: Not quite. As I replied to your assertion in the Anything Else room that the Greenhouse Effect was a scare story whipped up by politicians, I have fairly good data backing my belief; can you provide similar data to back yours?Yes, I can but don't have the time. I work full-time, go to school full-time and tutor.
: I should point out that my degree subject at University did cover climate science in great detail; I'm not pretending that my opinion is more valid than yours, but I would argue that it is more informed. I can cite papers that back up my claims. Thus I am not merely begging the question; I have yet to come across truly compelling evidence against the Greenhouse theory.
: For example, to quote Myers and Kent in their 1995 paper, the estimated cost of defending low-lying coastal regions against rising sea levels in the next 50 years is estimated at 17.5 to 20 trillion US dollars. That's just one of the effects of global warming; there are others such as the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria and trypsomaniasis, the failure of crops due to changing weather patterns, etc.
I'm too busy to look up the exact source but the main onus of any global warming occurs in northern climes, during winter nights. Let's say jumping from a mean of 0 to 10F. Quite a statistical jump but irrelevant given its location. Additionally, several economists and ecologist have predicted an economic boom due to better grain and produce production in these northern areas. Further, isotope measurements of animal remains seem pretty conclusive that earth has been much warmer in the very recent (evolutionarily speaking) past.
: The economic cost of these effects is likely to be crippling to the world economy; they represent a significant financial outlay by every government for each of their citizens.
See above.
: As I've also pointed out, science in the real world is a fuzzy entity; actual hard "proof" is impossible to come across; this doesn't mean that the existing evidence is an insufficient reason to draw conclusions; I consider the existing climatological evidence compelling, in my opinion; I would refer you to the year-on-year polar ice shrinkage and sea surface data from the E.S.A. ERS (Earth Remote Sensing) family of spacecraft.
: As I'm pointing out, all human language is emotive.
But by attempting to gain common understanding we can rise above pure emotion and engage in dialog. Calling people evil (I must apologize here, Lark and several others, excluding you, have done this) does not even remotely attempt this.
: Your words were "Well Gideon, while all you "no compromise" lefties are whining about how we need socialism and taht nothing good ever comes out of a free-market society..."
Yes, and most here have directly said 'no compromise'. This means that unless the world gets better under their 'system' they don't want it to get better at all. I, on the other hand seek to improve the world by advocating abolishing the IMF which is directly related to your first post.
: This was in response to a post of mine in which I described factual conditions in the Kalimantan area of Borneo. I presented factual evidence, I asked in a courteous and moderate tone what reasons the pro-capitalists have for believing that this would improve with increased deregulation.
See above.
: Exactly who is introducing non-reasoned emotion into the debate here, Joel?
No one. I'm being sarcastic, not emotional.
: If you believe my original post to be ridiculous, then explode it. Go ahead, leave me with egg all over my face.
It wasn't ridiculous. Come join the libertarians (for lack of a better category) and help us abolish the IMF.
: If you cannot explode it,
I agree with it. But most here don't want a solution unless it include a solution to all the other problems in the world, simultaneously.
: then don't just try to pooh-pooh it with emotional and illogical statements.
Sorry. I think I got carried away with ridicule.
: The basic question; why do you think that deregulated free trade would benefit the world environment, when the current examples of it are doing just the opposite, as can be seen in Indonesia?
Well, let's see. The IMF, a gov't driven entity, introduces artificial supports to malinvestment. This malinvestment hurts the people of Indonesia. It's pretty easy to see waht should be done; abolish the IMF.
: You may well argue that the demand is there to be satisfied, hence the illegal black-market logging, but I would contend that our demands are inflated by the society that we live in;
Don't get essentialist on me now. Red does enough of this.
: that our global capitalist system
Essentialist categorization.
: is educating people
Educating? This implies some particular Will with particular intentions.
: to overconsume our natural resources with no thought for the long-term effects and that the extant evidence shows this to be a Bad Thing, ecologically speaking.
And will be abated by what? Centralized, beaueaucratic action?
: Now, you may also imply that correlation does not imply causation; I can furnish you with the equations governing global warming, the graphs showing correlation between atmospheric CO2 and mean surface temperature, the demonstrable effects of deforestation on local microclimate and wider climate, the grey-body signature of various earth surfaces and biomasses.
Much of what you say has some validity. But it's the utter corruption in those countries causing it.
