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Global warming

bobdroege7 said:
I think economic projections 95 years out with business as usual are moot.
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95 years ago the German model of an industrialsed modern nation was widely idealised. Check that projection out.

And now, after the Cold War (who ordered that?) the Far East is back, already big-time and surging. Let alone climate-change, the dollar in the toilet, and the dash for Africa.

Business ain't as usual - and it never was :).
 
mhaze said:
No doubt. Perhaps some were just turned away? skeptics of IPCC and Gore science perhaps?
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OK, checked out the link, and it was worth it just for the Conservative T-Shirt thing. I feel I'm coming to undrestand you more.

So the turned away is about press credentials, and there'll have been intense competition. Was there ever any prospect of these people paying for hotel-space in Bali around now? If so, who was paying? And had they booked ahead?

Was it The Heartland Institute? If they did they'll have sub-let for a very tidy taxpayer-funded profit.

This is just more whining, frankly, and set up precisely for that purpose. You and yours are not paid serious attention because you're not worth it. Not because you're being discrriminated against but because you've got nothing to say.

All those years dissing Kyoto and what do we see? The Bali Conference. Without influence, I suppose whining's all you've got left.

While I'm here, have you got anything yet on why the UK gummint ordered Stern to produce the report he did?
 
a_unique_person said:
Anyone feel like having a laugh at Monckton?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/may/06/observerreview.climatechange
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"
Not all of the response was positive. George Monbiot of the Guardian trashed Monckton's argument with the help of Dr Stephan Harrison, senior research associate at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment, who wrote: '[Monckton] purports to show how scientists from a wide range of different disciplines, including atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, climatology and palaeoclimatology, have misunderstood and misused the science of climate change and he tries to debunk them all. Let it not be said that the man lacks ambition.' Harrison went on to refute in close detail many of Monckton's claims."
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I hear the scratching sound of the Oxford University Centre for the Environment being added to a list or two. Cambridge was always going to be at the heart of AGW darkness, but has even Oxford fallen to dark forces? Apparently so. The Philosophers have switched sides - and they do pride themselves on their flexibility.

Ironically enough Thatcher's promotion of AGW in the late 80's gave it one hell of a boost. It was an argument for nuclear power, which served one of her clique's obsessions - being a Nuclear Power.
 
CapelDodger said:
I didn't notice any details of the shirts, to be honest. It was the principle of the thing that drew my attention.
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Principles -

of free, capitalistic markets, of steady individual liberties, and economic prosperity for increasing percentages of the world -

Such principles are abhorrent to you and those whom you do respect.
 
CapelDodger said:
The Philosophers have switched sides
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what an absurd suggestion. to switch sides they would have to have taken a definitive stand to switch from. they cannot switch as they maintain a superposition over all know sides, with a little bit held back for new sides as yet unstated.
 
lenny said:
what an absurd suggestion. to switch sides they would have to have taken a definitive stand to switch from. they cannot switch as they maintain a superposition over all know sides, with a little bit held back for new sides as yet unstated.
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:o

As if that wave-function will ever collapse ...

I meant Oxford men, as distinct from Cambridge men (aka "The Scientists" or, more often, "The Oiks").
 
I think this is an accurate summary of the debate:

The Road to Bali
http://www.financialpost.com/analysis/story.html?id=eec03f41-5fa7-41b9-b179-614151eaf15e&k=87348
The real theme of this United Nations gabfest -- like that of its 12 predecessors, and of the hundreds, if not thousands, of related meetings --is whether globalization and trade liberalization will be allowed to continue, with a corresponding increase in wealth, health and welfare, or whether the authoritarian enemies of freedom (who rarely if ever recognize themselves as such) will succeed in using environmental hysteria to undermine capitalism and increase their Majesterium. Any successor to Kyoto will be rooted in hobbling rich economies, increasing the poor world's resentment, unleashing environmental trade warfare, and blanketing the globe with rules and regulations that benefit only rulers and regulators. Bali is not about climate; it symbolizes the continued assault on freedom by those who seek -- or pander to -- political power under the guise of concern for humanity.
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David Rodale said:
I think this is an accurate summary of the debate:
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Given the evidence so far, that's not at all surprising.. Would it, then, be fair to take it as a summary of your opinion?

The Road to Bali
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http://www.financialpost.com/analysis/story.html?id=eec03f41-5fa7-41b9-b179-614151eaf15e&k=87348
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The hysterical tone stands out from the very start. Even for editorial comment it's remarkably strident. Then there's paranoia and Procrustean efforts to cram Bali into a prepared (and, I daresay, immutable) ideological framework.

"The fate of the Earth hangs in the balance ... the authoritarian enemies of freedom ... environmental hysteria [sic] ... undermine capitalism ... increase their Majesterium ... hobbling rich economies ... environmental trade warfare ... blanketing the globe with rules and regulations ... assault on freedom ... pander to ... Marxism ... Soviet Union ..."
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To a simple soul globalisaton and free trade are subjects for WTO meetings, so it seems the "authoritarian enemies of freedom" have been doing their work there as well. All that stuff about agricultural subsidies is, presumably, a smokescreen. I don't buy it, frankly. Call me unsophisticated, but I blame the European, Japanese and US farm lobbies in the main.

