be washed away, but not as easily rebuilt.
Published: April 11, 2006 2:16 PM
Lee
Paul, my point was a bit different from that.
There are two arguments that constantly get intertwined.
1. Is the planet warming, and are huamns making it warm. People point to the little ice age, and the warmer period before it (which, BTW, is prettly clearly now not warmer than present regional temps) to say that the only reason we see warming now is that we are returning to natural warmer temps. For this argument,it is critically important to know if the Little Ice Age was global or regional. If it was regional (which it seems to have been) and what we see now is global (which it clearly is), then this particular argument falls apart. Thsi is the pointis was tryign to make.
2. The second and distinct issue is, will warming be bad for us. Note that this is an entirely different argument from the first, and using the Little Ice Age as an example for this is logically distinct from how it can be used for the first argument. Yes, regional cooling is bad in some ways for northern areas, and yes, the Little Ice Age is an example of this.
The logical flaw here, is that those making this argument look at only one side of the potential range of effects. Regional cooling would be bad in most ways for Europe (if it happened) and warming might be good for some parts of European agriculture and infrastructure. Not all parts, though, there will still be winners and losers, a nd massive dislocations. Remembver, too, tath climate shift also shifts rainfall aptterns, and better temsp with worse water is not an improvement. One can not make single-point arguments about this issue, based only on the direct effects of temps and pretending everythign else will remain unchanged.
Also, try to convince anyone living in the lowlands of the Indian plains, in the island natins of the pacific, on the gulf coast and low counties of the US southeast, or farming the California delta, that a 2C increase in temp is going to be ok because there are possible benefits to european agriculture adnti might insulate us agaisnt potential costs of a [otential slight cooling. Remember (using my most familiar local geography as an example), Scramento and Stockton are deep water ocean ports, and a 3 foot rise in sea level moves the ocean inland 100 miles to the borders of those cities, and loses the entire delta, which is the most productive farmland on earth. Yes, agriculture can move to other lands.. but this productive farmland can't move.
Arguing that warming is better than not, or that accepting warming is ok because potential slight cooling (and only slight) is bad, without a serious attempt to examine the entire range of potential consequences good, bad, and indifferent, is simply a failure to address the issue.
Published: April 11, 2006 2:39 PM
Yancey Ward
Paul,
I have noted that, in the last decade of climatology debate, there has been a systematic attempt to remove/deny the estimated temperature records of the last 10000 years. You very rarely read an article from a global warming alarmist that ever mentions things like the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, or the Holocene Optimum.
Link
Published: April 11, 2006 2:45 PM
Lee
Yancey,
Perhaps you should be reading the scientists, rather than the press.
Accounting for natural variation such as what you mention, vs anthropogenic variation, is precisely what they are doing. There have been publications in recent months on attempting to more accurately asess the temps of those periods, and climatologista are interested in them BECAUSE they help to illuminate natural forcings that lead to climate variations, and to illuminate boundaries for those forcings and effects.
This is hardly 'attempting to remove/deny them.'
Published: April 11, 2006 2:52 PM
Yancey Ward
Lee, I do read a lot of the science, and some of the scientists do try to deny them by omission. It may very well be the case that humans are warming the planet with the release of carbon into the atmosphere, but the success of the alarmism seems to require convincing people that the climate of the planet is otherwise stable without human beings' addition to the atmosphere of carbon dioxide. This stability of climate is a fantasy. Even if humans completely stop the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, the climate will change and we will still have to adapt with it, as we have for our entire history.
Published: April 11, 2006 3:01 PM
Paul Edwards
Hi Lee,
“Is the planet warming, and are huamns making it warm. People point to the little ice age, and the warmer period before it (which, BTW, is prettly clearly now not warmer than present regional temps)…�
I have never heard the mention of the little ice age in the mainstream media. If they are debating global warming in the context of that event, then i must give them great credit. They aren't though are they.
To say the least, there is controversy surrounding the premise that the earth is warmer now than it was in the 1100’s.
“… to say that the only reason we see warming now is that we are returning to natural warmer temps. For this argument,it is critically important to know if the Little Ice Age was global or regional.�
I see this angle as suspicious and unconvincing. The earth didn’t cool globally, but a regional ice age occurred where glaciers overran entire communities, wiping thriving civilization entirely off of Greenland for instance? Global or regional, that is a substantial change in temperature over a vast area. What caused it? Not human activity. And in the end, I am highly skeptical it wasn’t the result of a global cooling.
“If it was regional (which it seems to have been)�
I think the term “seems� may be a strong word. I think the phraseology should be “has been speculatively hypothesized�.
“and what we see now is global (which it clearly is), then this particular argument falls apart.�
I really think it is pure conjecture that the warming we see now is not, for the most part, the consequence of coming out of the little ice age. The local/global question strikes me simply as a distraction from the fact that decreases in the earth’s temperature have happened in recorded history and have had dramatic negative impacts on civilization and were not caused by human activity.
“The second and distinct issue is, will warming be bad for us. Note that this is an entirely different argument from the first, and using the Little Ice Age as an example for this is logically distinct from how it can be used for the first argument. Yes, regional cooling is bad in some ways for northern areas, and yes, the Little Ice Age is an example of this.�
I have two observations in regard to this: 1. the cooling that occurred was not due to human activity, so we are very far from knowing or even suspecting that the present warming is at all due to human activity. 2. Since warming will be good for many people, there is no way to know that it will, on net be a bad thing at all. More people can live in the cooler spots, people living in the warmer spots may adapt more easily to more heat than the Greenlanders were able to adapt to more cold.
“The logical flaw here, is that those making this argument look at only one side of the potential range of effects. Regional cooling would be bad in most ways for Europe (if it happened) and warming might be good for some parts of European agriculture and infrastructure. Not all parts, though, there will still be winners and losers, a nd massive dislocations.�
Perhaps. But on net (considering both sides of the effects), we can not have any clue that things will be worse, and it seems more likely that things could actually be much better if the earth warmed.
“Remembver, too, tath climate shift also shifts rainfall aptterns, and better temsp with worse water is not an improvement. One can not make single-point arguments about this issue, based only on the direct effects of temps and pretending everythign else will remain unchanged.�
There is likely to be more precipitation with a warmer earth. Farm production could go up. Ergo, at the very least, there is no basis to advocate any coercive governmental regulation to change people’s behavior on the arguably very modest possibility that it would do any good at all or provide any net benefit.
“Also, try to convince anyone living in the lowlands of the Indian plains, in the island natins of the pacific, on the gulf coast and low counties of the US southeast, or farming the California delta, that a 2C increase in temp is going to be ok because there are possible benefits to european agriculture adnti might insulate us agaisnt potential costs of a [otential slight cooling.�
They are the ones that must try to convince the world that CO2 emissions will cause great havoc and convince them to voluntarily refrain from producing more CO2 or other emissions to keep the globe cooler. The onus is on those people to argue their point and get ready to adapt if they are convinced of the coming disaster.
“Remember (using my most familiar local geography as an example), Scramento and Stockton are deep water ocean ports, and a 3 foot rise in sea level moves the ocean inland 100 miles to the borders of those cities, and loses the entire delta, which is the most productive farmland on earth.�
I don’t buy that a warmer earth will necessarily result in a significant rise in sea level. A warmer earth will result in more evaporation of the oceans and more precipitation over land including frozen land. Perhaps the ocean level will lower as the earth warms.
“Yes, agriculture can move to other lands.. but this productive farmland can't move.�
Again, if the ocean levels will rise, the onus is on these people to convince the world that their CO2 emissions are responsible for this and that they should reduce emissions to accommodate them. And prepare for the advent of higher water levels. But again, i doubt they are worried, but perhaps they are working on the problem as we speak.
Published: April 11, 2006 3:42 PM
Graeme Bird
"ps. Graeme Bird: You mentioned the Milankovitch cycles in one of your posts. Do you realize that the change in forcing from the gases that we've released is already comparable to what we expect from the trough to the peak of a Milankovitch cycle? This is why climate scientists are no longer worried about ice ages. Not that (going by the cycles) we'd need to worry for several thousand years even without human influence."
Given the massive heat deficit imbedded in the endless wastelands of ice during a glaciation this is just a bizzare statement to make. No of course I do not "know" this and neither do you. Let us see some evidence for whatever it is you are claiming here.
Published: April 11, 2006 3:47 PM
Graeme Bird
Where do you get this several thousand years business for the timing of when we have to worry? This has never been claimed until pretty recently yet the Malinkovitch cycles were the easiest item of this controversy to assess for some decades. And its been known that things are worsening steadily and in 2,000 years we will be right in the thick of it.
Its been thought that if at any time during the next ten thousand years we are iced over conditions won't be right for thawing for another 60 000 years after that.
If you cannot provide some evidence for this the suspicion would be that these claims are being made on the fly to shore up a movement that has gotten up too much momentum to let facts get in the way.
I don't see how peoples understanding of these cycles could have changed in just 15 years or so.
Published: April 11, 2006 3:56 PM
Graeme Bird
"As we collect global datawe are getting more and more evidence that the little ice age was regional, not global. Luke made thsi point explicitly. Yet, in yro response, you explicitly refer to it as a global pehnomenon ("that cooling fo the earth")."
I find this very hard to believe. It affected Europe in the early 1300's and then affected China some decades later in the early 1400's. That sounds pretty global to me.
And we didn't start climbing out of it until the late 19th century.
Published: April 11, 2006 4:01 PM
Graeme Bird
"Paul Edwards wrote:
"1. Did the earth experience a little ice age around the 1300's? I say yes, i'm not sure where you stand on this.
2. Is the earth cooler now than it was in the late 1100’s? I say yes, i'm not sure where you stand on this."
On the first point I think Paul is being a bit aggressive with his dates. Some people mark the start of the little ice age as sometime in the C14th, but more generally accepted bounderies are the C16th through C19th"
You would have a hard time convincing the natives in the early 14th century of this. What with people praying before the ice that it would stop on their hands and knees and accounts of it boiling along like slow-motion magma crushing everything in its path.
Published: April 11, 2006 4:08 PM
Sione Vatu
Paul
I've lived on the Islands of the Pacific (it's only during the last few years I've been stuck on a continent). Climate change is not a major issue for us there. The things that cause concern are politics, family, getting work, getting money, all that type of thing. Sometimes there is concern about the weather but that is usually restricted to when it is bad weather (like a huge storm or gale say). Then after it has gone, everyone gets back to cleaning the show up and trying to scam the agencies for some free stuff.
Of course were it to be widely accepted that a good scam to get free stuff (like aid money for instance) would be to promote the CO2 climate change idea and blame industrialised nations, well that would be different. Then there'd be plenty of "concern." No proofs though, but these days proof is not required!
Sione
Published: April 11, 2006 4:08 PM
Sione
Lee
There is a third theme that gets constantly intertwined with the two you mention. It is the notion that an asserted problem is solveable by coercive collectivisation of all individuals. It is a false idea but a popular one.
Sione
Published: April 11, 2006 4:15 PM
Lee
OK, I'll admit I stopped reading closely when I yet again encountered this logical flaw:
'There was natural cooling, so we can't know if this warming is anthropogenic.'
There can be BOTH natural climate variation AND anthropogenic warming. The two are NOT mutually exclusive, and a lot of the science is devoted precisely to untangling the two. This argument, which I often encounter, is logically equivalent to arguing that because I got chiled yesterday from failure to wear enogh clothes out into the snow,a nd then warmed up naturally when I went inside, that I cant possible be getting a fever today from a viral infection. It is, at best a nonsequitor,a nd I'm tired enough of dealing with it that I wont, beyodn pointing it out.
Yes climate variation is natural. But remember, we are ALREADY in an interglacial, we are ALREADY at temps very near or right at the top of the range we've seen, by best available data for at least 650,000 years. My car varies in speed all the time too, but that doesn't mean that mashing my foot to the floor when I'm already going 80 is a good idea.
BTW, those 'models' y'all like to disparage, which are really just precisely mathematically stated theories of climate change, all have one thing in common. None of them, NOT ONE MATHEMATICAL THEORY of the dozen or more available, by anyone, pro or con on this point, has managed to match the known temperature variations of the last couple hundred years without including anthropogenic porcing. There is NOT ONE RIGOROUSLY STATED THEORY, by anyone, that accounts for the data without including human causes. If the handful of remaining scientific naywsysers manage to craft such a theory, I'm all ears.
And Graeme; we are in an unusually stable Milankovich period. Return of cycle conditions favorable to ice ages is calculated not to occur for (IIRC) ablut 16,000 years. IOW, this apears to be an uncharacteristically long ice-free stable period in the milankovich cycles. A solid understanding of the link betweenmilankovich cycles and ice ages ws not possible unti lwe got the ice core data within the last few years, so yes, our understanding of thsi HAS changed dramatically of recent years.
Also "I find it hard to beleive" is not scientific arbgument, so I wont bother to respond unless you actually provide something to which I can respond.
Published: April 11, 2006 4:20 PM
Lee
Sione,
I refer you to my previous (and initial on this site) two posts in this thread, dealing with the absurdity of the strong-individualist strong-private-property faith tradition.
Published: April 11, 2006 4:24 PM
Lee
Oh good freaking lord!!!!
I just saw this:
"I don’t buy that a warmer earth will necessarily result in a significant rise in sea level. A warmer earth will result in more evaporation of the oceans and more precipitation over land including frozen land. Perhaps the ocean level will lower as the earth warms."
Sea level is ALREADY rising. NO ONE who is scientifically ivolved in this problem says sea levels will fall. Ther is some dispute about the amount of rise, but no significant dispute remaining about the FACT of rise.
The ONLY two significant terrestrial repositories of large amounts of frozen water are Greenland and Antarctica. We already are seeing net water loss from Greenland; see the newest studies published the last couple weeks using gravitometry analysis to directly measure the delta in the actual quantity of water on Greenland. Antarctica can potentially accumulate increased water inland, from increased precipitation, but global transport of water to the poles is necessarily limited by basic physics (the poles are pretty dry places)and we are also seeing net loss of ice already at the margins, where precipitation is significant.
This statment is the logical eqaivalent of saying, "fairies might deal with it."
Published: April 11, 2006 4:33 PM
Graeme Bird
"Also "I find it hard to beleive" is not scientific argument, so I wont bother to respond unless you actually provide something to which I can respond."
I had to tone it down to times before I got to "I find it hard to believe" Like toning something two times down before you get to fertiliser.
You are wrong about all this. So lets see the evidence. I suspect you are making it up or lying. So the toning down is over. You any happier? Any happier?
Now what I do notice is that you've made an outrageous claim and shirked when it came to the evidence. When it came to asking you for evidence you made an excuse and dodged it.
And you are wrong about another thing: "I find it very hard to believe." There is nothing particularly unscientific about this statement. This is an extremely feeble excuse on your part and suggests to me that you have no idea.
Published: April 11, 2006 8:04 PM
Graeme Bird
"And Graeme; we are in an unusually stable Milankovich period. Return of cycle conditions favorable to ice ages is calculated not to occur for (IIRC) ablut 16,000 years"
No we aren't. Where is the evidence for this?
Were this true it would not have escaped pre-Global warming frenzy scientists.
Published: April 11, 2006 8:09 PM
Lee
On Milankovich cycles and the next ice age.
See this link, and especially the quoted part in it. The last two sentences and the citations, are the money part. Thinking on this HAS cahnged since the mid-late 80s. Also note that while Milankovich cycles seem to set the basic periodicity of ice ages (and this idea is generally accepted) there are other variables that affect it.
Finding this stuff isn't hard Graeme. It simply requires the basic intellectual honesty to check it out before casting wild accusations and calling people liars. You have not done yourself any favors here.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm
"After 1988 =>after88
Looking at the rhythmic curves of past cycles, one could hardly resist the temptation to extrapolate into the future. By the late 1980s, most calculations had converged on the familiar prediction that the natural Milankovitch cycle should bring a mild but steady cooling over the next few thousand years. As climate models and studies of past ice ages improved, however, worries about a swift descent into the next great glaciation — what many in the 1970s had tentatively expected — died away. Not all ice ages were the same length, for the orbital elements differed in each. Improved calculations said that the next ice age would probably not reach its maximum for a few tens of thousands of years. [Ice core studies published in 2004 gave further evidence that a cycle like ours was likely to stay warm for many thousands of years].(53*)"
Falkowski, P., et al. (2000). "The Global Carbon Cycle: A Test of Our Knowledge of Earth as a System." Science 290: 291-96.
Berger, A., and M.F. Loutre (2002). "An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?" Science 297: 1287-88
EPICA community members (Eric Wolff et al.) (2004). "Eight Glacial Cycles from an Antarctic Ice Core." Nature 429: 623-28.
Published: April 11, 2006 8:45 PM
Lee
Graeme also said:
"ps. Graeme Bird: You mentioned the Milankovitch cycles in one of your posts. Do you realize that the change in forcing from the gases that we've released is already comparable to what we expect from the trough to the peak of a Milankovitch cycle? This is why climate scientists are no longer worried about ice ages. Not that (going by the cycles) we'd need to worry for several thousand years even without human influence."
