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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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 Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:55 pm Post subject: "Climate Change" is a Hoax! |
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So what? Let's say you don't believe in climate change or global warming. What is wrong with trying to find cleaner fuel sources? What is wrong with trying to reduce our dependence on oil? What is wrong with trying to clean up our environment?
Why would anyone be against these things unless they own stock in car companies or oil conglomerates? I understand why these two entities would make every attempt to disprove global warming. It's the same as all of the tobacco execs sitting in front of Congress declaring that nicotine wasn't addictive.
What I don't understand is the grassroots level moron that sits and says "It's all a joke." Why wouldn't everyone want a cleaner environment? Why wouldn't everyone want to put less money in the pockets of terrorists? Why wouldn't everyone want to breathe cleaner air?
So...
If climate change is a hoax, why does that matter? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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It matters because we have a finite amount of resources that we can use to deal with problems on earth. If climate change isn't a big problem, and we throw money at it, we are not using our resources efficiently or making our world as better off as we can.
We have to prioritize our problems.
| Quote: |
It matters because Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Nicholas Stern all profess that one of the major reasons that they want to do something about climate change is because it will hit the world's poor the hardest. Using a worse-than-worst-case scenario, Mr. Stern warns that the wealth of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will be reduced by 10% to 13% in 2100 and suggests that effect would lead to 145 million more poor people.
Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just 1% of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure--$75 billion--the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?
We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of 1% extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just 2% extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10% to 13% estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Last weekend in New York, I asked 24 U.N. ambassadors--from nations including China, India and the U.S.--to prioritize the best solutions for the world's greatest challenges, in a project known as Copenhagen Consensus. They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve. They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to the costly mitigation of global warning.
We all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines. |
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182 |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
It matters because we have a finite amount of resources that we can use to deal with problems on earth. If climate change isn't a big problem, and we throw money at it, we are not using our resources efficiently or making our world as better off as we can.
We have to prioritize our problems.
| Quote: |
It matters because Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Nicholas Stern all profess that one of the major reasons that they want to do something about climate change is because it will hit the world's poor the hardest. Using a worse-than-worst-case scenario, Mr. Stern warns that the wealth of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will be reduced by 10% to 13% in 2100 and suggests that effect would lead to 145 million more poor people.
Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just 1% of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure--$75 billion--the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?
We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of 1% extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just 2% extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10% to 13% estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Last weekend in New York, I asked 24 U.N. ambassadors--from nations including China, India and the U.S.--to prioritize the best solutions for the world's greatest challenges, in a project known as Copenhagen Consensus. They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve. They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to the costly mitigation of global warning.
We all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines. |
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182 |
If it isn't we end up with a far healthier planet, which will only lead to greater economic growth, partly due to greatly reduced health costs. If it is real andwe do nothing, we are seriously screwed.
This is a no-brainer. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Do you have any idea what causes economic growth, or what it is? Do you have any clue, what so ever, as to what drives health costs? Are you even slightly able to speak above Bush-bashing? |
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twg
Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Location: Getting some fresh air...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Um, hey, twitchy... He didn't do that. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
It matters because we have a finite amount of resources that we can use to deal with problems on earth. If climate change isn't a big problem, and we throw money at it, we are not using our resources efficiently or making our world as better off as we can.
We have to prioritize our problems.
| Quote: |
It matters because Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Nicholas Stern all profess that one of the major reasons that they want to do something about climate change is because it will hit the world's poor the hardest. Using a worse-than-worst-case scenario, Mr. Stern warns that the wealth of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will be reduced by 10% to 13% in 2100 and suggests that effect would lead to 145 million more poor people.
Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just 1% of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure--$75 billion--the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?
We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of 1% extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just 2% extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10% to 13% estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Last weekend in New York, I asked 24 U.N. ambassadors--from nations including China, India and the U.S.--to prioritize the best solutions for the world's greatest challenges, in a project known as Copenhagen Consensus. They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve. They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to the costly mitigation of global warning.
We all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines. |
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182 |
That would only be true if spending to improve efficiency didn't bring about other spinoffs, but it does. It's the equivalent of buying a new microprocessor or taking a month's salary to buy a new electric lamp instead of the smoky candle you've been using all this time. I've always thought the same as the op - whether climate change is real or not doesn't matter, cars still stink with or without it.
Don't forget the health benefits as well. Ever walked past a parked truck on a crowded road in Korea while two or three of those motorcycles raced by spewing out the bluish smoke? You can't breathe that shit. Health problems associated with the dirty air we breathe cost real money, and lots of it. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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I think the total environment (physical, mental, spiritual...) would be a lot healthier and better off if even just the U.S. stopped permitting the business practice of slaughtering more than 10 BILLION land animals per year, wasting and polluting so many natural resources in the process...
And, the blood money profits derived from the slaughterhouse industry yield more bad karma than economic benefits...
Last edited by Rteacher on Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:22 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
That would only be true if spending to improve efficiency didn't bring about other spinoffs, but it does. It's the equivalent of buying a new microprocessor or taking a month's salary to buy a new electric lamp instead of the smoky candle you've been using all this time. I've always thought the same as the op - whether climate change is real or not doesn't matter, cars still stink with or without it.
