Another setback for Teh Global Warming™ - Page 6

Originally Posted by jamac

Yes SDW the earth is flat and Galileo is wrong.
We must save ourselves from progress it could make things better. Edison was an idiot for trying. It would be so mush better if we could all still live in caves!

The few thousand inventions along the way could make several billion $$$ and save our economy.

As we can now clearly see the invention of even the best weaponry and massive defense spending does not improve security.

However, most power lies in intellectual property. Toyota i.e is making massive $$ from licensing hybrid technology to US car makers. Not reacting to Global Warming has already harmed the US economy greatly.

My personal decision to "Go Green" has saved me ~100k in the last 3 years. It has accelerated my 3 businesses since "Green" is a major selling point and a very effective advertising slogan.

Only Stupid Dim Wits can not see this. SDW is anti business, anti progress, anti American, anti conservative and anti life.

(Is it you George?)

Originally Posted by MarcUK

Global warming




vs

American Republicanism

What we HAVE done is accomplish nothing, destroying our economy as a result.


You would think that the typical republiscum having formed an orderly queue to rape their grandchildrens lives for a buck profit in warmongering - would be all over global warming - as indeed there is a ton of money to be made from it - and unlike most profit-related ventures, there could well be a vast improvement in the quality of life for everyone on the planet if we can do it right.

But you have to wonder, i know we all do regularly, what is seriously wrong with the republiscums?

ask them if they would like to carpet bomb a country they do not even know the location of - with the consequence that trillions of dollars will disappear down a black hole, hundreds of thousands of lives lost - nothing achieved except the killing of the most secular leader in the ME, leaving a gaping hole for extremist militants to fill the void, increasing the price of oil by 400% leaving little money left in the pockets of people so that they can keep the economy afloat. - They'll jump for it.

Ask them if they'll take their unnafordable tax cuts now, and have their grandchildren pay it all back for them - They jump for it

Ask them if they'll use all this money to overheat the economy and lead to the worst boom-bust situation in living memory - They'll jump for it

Ask them if they want to deregulate the financial markets so crooks can sell bits of paper noones ever seen for hundreds of billions that are essentially worthless. Maybe putting the economy into a 1920's depression - They'll jump for it.

BUT

ask them if they would like to invest in some real infrastructure to avert the single most pressing issue of everyones human existance - that would clear the smog from our cities, remove the poisons from the seas, stop trillions of dollars of revenue from ending up in the hands of dictators and human rights abusers, alleviate the most pressing national security issue. Offering them the chance to make money from a new developing industry as it replaces an outdated dirty ancient practise....

And they'll find every silly little reason to sabotage the effort...."Risking a few $'s might dent our economy"....

You shouldn't laugh at the mentally ill, handicapped spastics of our society, the losers who just dont get it, the weak of mind and the scared little sheep, but SDW....

Oh I forgot, Jesus is coming next week so it dont matter

Originally Posted by jimmac

As many have said before there's a certain comfort in some things never changing. At least you know what to expect. I'm sorry but you keep doing this in the face of the obvious!

Yes let's just list all the ( almost rhetorical ) things that emphasize your polarity.

Well as the emperor in " The Jedi Strikes Back " says : " It's you who are wrong about a great many things ".

That's the most positive spin I can put on your response.

Originally Posted by Bergermeister

One thing that is completely obvious is that some people will, on the basis of temporary monetary gain, deny even the possibility of global warming until it is too late and then all monetary gains will be meaningless.

Originally Posted by midwinter

This, for starters.

Originally Posted by midwinter

I know, I know. What was I thinking, linking to a body devoted to sussing out whether global warming is real, whether it's man-made, and what we oughta do if it is real and man-made. I mean, hell, what do all of these climate scientists know?! Tell us, music teacher! What are your theories on this immensely complex topic and why should I believe you over people who have devoted their lives to the study of the subject?

Originally Posted by addabox

So how do you ever form opinions about things of which you have no direct expertise?

If the IPCC is this compromised, agenda driven entity, wouldn't I be even less likely to take the word of people funded, directly or indirectly, by the oil industry? Don't they make mistakes and rely on questionable data and ignore data that runs contrary their agenda, as well? And last time I checked, there is a great deal more money involved in the oil industry than there is in whatever the enviromental/UN/hippy/science complex thing that people like you seem to believe in.

But why leave it there? What authoritative body claiming expertise on any topic couldn't be brusquely dismissed in the same terms? Doctors? Lawyers? Physicists? Clergymen? Plumbers?

Name me something you claim to know, SDW, that involves any kind of knowledge requiring expertise you don't have, and I can very easily insist that you must be wrong because the people who do claim expertise are, well, people.

That's why reasonably sentient adults make judgments, all the time, about what constitutes "reasonable authority" on matters outside of their own expertise (which in our interconnected, technological world is a great deal, so it's a pretty vital process). "Those dudes are all pompous and think they're all noble and shit and probably make mistakes or have motives" is a really terrible reason for rejecting a candidate for authority, since at one stroke you pretty much eliminate everyone.

Instead, as a lay person, I am inclined to check out what the experts are saying without worrying too much if these experts are given to human failings, since there ought to be a broad enough sampling to correct for whatever eccentricities might be introduced by individual perversity.

And since, in the matter of climate change, agendas and errors and errata are surely an artifact of any interpretation of the data you care to adopt, I had best go with what the majority of the people with the most expertise think, right?

And then it's no contest: the vast majority of the people with the most expertise think that human drive climate change is real, accelerating, and is likely to have very bad effects, as far as people are concerned.

Since that's indisputable, all the dark muttering about why those experts would have come to that conclusion doesn't mean a thing, since I can mutter just as darkly about the motivations of people who deny the reality of climate change, and we're right back to "what the majority of the experts think", the only real criteria (layman that I am) that seems useful.

Unless "knowledge" doesn't mean what I think it means, and is just this sort of contingent thing that rests on baseless assertions, the validity of which are determined by mechanisms other than "authority".

At which point you get to meet Midwinter in midair and have a chat about post-modernism and French deconstructionists, which, I assure you, he would be more than happy to have. A word of warning though: he knows more about it than you do, although his claim to that effect is merely an artifact of the power structure of academia (with its, you know, agendas and errors and shit).

So you have to start by acknowledging that the philosophy that you are apparently subscribing to can't be authoritatively demonstrated to exist, and your time with Midwinter would be as constructively spent trading sign language non sequiturs.

But that's your world, we just pretend to live in it. Maybe.

The IPCC was established to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change. The IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they need to deal objectively with policy relevant scientific, technical and socio economic factors. They should be of high scientific and technical standards, and aim to reflect a range of views, expertise and wide geographical coverage.