Given the massive heat deficit imbedded in the endless wastelands of ice during a glaciation this is just a bizzare statement to make. No of course I do not "know" this and neither do you. Let us see some evidence for whatever it is you are claiming here.
Posted by: Graeme Bird at April 11, 2006 03:47 PM
Graeme, do you know what forcing means in this context? Your answer strongly implies that you dont, and yet, this is a basic (perhaps THE basic) concept in this entire area of science.
Published: April 11, 2006 8:51 PM
Lee
and for sea level rise, start here, and references therein.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/catastrophic-sea-level-rise-more-evidence-from-the-ice-sheets/#more-276
Published: April 11, 2006 8:54 PM
Graeme Bird
Right. So they are taking some ancient cycle and assuming that our one will be like that. And so the whole issue is dismissed on the basis that one of the earlier cycles wasn't that bad. That is very feeble stuff on the one hand. But on the other it offers great hope that CO2 release will be sufficient.
Now notice this:
"An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?"
Its a question mark. Its not conclusive. Clearly the presumption still has to be that the natural tendency is toward glaciation even if there is the great hopefullness that CO2 may be sufficient to arrest that tendency.
In fact nothing has changed here:
"But the situation is not quite as black as it might be. The next dip....not likely to be as deep as an of the past three dips..... could take two or three of the short cycles for the cycles to build up"
I'm compressing as a clumsy way of avoiding copyright problems. This from a book by John Gribbon.
What this means is that all is not lost and the CO2 might allow us to avoid the next glaciation in its entirety. But one doesn't suddenly assume that its all cut and dried on the basis of inconclusive studies. The justification for spending a single dollar to reduce CO2 is just not there. Particularly if we'd absent of human influence, suspect Chicago to be under ice within 2000 years.
Tentative Conclusion:
Though its a very bleak situation. With a bit of help from industrial and consumer output of CO2 the situation may not be as black as it appears to be.
That is what I'm getting here. Why are you getting a different conclusion?
Published: April 11, 2006 9:06 PM
Graeme Bird
"Graeme, do you know what forcing means in this context? Your answer strongly implies that you dont, and yet, this is a basic (perhaps THE basic) concept in this entire area of science."
Listen fella. My observation stands. And I can see now that you've followed me here from the fraudulent site realclimate. You can use all the jargon terms you like. It isn't going to make the implied heat deficit involved with a glaciation go away. So your statement is misleading at best and more then likely as ridiculous as it appears to be.
Published: April 11, 2006 9:13 PM
Lee
Graeme, I'm just about done with you after this post. I don't appreciate intellectual dishonesty, and I don't tolerate it for very long.
No, they do NOT: "So they are taking some ancient cycle and assuming that our one will be like that."
They are taking IMPROVED future calculations of future milankovich cycles, and applying to it more detailed information regarding the effect of milankovich cycles from historoicial studies, and arriving at a new look at the probability fo near future ice ages You left out half the work, and misrepresented the other half.
You, n the other hadnd, are usign a faith-based statemtn that an ice age is imminent and we need to warm the palnt to avoid it.
by the way, note that I supplied specific cites "from a book by John Gribbon" especially in teh abbsense of a pub date or of he dates of the data he works from or the methods of his analysis, is not a cite.
Published: April 11, 2006 9:16 PM
Graeme Bird
OK. Lets break this down.
Lee sez:
Premise 1.
"...change in FORCING from the gases that we've released is already comparable to what we expect from the trough to the peak of a Milankovitch cycle?
Premise 2.
This is why climate scientists are no longer worried about ice ages.
Premise 3.
Not that (going by the cycles) we'd need to worry for several thousand years even without human influence.
Now I made it that Premise 2 doesn't follow from Premise 1. If it did we should be justly worried about the competence of some of our climate scientists (particularly those from realclimate). And I made it that Premise three is nonsense or at best dishonest speculation. Dishonest as to the level of certainty conveyed.
So I sez:
Given the massive heat deficit imbedded in the endless wastelands of ice during a glaciation this is just a bizzare statement to make. No of course I do not "know" this and neither do you. Let us see some evidence for whatever it is you are claiming here.
So Lee sez:
Graeme, do you know what forcing means in this context? Your answer strongly implies that you dont, and yet, this is a basic (perhaps THE basic) concept in this entire area of science.
So I sez:
Well don't hold out on us fella. Its your dubious leap of logic that I had a problem with. Not with the first premise.
Published: April 11, 2006 9:22 PM
Lee
so you dont know what forcing is.
Yes, I came here after seeing your posts on real climate. It looks as if ther are some people here capable of real conversation (even if I do personally feel the libertarian ideology behind much of it is naive; they still can think and respond on point). You, on the other hand, attack and refuse to address facts or interpretations of facts in anything appraoching an honest way.
"Implied heat deficit involved with a glaciation?" What exactly does that mean? You brushed off a salient point by bringing up a complete nosequitor ,as near as I can figure out what you are talking about; you seem to be confusing heat flow with amount of stored heat with heat requried for meltign ice, in ways that you refuse to discuss.
Why wont you address actual facts?
Published: April 11, 2006 9:23 PM
Graeme Bird
No I don't know what forcing is and whatever it turns out to be it will not make up for the dishonesty and the illogicality of the rest of your premise. And no you are lying when you claim that I'm not interested in the facts. Matter of fact right now I'm trying to drag them out of you before you go back to misleading people at realclimate.
"Implied heat deficit involved with a glaciation?"
You know precisely what that means. So why lie about that also?
I think you need to retract this idea that you don't know what I'm referring to.
Published: April 11, 2006 9:30 PM
Graeme Bird
"Why wont you address actual facts?"
Alright. What the hell are you talking about. Clearly this is leftist projection on your part.
Now where is your overwhelming evidence that suggests that money should be spent in curtailing CO2 release?
Where is it. Its not there. You haven't ontologically or scientifically magiced away the next glaciation or neutralised the idea that CO2 improves plant yields. Or shown that CO2 is a NET negative. Your site realclimate is a fraud since it edits out dissenting views.
Published: April 11, 2006 9:34 PM
Lee
Get your attributions right, graeme.
your "1" was not my post; it was somone elses. I agree with it, but at least get the basic easily verifiable stuff right.
Forcings (a simple functional definition here) are conditions that reset the equilibrium temperature at which heat-in balances heat-out. CO2 is such a forcing; there is no question about this, it is basic physics, known since Ahrennius (200 years ago?). It is basic equilibrium theory, familiar to anyone who has taken Intro Chemistry at college level.
We know the temperature difference between glacial and interglacial periods, and knowing the temp icrease, it is simple to calculate the forcing required to get that temp difference; this doesnt tell us what caused the forcing, it tells us what the magnitude of the forcing was.
We also know, even without allowing amplifications, what the basic forcing 'power' of CO2 is; the argument is not over that basic number, but over what the amplificatins to it will be from feedback effects in the overall climate.
And we know that the forcing due to anthropogenic CO2 is GREATER than the forcing necessary to raise the temps from a glacial to an interglacial, even berfore allowing any p;ossible amplifications from increased water vapor and so on.
Ice sheets and 'heat deficit" have nothing to do with this. The latent heat of melting necessary to get rid of that ice will effect the dynamics, how long it take sto warm the palent when teh forcing chagnges, but it does nto change the forcing or the new wquilbirium temperature, only the time taken to get to the equilibrium temperature.
So, your response was completely of target. And the fact that you dont know even this, renders your understanding of this field you are trying ot criticize suspect at best.
BTW, your assumptin theat we are on teh vere of diving into a glacial are MORE shaky than the best current scientific understanding of the probable length of this interglacial, yet yo seem devoted to defending it. Why?
Published: April 11, 2006 9:37 PM
Lee
RealClimate is not 'my site." It is one of many places I get info from, including the primary literature.
I have not argued here that I am aware of that there is "overwhelming evidence that suggests that money should be spent in curtailing CO2 release?"
I am arguign that anthropogenic global warming exists, which you have been disputing. I have also arguing, separately, that it is likely to be a net negative, but with less force because that evidence is less strong. Yo will, I hope, note that these aare two different arguments; could you please keep them straight?
Adn no, I will not 'retract the idea that I dotn knwo what you are talking about,' becaue I dotn knwo what you are talklign about. I'm willign to entertain the idea that you are simply using non-standard language to refer to a realistic phenomenon, but I cant even evaluate that if you wotn explain what you mean.
Published: April 11, 2006 9:50 PM
Graeme Bird
No my response wasn't off target. That's ridiculous. And you provided no basis that the CO2 would overide a glaciation.
And no my assumptions are not shaky. You claim, without evidence, that there has been a significant updating in the understanding of the Malinkovitch cycles.
Are you to have me believe that the scientists of 20 years ago couldn't make the basic calculations necessary to extrapolate the orbit of the Earth around the sun. My goodness man this is basic physics, basic maths.
If you want to put over such an extraordinary claim at least post the relevant studies. Not some ice core study. That is not relevant.
We have to be a bit skeptical about which studies get funded posted and reported (three filters already) now that the hysteria has taken hold.
Published: April 11, 2006 9:51 PM
jeffrey
Graeme and Lee, your debate is important but it is consuming a lot of real estate on the "recent comments" section, if you catch my drift. Can you take this to private emails?
Published: April 11, 2006 9:54 PM
Graeme Bird
Yeah I can see that Jeffrey. I suspect the debate will never get had. Since on the climate sites they tend to only let through the skeptics who doubt warming in its entirety. So that the debate rolls on pointlessly, for ages away from the nub of the question.
Feel free to give Lee my email if he requests it. But I doubt he will be interested. He comes here to bury, not enlighten, me.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:01 PM
Lee
Dude, do your frickin' homework:
Berger, A., and M.F. Loutre (2002). "An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?" Science 297: 1287-88.
That paper is a calculatin of Milankovich cycles and related factor that effect insolation. It is NOT based on ice cores; the relevant core data didnt exist when this was published. However, the older core data suports this paper; thoese newly revealed older cores are longer diuratn interglacials, in partial verification of these ideas. At least try to respond to waht I actually post?
This is from Nature:
http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020819/pf/020819-9_pf.html
The notion that we're due another ice age is still occasionally peddled as a reason not to worry about global warming. But just about all the predictions made today are very different to those when this idea was hatched 30 years ago, point out André Berger and Marie-France Loutre of the Catholic University of Louvain.
Back then, climatologists agreed that, because the previous two warm spells between ice ages had lasted about 10,000 years, the present one, the Holocene, should be over soon. It started more than 10,000 years ago.
But we now know that today's conditions are not like those of the last warm period, the Eemian, which was around 125,000 years ago. The ice-age cycle is caused by slow, periodic changes in the shape and position of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This time around, those changes are less pronounced than they were during the Eemian.
On such grounds alone, scientists have predicted since the 1980s that the present interglacial period might last up to 70,000 years.
And from Science, describing the Berger/Loutre paper:
Science 23 August 2002:
Vol. 297. no. 5585, pp. 1287 - 1288
DOI: 10.1126/science.1076120
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Perspectives
CLIMATE:
An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?
A. Berger and M. F. Loutre
Today's comparatively warm climate has been the exception more than the rule during the last 500,000 years or more. If recent warm periods (or interglacials) are a guide, then we may soon slip into another glacial period. But Berger and Loutre argue in their Perspective that with or without human perturbations, the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years. The reason is a minimum in the eccentricity of Earth's orbit around the Sun.
----------------------
I assume a minimum of actual interest from peopel with whom I have idsicussions, and taht includes at least some minimum effort to read what I post before responding to it.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:04 PM
Graeme Bird
I've done my homework. Notice the question mark in the study. Notice the idea that it MAY last another 50 000 years. Notice that this is just one speculation that you are jumping on?
Take your foolishness to emails or take it away.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:07 PM
Lee
jeffrey,
I'm about done anyway. Graeme is failing (refusing?) to respond on point, mischaracterizing the evidence I post (including apparently not even bothering to look at it in some cases), relying heavily on accusations of dishonesty, mixing the "is it happening" argument with the 'will it be harmful" argument, accusing me of making arguments I havent actually made, attributign to me things others have said, and on and on, and I'm reasonably tired of it. My apologies; I didnt realize (new to this site) that we would swamp a recent posts area.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:08 PM
Graeme Bird
No that's all nonsense fella. You aren't getting the last word in. Take your 'arguments' to email (birdsnewworld@mac.com) or take them away.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:17 PM
Lee
One last post for the onlookers, from Wikipedia on Milankovitch cycles. This is not obscure stuff.
Graph here; note the flattening of cycles from now into the future.. Graeme seems to feel this cant be true:.
">http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/6/6b/Orbital_variation.gif>
The amount of solar radiation (insolation) in the Northern Hemisphere at 65°N seems to be related to occurrence of an ice age. Astronomical calculations show that 65°N summer insolation should increase gradually over the next 25,000 years, and that no declines in 65°N summer insolation sufficient to cause an ice age are expected in the next 50,000 - 100,000 years.
As mentioned above, at present perihelion occurs during the Southern Hemisphere's summer, and aphelion during the southern winter. Thus the Southern Hemisphere seasons should tend to be somewhat more extreme than the Northern Hemisphere seasons. The relatively low eccentricity of the present orbit results in a 6.8% difference in the amount of solar radiation during summer in the two hemispheres.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:24 PM
Graeme Bird
This shows conclusively that the natural tendency is towards cooling. But thanks to CO2 we may head it off.
Published: April 11, 2006 10:28 PM
Sione Vatu
Lee, you are guilty of mixing in that third notion!
BTW I read your earlier contributions and they come up short for a variety of reasons.
First, an analogy is not proof. It is not even "the same as." Your analogies do not hold anyway.
Second, In order to make your case you are required to supply proof. That you have not done. I draw your attention to the seven proofs I requested a while back. In the absence of ALL those proofs you can't make a case for your grand centrally planned coercions. Remember, you are asserting a positive and so the burden lies upon on you to supply the proof. Proof you aint provided and so my understanding is, proof you aint got. So, "Stand and deliver, boy!"
Next point, promoting freedom for the individual and the absence of coercion is not faith. It's a recognition. It's a matter of how people should be treated and is based on a negative obligation that you as an individual bear (as do I), the recognition of Individual Rights (that means OTHER PEOPLE'S). You may have heard of such.
You are the one promoting a naive and baseless faith. In your case it is in coercive collectivisation as a viable solution to an asserted problem (I guess that's two faiths!). That you know better then another man how he should live his life is a dangerous conceit to possess. You'd do well to consider what it is you are actually promoting. Right throughout history there have been calls to restrict human behaviour for the good of________________ (fill in favourite reasons- eg, the nation, the race, the soul, the culture, the tribe, the ruler, the church, the proles, royalty, the animals, the planet, the stars, the spirits, the upper classes, grace, moral imperative, and in your case, the weather). In practice the supposedly "noble" aims boil down to expressions of force, fraud, coercion, theft, rape, violence and killing. To you Ayn Rand would likely advise, "Check your premise." In this instance she'd be 100% spot on with that recommendation. That's for certain.
Digressing:
To date people have been able to successfully adapt to many changes in life. I'd be prepared to let them continue to do that and I'd bet they'll be successful at it. They do not require a central planned approach.
Recently the Matai was discussing how things have changed. He made mention of the fact that these days Polynesians (and other peoples) consider human cannibalism utterly abhorrent. At a deep and personal level people just will not consider doing such things in their lives. Yet not so many generations ago there were cannibals and the practice was not altogether uncommon. Now attitudes have changed. Consider how and why this occurred. It wasn't that the govt stopped us (don't come trying that line, the palangi version of the history is not correct). People changed behaviour by moral persuasion. For example, why wouldn't you consider killing and eating other humans? What is it at a personal level that prevents you from even considering such a course of action?
Better to let people freely learn and change as they do.
Sione
Published: April 12, 2006 1:36 AM
tz
Bush also claimed an immediate danger from WMDs from Iraq, and now something similar from Iran, and said we can't wait until there is proof (one of his minions said it would come in the form of a Mushroom Cloud).
I see the GW argument in similar terms. Act now or lose the planet, and it does mean war on the economy.
The discussion is healthy, but it only shows there is debate and not conclusive evidence.
Now everyone says "if we only had known (about Iraq), we wouldn't have supported the war".
The science is still bad on CFCs, but they remain banned (now their patents have expired and 3rd world countries in the tropics could make air-conditioning cheaply that would use less energy and be non-toxic).
Rush to judgment, pass draconian laws, then just forget or not talk about it unless it is something like the Iraq war that kills a citizen or two in a direct way.
It is never wise to act rashly.
Published: April 12, 2006 7:29 AM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione Vatu wrote:
"promoting freedom for the individual and the absence of coercion is not faith. It's a recognition. It's a matter of how people should be treated and is based on a negative obligation that you as an individual bear (as do I), the recognition of Individual Rights (that means OTHER PEOPLE'S). You may have heard of such.