Don't forget the health benefits as well. Ever walked past a parked truck on a crowded road in Korea while two or three of those motorcycles raced by spewing out the bluish smoke? You can't breathe that *beep*. Health problems associated with the dirty air we breathe cost real money, and lots of it. |
That's exactly right. Implementing change would bring with it a period of growth akin to the computer boom of the eighties and nineties. Innovation brings with it trillions of dollars in economic growth. Those using this argument to decry climate change are lacking in vision or knowledge of economics.
Where's Wangja when you need him? 
Seriously, though. It appears that the "powers that be," that being the oil and automotive industries, have serious backing in both parties of Congress in the U.S. The oil industry clearly supports the GOP, while the automotive unions back the Democrats. That is the reason that the Americans are slow to implement the changes necessary to slow CO2 production. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:47 pm Post subject: |
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I do not believe that "climate change" is a hoax. It is real and it requires our attention.
I do, however, have no doubt that those who push for it use it not as a convenient truth but rather a convenient pretext to further their same old, tried-and-true far-leftist politics. Thus they undermine this, again, very real, practical, and dangerous issue.
Why is it, for instance, that the so-called green agenda bitterly faults, in order from what I have read, the Neolithic Revolution; Western Civ.; Christianity; Bacon and Newton, all Western men, and the so-called Scientific Revolution; modern capitalism; Western Europe; and especially: you-know-who.
The create "the Ecological Indian" myth out of whole cloth and then club us with it for being everything that he is not.
Moreoever, such inherently-oppositionist accounts as these usually propound unreasonably- and unworkably-grandiose "solutions": change the nature of Christianity and recalibrate history; the ecofeminists led by Carolyn Merchant propose something like rewiring gender hierarchies at the time of the Scientific Revolution and then recalibrating history from there; "just say no" to fossil fuels and go back to our way of life as it was before the Industrial Revolution or better yet: as it was when we were the prototypical Ecological Indian as preNeolithic hunter-gatherers...the list goes on.
These people need to put their feet on the ground, stop the neverending blame game (we already know they despise modern capitalism, etc.), and propose actual, workable solutions.
This use and abuse of environmentalism as a pretext to further leftist politics remains perhaps the most important reason why the left meets such resistance from the right on what should be a serious discussion involving everybody.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:58 pm; edited 6 times in total |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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The liberals (progressives, whatever you want to call them) use fear as a means to an end. What is that end? The stifling of big business. Now, that's not to say everyone should want pollution, quite the contrary. The facts remain, though, that the pollution that we are throwing into the air has dubious evidence, at best, to show that it is causing climate change. The only way to get people to change behavior immediately is to say the sky is falling. Big business is all bad all the time to most libs. Hell, we've even got some animal rights whacko spouting "blood money" slogans on this here thread.
You know, its a lot like they accuse the eeeeeevil Bushie of doing with terrorism.
Sorry, gotta go. My steak and eggs are done. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
These people need to put their feet on the ground, stop the neverending blame game (we already know they despise modern capitalism, etc.), and propose actual, workable solutions.
This use and abuse of environmentalism as a pretext to further leftist politics remains perhaps the most important reason why the left meets such resistance from the right on what should be a serious discussion involving everybody. |
Well, I guess my question is this: what if the only actual workable solutions happen to be within the sphere of leftist politics? (and I don't mean leftist in the sense of those queer studies pomo softheads that you keep running into at your university).
And yes, Big Business is generally bad news, wannago, for some very good reasons. It's not in any corporation's short run interest to do a single thing to prevent environmental damage - ask Milton Friedman (or at least you could have until a couple of months ago. Now you'll just have to ask BJWD.)
(oh, and it's not fair to lump Rteacher in with the liberals. He's an independent wacko.) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| ...what if the only actual workable solutions happen to be within the sphere of leftist politics? |
| E. H. Carr wrote: |
| ...the characteristic weakness of utopianism is also the characteristic weakness of the political intellectuals -- failure to understand existing reality and the way in which their own standards are rooted in it... |
| Machiavelli wrote: |
| It being my intention to write of things which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of a matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been seen and known, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done sooner effects his ruin than his preservation... |
We will get nothing workable from the left, Gang ah jee. You do not consider the Soviet Union a workable utopia, do you?
Actually, should the left calm down and talk business, make an effort to stop the neverending allegations and recriminations, etc., just as, conversely, should the right open its mind to change and new possibilities, then, yes, perhaps there might be room to negotiate and move forward on this (and other issues).
As it is, it is really hard to talk to leftists if you do not share their worldview. At least acknowledge that.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| We will get nothing workable from the left, Gang ah jee. You do not consider the Soviet Union a workable utopia, do you? |
Soviet Union? Eh? That's a pretty egregious strawman, wouldn't you say? I was thinking more of legislation that constrains the activities of corporations etc. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:26 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| That's a pretty egregious strawman, wouldn't you say? |
No I would not.
Who sold it as "the correct side of history?" Who sold it as "a workers' paradise," etc.?
Is there, by the way, another example of a successful leftist utopian project anywhere at all in human history...? Anything at all will do.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:43 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:27 pm Post subject: |
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My point is this: it is possible to do good for the environment and still expand economic growth.
The question is this: why do the people in power refuse to even try?
When you answer that, then you'll know.
Economic growth is the Republican war cry (that and "Here come the terrorists."). The Republicans that have been in control have so much invested in their old technology that they refuse to allow change to take place. |
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