Bullshit. Show me the proof that we can't slow or reverse global warming.
Global warming is a largely natural trend. Evidence from deep drilling into polar ice suggests that there are occasional "rapid" fluctuations in global climate.
Anyway, I'm pro-environment, but when you consider that one volcano eruptions belches more greenhouse gasses into the air than have been contributed by humans, aggregate, it's hard to buy the idea that conservation is going to help much.
Lastly, the reports I've read have been very clear in their assessment that higher temperatures are not responsible for more active storm seasons. Consider for a second that there are several other storm basins besides the North Atlantic, and none of them are showing greater activity.
Sure, but only minimal government services are required to start up free trade (mainly crime prevention). If you want to interfere with free trade, you require many extra government layers (tarrifs, customs, subsidies, etc) than if you just want to allow it to happen.
What you call minimal governmental service are often the most precise and extensive parts of a countrys laws.
If you were right then what do we need GATT and WTO for. Lets make away with them and lets see how free trade then handle itself. As long as there has been international trade there has been regimes to regulate it. And as we have progressed towards international free trade those regimes has been more and more powerful and institutionalised, like in WTO. Free trade is international regulated trade.
Please notes that I am not arguing that other forms of trade are more natural than free trade. Just that they are all constructions. And international regulation of energy won´t be any less or more natural than the current system and won´t be any harder to handle if only the big three players agreed...
Global warming is a largely natural trend. Evidence from deep drilling into polar ice suggests that there are occasional "rapid" fluctuations in global climate.
Anyway, I'm pro-environment, but when you consider that one volcano eruptions belches more greenhouse gasses into the air than have been contributed by humans, aggregate, it's hard to buy the idea that conservation is going to help much.
Lastly, the reports I've read have been very clear in their assessment that higher temperatures are not responsible for more active storm seasons. Consider for a second that there are several other storm basins besides the North Atlantic, and none of them are showing greater activity.
We humans are not limited to conservation as a tact. We know how to do much more than simply conserving resources, we also know that the primary reason to conserve resources is to allow them to last longer, not to reduce the effects of using them.
The argument that only the Atlantic basin is acting strangely is specious since we don't know how the oceans of the world should respond to higher average global temperatures. It may be a sign of global warming that there is such a large differentiation between the atlantic and pacific basins, or it could just be a normal cycle. The thing is we don't know. The only things we do know are that the global ocean temperatures are a lot higher than they have been in the past and we have had an active hurricane season that may or may not be related to the increased temperature, but appears by most models to be related.
Consider this: The last highly active seasons were not associated with an increased ocean temperature.
or it could just be a normal cycle. The thing is we don't know.
Actually, we do know. There is a 26 year cycle of heavy storms and then 26 years of light ones. The heavy cycle started in 1995. That is not to say that global warming is not contributing a little bit, but the cycle was there already.
Anders - we need the WTO to prevent governments from abusing trade via tarrifs and subsidies. The WTO is there to push us towards more free trade, rather than less.
Governments can do all kinds of nasty stuff with subsidies and tarrifs, for example China is trying to kill the US semiconductor makers by subsidising their own chip makers (so that they can take over the whole market, which has a high barrier to entry). Each barrier to trade is part of a global trade war that is hurting the world economy - the WTO is part of a trade disarmament plan.
The war started at the end of the 19th century - the world was in a fantastic free trade time, and the wealth of the industrialised nations was growing with leaps and bounds. Then the bone-headed British got the bright idea to stop trading with other countries outside of the British Empire - after all, who needed stuff that was not part of the Empire?
I have read some convincing arguments that say that this decision was a leading contributer to WWI (and therefore WWII). We are still in the process of standing down from that trade war, 130 years later.
Actually, we do know. There is a 26 year cycle of heavy storms and then 26 years of light ones. The heavy cycle started in 1995. That is not to say that global warming is not contributing a little bit, but the cycle was there already.
So you are saying that after taking data for a full 150 years, we are able to state that we have cycles of 42 years? That is three "full cycles". I wouldn't trust that data with my life.