You are the one promoting a naive and baseless faith. In your case it is in coercive collectivisation as a viable solution to an asserted problem (I guess that's two faiths!). That you know better then another man how he should live his life is a dangerous conceit to possess. You'd do well to consider what it is you are actually promoting. Right throughout history there have been calls to restrict human behaviour for the good of________________ (fill in favourite reasons- eg, the nation, the race, the soul, the culture, the tribe, the ruler, the church, the proles, royalty, the animals, the planet, the stars, the spirits, the upper classes, grace, moral imperative, and in your case, the weather)."
BillG responds:
I am jumping in a little late to the thread but I wanted to point out what I think is a common misperception by many...
collective ownership and ownership in common are actually opposite...one is a group right while the other is an individual right
here is the case to be made from an individual's freedom point of view as it relates to global warming.
we all have an individual equal access opportunity right to use the sky as both a source and sink for our sustenance...so long as our use/access does not infringe on the equal access opportunity rights of any other individual
homesteading the sky as a sink for our waste is not a problem up to the sustainable yield - this represents the same concept as Locke's proviso (enclosure is justified so long as "enough and as good are left in common for others").
beyond the sustainable yield, the enclosure of the sky as a sink for individual's use (privatization) creates a monetary and legal obligation on those being excluded - negative externalities (a tax in kind but not in substance) that can only be satisfied by violating the absolute rights we all have to our labor and thus is a denial of our right of self-ownership.
this argument may look familiar to some as it is no more than the georgist analysis of land enclosure applied to the sky.
Published: April 12, 2006 9:26 AM
Graeme Bird
"Another big freeze might never happen." It then goes on to say that with HUMAN CO2 RELEASE WE MIGHT NOT HAVE ANOTHER GLACIATION.
Well that's great news.
So sayeth the speculative article.
But look at this speculation is being used. Look us humans haven't always done great things by the other species. And here was the chance to give us a ringing endorsement to say that once we had found economic liberty by dumb luck or by some sort of cosmic righteousness we may well have saved the planet from the next White Death Holocaust.
But instead the article (and the climate scientist bigshot citing it) say the following:
"The notion that we're due another ice age is still occasionally peddled as a reason not to worry about global warming."
What is the thinking here?
First the article is speculative. Then suprisingly it doesn't focus on thanking the industrial revolution for making it in time to stave off a catastrophe (speculatively thanking it if you like) but instead turns this thing around and uses it to chastise folks for saying the natural tendency is towards cooling.
I wanted to 'step outside' on this one and not bore everyone with my petty (cosmic) squabbles. But I checked my emails and there is no action there. And I think it is important to note that if you do come back and studiously go through the homework these fellows try to trip you up with you find that there reasoning is not always that solid.
What is wrong with our scientists?
WHY CAN'T THEY BE MORE LIKE THE AUSTRIANS.
Why can't they be all cards on the table........ The high-priesthoods workings-out.......To be checked by the laity?
This is one of the few truly scientific sites I've been able to find.
More is the pity.
Published: April 12, 2006 10:36 AM
Lee
Selective quotation and dishonesty again, Graeme.
G- "The notion that we're due another ice age is still occasionally peddled as a reason not to worry about global warming."
What is the thinking here?
Article -
The notion that we're due another ice age is still occasionally peddled as a reason not to worry about global warming. But just about all the predictions made today are very different to those when this idea was hatched 30 years ago, point out André Berger and Marie-France Loutre of the Catholic University of Louvain.
Back then, climatologists agreed that, because the previous two warm spells between ice ages had lasted about 10,000 years, the present one, the Holocene, should be over soon. It started more than 10,000 years ago.
But we now know that today's conditions are not like those of the last warm period, the Eemian, which was around 125,000 years ago. The ice-age cycle is caused by slow, periodic changes in the shape and position of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This time around, those changes are less pronounced than they were during the Eemian.
On such grounds alone, scientists have predicted since the 1980s that the present interglacial period might last up to 70,000 years.
---
In other words, your oft-repeated statement that we are on the verge of an ice age, and that CO2 is saving us from such, is 25 years out of date.
Yes, there is a speculation here, clearly labeled as such. The speculation is over whether anthropogenic CO2 forcing leading to global warmiong might permanently end ice ages - the next of which is currently not predicted to occur until tens of thousands of years from now. You are conflating the speculatiion about the permanent end of ice ages, with the clear statement that for 25 years now, scientists have mostly predicted that the next ice age is tens of thousands of years out.
--------------
tx: the science is NOT bad on CFCs. There are some quantitative uncertainties on residence time and turnover numbers, but the error bars are small and getting smaller all the time. The error bars are small enough that we know the qualitative description is correct, and we know the quantitative predictions are solidly within real values ... which, BTW, we are able to preserve.
------
This insistence on scientific PROOF just illustrates that either y'all dont understand science, or you are willing to use the quite-successful process of science against science. Science doesnt deal in proof; it deals in testable hypotheses about the real world. At some point, those hypotheses are well-enough tested that it starts to become reasonable to use them as probably-valid descriptions of the world. Anthropogenic warming is well beyond that point, and has been for at least several years. Minority disputations dont change that. There are stil people who dispute whether HIV causes AIDS, too, but I'm nonetheless going to be damned careful not to expose myself to HIV; minority (or even majority) controversy does NOT equal evidence of bad or inconclusive science; one must looka t the actual science innvolved. Which I have, quite extensively, and satisfied myself on this point.
A full understanding of the **consequences** of warming is not there yet, at least not in full. Of course there will be both beneficial and harmful consequences; we DO know enough to know that not all changes will be neutral. We also know that some of the harmful effects are likely to be very devastating, sea level rise among them; and yes, there are still large error bars here (but getting steadily smaller over time), which is why I qualified this particular claim with "likely." I say this in order to keep Graeme informed enough that perhaps he wont dive in with another bout of arm-swinging accusations of dishonesty.
And also, even though it probably doesnt need saying, just to make it clear to Graeme here: this is the point where the scientific claims end and my value jsudgement begins. There are many things we can do that don't have dire economic costs. Given the fact that dire economic consequences ARE expected for events covering the overwhelming part of the range between the error bars for potential consequences, it would behoove us to start taking those actions. Y'all here have a shared value system that values personal autonomy to the point of denying that shared responsiblitiy even exists; yeah, I'm probalby stating the extreme end of a range, but this is what Reiser argued, and what Sione just defended (by a blanket statement that my analogy is flawed, without arguign why). I think that is a seriously dangerous and damaging value system, but I dont think y'all are evil for holding it (just msiguided. Grin. I'm sure y'all think the same of me. Well, Except Graeme here, who does seem to think I'm evil and an overt liar, but he has pretty well discredited himself anyway), and I don't pretend my own value system is necessarily the only right one either.
I do argue in favor of conclusions I derive from my value system, and I listen to those deriving from other peoples value system,a dn look for shared teritory, adn I even examine my own value system for problems in it. And I work quite hard to examine real world realities and make sure I dont deny them in evaluating my own value system, or in evaluating the value-based arguments made by others. My personal value system, when confronted by the facts (including the error bars) regarding global warming and its likely consequences, says we need to do at least the easy things, starting now. Y'all disagree. Fine. Your value system, or mine, is NOT evidence that the science is flawed; the science stands or falls on its own. Graeme here, in particular, seems to muddle that a bit.
Decidign waht resposne we need is BOTH a scientific and a values issue. Attackign the science becasuit doesnt yet rise tot eh threshold at which YOUR value ssytem ays it is appropriate to act, simisdirecting the response. My value system, which informs the risk I am willing ot accept before acting, is differnt from yours. The point of disputation in THAT argument is the value system, not the science; the science simply informs the debate. Graeme and others seem to muddle that distinction, too,a dn this also seems to be feeding the absurd call for a scinetific 'proof' that science cant and doesnt claim to be able to deliver, in any field of scientific endeavor. This doesnt seem to noticeably diminish science's successes, though.
And oen final point; the science on anthropogenic warming is extensive, and a couple days ddisputation on a blog cant even begin to get into it. Anothe rpoint Graeme seems to exploit; I psot entry point to an extensive global warmign literature, and he finds mostly-out-of-context sinigle sentences to dsipute and dismisses thenetire literature outof hand, rather than start to inform himself. RealClimate (the site Grame hates so much) is one very good entry point, regardles sof whether you agree withtheir policy conclusions. Don't take their word for things; go the the literature, which they are nice enogh to explicitly source and link for you specifically so that you can check it out for yourself. NASA and the ongoing IPCC assessments, with their cites of the literature, are also useful ENTRY POINT (again, emphasis for Graeme; before he hurls the 'fraudulent' accusation at IPCC and dismisses the literatre out of hand). It takes some grinding, but its interesting reading, and worth informing yourself about. And it'll keep you from making the kind of basic error Graeme does above, where he seems (as near as I can tell; he still hasnt clarified what the f*** he meant) to have confused transient large heat sinks here on earth (ice fields) with equilibrium inputs to the global thermostat.
Published: April 12, 2006 12:05 PM
Sione
BillG
You have postulated the existence of a group right. That is, that a group can "possess" rights. How do you derive such a notion? I'd like to see a proof for this please.
Sione
Published: April 12, 2006 3:01 PM
Lee
Sione,
You have postulated the existence of an individual right. That is, that an individual can "possess" rights. How do you derive such a notion? I'd like to see a proof for this please.
-Lee
----
These are both VALUE judgements, not subject to proof. The existence of rights AT ALL is something that derives from one's value system. Ther is no proof of the existence os any set of rights, taht does not either assume the existence of rights as a premise, or derive from some equally basic and unprovable asumption.
Why dont you guys just be honest here, and say, my value system places all individually-claimed rights above the rights claimed by groups acting in concert.
Published: April 12, 2006 3:10 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote:
"You have postulated the existence of a group right. That is, that a group can "possess" rights. How do you derive such a notion? I'd like to see a proof for this please."
BillG responds:
I have postulated no such right.
I believe we all have an inalienable, INDIVIDUAL equal access opportunity right to use our common asset the sky as both a source and sink to derive our sustenance upto the sustainable yield (Locke's proviso)so long as it does not infringe on the equal access rights of all other INDIVIDUALS.
it is thus a just and righful use of force to preclude individual from privatizing via enclosure more of the sky as a sink than the sustainable yield because it creates a legal and monetary obligation on those being excluded which can only satisfied by violating their absolute right to the fruits of their labor and thus self-ownership.
Published: April 12, 2006 3:13 PM
Sione Vatu
BillG
"we all have..."
"our common asset..."
"preclude individual from privatizing via enclosure..."
Yup. That's a group right based on group rights you're attempting to set up there, sure enough.
To justify the concept you need to derive the principles that apply to your idea, validate them and then provide proofs.
These are not a trivial tasks.
Sione
Published: April 12, 2006 4:46 PM
Lee
Rights are a social construct, like 'race' or 'the self.'
Why has no one taken on the task here of proving the existence of individual rights?
Published: April 12, 2006 4:59 PM
PR
If individuals don't have rights, then how can they "construct" anything, socially or otherwise?
Published: April 12, 2006 5:26 PM
Lee
Our rights exist because we (plural; I'll even use the "C" word: collectively) have defined, demanded, and defended them. At great cost and sacrifice.
Our ability to do this (and even the importance to our freedom of having done so) constitutes no kind of proof that 'rights' exist independent of our creation of them. This is, once again, begging the question.
Rights are good for us, we want them, we demand them, but that again dos not mean they exist a priori of our definition and creation of them a functional entities.
ESPECIALLY some particular set of rights defined as the ONLY proper and moral rights, by a group that sees anyone who doesnt agree about THAT SET of rights as behaving in evil fashion. And yes, the word evil has been used repeatedly in this thread.
Individuals have distinct moral and value systems. When we manage to have a thriving marketplace of ideas, in which all these various value systems have purchasing power in the collective market, we also manage to arrive at a functional and defended set of rights that typically work reasonably well. Again, this does not mean that such rights exist a priori; it means that we tend to do a good job of creating them because it makes our lives better when we do.
When we do NOT have that kind of oppen market, when ANY ONE or ANY GROUP, for ANY REASON closes access of individual value systems to the social market, then we get disasters. The history of this is at least as long and ugly as the history of communism or fascism; various kinds of religious tyranny, for example, derive from precisely this dynamic.
I look across this site (and at much of libertarianism in general; I first started to recognize this when I first started to be able to think critically, and it was part of why I managed to excape Randism at an early age) and I see the Moral Perfectionist "anyone who believes different is evil" attitudes in play, and it quite frankly scares the bejeebers out of me. At least it a relatively marginal movement in our society; most of us (plural again) recognize this, even if many around me can't perhaps name it all that well at first.
Published: April 12, 2006 5:40 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Sione wrote:
"That's a group right based on group rights you're attempting to set up there, sure enough."
BillG responds:
common rights are individual rights.
collective rights are group rights.
I have asserted no group right as I don't believe they are actually valid.
Published: April 12, 2006 6:24 PM
PR
Lee, you didn't answer my question at all. I, individually, must have--at the very least--the right to participate in this collective act of defining/demanding/defending. How can that right be anything but pre-existing?
Any question you ask of the form "Why do you have the right to do X?" can be answered with "Why does someone have a right to forcibly prevent me from doing X?" Applied consistently across all individuals, this is enough to derive the libertarian concepts of self-ownership and non-aggression.
Published: April 12, 2006 6:33 PM
Graeme Bird
Lee. The full spectrum wrong-way Corrigan. Not only do your links not overturn the presumption towards glaciation. But I don't see a resoundingly superior substitute for natural rights/natural law theory here.
Social construct or not we go with the best theory available. You can deconstruct anything down in this way. You can deconstruct the Sun down to its individual constituent molecules. Only don't be surprised if she still rises in the morning.
Published: April 12, 2006 6:34 PM
Lee
This is simply begging the question, PR.
You or I or anyone else does not have such a right. The fact that many people CAN'T do so, and that one must continually fight for the ABILITY (not right) to do so, is pretty good evidence.
You rarguemtn reduces to:
Premise 1 - One can not do something unless they ahve a right to do so.
Premise 2 - We can define/demand.defend sets of agreed-upon liberties (rights, freedoms, call 'em waht you will).
Conclusion - We ahve a priori rights.
This is simply assuming the conclusion.
Your second illustration also assumes the existence of a priori rights, which yo are attempting to prove. I don't have an a priori right to do something, and you dont have an a priori right to prevent me from doing it, because a priori rights do not exist. Bingo; your attempt at contradiction disappears, because you are ASSUMING both the thing for which you create a contradiction, and the thing that contradicts it.
Published: April 12, 2006 6:41 PM
Lee
Graeme sure, eventually we are likely to evenutally return to a glaciated state. Our current best estimates are tens of thosuands of years from now. Yo ahve been consistently stating that we need CO2 release to save us from glaciation,a nd you have made the 'imminent' claim at least implicitly several times, and this is what Ive been disputing, as shoudl be clear from the fact that I ahve been respodkgn with time frames. This response says nothign aobut time frames. It is not imminenet. In fact, one could make the argument that we should be making geological stores of carbon so they are available if we start to see a return of glaciation. This is also a realtively absurd argument, but no more absurd than yours.
Why is this the best theory available? Becasue its the one you subscribe to? There's that scary personal absolutism I was talking about. Thanks, though for implicitly asdmitting that the concept of personal rights is a construct.
Published: April 12, 2006 6:47 PM
PR
The fact that people must continually fight for the ability to do exercise rights proves only that rights are continually violated. Such violations are made much easier by convincing everyone that rights are arbitrary to begin with.
My premise 1 is "One cannot justly do something unless they have a right to do so." This is nothing more than the definition of just. Having the ability to do all sorts of unjust things does not make them just any more than having the ability to write "not (A and B) = not A and not B" makes it logically valid. Premise 2 you have admitted yourself.
Published: April 12, 2006 7:04 PM
Lee
Again, you are asimply assuming the a priori existence of rights.
In this case:
1 - the definition of just action is action that is in accordance with a priori rights.
2 - Just action exists.
3 - Therefore, a priori rights exist.
I'm certainly not going to deny that having rights is a pretty damned good thing. But they arent a priori; they are constructed. IMO, constructed best in a market of ideas, NOT by impositin of The One Best Moral System. The "natural Law" argument from a priori rights ia a faith system, not a logical system, because of this simple fact that it assumes what it tries to prove.
Published: April 12, 2006 7:19 PM
Lee
oh, and also:
"Such violations are made much easier by convincing everyone that rights are arbitrary to begin with."
The argument from utility. The fact that it is easier to defend our rights if we all pretend they exist a priori, is NOT evidence that they exist a priori. Lots of fictions are convenient; that doesnt make them true.
Published: April 12, 2006 7:35 PM
PR
Well of course it is. It is also separate from my main argument and simply an offhand response to what looked like an attempt to equate rights with abilities.
How else can anything be "imposed" except by coercion? Coercion is what libertarians oppose. You resent their perceived imposition of non-imposition because you oppose imposition. This is nonsensical.