So anyway, Bali is aiming to stop progress at the WTO according to Peter Foster (and, presumably, you).

But wait. In the midst of the hysteria :

"Bali will see nothing but posturing and preening, "tough" negotiations, and an agreement to talk further, in yet more exotic locations."
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The implacable enemies of freedom had some actual cojones back in the day. It seems - and it really does seem - that this is just another diplomatic jam-fest like WTO Meetings, G8 Summits, Anti-AIDS Conclaves and what-all else. What distinguishes Bali as the work of dark forces?

"Democratic governments have no choice but to cater to the ignorance/alarm/hypocrisy engendered in their electorates. This catering in turn reflects greater or lesser degrees of cynicism, skepticism, or moralistic bloviation."
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The electorate is hypocritical now, it seems. I'm starting to question how deep Foster's commitment to democray is. Is democracy perhaps a danger to freedom in its flabby weakness? The forces of darkness are making free with the population's head-space whicle democrats and capitalist media-barons merely pander to it. How the West survived the Cold War is a mystery. (Irony)

The whole piece smacks of the need for Strong Government to resist the onslaught of environmentalism on capitalism. I suggest China as an good example. There'd be none of this environmental nonsense if ever nation adopted the Chinese system.
 
fsol said:
DR doesn't seem to be immune either judging by his last post.
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Cards are coming down on the table, aren't they?

Touch of irony : as you're probably aware, there's a Marxist wing to AGW contrarianism, which condemns it as a Capitalist-Imperialist plot to feudalise the Thirld World (more or less the ex-colonial territories but with Northern India and East Asia in the Capitalist-Imperialist camp). Strange bedfellows. What they share, I think (extreme capitalists and extreme socialists, that is) is the assumption that the world is what you make of it, it can be imposed on without limit if sufficient physical effort is brought to bear. There are no limitations built into the ideology, and there is nothing outside the ideology.

(I've had plenty of experience of Leftists, and the list of things they regard as bourgeoise digressions is remarkable - racism, sexism, fertility-control, environmentalism, homophobia, a life outside, and I've probably missed some stuff. Come the correct economic system everything else will fall into place. Mostly they grow out of it. Scary they ain't.)

So anyway, and rather weirdly, two ideological camps are blaming each other for the same thing they've taken up arms against.

What we might get, if we're lucky, is some higher definition presentation of what our ideologies are in the minds of some regulars here. Innuendo is so tawdry, don't you think? The forces of darkness laugh at innuendo.

"the authoritarian enemies of freedom (who rarely if ever recognize themselves as such)"
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I rather think Foster means us by that - and others too many to mention. Foster (and, I daresay, David Rodale) regards himself as a rather better judge than we are of ourselves. Which is rich coming from such a transparently poverty-stricken intellect.
 
CapelDodger said:
Cards are coming down on the table, aren't they?....the assumption that the world is what you make of it, it can be imposed on without limit if sufficient physical effort is brought to bear. There are no limitations built into the ideology, and there is nothing outside the ideology.....(I've had plenty of experience of Leftists, and the list of things they regard as bourgeoise digressions is remarkable - racism, sexism, fertility-control, environmentalism, homophobia, a life outside, and I've probably missed some stuff. Come the correct economic system everything else will fall into place.
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Victor Klaus speaks from long, bitter experience - (Not your friend or ally in the cause, eh? )
there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming. The recent awarding of Nobel Prize to the main apostle of this hypothesis was the last straw because by this these ideas were elevated to the pedestal of “holy and sacred” uncriticisable truths.

It became politically correct to caricature us, who dare to speak about it, as those who are talking about things they do not understand and are not experts on. This criticism is inappropriate. People like me do not have ambitions to enter the field of climatology. They do not try to better measure global temperature or to present alternative scenarios of the future global climate fluctuations.

They need not do it because the climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, which is a new anti-individualistic, pseudo-collectivistic ideology based on putting nature and environment and their supposed protection and preservation before and above freedom. That’s one of the reasons why my recently published book on this topic has a subtitle: “What is Endangered, Climate or Freedom?”
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Full text here.
 
mhaze said:
Victor Klaus speaks from long, bitter experience - (Not your friend or ally in the cause, eh? )
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What cause would that be, then? My only acknowledged cause where AGW is concerned is the defence of science, which I regard as the supreme achievement of HomSap. You've done your best to besmirch Science's honour, and you have a clearly acknowledged cause which has nothing to do with Science. An ulterior motive. It's hardly a coincidence that your beliefs about AGW exactly fit your ideological beliefs, as typified by the Heritage Institute.

If we must personalise matters, the big bad analogue models have been allies of science. The BBA physical model can do no other (physics is physics, after all, no appeal) and the BBA political model is constrained in the end. Reality beats ideology in the end - look what happened to the USSR.
Despite all the contrarian effort over decades Bali's happening and the zeitgeist trends ever more towards concern about AGW. Not because people haven't seen the right graphs but because they have seen what's going on around them.
 
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