So you are saying that after taking data for a full 150 years, we are able to state that we have cycles of 42 years? That is three "full cycles". I wouldn't trust that data with my life.
That is about the same quality of data that we have on the human causes of global warming, and you seem pretty keen on that...
Just to get off topic for a sentence or two, Hurricane Wilma is right now undergoing explosive intensification, and is verging becoming a Cat. 3, sustained winds at 110mph and is forecast to become a Cat 4 with 145 mph winds within 48 hours. SW Florida is under the gun this time.
Just to get off topic for a sentence or two, Hurricane Wilma is right now undergoing explosive intensification, and is verging becoming a Cat. 3, sustained winds at 110mph and is forecast to become a Cat 4 with 145 mph winds within 48 hours. SW Florida is under the gun this time.
It made Cat 4 with 150 mph winds less than two hours after your post.
Quote:
Just nine hours after becoming a hurricane, Wilma's wind speeds had jumped from 75 mph to 100 mph. Then, within two hours, the winds intensified from 110 to 150 mph.
and now it's a Cat 5 monster. It's simply amazing how fast hurricanes gain strength these days...
Quote:
Hurricane Wilma has strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category 5 hurricane, with sustained maximum winds of 175 mph, the National Hurricane Center said today. The hurricane's minimum pressure is 892 millibars -- the lowest pressure observed in 2005.
UNBELIEVABLE. Wilma now has 175 mph winds and a pressure of 892 mb, the second lowest pressure EVER RECORDED in the Atlantic basin (ties with 1935 Labor Day storm). Quite frankly, I've never seen a storm like this. Its pressure has fallen 92 mb in 24 hours. That is incredible, considering that pressure falls of 14-20 mb every 24 hours is considered rapid strengthening. Wilma is now encroaching on Gilbert's record of 888 mb, which is the lowest pressure ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, and Typhoon Tip's record of 872 mb,the lowest pressure ever recorded on Earth. Unfortunately, it is still in a favorable environment to strengthen.
tampa, florida. the west coast of the state. the side that never ever EVER gets hit by hurricanes because a 'cane has to take a freaky buttonhook back towards that side, and now TWO hurricanes have done/will do essentially that (wilma now, and one of the fearsome foursome last year, i forget which...)
besides new orleans, it's where i grew up. everyone i grew up with still lives in the area, or has their families there. aside from years 1-5, when i lived in minnesota. i doubt, however, a hurricane will ever hit there (though, if one does, will people finally believe the whole "global warming" thing is real?)
By the way, I know the guy is banned now, but didn't NaplesX proudly declare after the whole Katrina debacle that he'd never, EVER expect the government to help him out of a natural catastrophe, despite, you know, choosing to live in Naples, Florida?
Any storm track prediction outside of 2 days isn't all that reliable though, so if you're in the cone, anywhere in the cone, inside of 3 days, be prepared.
Anders - you are totally wrong, the free market is the natural state
No it's not. Everyone knows that pastoral transhumance is the natural state. For pre-industrial people with cows.
Or rainforest hunting and gathering. For people without domesticated animals. Who live in rainforests.
Or neo-socialism. For Bolivian subsistance farmers who don't feel like selling their tubers to supermarkets.
Or feudalism. For medieval peasants in the Swiss Alps.
Or banging your head against a big door until there's skull in your brain for those of us with the imagination to see how, you know, we might just save the planet before we're all totally fucked.
Or banging your head against a big door until there's skull in your brain for those of us with the imagination to see how, you know, we might just save the planet before we're all totally fucked.
I know that you were joking, but all those guys you listed would trade goods and services in some way - we are not loners, but tribal/social creatures, and as soon as you have more than one person you have trade.
And how do you propose to save the planet? Are you saying that I am wrong about local conservation having no effect on global petrochemical usage? If so, then prove it...
Global warming won't kill the planet, btw, it won't even kill all the humans.
I know that you were joking, but all those guys you listed would trade goods and services in some way - we are not loners, but tribal/social creatures, and as soon as you have more than one person you have trade.