Nothing in libertarian philosophy bars people forming a socialist or democratic community, heck even a monarchy, among those willing to join. (Note that the reverse is not true.) If that's not your "market of ideas," then what is? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm actually curious.
Published: April 12, 2006 8:37 PM
Lee
Thsoe who argue that they beleive this is the system they believe works best, and argue for that in a market of ideas, I have no problem with. I find some of the ideas naive (this idea that one can prove the existence of a priori rights among them), but thats a different issue.
Those who argue that anyone who believes differently from them is evil, or facilitating evil (and they exist right here in this thread, and ahve made that argument), are on a path that leads to dehumanization of those who disagree. The overt argument in this case is against imposition of anything; the history is that such an absolutist moral basis leads inevitably to imposition fo that One True moral system if those who hold it gain power. Inconsistency has never been a problem historically.
Its that tendency toward denying the utility or validity of other's thoughts, rather than acknowledging that they derive from different value systems and have value in the marketplace of ideas, that I find frightening.
Published: April 12, 2006 11:48 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Lee wrote:
"The overt argument in this case is against imposition of anything; the history is that such an absolutist moral basis leads inevitably to imposition fo that One True moral system if those who hold it gain power. Inconsistency has never been a problem historically."
BillG responds:
Lee, do you believe it is possible to derive a universal ethic from Locke statement in his 2nd Treatise?
"The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."
Published: April 13, 2006 4:51 AM
Graeme Bird
"I'm certainly not going to deny that having rights is a pretty damned good thing. But they arent a priori; they are constructed."
How do you mean? You mean Aquinas, Locke, Tom Paine and others helped develop the theory? Hoppe still refining it?
So what? Their arguments are solid. And being as they are stronger then any alternative the rights are real. If there was a close competitor to rights theory then we might call them into question.
Killing your Mother? That's bad right? Natural rights theory is a more complicated working out of such observations that you would not find controversial.
I am skeptical as to whether you can prove anything axiomatically to the nth degree. But you listen to Hoppe sometime. A sterling effort. He comes about as close as one can to having all bases covered.
"The fact that it is easier to defend our rights if we all pretend they exist a priori, is NOT evidence that they exist a priori."
No no. Its actually PROOF. Its not evidence. Alone that constitutes TOTAL PROOF. In the absence of other counter-arguments for greater justice that practical assumption would be enough to constitute TOTAL PROOF THAT THE RIGHTS WERE REAL.
If you say there are no rights but pretending there are is the only way to ensure good utilitarian outcomes then if that's correct there are indeed rights.
Because then if you cannot prove rights from the ground up it falls back on utilitarianism (in absence of counter-argument).
That's a very poor second choice but nonetheless the mere fact (if it is a fact) that we have what now seem to be 'minimum standards' (rights looking at it through another prism) and we believe in them fervently and so that therefore that holds the depredation of others at bay on a practical level......
That's all you need to prove that YOU DO INDEED HAVE RIGHTS. That the rights are real. But under this scenario they are derived somewhat differently.
You see you are deconstructing to nihilism. But to disprove the reality of rights you have to deconstruct to a superior version of ethics.
There is no close competitors since the absence of rights is full spectrum 'might makes right'. And whereas might makes right so often prevails its the existence of the possibility where it need not prevail that makes civilisation possible.
That is to say civilised human behaviour is impossible from the getgo without SOME notion of rights. So here is yet another proof of rights right there. But that does not get you to just what the best set of rights are. That argument only gets you to where there are some sort of rights.
Published: April 13, 2006 9:08 AM
Graeme Bird
"Graeme sure, eventually we are likely to evenutally return to a glaciated state. Our current best estimates are tens of thosuands of years from now. Yo ahve been consistently stating that we need CO2 release to save us from glaciation,a nd you have made the 'imminent' claim at least implicitly several times, and this is what Ive been disputing, as shoudl be clear from the fact that I ahve been respodkgn with time frames. This response says nothign aobut time frames. It is not imminenet. In fact, one could make the argument that we should be making geological stores of carbon so they are available if we start to see a return of glaciation. This is also a realtively absurd argument, but no more absurd than yours."
In summary the above is another example of wrong-way-Corriganism. Since you arbitrarily stack the burden of proof on me. But the burden of proof is clearly on the side opposing me since there have been 20plus glaciations in the last three million years. Whereas we haven't had any overheating ever duriing the existence of primates. And its not proved that we've had a serious overheating even once in the last billion years. There is some speculation to that effect. But that's about it.
In the face of this my opponents are being lunatics to have the starting point as me being under the burden of proof.
But my position is far more secure then even this would suggest. Since I've not got my hand out asking for money. How much more sound could my side of the argument be? All these campaigners against giving the Northern Canadians a second stay at execution want money. The want more money for research. They want subsidies for this . They want to force us to change the way we live.
Supposing after the status of our planet over the last 3 million years is explained. Supposing we would say my opposition had 10% as strong a grounding as me? That's immensely charitable but lets suppose this............
But now they reveal that all the time they wanted to steal all this money off people and impose great hardships on them. We now see this ridicluously charitable 10% as being attenuated very fast...
Now lets go through your whole spiel:
"Graeme sure, eventually we are likely to evenutally return to a glaciated state."
But that's not what the study you quoted said. So you quoted a study that you yourself did not believe. That the author of it knew was speculative. So much so a question mark was in the title of the story....
Well this is not acceptable. Another glaciation is not on. Not OK.
In the absence of an upside risk we should not allow the possibility of another glaciation. Particularly as it will mean giving up higher plant yields without justification.
" Our current best estimates are tens of thosuands of years from now."
No that's not right. You can quote studies where the author says this but none where they SHOW this convincingly with the clerisys workings out very clear so the laity can check their homework. None of your links gives me a simple model. A reason to believe the model. And the clear deliniation of your reasoning. Just citing someone who agrees with you has got some ways to go as evidence on this part of the ether.
" You ahve been consistently stating that we need CO2 release to save us from glaciation..."
That's right. Absence of evidence to the contrary that has to be the presumption. Yes indeed. Remember that quoting someone who thinks differently is not evidence. We need to see the reasoning laid out as clearly as possible.
"and you have made the 'imminent' claim at least implicitly several times, and this is what Ive been disputing..."
But you have no reason to dispute it. I don't say I KNOW its imminent. You say you KNOW it isn't. Your knowledge is an illusion as we have seen. Here my claim to knowledge is far less presumptuous then yours. You are assuming that the historic tendency towards glaciation will not occur. But you have no reason to believe this.
" as shoudl be clear from the fact that I ahve been respodkgn with time frames. This response says nothign aobut time frames. It is not imminenet."
Once again you say this but you don't SHOW this. You are making it up.
" In fact, one could make the argument that we should be making geological stores of carbon so they are available if we start to see a return of glaciation."
We could do that down that track when I can walk to the South Pole in my sandshoes staking out Oil claims on the way.
"This is also a realtively absurd argument, but no more absurd than yours."
I'm not the one making claims I have no cause to make. You are. I haven't made a single absurd argument. Not one.
Ok now that you know how badly, unscientifically and unethically your crowd has been acting its time to go back to the realclimate site and shake them up.
Published: April 13, 2006 9:51 AM
Lee
Graeme:
"Graeme sure, eventually we are likely to evenutally return to a glaciated state."
But that's not what the study you quoted said. So you quoted a study that you yourself did not believe. That the author of it knew was speculative. So much so a question mark was in the title of the story....
The Article, AS QUOTED ABOVE!!!!:
On such grounds alone, scientists have predicted since the 1980s that the present interglacial period might last up to 70,000 years.
-
In other words, at some point up to 70,0000 years form now, glaciation is likely to recur. which is precisely what I said in the sentence you quote. Granted, this is an editorial summary, but the study itself speculates that possibly we might be changing to a state where that happens. That speculation has NOTHING to do with the question of when glaciation would recur in the absense of human actions that delay that return. The actual study does cite the work that leads teads to current understanding of the timing of recurrence
You are (as you seem to often do) conflating two separate arguments in order to use a seemingly-rational response to one and pretend it applies to the other. Posted taht as an entry, point for you,showing that there is a long-standing move away form the "glaciation is immiennet" thinking of 30-od years ago, to a glaciatino is not imminent thinking today.
The rest of your argument (as I suspect you well know) is missing one major part; you assume that warming is without cost, or at the very least that it has less cost than glaciation. The potential costs of warming are not negligible, and observed warming is happening now, while glaciation is speculative and by best current scientific understanding, not likely for tens of thousands of years into the future. And yet the same argument being put forward to minimize the cost of warming (residents of low countries can simply move, agriculture will shift to appropriate climates, we wil apply technological measures to mitigate the costs, and so on) apply JUST AS READILY to glaciation. AND if we see glaciation starting to occur, (it won't happen overnight; popular movies notwithstanding) thereeis nothin preventing us from dumping geologic carbon into the atmosphere at that time, to prevent it then when teh costs are imminent.
So let me summarize. You are proposing that we undertake to cause or continue current increased carbonification of the atmosphere and acompanying acidification of the ocean (this is certain, and already happening with observed deleterious effects: see a very recent, possibly last month, article in Sci Am on this topic) and warming (also scientifically solid now; the scientific debates are over magnitude and the effects), with certain (if not entirely quantified) PRESENT costs (which you ignore in part by pretending that a single one of many, many effects, the carbon fertilization of plants, proves that major chemical changes in the atmosphere is in general a good thing) in order to possibly prevent a glaciation not likely to occur for tens of thousands of years, that could be addressed then if we see it starting by these very same methods of dumping carbon into the atmosphere (assuming we have accessible store of carbon left), because you claim without any evidence that glaciation at some unknown (but probably distant) time in the future will have greater costs than warming happening right now. All without making any attempt at asessing the current value of those unknown future costs at some unknown future date as compared to emerging known costs (acidification, loss of coastal lowlands) of warming now.
This is, frankly, an idiotic (at best inarticulate and incoherent) argument.
Published: April 13, 2006 11:56 AM
Lee
Graeme, you might bother to respond to what I actually argue, please? I never said rights dotn exist, I said they DO exist, as a social construct.
You responded to me:
"The fact that it is easier to defend our rights if we all pretend they exist a priori, is NOT evidence that they exist a priori."
No no. Its actually PROOF. Its not evidence. Alone that constitutes TOTAL PROOF. In the absence of other counter-arguments for greater justice that practical assumption would be enough to constitute TOTAL PROOF THAT THE RIGHTS WERE REAL.
If you say there are no rights but pretending there are is the only way to ensure good utilitarian outcomes then if that's correct there are indeed rights.
-----
And yet, I have never argued that rights arent real. I have (and am) arguing that they are not a priori; they are constructed, preferably in an open marketplace of ideas but too often by imposition of one persons value system in a way that restricts them to less than most would want, and they exist by virtue of our collective agreement that they exist.
If I read you right, I think you said that if there is utility in pretending a thing (rights) exsists, then that thing does exist.
""The fact that it is easier to defend our rights if we all pretend they exist a priori, is NOT evidence that they exist a priori."
No no. Its actually PROOF. Its not evidence. Alone that constitutes TOTAL PROOF. In the absence of other counter-arguments for greater justice that practical assumption would be enough to constitute TOTAL PROOF THAT THE RIGHTS WERE REAL.
If you say there are no rights but pretending there are is the only way to ensure good utilitarian outcomes then if that's correct there are indeed rights."
Dude. Lets say I come downstairs one night, and there is an intruder in my house. Having no gun to hand, I grab the metal dowel I use as a paperweight, shove the tip of it into the back of his head, and tell him if he does anything wrong, I'll blow his brains out, and then use his BELIEF that I have a gun to place him on had face and bindhis hands. There is in this case a BELIEF that I have a gun (it is the reason he cooperates), and that belief has UTILITY (if he didnt beleive it, I'd likely be in trouble). And yet, there is no gun. What is created (constructed) is a useful belief in a fiction. That belief is real, the consequences of that belief is real. The gun never exists.
This is not a perfect analogy I know, but its illustrative.
In the case of rights. We individuals (y'all should like that I start here with individuals) find it vastly preferable for ourselves to live in a society where the concept of rights is recognized and enforced. We therefore, in a marketplace of ideas or by some other (IMO much less preferable) method arive at a sufficiently-shared collective (yeah, you can boo now, but there it is) agreement on a set of rights, which now ***do exist*** AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT,not as an a priori thing-in-itself. The fact that we agree on those rights does mean those rights exist (for as long as we continue to agree on them; thsu the constant need to defend teh rights we beleive are critical), but it does NOT mean they exist a priori.
BTW, your insistence that I am unjustified in 'reducing [my value beliefs and statments] to nihilism' is ismply an acknowledgement that we (all of us) are starting from a set of unprovable ASSUMED axioms of some sort in defining our value-based beleifs, and not from a set of a priori provable truths. Which is all I've been arguing all along; as soon as you acknowledge this, you are necessarily acknowledging that moral ssytems are constructed, not a priori.
Published: April 13, 2006 12:24 PM
Graeme Bird
Look you don't have anything. You haven't got even one study which lays out the reasoning for why glaciation can be over-ridden. Not one. Just some guys saying that's the case.
But then we have Stefan over at real-climate standing in for you. Saying glaciation not possible with this much CO2. Yet you and Steve Bloom say that glaciation will happen....
So what can I say? You guys are all nutjobs. Repeat after me. You are not scientists. You are public-tit science workers.
What did you think getting Stefan to make things up for you would do. Because you deny me my right of reply it only serves to emphasise how readily you guys are willing to lie.
" Posted taht as an entry, point for you,showing that there is a long-standing move away form the "glaciation is immiennet" thinking of 30-od years ago, to a glaciatino is not imminent thinking today."
Look I don't care what the "thinking" is to day. By people who are clearly nutballs. I'm only interested in work that is so arranged that it becomes convenient for the laity to check.
And since you guys live off the sweat of another mans brow I think that's not too much to ask.
You get Stefan to stand in for you? I don't give a damn.
I'm not impressed. Your job is not to cite people who agree wih you or rig up people to stand in for you. Your job is to get your assumptions out there on the table where they can be checked.
Published: April 13, 2006 12:24 PM
Lee
BillG said:
Lee, do you believe it is possible to derive a universal ethic from Locke statement in his 2nd Treatise?
"The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."
---
Of course you can, Bill. Once you ASSUME AS A PREDICATE that Locke's statement about the existence of natural law is correct, then you can derive from it the existence of natural law that leads to a universal moral system.
None of which is any more subject to "proof" than the predicate axiom upon which it is founded.
I thnink Locke made the same mistake y'all are making; that the utility of a concept (rights) in a belief sysem is proof of the existence of that thing a priori. Problem is, once you accept this way of thinking (that MY value system and set of desired rights is a priori the only proper value system and set of desired rights), then you are implicitly denying the utility of the market of ideas that (IMO) leads best to workable collective moral (rights) systems, and (again, IMO) this is an oft-trod path toward death and destruction.
Published: April 13, 2006 12:33 PM
Lee
Speaking of nutjobs, Graeme, why will you not respond to what I actually say, instead of to what you can pretend I said.
"Look you don't have anything. You haven't got even one study which lays out the reasoning for why glaciation can be over-ridden. Not one. Just some guys saying that's the case."
Graeme YOU ARE THE ONE saying that we need to be dumping carbon NOW in order to over-ride glaciation. Remember? Ive given you an entry point into the literature of on the expected timing of the next glaciation in the absense of anthropogenic forcings, by way of a paper that cites taht as background to its speculation that perhaps anthropogenic forcings might delay thattiming, or perhaps end it. By people who are honest enough to lalee the uncertain part as uncertain. Note that yo are sayign they are ful of shit and should not be believed because of that question mark, when what they are saying a possibility is precisely what you are claiming we should be doing. Take a logic class.
"But then we have Stefan over at real-climate standing in for you. Saying glaciation not possible with this much CO2. Yet you and Steve Bloom say that glaciation will happen...."
I'm not affiliated with real climate in any way. I'm a reader of taht site, AMONG MANY OTHERS. Including, you will note, this one. Ive jsut finished arguing that, absent human action, glaciation will probalbyheppen, but not for severaltens of thousands of years. Ive just pointed out that if release of atmospheric carbon is a possible way to prevent glaciation, then if it starts to happen we can do it then. Where in all this am I saying glaciation wont happen. I'm saying it isnt immienent, (in fact ice is retreating at the moemnt). Even the study I posted doesntmake that strong claim; you keeplambasting it presicely because it doesnt do so.
BTW, if yo read RC and are honest, you will note that they dispute links between global warming adn hurrican frequency, and slowdown of the North Atlantic heat conveyor, as unporven Ian dsome of the authros ther argue, unlikely), and they often pointout that the more extreme claims in the press are either untrue or unlikley. This is not the behavioir of alarmists, it is the behavior of scientists beign careful to stay wihtin what they believe ar eth elimits of teh science. But I dotn expect, based on your behaviorr her and elsewhere, that you will be this honest.
