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.
No.
What you are doing is arguing from a very narrow set of contemporary conservative economic ideas about the role of free markets and government regulation to some kind of wooly headed notion of a global, ahistorical "condition of man" and "what naturally obtains".
Making claims for an equivalency between "trading yams" to "buying an SUV" is the very definition of a non-sequitur.
Your fictional yam transaction, wherein necessities are reallocated by their producers without "profit" or intermediaries makes a better case for the "naturalness" of agrarian collectivism or socialism than it does for contemporary capitalism.
We are not going to agree, your arguments seem feeble to me (and obviously I am not making any headway either). Even in primitive collectivist societies, you had trade between tribes, and you can have "profit" without money.
But that was a side issue anyway - my main point was that conservation is useless without a global police state to enforce limited consumption.
Global warming won't kill the planet, btw, it won't even kill all the humans.
sigh... this sounds somewhat like when sdw was arguing that we won't run out of gas for, you know, at least 100 years or so. and yet, what, do you assume it'll just stay the same between now and then and then suddenly precipitate? i imagine him a 75 year old crotchety man paying $17.00 a gallon to fill up his truck and screamin' to people passing on bicycles "BUT WE'RE STILL NOT OUT, DARN IT! I WAS RIGHT"
so what if you're right that it won't "kill" the planet... aren't you concerned about what will happen? like yeah, maybe the earth will adapt to regular record-breaking heat waves and a polar icecap shrunk by 60% of its size since the 70's by the time we're octogenarians. i don't think i'm gonna like living underground in order to "live."
by the way, my statement was intended to be over-the-top, but still, are you comfortable with where the trends are leading for the next 40 or so years? is the claim that "there's nothing we can do to stem the tide of using fossil fuels by conservation" really a good enough excuse not to at least TRY?
sigh... this sounds somewhat like when sdw was arguing that we won't run out of gas for, you know, at least 100 years or so. and yet, what, do you assume it'll just stay the same between now and then and then suddenly precipitate? i imagine him a 75 year old crotchety man paying $17.00 a gallon to fill up his truck and screamin' to people passing on bicycles "BUT WE'RE STILL NOT OUT, DARN IT! I WAS RIGHT"
so what if you're right that it won't "kill" the planet... aren't you concerned about what will happen? like yeah, maybe the earth will adapt to regular record-breaking heat waves and a polar icecap shrunk by 60% of its size since the 70's by the time we're octogenarians. i don't think i'm gonna like living underground in order to "live."
by the way, my statement was intended to be over-the-top, but still, are you comfortable with where the trends are leading for the next 40 or so years? is the claim that "there's nothing we can do to stem the tide of using fossil fuels by conservation" really a good enough excuse not to at least TRY?
1. Lumping me in with somebody else in order to discredit me is really weak of you.
2. I am concerned about global warming, and I believe that it is occuring as a result of the actions of man. I also believe that we will never run out of oil, because it will soon (20 years?) get so expensive that it is no longer used.
BTW - the human race (and polar bears too) survived temparatures 2 degrees warmer than it is now for 4000 years (8000 BC to 4000 BC), so I don't think that we will have to live in underground bunkers. The projections that I have seen match this temparature in 2070, and since we will no longer be using oil by then, I don't think that it will be as disaterous as you say.
My personal guess is 4 billion people dead (out of 9 billion when real problems start happening in 2050) - half from environmental disaster, and the other half from starvation when we take their land to grow biofuel with.
3. Just because I am concerned about it does not mean that I am going to start doing something that won't work in order to fix it. Conservation of oil makes the problem worse, not better, because it discourages alternative fuel research.
People that try to conserve fuel to stop global warming are not thinking it through. You might as well try to stop a comet impact by blowing into the sky.
1. Lumping me in with somebody else in order to discredit me is really weak of you.
i wasn't trying to "discredit" you. i'm saying you sounded similar to something else i heard. like a tune that has a similar beat, tempo or melody to another you know. that's all. if it sounded harsher than that, i apologize.
Wilma's gone, at last. Who's next: Welcome Beta. Big bad Beta? The NHC are forecasting this latest storm (max sustained wind currently at 60mph) to head into Nicaragua, as very near to a category 3 hurricane. But some computer models take it to the North towards Cuba and.... Florida (although the NHC isnt giving these possible tracks much weight in their composite analysis).