You said 'free market'. This is a different thing to 'trade'.
You trade commodities to get the material things that will ensure your survival in hard times, to strengthen ties between families and clans for when times are hard, and to get yourself stuff to look nice. You don't trade for profit regardless of the consequences for the planet or for your society. That's what free market capitalism proudly and unapologetically does. No pre-agriculturalist culture does this because
a) it directly works against your survival prospects
and
b) it's inhuman; it's bad manners.
Capitalism's a recent invention. It's not 'what human beings do.' It's what we do now.
Quote:
Originally posted by e1618978
Global warming won't kill the planet, btw, it won't even kill all the humans.
You realise that believing stuff without the facts behind you makes your environmental notions a religion, rather than rational thought...
And a free market is trade that is not constrained by a government, exactly what two yak herders do when they trade cheese for yams. If that transaction starts to hurt the world, then the only thing that you could do to stop it is have a severe whole-world police state, because those guys like yams all over the world (and there will always be somebody that wants the yams if you lower the prices by refusing to buy).
You realise that believing stuff without the facts behind you makes your environmental notions a religion, rather than rational thought...
The whole idea that "free market/capitalism" is some kind of "natural state" and the attendant Smithian constructs such as the "invisible hand" and notions that "the market" somehow magically knows what's best and "allocates fairly" and that relying on greed as the underlying organizing principle for all human endeavor is self evidently correct is very much a religion. A cruel, inhumane religion that celebrates winning over every other possible stance, but a religion nonetheless.
Quote:
And a free market is trade that is not constrained by a government, exactly what two yak herders do when they trade cheese for yams.
What is "trade"? What is "constraint"? What is "governemnt"?
Quote:
If that transaction starts to hurt the world, then the only thing that you could do to stop it is have a severe whole-world police state, because those guys like yams all over the world (and there will always be somebody that wants the yams if you lower the prices by refusing to buy).
It is not a non-sequitur, it just went over your head.
A guy buying gas for his SUV is making a trade in his own self interest, just as the yak herder is when he trades cheese for yams. Neither is concerned about the agrigate effect of the transaction, when combined with all the other transactions taking place in the world.
I think that I made pretty good arguments for both sub-threads
1) Free trade is a natural state of humanity
and
2) Local conservation cannot reduce the total human usage of fossel fuels.
And all I am getting back from you guys is "is not!", not very convincing.
Comments
Originally posted by hardeeharhar
Bullshit. Show me the proof that we can't slow or reverse global warming.
Global warming is a largely natural trend. Evidence from deep drilling into polar ice suggests that there are occasional "rapid" fluctuations in global climate.
Anyway, I'm pro-environment, but when you consider that one volcano eruptions belches more greenhouse gasses into the air than have been contributed by humans, aggregate, it's hard to buy the idea that conservation is going to help much.
Lastly, the reports I've read have been very clear in their assessment that higher temperatures are not responsible for more active storm seasons. Consider for a second that there are several other storm basins besides the North Atlantic, and none of them are showing greater activity.
Originally posted by e1618978
Sure, but only minimal government services are required to start up free trade (mainly crime prevention). If you want to interfere with free trade, you require many extra government layers (tarrifs, customs, subsidies, etc) than if you just want to allow it to happen.
What you call minimal governmental service are often the most precise and extensive parts of a countrys laws.
If you were right then what do we need GATT and WTO for. Lets make away with them and lets see how free trade then handle itself. As long as there has been international trade there has been regimes to regulate it. And as we have progressed towards international free trade those regimes has been more and more powerful and institutionalised, like in WTO. Free trade is international regulated trade.
Please notes that I am not arguing that other forms of trade are more natural than free trade. Just that they are all constructions. And international regulation of energy won´t be any less or more natural than the current system and won´t be any harder to handle if only the big three players agreed...
Originally posted by Splinemodel
Global warming is a largely natural trend. Evidence from deep drilling into polar ice suggests that there are occasional "rapid" fluctuations in global climate.
Anyway, I'm pro-environment, but when you consider that one volcano eruptions belches more greenhouse gasses into the air than have been contributed by humans, aggregate, it's hard to buy the idea that conservation is going to help much.