"So what can I say? You guys are all nutjobs. Repeat after me. You are not scientists. You are public-tit science workers.
Get a better tin-foil hat, Graeme. I dont know stefan or any of the other climatologists at RealClimate, I have never correspoinded with any of them. I don't think I've even ever posted on REalClimate, but I post to a lot of sites so I could be forgetting a post or two. This is just more unsupported wild gesticulations in plece or an actual response to waht I said.
" Posted taht as an entry, point for you,showing that there is a long-standing move away form the "glaciation is immiennet" thinking of 30-od years ago, to a glaciatino is not imminent thinking today."
Look I don't care what the "thinking" is to day. By people who are clearly nutballs. I'm only interested in work that is so arranged that it becomes convenient for the laity to check.
And since you guys live off the sweat of another mans brow I think that's not too much to ask.
You get Stefan to stand in for you? I don't give a damn.
I'm not impressed. Your job is not to cite people who agree wih you or rig up people to stand in for you. Your job is to get your assumptions out there on the table where they can be checked.
-----------------
Graeme, they are not MY assumptions. I'm an informed student, not a climatologist. My field of science is different. YOU are the one saying that the science is wrong (as near as I can tell, you cliam its wrogn becasue, well, you think its wrong), YOU are the one claimign that we need to continue with major changes in the planet TODAY in order to possibly prevent a possible event at some unspecified time probably far in the future, adn when I point out that most of the curent science suports that "probably far in the future' part, you respond with these blathering unsupported accusations against scientists who dont agree with you.
YOU are the one making the claim that dumping carbon into the air isnnecessary to save us from glaciation. I poionted out the wekanesses of yor claim in my last post; yo failed to respond to a single part of it. Are yo a coward, or just a blithering idiot? And yes, that's a flame; it follows on the heals of your "nutjobs' 'nutballs' 'public tit' bullshite, not to mention your unfounded paranoid assumptions about me, my field, adn my realationships with people I occasionally read. RC clearly states that they will remove ad homs and flames; if this is an example (and it aint your first in this thread) of your posting style, I suspect I have a pretty good idea why your posts arent making it there.
Published: April 13, 2006 12:59 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Lee wrote:
'Of course you can, Bill. Once you ASSUME AS A PREDICATE that Locke's statement about the existence of natural law is correct, then you can derive from it the existence of natural law that leads to a universal moral system.
None of which is any more subject to "proof" than the predicate axiom upon which it is founded.
I thnink Locke made the same mistake y'all are making; that the utility of a concept (rights) in a belief sysem is proof of the existence of that thing a priori. Problem is, once you accept this way of thinking (that MY value system and set of desired rights is a priori the only proper value system and set of desired rights), then you are implicitly denying the utility of the market of ideas that (IMO) leads best to workable collective moral (rights) systems, and (again, IMO) this is an oft-trod path toward death and destruction."
BillG responds:
let me take a crack at it from a summary of Fred Foldvary's "universal ethic" and you point out the problems...
----------------
EQUAL freedom and liberty for all, special privileges for no one.
just as Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" what he meant is that all men are born with the same human capacity to act equally moral.
this is the basis for a universal ethic of social justice derived from human nature that allows us to live in peace, harmony and prosperity...
the two aspects of human nature that the classical liberal philosopher John Locke used are independence and equality...Locke wrote in his 2nd Treatise: "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."
this natural moral law is formulated by rules that make up a universal ethic (across cultures) where the ethic assigns the moral values of good, evil, and neutral to all human acts.
the premise of independence, that all persons think and feel independently, implies that values are ultimately subjective, coming from individual desires and feelings while the premise of human equality gives these values an equal status.
the universal ethic's rule for moral goodness is that acts which are welcomed benefits to others are morally good while the rule for evil is:
a. an offense that exists within the subject's mind
b. an invasion into the person's body and possessions
for the universal ethic, only unwelcomed invasions are evil, while mere offenses are morally neutral...acts which only affect yourself are either neutral or good, but not evil, since there is no invasion into another's domain.
thus there are three basic rules of the universal ethic:
1. acts are good if and only if they are welcomed benefits.
2. acts are evil if they coercively harm others as invasions.
3. all other acts are neutral.
a society has complete liberty or freedom if its laws prohibit and punish evil as prescribed by the universal ethic, and if any act which is good or neutral is allowed but not required....we have the right to do anything that does not coercively harm others, and the right to be free from coercive harm.
we also have a property right to our own bodies and lives, since if some control others, this violates the premise of equality and becomes an invasion...this self-ownership right implies a property right to our labor and the products of our labor as the natural extension of self.
but self-ownership does not extend to what labor does not produce: natural resources.
the premise of equality implies that all persons have an equal property right to the benefits and natural opportunites afforded by nature other than our own bodies...these benefits are manifested in the rent that folks bid to use nature so equality can only be satisfied if communities share the economic rents due to nature equally and directly amongst neighbors in the form of a citiens dividend.
the universal ethic therefore prescribes a fiscal policy of public and community revenue from economic rent due from community investments (as opposed to those afforded by nature) along with voluntary user fees...if the community investments and voluntary user fees diverge too widely to suit a particular individual, then thay are to be free to join another community and shape it more to their liking.
the taxation of labor and produced goods is an invasion into what properly belongs to the producers.
for social policy and civil liberties, the universal ethic prescribes that there should be no law where there is no victim of an invasion, thus no victimless crimes...everyone should be free to do what she or he wants so long as they do not coercively harm others which also means no restriction on honest and peaceful enterprise.
this implies true free trade: no barriers of any kind.
the universal ethic provides the general framework that can be applied to any particular topic, leaving scope for judgment and circumstances...this framework enables our widely differing cultures to live together in social harmony.
the best way to implement the universal ethic for social justice is to make it a permanent part of a country's constitution, along with a decentralized political organization that lets the people rather than moneyed elites control the governance and policy.
only when much of humanity recognizes the existence of the universal ethic and applies it to personal and social life will there be universal justice, peace, and harmony.
Published: April 13, 2006 1:27 PM
Lee
bill, that's all fine and dandy. You just did waht I said you could do; derived a 'univeral' value system, based on some unproveable acioms and then (implicilty at least) regarded it as proven.
Among the unprovable assumptions.
That all humans have equal moral capacity
That (complete and unfettered except as to actual harm of others, given the use you make of this assumption) indepedence is an a priori good.
That property rights (againn, unfettered) are a natural extensin of the self. BW, taken at face value, this means taht crimes agasint property carry equal moral weight with crimes agsint persons, which I personally find absurd.
Implicitly, that resources have value only insofar as people interact with it. Tah tis, ther is no value OUTSIDE of human assigning of value.
That the 'ability to join another community' is neutral (which I also find absurd, in a world with any limited resource whatsoever). I can (perhaps) find a compatible comunity,but only if I chose to gie up my ability to liove anywhere except for teh one limited place where that cpommunity exists; that is a limit on resources. This one is critical; if you DONT assume such neutrality, then you are lead inevitably to the ned for at least some level of coercive action in human societies, because it recognizes that peopel of differing value systems must live together i spite of their difering value systems. THIS is precisely where the danger of Single Perfect value (rights) systems arises.
That "universal justice, peace, and harmony.
" is achievable by any means.
I'm sue I could find others; these leapt at me. Personally, I find much to like in this, YOUR, system of rights. I also personaly find parts taht I think are simply absurd; my axiom set is different from yours. That doestn make me evil, or even wrong, any more than my belief that your seeming insistnecce that there is One True Set of Rights is part of a dyunamic that way too often leads to violence and destruction, makes you evil or wrong.
Published: April 13, 2006 1:57 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Lee wrote:
"Among the unprovable assumptions.
That all humans have equal moral capacity
That (complete and unfettered except as to actual harm of others, given the use you make of this assumption) indepedence is an a priori good.
That property rights (againn, unfettered) are a natural extensin of the self."
BillG responds:
thanks Lee...
I thought I would just respond to a few of your criticism to see if it may or may not be fruitful for us to continue discussion.
1. what other conditions besides some type of mental deficiency would keep men from being born with the same capacity to act equally moral?
2. not that independence is an "a priori good" but rather that it is an inevitable factual condition of being born human.
3. not that "property rights are a natural extension of self" but that labor is a natural extension of self and labor then defines property rights.
Published: April 13, 2006 2:37 PM
Lee
I suspect I'm nto going to change yor mind, or vice versa, but here goes. BTW let me be clear; I'm not (necesarily) arguing that your definition of rights are bad r taht I necessarily disagree with them (although I do with some, not with others, based on my own values system), just that they are a construct, not PROVABLE from necessarily true first principles.
1. Why do you exclude those? Including those, why are there necessarily no others? Let me make clear; I think this is the strongest (as in most utilitarian) of your assumptions. My point it, it IS an assumption. And as you just pointed out, one that is clearly violated in at lesst some cases.
2. I suspect we need to be careful aobut what 'independence' means. Independence of action is by no means an inevitable factual condition of being human; my children will be happy to confirm this for you, most forcefully right after I've denied them somethign they want. Neither is independence of 'existence,' we humans are social animals and do not do well in the absense of others around us. We are, strictly, speaking biologically and physically separate; that does not mean we are 'independent' by any criterion beyond simple physical separation. We tend to carve out zones of autonomous action, amid other zones of interdependent action, and where the borders are tends to vary widely among people. Independence (in any absolute sense from which one can derive unqualified conclusions) is at least an assumption, and IMO a weak one because likely in too many cases to be overtly false.
3. The first half is fine, if a bit tautological; my labor is the labor I do. The second half does not follow. That my labor creates a property right in the fruits of that labor is either an assumption, or a construct from a set of derived rights, not a necessary conclusion. IMO, acting as if this is NECESSARILY TRUE (as opposed to most often being agreed upon as good) is dangerous; I pretty strongly suspect my value system regardign this differs from that of the inhabitants of this site quite strongly, and may even get my beliefs branded as 'evil' within your postulates by at least some here. That's a pretty dangerous thing, IMO.
Published: April 13, 2006 2:58 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Lee wrote:
"My point is, it [all humans have the capacity to act equally moral] IS an assumption
BillG responds:
the human capacity of self-awareness and choice is common to the species, and human beings are biologically one species therefore the capacity to act equally moral is that pertaining to human action: purposeful behavior, rather than behavior governed mainly by genetic programming or instinct.
each person therefore has a personal ethic by which any act that one experiences or that one can imagine has a determined moral value...each person can designate any act as good, evil, or neutral, according to his/her own personal ethic.
the moral value (good, evil, neutral) of any act is determined at the moment it is performed.
Published: April 13, 2006 4:36 PM
Lee
Sure, if you reduce this to a tautology, it is true but meaningless:
------------
BillG responds:
the human capacity of self-awareness and choice is common to the species, and human beings are biologically one species therefore the capacity to act equally moral is that pertaining to human action: purposeful behavior, rather than behavior governed mainly by genetic programming or instinct.
each person therefore has a personal ethic by which any act that one experiences or that one can imagine has a determined moral value...each person can designate any act as good, evil, or neutral, according to his/her own personal ethic.
the moral value (good, evil, neutral) of any act is determined at the moment it is performed.
----------
Humans act, acts have (good, bad, or indiffirnet) moral value, so human actions have moral value. If all you are sayign is that human actin shave moral value and when you include good, bad OR NEUTRAL you make this so even with no moral conseqe3unces; not very useful), that is true by definition. But that isnt moral capacity. Moral capacity is the abiltiy to act in ways that intentionally influence the moral conseqeunces of one;s actions. Remove this elemenmt of intent, and you might as well assign moral capability to at ree when its fallign branch hurts someone.
You broached this point in passing, but sloughed it off when getting to the meat of whether ***of necesity*** the moral capacity of all humans is equal.
The issue is whether a priori it can be known that all humans have equal moral capacity, or whether this is an assumption and unprovable (and iMO, probably wrogn; you already mentioned examples). As a trivial (but deadly to your point) example, I often make choice swith weighty moral cosnequences regardign the wellbeing andfuture of my family. I don't allow my children to make those choices, because they lack (among other things) morally capacity to dot so. Not from deficiency, in their case, but from lack of experieince, education, and developmentally-derived thinking abilities that gives them sufficient foresighttto eexamine the moral conseqeunces of their decisions. If you want to exclude children (and that alone removes 'all people,' I can apply the same argument to many classes of adult people. They dont have EQUAL moral capacity, even if they have SOME moral capacity.
Published: April 13, 2006 5:20 PM
Graeme Bird
"YOU are the one claimign that we need to continue with major changes in the planet TODAY in order to possibly prevent a possible event at some unspecified time probably far in the future, adn when I point out that most of the curent science suports that "probably far in the future' part, you respond with these blathering unsupported accusations against scientists who dont agree with you."
When you say that the science supports you you are making it up. Your position is untenable since it is you who are simply assuming that the reality of the last three and a half million years can be dismissed. You are the one wanting intervention since you are the one wanting other peoples money to be spent.
The science does not support your position. THE SCIENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT YOUR POSITION. If it did you would have some evidence beyond simply posting speculative studies from folks who agree with you. We could do that all day. Making links doesn't mean a damn thing. What is your reasoning.
You want to impose costs. Yet the science runs the other way?
Why?
Published: April 13, 2006 5:35 PM
BillG (not Gates)
Lee wrote:
"The issue is whether a priori it can be known that all humans have equal moral capacity, or whether this is an assumption and unprovable"
BillG responds:
I don't think "equal moral capacity" and "capacity to act equally moral" are quite the same concept once we take away the obvious conditions of children and those who are mentally deficient.
yours seems to refer to a cpacity after life experiences whereas I am talking about the capacity prior to life experiences as in potential.
Published: April 13, 2006 5:36 PM
Graeme Bird
"YOU are the one making the claim that dumping carbon into the air isnnecessary to save us from glaciation. I poionted out the wekanesses of yor claim in my last post; yo failed to respond to a single part of it."
No there is no weakness to my claim. You simply assert otherwise. You just make it up.
The burden of proof is on you and obviously so since it is you that wants to steal off people for this alleged problem. But you haven't shown a problem. Rather we have a situation that may be being corrected by Capitalism. Or dumb luck if you will.
Now stop talking nonsense and pretending science is on your side.
Published: April 13, 2006 5:39 PM
Lee
Look, Graeme, Ive tried posting links to the reseaerch, I've tried explainign why it is relevant, I've corrected yor misrepresentatinof the logic, Ive posted the actual cycle graph shpowing that it is in fact changing shape right now, and the timing of the past is NOT like the timing of the future, I have explained and reexplained and reexplained when you attribute to me quotes or ideas that arent mine, and you continue to refuse to address that, and you continue to refuse to beleive that I actually beleive what I say I beleive, in favor of crude ad hominem attacks and refusals to address any of this except by accusing me and many, many others of lying.
And you wonder why your posts arent making it onto RC.
I'm done with you; you are dishonest, and mildly lunatic.
If anyone else here wants to discuss this, reasonably and with a minimum of ad hominem or mouth-frothing accusations, I'm happy to do so as my time is availalbe. I have to say, Graeme here is not giving me a very good impression of your site.
Published: April 13, 2006 5:44 PM
Graeme Bird
"Graeme YOU ARE THE ONE saying that we need to be dumping carbon NOW in order to over-ride glaciation."
No. You're wrong. I'm not asking anyone to spend one dollar on my account. Your side is asking for costs to be incurred. Wrong-way Corrigans the lot of you. Risking glaciation, imposing costs, reducing yields. What could be more insane then this?
You can read Charles Mackays "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
and you will not find anything like this for sheer derangement.
Published: April 13, 2006 5:45 PM
Graeme Bird
"I'm done with you; you are dishonest, and mildly lunatic."
That's leftist projection. Every claim you've made you've made up. One minute you point to 'forcing' and say its all a done deal. Next you claim that there will eventually be glaciation again. You cite links claiming proof when its clear that the links are speculative. You want to impose costs even when the tendency is towards glaciation.
If you weren't part of a mass movement we would have to diagnose you a lunatic right off the bat.
Published: April 13, 2006 5:50 PM
Lee
A question to the entire site, if I may?
Is this Graeme lunatic representative of all or most of you? I'm enjoying, being mildly challenged and made to think by my conversation with Bill, and that is encouraging, but if Graeme is representative of what this site has to offer, I am SO out of here.
Published: April 13, 2006 5:56 PM
jeffrey
I think everyone will be glad when this argument ends--and ends without anyone being banned. So one of you please let the other one just have the last word. Please.
Published: April 13, 2006 6:02 PM
Graeme Bird
I'll take the last word.
Take it to emails. There I might be able to drag some authentic evidence out of you. I asked you to take it to emails many posts back.
Published: April 13, 2006 6:04 PM
Sione Vatu
Lee
You're labouring under certain rigidly held assumptions yourself. This argument is epistemological. It relates to identification and the formation and use of concepts.