Comments
Originally posted by e1618978
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.
No.
What you are doing is arguing from a very narrow set of contemporary conservative economic ideas about the role of free markets and government regulation to some kind of wooly headed notion of a global, ahistorical "condition of man" and "what naturally obtains".
Making claims for an equivalency between "trading yams" to "buying an SUV" is the very definition of a non-sequitur.
Your fictional yam transaction, wherein necessities are reallocated by their producers without "profit" or intermediaries makes a better case for the "naturalness" of agrarian collectivism or socialism than it does for contemporary capitalism.
Did you even read Hassan's post?
But that was a side issue anyway - my main point was that conservation is useless without a global police state to enforce limited consumption.
Originally posted by e1618978
Global warming won't kill the planet, btw, it won't even kill all the humans.
sigh... this sounds somewhat like when sdw was arguing that we won't run out of gas for, you know, at least 100 years or so. and yet, what, do you assume it'll just stay the same between now and then and then suddenly precipitate? i imagine him a 75 year old crotchety man paying $17.00 a gallon to fill up his truck and screamin' to people passing on bicycles "BUT WE'RE STILL NOT OUT, DARN IT! I WAS RIGHT"
so what if you're right that it won't "kill" the planet... aren't you concerned about what will happen? like yeah, maybe the earth will adapt to regular record-breaking heat waves and a polar icecap shrunk by 60% of its size since the 70's by the time we're octogenarians. i don't think i'm gonna like living underground in order to "live."
by the way, my statement was intended to be over-the-top, but still, are you comfortable with where the trends are leading for the next 40 or so years? is the claim that "there's nothing we can do to stem the tide of using fossil fuels by conservation" really a good enough excuse not to at least TRY?
Originally posted by rok
sigh... this sounds somewhat like when sdw was arguing that we won't run out of gas for, you know, at least 100 years or so. and yet, what, do you assume it'll just stay the same between now and then and then suddenly precipitate? i imagine him a 75 year old crotchety man paying $17.00 a gallon to fill up his truck and screamin' to people passing on bicycles "BUT WE'RE STILL NOT OUT, DARN IT! I WAS RIGHT"
so what if you're right that it won't "kill" the planet... aren't you concerned about what will happen? like yeah, maybe the earth will adapt to regular record-breaking heat waves and a polar icecap shrunk by 60% of its size since the 70's by the time we're octogenarians. i don't think i'm gonna like living underground in order to "live."
by the way, my statement was intended to be over-the-top, but still, are you comfortable with where the trends are leading for the next 40 or so years? is the claim that "there's nothing we can do to stem the tide of using fossil fuels by conservation" really a good enough excuse not to at least TRY?
1. Lumping me in with somebody else in order to discredit me is really weak of you.
2. I am concerned about global warming, and I believe that it is occuring as a result of the actions of man. I also believe that we will never run out of oil, because it will soon (20 years?) get so expensive that it is no longer used.
BTW - the human race (and polar bears too) survived temparatures 2 degrees warmer than it is now for 4000 years (8000 BC to 4000 BC), so I don't think that we will have to live in underground bunkers. The projections that I have seen match this temparature in 2070, and since we will no longer be using oil by then, I don't think that it will be as disaterous as you say.
My personal guess is 4 billion people dead (out of 9 billion when real problems start happening in 2050) - half from environmental disaster, and the other half from starvation when we take their land to grow biofuel with.
3. Just because I am concerned about it does not mean that I am going to start doing something that won't work in order to fix it. Conservation of oil makes the problem worse, not better, because it discourages alternative fuel research.
People that try to conserve fuel to stop global warming are not thinking it through. You might as well try to stop a comet impact by blowing into the sky.
Originally posted by e1618978
1. Lumping me in with somebody else in order to discredit me is really weak of you.
i wasn't trying to "discredit" you. i'm saying you sounded similar to something else i heard. like a tune that has a similar beat, tempo or melody to another you know. that's all. if it sounded harsher than that, i apologize.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh.../272040.shtml?