Lastly, the reports I've read have been very clear in their assessment that higher temperatures are not responsible for more active storm seasons. Consider for a second that there are several other storm basins besides the North Atlantic, and none of them are showing greater activity.
We humans are not limited to conservation as a tact. We know how to do much more than simply conserving resources, we also know that the primary reason to conserve resources is to allow them to last longer, not to reduce the effects of using them.
The argument that only the Atlantic basin is acting strangely is specious since we don't know how the oceans of the world should respond to higher average global temperatures. It may be a sign of global warming that there is such a large differentiation between the atlantic and pacific basins, or it could just be a normal cycle. The thing is we don't know. The only things we do know are that the global ocean temperatures are a lot higher than they have been in the past and we have had an active hurricane season that may or may not be related to the increased temperature, but appears by most models to be related.
Consider this: The last highly active seasons were not associated with an increased ocean temperature.
Originally posted by hardeeharhar
or it could just be a normal cycle. The thing is we don't know.
Actually, we do know. There is a 26 year cycle of heavy storms and then 26 years of light ones. The heavy cycle started in 1995. That is not to say that global warming is not contributing a little bit, but the cycle was there already.
Anders - we need the WTO to prevent governments from abusing trade via tarrifs and subsidies. The WTO is there to push us towards more free trade, rather than less.
Governments can do all kinds of nasty stuff with subsidies and tarrifs, for example China is trying to kill the US semiconductor makers by subsidising their own chip makers (so that they can take over the whole market, which has a high barrier to entry). Each barrier to trade is part of a global trade war that is hurting the world economy - the WTO is part of a trade disarmament plan.
The war started at the end of the 19th century - the world was in a fantastic free trade time, and the wealth of the industrialised nations was growing with leaps and bounds. Then the bone-headed British got the bright idea to stop trading with other countries outside of the British Empire - after all, who needed stuff that was not part of the Empire?
I have read some convincing arguments that say that this decision was a leading contributer to WWI (and therefore WWII). We are still in the process of standing down from that trade war, 130 years later.
Originally posted by e1618978
Actually, we do know. There is a 26 year cycle of heavy storms and then 26 years of light ones. The heavy cycle started in 1995. That is not to say that global warming is not contributing a little bit, but the cycle was there already.
So you are saying that after taking data for a full 150 years, we are able to state that we have cycles of 42 years? That is three "full cycles". I wouldn't trust that data with my life.
Originally posted by hardeeharhar
So you are saying that after taking data for a full 150 years, we are able to state that we have cycles of 42 years? That is three "full cycles". I wouldn't trust that data with my life.
That is about the same quality of data that we have on the human causes of global warming, and you seem pretty keen on that...
Originally posted by e1618978
That is about the same quality of data that we have on the human causes of global warming, and you seem pretty keen on that...
Have I mentioned human causes of global warming once?
I don't think so.
Global warming is a fact. Its causes are under scientific study.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh.../190236.shtml?
Carry on.
Originally posted by sammi jo
Just to get off topic for a sentence or two, Hurricane Wilma is right now undergoing explosive intensification, and is verging becoming a Cat. 3, sustained winds at 110mph and is forecast to become a Cat 4 with 145 mph winds within 48 hours. SW Florida is under the gun this time.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh.../190236.shtml?
Carry on.
Bah.
It made Cat 4 with 150 mph winds less than two hours after your post.
Just nine hours after becoming a hurricane, Wilma's wind speeds had jumped from 75 mph to 100 mph. Then, within two hours, the winds intensified from 110 to 150 mph.
Hurricane Wilma has strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category 5 hurricane, with sustained maximum winds of 175 mph, the National Hurricane Center said today. The hurricane's minimum pressure is 892 millibars -- the lowest pressure observed in 2005.
besides new orleans, it's where i grew up. everyone i grew up with still lives in the area, or has their families there. aside from years 1-5, when i lived in minnesota. i doubt, however, a hurricane will ever hit there (though, if one does, will people finally believe the whole "global warming" thing is real?)
all i can do is sit and watch now.