First let's check premise. Unfortunately you are a collectivist. Your approach proceeds with treating the concept "group" as a being and as a real entity. Yet that concept is not an actual physical entity in reality. The notion of a group is a conceptual tool used by people to deal with certain aspects of reality in their thought. It's based on a classification used to address attributes of certain individual entities and is a tool of logic- nothing more. Treating the idea "group" as a real entity is a grave error to make. Assigning to a group the attributes of the individual entities within it or the results of those attributes is likewise erroneous. The attributes are possessed solely by each individual member.
For example, that Siotu possesses two eyes and is able to be categorised as a member of a group of people with two eyes does not mean that said group possesses eyes. Each member of the group does. Likewise "group" does not see. Only the individual members are able to do that. They each see (exercise the power or attribute of vision) on an individual basis. The action of seeing is an individual action. It also would be invalid to say that Siotu possesses eyes BECAUSE of his membership of the group of two eyed people. The group does not PROVIDE him with the attribute. He has the attribute and that makes it appropriate to classify him as being a member of that particular group.
The misidentification of the conceptual tool "group" as an actual entity soon leads to ideas that groups have some sort of moral imperative and right in and of themselves as groups. This gets especially misleading when special attributes are assigned to the group that do not attach to the individual entities that make up the group. I note the expression of this in your approach where the individual is unimportant, only the "we."
You state things such as:
"Rights are a social construct, like 'race' or 'the self.'"
&
"Our rights exist because we (plural; I'll even use the "C" word: collectively) have defined, demanded, and defended them. At great cost and sacrifice."
The notion is that rights are an arbitrary developed by group action (whatever that action may happen to be, eg society or the collective possess or produce or define rights etc.). The group acts, not the individual. The "we" act, not the individual. Notice how the individual is thus an expression of a group. The self becomes a social construct. Attributes of the individual are caused by society or the collective or the group. Following this line of thinking the group or collective must have primacy. This, even though it is an arbitrary construct whereas the individual member is real. A classic base-over-apex error!
The problem, at heart, is one of treating something as it isn't. A misidentification.
Second, you had some sort of problem understanding what was written for you. Let's check what I actually did write to you with regards to a certain recognition which I named as "Individual Rights" and which I attached to OTHER PEOPLE. Perhaps I should have used another term but let's stick with it. Repeating my comment to you:
"Next point, promoting freedom for the individual and the absence of coercion is not faith. It's a recognition. It's a matter of how people should be treated and is based on a negative obligation that you as an individual bear (as do I), the recognition of Individual Rights (that means OTHER PEOPLE'S)."
No, Lee, I did not postulate the existence of an individual right in the sense that an individual can "possess" rights. I discussed an obligation. You have been very, very naughty in your approach to this and I suspect you may merely be looking for yet another argument. That's a shame as the practical outcome of these ideas are very serious indeed.
I'll elaborate a little on what I was referring to. I identified Individual Rights as involving the recognition of a negative obligation. It's an obligation on you as an individual volitional human. The fundamental obligation is to treat things as they actually are. Let's examine premise again.
AXIOM: Reality exists and there are entities that exist within it.
PREMISE: I want to live and live well while I do.
CONCLUDE: I am obliged to treat entities as their attributes require. In other words, according to what they are.
For example, one does not eat tower blocks. Consider the attributes of tower blocks and the attributes of one's own self. It should be readily apparent how to treat a tower block.
Another example, one does not put a Sydney funnel web spider down one's trousers. Consider the attributes of the Sydney funnel web spider and what is inside one's trousers. It should be readily apparent how to treat a Sydney funnel web spider.
Get it?
Regarding other people.
The obligation to which I refer can be applied by answering the question, "How should I treat another individual human?" To answer, "according to real attributes" immediately places the negative obligation on you to recognise those attributes and deal with them appropriately. You (and I) treat an individual as such. Not as a herd. Not as an animal. Not as a chattel. Not as a slave. Not as some disembodied by-product of "group". Not as "society". Not as social construct. Treat him as he actually exists, as he is, according to his attributes; one of which is volition. An outcome of that means you avoid interfering with a man's ability to lead his own life, chase his own goals and values and acquire his own property, unless he fails in turn to treat you as an individual (fails to treat Lee as a sovereign independent person by ignoring HIS attributes of being). Then, the attributes expressed by that particular man may require you to treat him in a slightly different fashion.
The alternative is to treat an individual as a tool or a chattel regardless of any attribute/s to the contrary. Now where would that lead? What would result? I'm sure you can well imagine. You have alluded to such results in relation to philosophic systems with which you personally disagree. Anyway, there have been plenty of examples of what does happen when this path is selected. It does not work out well as it is based on an error; treating an entity as something it is not.
The proof of which approach is valid is ostensive although it can also be derived through long and involved philosophical discourse (one variant of which I suspect you may be aware of). As a practical person I prefer ostensive reference to reality, although it is good that there are more formal deductive approaches.
Digressing. Of course should a person choose not to want to live, well then all bets are off. The premise is altered. The obligation vanishes. Now it's that person versus reality. Results are final! Literally. [if anyone wants to borrow some funnel webs I have two in the garden]
So where does all that leave "collective rights"? Non-existent. There are none.
An arbitrary mental construct like "group" or "collective" has no "rights." It can't have as it does not exist. Troubles occur when the concept "group" is imagined as being a real entity and gets dangerous once allowed to suppress existent individuals. Then off go collectivists assigning all sorts of special attributes, privileges, powers and even possessions to imaginary and arbitrarily defined collectives. Too bad for those poor individuals who disagree.
Individuals (who may or may not be classified to whatever group) do exist and each possesses an attribute of being able to act (among other things). How to treat each individual is determined according to the attributes of that individual.
So stick with the real thank you very much. Existent trumps the non-existent. Individuals exist. Deal with them as they are. Leave other people as they are. You, clever as you may regard yourself, do not know better than they how to live THEIR lives.
Sione
PS BTW have you noticed the self contradiction inherent in collectivism? Here's one, consider how collectivists have to arrive at their conclusions individually and then promote them individually. They may as well be saying, "I am borg." I still chuckle at that. Collective consciousness!
Published: April 13, 2006 11:21 PM
LEE
Rather that deal with that sophistry (I'll simply note that 'rights' have precisly as much real existence as 'groups' in your construct) I'll go back to my original point.
If Reiser is dead, and he is dead because 10,000 people each gave him a sub-lethal dose of arsenic (and therefore no individual killed him) he is still dead, and he is dead because the group killed him. By Reiser's logic, no individaual killed hiim (because no individual engaged in lethal actions) and no groups can exist, so nothing happened that can kill Reiser. Either that, or he is dead and no one killed him. And yet, he died, and 10,000 individuals contributed to the collective act adn bear teh moral burden of taht murder, whcih Reiser woud by the logic he uses here deny is murder, because individuals cant be responsible for the actions of a group collective that can have no existence.
This idea that one cant be BOTH an individual acting as an indiviual, AND part of a group acting toward group goals of a grou pthat exists A as a group, or that group actions cant exist because indivuals contribute to our pactions, is simply an absurd attempt to attribute mutually-exclusive binary logic to categories where it isn't applicable.
And with that, I really AM out of here. My team at work is about to collectively release a body of work that none of us could have created individually. I'm going to go back to do some hard work,a dn then revel in my individual responsible contribution to the collective act of creation. But I forget; collectives dont exist, so how can I amigine that a group can accomplish what the individuals of the group could not? Silly me.
Published: April 13, 2006 11:36 PM
Graeme Bird
No you have that wrong. Since we are not talking about arsenic that millions of people are maliciously pouring into the sewers. We are talking about small pollutants put out as a bi-product of production needed for the survival of billions.
Once a country is wealthy enough the level of these pollutants will decrease in any case.
But we are talking about the free fertiliser and glaciation-neutraliser CO2 ( see your own link which was evidence for Me but you ludicrously put it up as if it was a counter-argument).
http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020819/pf/020819-9_pf.html
This link provides no real evidence. But its a statement of some of the scientific opinion that is around. Here we can pull a number of assumptions out of it.
1. The article assumes that glaciation would occur without human-based CO2.
2. The article assumes that glaciation MIGHT (note.... NO CERTAINTY) be delayed for a very long time due to human released CO2.
3. The article however affirms that there WILL BE NO CATASTROPHIC HEATING. This is implied by the following paragraph:
"It is hard to know what the ice sheets will do, says climatologist Thomas Crowley of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He thinks that the ice in Antarctica is very unlikely to disappear. Long after we've burnt up all the fossil fuels, "there should still be a pretty big chunk of ice down there", he says. The Greenland ice sheet might be more susceptible, but possibly not enough to rule out an eventual return to ice-age conditions."
If there is still ice there then this cannot mean catastrophic heating .
4. A minority opinion is expressed that the next glaciation might not just be delayed. It might be avoided entirely. SUPERB NEWS IF TRUE. Praise be to economic liberty.
Now you posted this in order to try and show that I was ignoring the science. But I have been pushing these very same premises myself.
So its time you wrong-way Corrigans clicked your heels three times and made it back to reality.
So lets be clear about this.
(a) We might avoid a coldness disaster but there is no certainty here.
(b) We WILL avoid an overheating disaster. Here we have some level of certainty.
So what's the policy prescription? Its obvious. Leave us alone. Don't force people to incur unecessary costs. This is confirmed BY YOUR OWN LINK. Its your logic and not my science that is at fault.
Published: April 14, 2006 12:17 AM
Lee
Ading some accuracy:
1. The article assumes that glaciation would occur AT SOME TIME TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS FROM NOW without human-based CO2.
2. The article assumes that glaciation MIGHT (note.... NO CERTAINTY) be delayed BEYOND ThaT DISTANT PROBABLE TIME for a very long time due to human released CO2.
3. The article however affirms that there WILL BE NO CATASTROPHIC HEATING. This is implied by the following paragraph:
"It is hard to know what the ice sheets will do, says climatologist Thomas Crowley of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He thinks that the ice in Antarctica is very unlikely to disappear. Long after we've burnt up all the fossil fuels, "there should (SHOULD) still be a pretty big chunk of ice down there", he says. The Greenland ice sheet might (MIGHT) be more susceptible, but possibly (POSSIBLY) not enough to rule out an eventual return to ice-age conditions."
If there is still ice there then this cannot mean catastrophic heating .
-----
Speaking of unfounded absolutes.
Published: April 14, 2006 2:32 PM
Graeme Bird
"1. The article assumes that glaciation would occur AT SOME TIME TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS FROM NOW without human-based CO2."
No the article doesn't imply this you are lying. Heat deficits/surplus coming from the Malinkovitch cycles register as increases/decreases in the ice pretty much on a one to one basis (over the long haul). Things may have changed due to our actions. But that is not what you are inaccurately claiming above. And the article DOES NOT CLAIM WHAT YOU CLAIM.
And there was no cause for your lunatics aspersion against my correct claim that the existence of ice would imply no catastrophic heating.
Once again I will point out that it is not a failure of science on our side. But that it is instead a failure of reason and basic honestly on your side that is the cause of the disagreement.
Published: April 14, 2006 4:31 PM
Lee
Graeme, if you are going to accuse me of lying, you might at least avoid doing so with the referent lying right there for all to see:
"But we now know that today's conditions are not like those of the last warm period, the Eemian, which was around 125,000 years ago. The ice-age cycle is caused by slow, periodic changes in the shape and position of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This time around, those changes are less pronounced than they were during the Eemian.
On such grounds alone, scientists have predicted since the 1980s that the present interglacial period might last up to 70,000 years."
ON SUCH GROUNDS ALONE, Graeme.
Published: April 14, 2006 11:40 PM
Sione Vatu
Gentlemen
Lee is wilfully obtuse, mischaracterises what was provided for him and consistently evades the point. Either that or he honestly has some sort of trouble understanding what was provided for him. The less charitable would say he is dishonest (echoing what the Matai said about socialists and suchlike). I can see why people get frustrated with him. There should not be much tolerance for this type.
A few points relating to Lee's contributions (if you can call them that).
1/. The professor's surname is Reisman. Professor Reisman. Not Reiser. Lee fails to get even that much correct. It is important to have the courtesy to read and address what is provided for oneself by others, surely.
This leads to the question about why Lee stooped to attacking the professor by making up such a deliberately offensive analogy. It was completely unnecessary. One could imagine the howls had anyone postulated a scenario where Lee received a right brutal hiding at the hands of the Vatu. I conclude that Lee was here only for the sake of promoting his dogma, stroking his ego and the hell with anyone who dared contest his sacred revelations.
2/. Lee's analogy of ten thousand poisoners (how silly was that) merely illustrates that each individual acts. Each INDIVIDUAL is responsible for HIS action.
The concept of "group" is an intellectual tool, as previously described, and does not exist as a real physical entity. It is an intellectual tool used as a way of dealing with aspects of reality. In this case it is a shorthand for dealing with 10,000 separate individuals who commit 10,000 similar actions. Now that does not mean that individuals can't associate to undertake an activity or task. Obviously they can and do. Each can contribute to a project but each contributes his own individual actions as an individual. Among other things this allows for specialisation of labour (which is good). Note that it is each individual that bears the consequences of the project outcome according to his particular situation and context (very important to realise that). Lee evades any of this.
3/. Here is another important issue to understand. In Lee's analogy it is KNOWN with complete certainty that each member of the group of poisoners acts in a certain way (known as Lee said so, it's one of his premises for the analogy) and the result is KNOWN (Lee revealed that as well, it's another of his premises for the analogy). A direct causal link is established (a most important part of his premise). That is NOT something that has been established with certainty in relation to Man and climate change. Even if it could be, there is still a chain of logical proofs to follow in order to get from the problem to a valid justification of coercive collectivisation as the final solution. I doubt such a conclusion could found to be valid.
Another issue of context hidden in Lee's analogy. Lee and the 10,000 poisoners conspire to undertake a specific task. They agree to act in concert to kill by poisoning. They are organised to execute Lee's unkind plan. Another way of looking at it is that they have formed intent to harm another individual. That is an organised criminal enterprise. Have individuals who use fossil fuels formed an intent of this nature? Clearly not!
4/. An analogy is not "the same as". There may be similarities between a real situation and the analogy but it needs to be very carefully determined whether a particular analogy is illustrative or merely a hindrance; an error. Therefore always check premise and check context.
5/. A major error has been identified in Lee's epistemology. It is serious enough to undermine his system of thought and invalidate much of his stated position.
The lesson in this debate has been the shallow and wilfully dishonest nature of those who would justify the initiation and use of coercive force against other individuals. It all comes down to the conceit of assuming to know better than another man how he should live HIS life. Answers to problems are not to be found in that manner; only more problems.
Sione
Published: April 15, 2006 5:03 AM
Graeme Bird
"On such grounds alone, scientists have predicted since the 1980s that the present interglacial period might last up to 70,000 years."
Not without homo sapiens. And no I dispute that. Find some folks in the 1980's who were saying that. Probably they were making an ambit case against the hysterical freeze soothsayers of the time. That would have been an EXTREME minority. And I suggest to you that this is just leftist re-writing of history.
You see freedom.......... FREEDOM!!!!!!..... freedom, or economic liberty, is the middle ground. The place where the sensible people hang. One crowd has their hand out trying to grab money saying avoid this. Another crowd have their hands out trying to grab oney saying avoid the opposite.
But libertarians and near libertarians and even some anarcho-capitalists. We are sensible people and not easily spooked.
Published: April 15, 2006 8:13 AM
Lee
"Not without homo sapiens. And no I dispute that. "
Graeme, what precisely do you think the pharase "on such grounds alone" means?
Published: April 15, 2006 12:11 PM
Lee
1/. The professor's surname is Reisman.
L - For this, my apologies. I have recently been reading a Reiser; I confused names. Mea Culpa. Move on.
My analogy was chosen to be stark; y'all were indulging in self-congratulations for having proven the lack of individual responsibility in any consequences of carbon exhaust, and I was inciting a response. It worked.
2/. Lee's analogy of ten thousand poisoners (how silly was that) merely illustrates that each individual acts. Each INDIVIDUAL is responsible for HIS action.
The concept of "group" is an intellectual tool, as previously described, and does not exist as a real physical entity. It is an intellectual tool used as a way of dealing with aspects of reality. In this case it is a shorthand for dealing with 10,000 separate individuals who commit 10,000 similar actions. Now that does not mean that individuals can't associate to undertake an activity or task. Obviously they can and do. Each can contribute to a project but each contributes his own individual actions as an individual. Among other things this allows for specialisation of labour (which is good). Note that it is each individual that bears the consequences of the project outcome according to his particular situation and context (very important to realise that). Lee evades any of this.
L - But Sione, this is precisely my point!!! Reisman attempted to exculpate each contributor to the rise in CO2 as being utterly without responsibility for his own actions, simply because each individual makes a sub-threshold contribution to the collective consequence of all those individual actions. He made this argument independently of the question of whether that rise has consequences; it was a general argument about the nature of indivuidual responsibility for collective consequences, not an argument that they are innocent because of a lack of consequences. That was precisely what my analogy was trying to illustrate; Reisman attempted to excuse any responsibility ON THE GROUNDS THAT IT WAS COLLECTIVE, while denying the reality of a collective. How silly is THAT?.
This is precisely what he said:
"In contrast, no individual, and no voluntary association of individuals acting for a common purpose, such as a business corporation, is responsible for any perceptible rise in the surface temperature of the world or for any harm that could result to anyone from such a rise. When it comes to global warming, the human individual is innocent! "
He defends this on the ground that each individual action is sub-threshold; that is his intended point. Yes, I'm grinding the axe here a bit; you guys seem to be missing this central point.
3/. Here is another important issue to understand. In Lee's analogy it is KNOWN with complete certainty that each member of the group of poisoners acts in a certain way (known as Lee said so, it's one of his premises for the analogy) and the result is KNOWN (Lee revealed that as well, it's another of his premises for the analogy). A direct causal link is established (a most important part of his premise). That is NOT something that has been established with certainty in relation to Man and climate change. Even if it could be, there is still a chain of logical proofs to follow in order to get from the problem to a valid justification of coercive collectivisation as the final solution. I doubt such a conclusion could found to be valid.
L - This is a different argument; Reisman was addressing the issue of individual responsibility IN GENERAL, with an argumetn that if valid at all, must be valid whenever there is a responsibility to assign to the individuals. You are defending a different point, not his. Clearly, if warming has no deleterious consequence, or if warming isn't happening, then there is no individual responsibility for the contributors to that collective non-event. But if there are deleterious consequences, Reisman says, NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM because each individual contribution is sub some arbitrary threshold. He grants harm for the sake of his argument, and then excuses individual responsibility for the harm.
Another issue of context hidden in Lee's analogy. Lee and the 10,000 poisoners conspire to undertake a specific task. They agree to act in concert to kill by poisoning. They are organised to execute Lee's unkind plan. Another way of looking at it is that they have formed intent to harm another individual. That is an organised criminal enterprise. Have individuals who use fossil fuels formed an intent of this nature? Clearly not!
L - So are you arguing that there is no responsibility for the consequences of one's actions unless the end result was intended? Surely not. And there is no responsibility for probabilstic outcomes, if there is any potential chance one's actions aren't deleterious? I can fire my .38 into the air in the city, say to take out that pesky squirrel, because the odds of the bullet killing someone when it falls is probabilitically very low? I certainly hope not. And yet, the oft-repeated requirement for absolute proof here is simply a denial of any moral power to probabilistic arguments. What if there is a 20% chance that warming will flood 50 million people from their homes? A 50% chance? A 90% chance? Do you recognize the presense of a threshold? Given that you have said that the good, bad, or neutral weight of an act attaches at the point it is committed, if you say, well, I'll take the risk at 40%, as an individual choice (with the risk attacheing to other for your action, remember), are you then absolved of moral consequences if warming-induced flooding then occurs? Recall, this is an discussion on the nature of the argument; REsiman assumed harm. The questions reagarding consequences of carbon release is a different discusion.
4/. An analogy is not "the same as". There may be similarities between a real situation and the analogy but it needs to be very carefully determined whether a particular analogy is illustrative or merely a hindrance; an error. Therefore always check premise and check context.
L - Well, sure. The context is the nature of responsibility for individual contributions to effects that only reach deleterious threshold if engaged in by many. Reisman argues that there is no such individual responsibility:
"We have shown that this global warming, and any damage it may do, is still not the product of any individual human being. Nor is it the product of any such actual entity as “the human race.� There is no such actual entity. At the very most, global warming is a cumulative, unintended byproduct of human behavior for which no one is responsible."
He is arguing overtly that even if is is known that individual acts lead to harmful consequences (remember, he allowed this for the sake of argument) in aggregate, that THERE IS NO RESPONSIBILITY so long as that outcome is unintended and no one is announcing a conspiracy to engage in such acts. This is also absurd. Change my analogy to ten thousand random individuals each discarding a bit of poison, on the grounds that "my pollutant is too small to matter" and in aggregate, the ten thousand of us poisoning a piece of land or a person, and Reisman says each of us can not be guilty. Right. I thought individual responsibility for the consequences of one's actions was the heart of your philosophy?
5/. A major error has been identified in Lee's epistemology. It is serious enough to undermine his system of thought and invalidate much of his stated position.
L - Precisely what error is that? And not in yours? Reisman argues that, because of the primacy of indiidual responsiblity for one;s actins, that peopel cnat be held individually responsible for actions that hve ocnseuences in aggregate. Bzzzttt...
The lesson in this debate has been the shallow and wilfully dishonest nature of those who would justify the initiation and use of coercive force against other individuals. It all comes down to the conceit of assuming to know better than another man how he should live HIS life. Answers to problems are not to be found in that manner; only more problems.
Sione
L - And corkscrewing one's stated value system in order to excuse individual responsibility for subthreshold contributins to clearly harmful aggregate actions (Reisman granted precisely this for the sake of argument), on the premise that individual responsibility is primal, is not a conceit?
Not to mention that you guys still have not addressed most my listing of the assumptions, based largely on personal values, behind your claimed proof that this is the Only True Moral System, or overtunred my staemtn that they are assumptins for the ones yo have addressed. And I find the easy casting of accusations of dishonesty to be quite telling; denying the honesty of those who disagree with one is a time honored way of avoiding disagreement.
Published: April 15, 2006 1:05 PM
Lee
Sione responded:
"Our rights exist because we (plural; I'll even use the "C" word: collectively) have defined, demanded, and defended them. At great cost and sacrifice."
The notion is that rights are an arbitrary developed by group action (whatever that action may happen to be, eg society or the collective possess or produce or define rights etc.). The group acts, not the individual. The "we" act, not the individual. Notice how the individual is thus an expression of a group. The self becomes a social construct.
---
Well, no. We're talking past each other.
I have no problem with the concept that rights and responsibilities reside in the individual. (Although I also argue that accomplishing some of our responsibilities requires group action in concert, and that therefore members of a group can be held responsible for failure to contribute to group actions. I'm sure you disagree. I contend that there is no proof from anything other than assumptions that either is correct).
I have a serious problem with the notion that the proper set of rights is probvable from some set of naturally-correct a priori axioms. I think this beleif is dangerous.
I and you have some set of individually inherent rights and responsibilities. Those rights and responsibilities, IMO, BEST arise out of a market of ideas to which each individual has access. The fact that such rights are defined by collective actions, does NOT mean that the individual only exists as defined by the group. It means taht moral consequence of individual actions that affect others is as defined by the group, not from some set of "a priori" concepts that you identify and adhere to, EVEN IF OTHER MEMBERS OF THE GROUP DISAGREE.
That last is the kicker, and the reason that appeal to supposed a priori unquestionable ruths is dangerous; it denies that differing value systems have value.
Published: April 15, 2006 1:28 PM
Graeme Bird
"AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT,not as an a priori thing-in-itself. The fact that we agree on those rights does mean those rights exist (for as long as we continue to agree on them; thsu the constant need to defend teh rights we beleive are critical), but it does NOT mean they exist a priori."
They exist apriori with very few assumptions. But if you agree that the belief in them has utility then absent of apriori or axiomatic proof they would exist for that reason and for that reason alone. Given that their absence, at least on some crude level means that the only principle was might makes right. And then there would be no civilisation under such a negation of some concept of rights or minimum standards.
So that rights are real and can be derived by your agreement as to their utility.
Published: April 16, 2006 6:08 AM
Lee
Graeme, that isi what I said!!!!!
You arent responding to my point, you are responding to some imagined other point.
I'm not denying that rights exist. Let me repeat that. 'm not denying that rights exist.
I am denying that any particular stated or derived set of rights exist as the only proper ones, provable from a priori truths. Unless I'm badly misreading, y'all here seem to be saying that THIS particular set of rights y'all agree n here are the only True and Proper set of rights, presumably because you have Proven them.
Sione even attempted to present such a derivation. He did so right after he asked if I thought it was possible to do so, and right after I pointed out that sure, it was possible, but the derivation would be no more 'proven' than the assumptions upon which it rested. He ignored the critical (and impossible) detail of attempting to prove the assumption set, and instead went about using it to construct a demonstration that itself was full of additional assumptions, which I then also poited out. And then, after he ignored that fundamental pint I was making about the assumptions (other than to restate his assumptins, basically), he accused me of being obtuse and dishonest in my responses. Right.
You yourself, right here, admit that there are unproveable assumptions necessary to derive even the existence of rights at all(and again, I'm not disputing the existence of rights; your insistence on demonstrating to me something that I admit and value, rather than address what I am disputing, is getting rather tiresome). If this is true for rights per se, so much more for any particular set of rights.
This dependence on assumptions means that if someone else starts from a different set of unproveable assumptions, based on a different personal value set, they will arrive at a different set of rights. And the tacit assumption that seems to pervade discussion at this site, that any of those different derived set of rights are valueless a priori, by proof of the correctness of YOUR set of rights without further discussion necessary, without any participation in a marketplace of ideas, is in fact a statement that the value systems of people who dont agree with y'all are without value.
And THAT is a damnably dangerous thing.
Published: April 16, 2006 11:21 AM
Sione Vatu
More rubbish from Lee. He may as well deny reality as he can't prove it exists!
I wonder whether he understands the term "ostensive"?
Sione
Published: April 17, 2006 6:59 PM
Lee
Sione, would you care to inform me exactly what I'm being accused of denying?
Published: April 17, 2006 9:28 PM
Peter
You yourself, right here, admit that there are unproveable assumptions necessary to derive even the existence of rights at all(and again
There are unprovable assumptions needed to derive that two plus two is four. So what? (You seem to be implying that if an assumption is unprovable, it's not necessarily true. This is a false assumption)
Published: April 18, 2006 2:00 AM
Sione
Lee
How about responding to what I wrote, not what you'd have liked me to have written?
1/. Your analogy was intended to be offensive toward Professor Reisman from the outset. Also noted is your tone and general demeanour towards other contributors on the blog. It does your cause great harm to behave like this and it is completely unnecessary. If you had intended to raise a serious issue why not raise it civil fashion and address it directly? From the content of your contributions to this blog it is clear you solely came for argument (a little ego stroking). Does that approach validate any of your points? No! Is it a good way to promote your ideas? No!
Perhaps it may not have occurred to you that had you addressed this forum in civil fashion you may have been able to get clarification from the professor himself. I doubt he's going to respond to the likes of you now. A pity, as he raised some interesting issues. Now all that is available to you (should you be serious about understanding his views) would be to purchase his book "Capitalism" and read it.
2/. Lee, once again you are indeed being dishonest. My point here was not the same as yours at all. Worse for you is that I demonstrated that your analogy does not hold. It contains hidden premise, altered context and operates on a completely different set of principles from those of the professor.
For the record I noted you proceed from collectivist premise.
My understanding of the professor's line of thought (after he makes a series of important assumptions with respect to climate change and a potential link to Man etc.) is that no individual is responsible with respect to climate change since the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere is a natural outcome of human activity. He characterised it as unintended and cumulative occurring over billions and billions of actions, over centuries. Humans even produce CO2 during respiration. I suspect that he would argue that it is in Man's nature to alter his surroundings anyway. That's worth consideration.
He writes:
"We have shown that this global warming, and any damage it may do, is still not the product of any individual human being. Nor is it the product of any such actual entity as “the human race.� There is no such actual entity. At the very most, global warming is a cumulative, unintended by-product of human behaviour for which no one is responsible.
A phenomenon for which no human being is responsible is an act of nature. That is the category to which all global warming belongs. It is an act of nature. It is an act of nature whether it comes about, as it did more than once in geologic time, in the absence of human beings from the planet, or in the presence of human beings. To repeat, it is an act of nature even when it is the unintended cumulative by-product of the actions of billions of human beings. None of those human beings is responsible as an individual and there is no human “race� that is responsible."
His argument, which I note you failed to produce, represent or address fairly, is not the same as your "sub-threshold" idea. It isn't even similar.
What you have been attempting to do is smuggle in your own concepts, assumptions and premise (none of which are provable one might add) while attempting to suppress those of the professor. That is an invalid approach.
Note that when I explained to you that each individual bears the consequences of a project outcome according to his particular situation and context I was writing in relation to a specific project such as your publication work or your organisation of a 10,000 strong gang of poisoners. You are attempting to stretch this into quite different context. Note carefully the term, "project." See also, "particular situation" and "context." Professor Reisman, on the other hand, is interested in a situation where an occurance is "still not the product of any individual human being." He goes to some trouble to explain what he means by this.
Context. Probably too subtle for you anyway.
3/. Lee, a different point perhaps, but it is part of the same argument. Remember it was you who chose the analogy. I demonstrated that you smuggled in your premise and this prevented the proper examination of the central issues that were intended for our consideration. Establishing whether the professor's points are valid requires a serious discussion without misleading analogies, smuggling of false premise and mischaracterisation of what his points actually are.
And so what did you do? Introduce yet more sloppy analogies with different premise and context (this time around you are in the process of utilising the precautionary principle). This is grossly misleading.
"Can't you think in principles?"
4/. The point remains that your argument by analogy is a hindrance and not illustrative of the idea you may wish to convey. Actually what you appear to be going to great lengths to achieve is to hide the consequences of your intended conclusion and premise. Remember that third issue (coercive collectivisation).
Surely you must (by now) understand that the expression of a central plan with intent and organisation is not the same as billions of individual actions of centuries without such intent and organisation. It is not even similar. Your analogies are rather poor and mislead rather than assist with the identification of salient points and principle.
5/. Your error persists in the use of concepts relating to collectives or groups while minimising or ignoring the importance of individual entities and their attributes. Similarly your acceptance of the arbitrary undermines deductive conclusions on your part. Getting epistemology wrong had the effect of invalidating your entire approach to ethics, politics and so on (probably science as well). That's too bad as you are not without intelligence.
Now I'd like to clarify what my points were. Here they be:
A/. People adapt. Individuals alter behaviour to suit the changes/challenges they encounter. Problems get solved or ignored (become non-problems). I think Professor Reisman is referring to this when he asks how people should deal with a changing environment.
Digressing; here is an area where great wealth can be generated. Lately I've been thinking about where to get more energy. Initially it's a likely go for more oil from existing wells (geologists report that 90% of the oil remains in our outfit's wells so I reckon that is crying out for a new technology to get it all out of there, something I'm keen to do). New ways to power transport are under development. Later, some may become popular. For example, Guy Negre's automobile (which does not need to have fossil fuel, although it can use it as a range extender). Eric Buck's approach is even better. And MIT built a liquid nitrogen car. As far as powering houses are concerned, that's much easier. Still, whatever comes into popular use will need to be superior for the purchaser/user (and perceived as such by them). A potential fortune awaits the developer/entrepreneur. Surely that's the way to proceed? Earn your money. Don't take it away from others.
BTW I suspect much of the problems in energy, transportation and trade are caused by government intervention in the first place. Even the architecture of cars was fixed by government decree decades ago. It would be most helpful to the emergence of alternative (improved) technologies were the government to get out of research altogether and also stop its hidden subsidisation of its cronies. Stop stealing people's money. Let them keep it and decide where the product of their labours should be directed. Were this to occur there is the likelyhood that devices with far more utility than the ones we currelty have would be made available. Many of them would not rely on fossil fuels. One is reminded of Bastiat's warnings about "that which is unseen."
B/. There is a theme of coercive collectivism that gets mixed into the climate debate without being properly identified and examined. You were guilty of mixing that third theme into the climate change argument. That was the idea coercive collectivism was the final solution to an asserted problem.
C/. There is a chain of logical proofs (previously I identified seven, there may be more) to get from the asserted problem to a political system based on coercive collectivisation as a final solution to said asserted problem. I do not expect this to be achievable.
Finally, we get to your appeals to the notion that everything is arbitrary and unprovable since we must start any proof or argument from some initial conditions. So what? That does not necessarily invalidate a particular argument at all. One needs to examine the argument in its entirety to check its validity (as I have been doing with yours). In this particular case you are executing a variant of the stolen concept error.
In previous discussion I referred to an axiom, existence. I also explained my premise. If you have trouble with those, well that's too bad, although I expect you implicitly accept them anyway (you have to in order to survive). Let's just say there is reality and you have to deal with it or you'll cease to exist as an independent volitional entity soon enough.
One True Moral System? You speak for yourself. Remember you are the one who posits enforcing restrictions against other individuals and expropriating their wealth according to your values. I'm not sure I understand how you come up with your One True Moral System for that. Or even justify it. Anyway, your argument to the arbitrary certainly does not justify coercive collectivism. It opposes it. You DO NOT know better than anyone else how they should live.
With regards to your personal value system, you have built in an internal contradiction. Why should your ideas and values have primacy over everyone else's? They don't. How can you justify expropriations of other people's wealth and enforced restrictions over their lives? You can't. Your values do not trump theirs. And so you're hoist by your own petard!
Sione
PS Leave people alone. Perfect your own life.