I'm just sayin'...
All tracks still headed for South Florida:
Any storm track prediction outside of 2 days isn't all that reliable though, so if you're in the cone, anywhere in the cone, inside of 3 days, be prepared.
Originally posted by e1618978
Anders - you are totally wrong, the free market is the natural state
No it's not. Everyone knows that pastoral transhumance is the natural state. For pre-industrial people with cows.
Or rainforest hunting and gathering. For people without domesticated animals. Who live in rainforests.
Or neo-socialism. For Bolivian subsistance farmers who don't feel like selling their tubers to supermarkets.
Or feudalism. For medieval peasants in the Swiss Alps.
Or banging your head against a big door until there's skull in your brain for those of us with the imagination to see how, you know, we might just save the planet before we're all totally fucked.
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Or banging your head against a big door until there's skull in your brain for those of us with the imagination to see how, you know, we might just save the planet before we're all totally fucked.
I know that you were joking, but all those guys you listed would trade goods and services in some way - we are not loners, but tribal/social creatures, and as soon as you have more than one person you have trade.
And how do you propose to save the planet? Are you saying that I am wrong about local conservation having no effect on global petrochemical usage? If so, then prove it...
Global warming won't kill the planet, btw, it won't even kill all the humans.
Originally posted by e1618978
I know that you were joking, but all those guys you listed would trade goods and services in some way - we are not loners, but tribal/social creatures, and as soon as you have more than one person you have trade.
You said 'free market'. This is a different thing to 'trade'.
You trade commodities to get the material things that will ensure your survival in hard times, to strengthen ties between families and clans for when times are hard, and to get yourself stuff to look nice. You don't trade for profit regardless of the consequences for the planet or for your society. That's what free market capitalism proudly and unapologetically does. No pre-agriculturalist culture does this because
a) it directly works against your survival prospects
and
b) it's inhuman; it's bad manners.
Capitalism's a recent invention. It's not 'what human beings do.' It's what we do now.
Originally posted by e1618978
Global warming won't kill the planet, btw, it won't even kill all the humans.
Yes it will. It really, truly will.
Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah
Yes it will. It really, truly will.
You realise that believing stuff without the facts behind you makes your environmental notions a religion, rather than rational thought...
And a free market is trade that is not constrained by a government, exactly what two yak herders do when they trade cheese for yams. If that transaction starts to hurt the world, then the only thing that you could do to stop it is have a severe whole-world police state, because those guys like yams all over the world (and there will always be somebody that wants the yams if you lower the prices by refusing to buy).
Originally posted by e1618978
You realise that believing stuff without the facts behind you makes your environmental notions a religion, rather than rational thought...
The whole idea that "free market/capitalism" is some kind of "natural state" and the attendant Smithian constructs such as the "invisible hand" and notions that "the market" somehow magically knows what's best and "allocates fairly" and that relying on greed as the underlying organizing principle for all human endeavor is self evidently correct is very much a religion. A cruel, inhumane religion that celebrates winning over every other possible stance, but a religion nonetheless.
And a free market is trade that is not constrained by a government, exactly what two yak herders do when they trade cheese for yams.
What is "trade"? What is "constraint"? What is "governemnt"?
If that transaction starts to hurt the world, then the only thing that you could do to stop it is have a severe whole-world police state, because those guys like yams all over the world (and there will always be somebody that wants the yams if you lower the prices by refusing to buy).
What is a "non-sequitur"?
Originally posted by addabox
What is a "non-sequitur"?
It is not a non-sequitur, it just went over your head.
A guy buying gas for his SUV is making a trade in his own self interest, just as the yak herder is when he trades cheese for yams. Neither is concerned about the agrigate effect of the transaction, when combined with all the other transactions taking place in the world.
I think that I made pretty good arguments for both sub-threads
1) Free trade is a natural state of humanity
and
2) Local conservation cannot reduce the total human usage of fossel fuels.
And all I am getting back from you guys is "is not!", not very convincing.