Published: April 19, 2006 11:45 PM
Tony Harvey
I believe any hope that Neo-liberal capitalism can solve the problem of climate change will prove to be utterly unfounded. To try to put this right without rectifying the clapped out global financial system is useless and environmentalists doing so will carry on coming up against a brick wall. They need to look at the way this system works and intellectually grow beyond the conditioning that economics and finance can only be understood by economists and financiers.
***New Paragph
***
Let me try to explain. The two main cornerstones of Western economies are usury and speculation. Usury in that almost all of the money in circulation has been electronically created by the commercial banks and is called by them “credit� and is lent to Governments and individuals for quick profit not for a particular motive of world betterment. Nothing moves when electronic money circulates when you use your debit card, direct debits, cheques etc and when Governments borrow money- all that happens is that one account’s data entry is debited (decremented) and another credited, (incremented). So this money can be created at negligible cost to the banks because it exists only as a data entry in the electronic bank accounts and is exchanged between them as such only. The stuff in your wallet/purse created by the Royal Mint for the Bank of England represents a tiny fraction of the ‘money’ that exists, the vast majority has originated as loans created by the commercial banks under this “fractional reserve banking system� and circulates electronically and the profit (interest) accrues to bankers not Governments. Even pretty low corporation tax is often avoided by the use of foreign tax havens, (At least £20 Billion total in the UK per annum avoided at 2003 figures- [War on Want pamphlet]). The need for the continuing increase of the assault on the world’s resources substantially stems from the imperative of “economic growth� which is necessary to keep up with the ever spiralling overall interest payments due on the explosion of different types of loans created by commercial banks and other private interests. I read that the exponential growth in private loans and private credit has been allowed to occur with all its wanton increase in the consumption of resources and debt hardship because of outsourcing by corporations of huge amounts of skilled & unskilled jobs overseas under globalisation (“corporate flight�). To make ends meet governments and individuals in most developing nations have had to be allowed to borrow more and more. I recommend the reading of the internet and books by the US professor of economics Ravi Batra who has a lot of hard hitting and extremely interesting things to say on this matter, www.ravibatra.com.
***New Paragph
***
I refer to the ‘cornerstone of Speculation’ in that National economies and their populations are utterly dependant on the $2 Trillion or so (equivalent) that changes hands electronically every DAY- untaxed- around the world on the “financial markets� in search of speculative quick profit unrelated to any exchange of real goods or services. Utterly dependant because National Governments create hardly any of the money that is in circulation at all as I have already explained and they need to compete to keep on attracting this privately created globally mobile electronic money which has become the lifeblood of all our economies. Financiers and corporations increasingly trade IN money not WITH money, since deregulation in the 1980s- eg Removal of foreign capital exchange controls which happened then. Why create, innovate and trade in cumbersome goods when one can make far more far quickly and with far less risk just by moving money and money instruments between computers around the world? Almost all the global financial institutions and even many corporations are at it. A “monstrous global casino� in the words of sustainable columnist Hazel Henderson. Any government that even publicly SPEAKS of restricting it, or taxing it, or significantly environmentally regulating the stock market listed business that it invests in, or getting off the absurd merry-go-round of competing with other nations to clamp down on corporation tax so as to attract essential employment and capital, or creating their OWN electronic money, or even threatening tax havens, faces economically disastrous capital flight to nations NOT doing so within hours on the trading computers on the stock markets and the derivatives computers of the international corporations and banks. You see how the financier oligarchy has got us all over a barrel? No Government dare even publicly consider democratically demanded change to the status quo. No corporation dare significantly reduce the current quick profit return to its international capital investors by SIGNIFICANT investment in alternative forms of energy & transportation as to do so invites a declining share price and capital flight to corporations not doing so. The intellectual economist Lyndon LaRouche in Executive Intelligence Review (see below) actually uses the term “Financier Oligarchy� referring to the way our ‘democracies’ are going under the economic & corporate globalisation I have already described. A POSSIBLE SOLUTION to re-establish control over international capital and corporations by electorates and governments is proposed by “The Simultaneous Policy� at www.simpol.org and I believe progressives might feel their strategy warrants consideration.
***New Paragph
***
Most mainstream media outlets are owned by stock market listed corporations. Does anyone believe such a corporation will allow SERIOUS debate in its pages or TV stations, of reform to the international financial system when it is this system that is the investment hand that feeds it, both owning the shares and placing the corporate adverts? Does anyone seriously believe that one example tabloid and TV/news station owning international corporation that currently pays no corporation tax in the UK by the use of tax havens will seriously allow such debate in its media outlets? I’m not suggesting columnists and editors are directly told what to say and what not to, but they know there are limits which they must not cross if they are to retain their jobs which are mostly in the form of shortish term renewable (or not) contract posts. And most of them seem never to have asked themselves what money really is, who creates it, who administers its circulation, who profits from it and why no Government of left OR right credentials strangely refuses to reinstate fair corporate taxation and environmental regulations ONCE IN POWER despite the obvious dire financial state of our public services, worsening annually, and the developed countries paltry aid to the developing ones whose populations are starving to death in their millions monthly for the want of the huge surplus of food per capita that exists worldwide (Some 10%- look up UN Statistics).
***New Paragph
***
I believe that Planet Earth’s environment is in a sad and perilous state which each day brings it nearer to the critical, and that even the most dire prophecy falls short of the calamity facing the world today, (this quote from www.share-international.org). Anyone who seriously believes that humanity can burn off gigantic amounts of carbon into the atmosphere daily over some 200 years (in the form of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels) that had been gradually accumulated beneath the earth over hundreds of MILLIONS of years, and while annually cutting down tens of millions of acres of atmosphere purifying tropical forests- all of this without incurring MAJOR upheaval and destruction to the earth’s life supporting natural climate systems- is conditioned and deluded indeed.
***New Paragph
***
I believe that only a total and systemic collapse of the world’s financial system will bring humanity to its senses and- (even though I know this itself would cause major trauma for a while because we have allowed stock market listed corporations to take over most food and energy production and distribution worldwide)- it is my belief and hope that this is coming to pass. (I refer again to the writings of economics professor Ravi Batra). The men of money’s selfish greed and competition is over-reaching itself at long last and the frantic efforts to prop up the system behind the scenes are at long last crumbling. “The REAL economy has fallen out from under the markets which have been artificially propped up by accounting tricks, enormous and unpayable debt loads, and mass delusion on the part of the markets and the public� (John Hoefle banking columnist, and refer also to the writings of economist’s Lyndon LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review for more information, www.larouchepub.com). The signs of the oncoming collapse are obvious for those who look beyond their own narrow interests and look below the surface at powerful people’s MOTIVES- not what they SAY but what they DO and WHY that might be- with objectivity. People who bother to READ & STUDY widely. Anyone who thinks that substantially unrestrained powerful people in today’s out of democratic control globalised capital/corporate world will not try to manipulate to retain and enhance their own selfish interests, and who denounces those who highlight this as “conspiracy theorists�, is deluded and conditioned indeed. They have just not reflected seriously on the sad condition of greed and fear of loss as well as Spiritual poverty and poverty of intellect that dominates the natures of most of our fellow human being financier oligarchs in power. We’ve all got some major waking up to do if we are to survive.
Published: June 22, 2006 5:59 AM
Jonney
I believe any hope that Neo-liberal capitalism can solve the problem of climate change will prove to be utterly unfounded. To try to put this right without rectifying the clapped out global financial system is useless and environmentalists doing so will carry on coming up against a brick wall. They need to look at the way this system works and intellectually grow beyond the conditioning that economics and finance can only be understood by economists and financiers.
***New Paragph
***
Let me try to explain. The two main cornerstones of Western economies are usury and speculation. Usury in that almost all of the money in circulation has been electronically created by the commercial banks and is called by them “credit� and is lent to Governments and individuals for quick profit not for a particular motive of world betterment. Nothing moves when electronic money circulates when you use your debit card, direct debits, cheques etc and when Governments borrow money- all that happens is that one account’s data entry is debited (decremented) and another credited, (incremented). So this money can be created at negligible cost to the banks because it exists only as a data entry in the electronic bank accounts and is exchanged between them as such only. The stuff in your wallet/purse created by the Royal Mint for the Bank of England represents a tiny fraction of the ‘money’ that exists, the vast majority has originated as loans created by the commercial banks under this “fractional reserve banking system� and circulates electronically and the profit (interest) accrues to bankers not Governments. Even pretty low corporation tax is often avoided by the use of foreign tax havens, (At least £20 Billion total in the UK per annum avoided at 2003 figures- [War on Want pamphlet]). The need for the continuing increase of the assault on the world’s resources substantially stems from the imperative of “economic growth� which is necessary to keep up with the ever spiralling overall interest payments due on the explosion of different types of loans created by commercial banks and other private interests. I read that the exponential growth in private loans and private credit has been allowed to occur with all its wanton increase in the consumption of resources and debt hardship because of outsourcing by corporations of huge amounts of skilled & unskilled jobs overseas under globalisation (“corporate flight�). To make ends meet governments and individuals in most developing nations have had to be allowed to borrow more and more. I recommend the reading of the internet and books by the US professor of economics Ravi Batra who has a lot of hard hitting and extremely interesting things to say on this matter, www.ravibatra.com.
***New Paragph
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I refer to the ‘cornerstone of Speculation’ in that National economies and their populations are utterly dependant on the $2 Trillion or so (equivalent) that changes hands electronically every DAY- untaxed- around the world on the “financial markets� in search of speculative quick profit unrelated to any exchange of real goods or services. Utterly dependant because National Governments create hardly any of the money that is in circulation at all as I have already explained and they need to compete to keep on attracting this privately created globally mobile electronic money which has become the lifeblood of all our economies. Financiers and corporations increasingly trade IN money not WITH money, since deregulation in the 1980s- eg Removal of foreign capital exchange controls which happened then. Why create, innovate and trade in cumbersome goods when one can make far more far quickly and with far less risk just by moving money and money instruments between computers around the world? Almost all the global financial institutions and even many corporations are at it. A “monstrous global casino� in the words of sustainable columnist Hazel Henderson. Any government that even publicly SPEAKS of restricting it, or taxing it, or significantly environmentally regulating the stock market listed business that it invests in, or getting off the absurd merry-go-round of competing with other nations to clamp down on corporation tax so as to attract essential employment and capital, or creating their OWN electronic money, or even threatening tax havens, faces economically disastrous capital flight to nations NOT doing so within hours on the trading computers on the stock markets and the derivatives computers of the international corporations and banks. You see how the financier oligarchy has got us all over a barrel? No Government dare even publicly consider democratically demanded change to the status quo. No corporation dare significantly reduce the current quick profit return to its international capital investors by SIGNIFICANT investment in alternative forms of energy & transportation as to do so invites a declining share price and capital flight to corporations not doing so. The intellectual economist Lyndon LaRouche in Executive Intelligence Review (see below) actually uses the term “Financier Oligarchy� referring to the way our ‘democracies’ are going under the economic & corporate globalisation I have already described. A POSSIBLE SOLUTION to re-establish control over international capital and corporations by electorates and governments is proposed by “The Simultaneous Policy� at www.simpol.org and I believe progressives might feel their strategy warrants consideration.
***New Paragph
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Most mainstream media outlets are owned by stock market listed corporations. Does anyone believe such a corporation will allow SERIOUS debate in its pages or TV stations, of reform to the international financial system when it is this system that is the investment hand that feeds it, both owning the shares and placing the corporate adverts? Does anyone seriously believe that one example tabloid and TV/news station owning international corporation that currently pays no corporation tax in the UK by the use of tax havens will seriously allow such debate in its media outlets? I’m not suggesting columnists and editors are directly told what to say and what not to, but they know there are limits which they must not cross if they are to retain their jobs which are mostly in the form of shortish term renewable (or not) contract posts. And most of them seem never to have asked themselves what money really is, who creates it, who administers its circulation, who profits from it and why no Government of left OR right credentials strangely refuses to reinstate fair corporate taxation and environmental regulations ONCE IN POWER despite the obvious dire financial state of our public services, worsening annually, and the developed countries paltry aid to the developing ones whose populations are starving to death in their millions monthly for the want of the huge surplus of food per capita that exists worldwide (Some 10%- look up UN Statistics).
***New Paragph
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I believe that Planet Earth’s environment is in a sad and perilous state which each day brings it nearer to the critical, and that even the most dire prophecy falls short of the calamity facing the world today, (this quote from www.share-international.org). Anyone who seriously believes that humanity can burn off gigantic amounts of carbon into the atmosphere daily over some 200 years (in the form of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels) that had been gradually accumulated beneath the earth over hundreds of MILLIONS of years, and while annually cutting down tens of millions of acres of atmosphere purifying tropical forests- all of this without incurring MAJOR upheaval and destruction to the earth’s life supporting natural climate systems- is conditioned and deluded indeed.
***New Paragph
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I believe that only a total and systemic collapse of the world’s financial system will bring humanity to its senses and- (even though I know this itself would cause major trauma for a while because we have allowed stock market listed corporations to take over most food and energy production and distribution worldwide)- it is my belief and hope that this is coming to pass. (I refer again to the writings of economics professor Ravi Batra). The men of money’s selfish greed and competition is over-reaching itself at long last and the frantic efforts to prop up the system behind the scenes are at long last crumbling. “The REAL economy has fallen out from under the markets which have been artificially propped up by accounting tricks, enormous and unpayable debt loads, and mass delusion on the part of the markets and the public� (John Hoefle banking columnist, and refer also to the writings of economist’s Lyndon LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review for more information, www.larouchepub.com). The signs of the oncoming collapse are obvious for those who look beyond their own narrow interests and look below the surface at powerful people’s MOTIVES- not what they SAY but what they DO and WHY that might be- with objectivity. People who bother to READ & STUDY widely. Anyone who thinks that substantially unrestrained powerful people in today’s out of democratic control globalised capital/corporate world will not try to manipulate to retain and enhance their own selfish interests, and who denounces those who highlight this as “conspiracy theorists�, is deluded and conditioned indeed. They have just not reflected seriously on the sad condition of greed and fear of loss as well as Spiritual poverty and poverty of intellect that dominates the natures of most of our fellow human being financier oligarchs in power. We’ve all got some major waking up to do if we are to survive.
Published: September 26, 2006 11:03 AM
John P. Reisman (The Centrist Party)
Nick Bradley,
Sorry I'm late to this blog, but I just noticed it. I would like to address your assertions
"Secondly, your assertion that the "climate is changing rapidly" is unfounded. You probably haven't done any research on the issue at all. Here are some facts:
-- Today, it is not nearly as warm as it was during the Medieval warm period that ended 700 years ago.
-- CO2 levels are 1/7th of what they were during the Jurassic Peiod.
-- The sun is currently undergoing one of its "warm phases".
-- The VAST MAJORITY of CO2 that is pumped into the air is absorbed into the oceans, although it can take a century or so."
1. Today is much warmer than the MWP that ended 700 years ago. The temperature in the norther hemisphere does not represent the temperature of the planet. The unusual warmth is a product of what is called the Arctic amplification effect.
2. The Jurassic period was about 2.5 to 3 C warmer than now and human did not live then. Are you saying we would be better off in a Jurassic climate? Can you tell me where to find Jurassic Co2 Levels. I am interested in that.
3. What do you mean by the sun is going through one of it's warm phases? Are you referring to the Schwabe cycles? If so we are in a cool phase which removes .3 W/m2 from the average climate forcing on earth. If you have other data, I would like to see it. The cycle average 11.1 years and we are expected to renter the next warm phase soon.
4. The ocean take up about 2 Gt of Co2 on average per year and mankind produces about 7Gt (still increasing) per year so you assertion that the oceans take up the "vast majority of Co2" is incorrect.
I see that some individuals are more aware of the relevant science than others but it is good to see the discussion here.
Published: August 22, 2008 10:30 PM
Julien Peter Benney
The whole article seems rather muddled.
For one thing, primitive man had to cope with major climate changes, and adapted generally very well with relatively little ecological harm. However, today, we have private landowners in southern Australia having invested over very long periods large sums of money to farm a large belt of land from Geraldton through to Sale that has become part of the arid zone as a result of man-made global warming. It is difficult for any of these people to withdraw their investments from such land, and the rainfall declines are taking place more rapidly than technology can be developed to adapt.
Again, with the opening up of more northerly land, there is the problem that forestry and tourist interests have already invested over decades much money and would find it almost impossible to lose it if it became more economic to farm.
What I think likely is that we will see a future of desalination-based agriculture in southern Australia dominating the world food supply - and that would make the global warming problem worse because Australia's natural glut of mineral resources does everything to encourage inefficiency. An alternative possibility is that as the humid tropical belt expands food choices will quite radically change. In the tropics, like in Australia and Southern Africa, farming in inherently more efficient even though soils are drastically poorer than in Eurasia, North America, New Zealand or the Southern Cone. We could in this scenario see wheat and other temperate cereals disappear from food shelves for (less nutritious) tropical crops.
Published: May 26, 2009 6:15 AM