: I can give you causal links between our industrial production of carbon dioxide, global temperature rise and predicted damage to the ecosystem. I merely have to consult my lecture notes on 3C27: Planetary Atmospheres and 3C64: Space Instrumentation and Remote Sensing.
See above.
: Can you give me a convincing causal link that disproves my assertion?
Actually, yes. Almost all 20th century global warming occurred before 1950. The vast majority of industrial output has occurred during the last two-thirds of the century. Additionally, there's been a lot of buzz lately regarding the relation between mean global temps and the sunspot cycle which creates massive fluctuations in solar energy.
: (oh, by the way, while solar and volcanic activity *are* factors in mean surface temperature, the latest models suggest that they have been outweighed by human-produced sources over the last 50 years)
Depends on the source.
: : Yes. I simply don't subsitute emotion in place of rational arguement; unlike many here.
: Oh, *really*? Let's take a quick tour...
: "These are mostly scare tactics from politicians, such as Al Gore, designed to enhance their electability; and, from would-be Platonic Philosopher-Kings who make their arguments from politically-driven academia" (JJ, Feb. 9th 1999, Anything Else room)
While 'scare tactics' may have been emotive the whole structure of the argument was regarding political economy and public choice theory. I was pointing out that politicians have a self-interest in promoting 'global warming' and other political issues regardless of their actual validity.
: "Due to ill-defined property rights and overadvocation of publicly produced goods, people behave in different manners than they other wise would." (ditto the above)
Woah. I don't understand. This is a purely descriptive analysis of political economy and choice theory. There's not even a hint of emotion here. Rearranging my statement, "public policy measures create differnt incentives that individuals make in relation to other possible choices." Where, anywhere here, is there emotion. It's purely descriptive.
: "Maybe if you paid attention to what I was saying you'd actually say something worth responding to. Are you truly unable to follow conversations or is this some obtuse manner of changing around definitions or subjects? Either way is an exceptionally dishonest manner of conversing." (JJ, Feb 12th 1999, Capitalism & Alternatives)
I think this was a response to Samuel Day where I was giving a structuralist narrative regarding ancient tribes and he jumped in accusing me of supporting The Holocaust. My language was emotive, and understandably so, as a jump of subject in this proportion simply abrogates any attempt at dialog. I was pissed and rightly so. Samuel was simply diverting the conversation into oblivion and implicitly accusing me of being evil.
: The first is an assertion, pure and simple, loaded with emotional language but from an ill-informed viewpoint.
Ill-informed? You're saying taht politicians don't act out of rational self-interest, then? Let's see . . . VP Gore endorsed tobacco money in 1992 and then condemned it in 1996 for killing his sister (which occurred in ~1986). This sure sounds like self-interest to me. Additionally, there's are positively enormous bodie of literature relating to political economy and public choice theory demonstrating that politicians act out of rational self-interest. Gore uses isses such as 'global warming' as other politicians use issues like abortion, immigration, and a host of others.
: The second is a generalization made from a superhuman viewpoint. You can't declare anything as large and heterogenous as humanity to do anything uniformly unless it be breathing and eating.
Again, there is positively enourmous bodies of work stipulating that public action changes and diverts choices individuals make into alternative choices and decisions. If you disagree then you're opposing pretty much every economist alive. Let's say gov't imposes, tomorrow, a 10% surcharge on yachts. Will I be more or less likely to buy a yacht on average? C'mon, to disagree with me is to say that price is no object when people buy something.
: The third is interesting to note, in the light of your behaviour in this topic.
Well, I don't know . . . you gave examples of my emotive language. But I've never denied this to begin with.
: Do you have any standpoint you can verify with logic?
Logic is about infering the nature of statements; do they make hypothetical assertions or no, etc. My assertion that politicians have personal incentives to hype issues regarless of their validity is a logical assertion. The subject of the debate is whether this assertion is correct.
: It's far less easy than you imply.
Amen, bruthu.
: Myself, I'll go for the empirical scientific approach; it's not perfect, but it does give some guidelines to follow. I'm not pretending it's the Ultimate Answer, but it'll do for now.
Wow! Me likes. Please, go and give Red some pointers on this topic.
: For the record, where have I said that your standpoint was evil?
My apologies. Lark said this as did (I think) QX, SamD (certainly) and a couple of others.
: What I have said was that our political system was destroying our environment and resulting in the unnecessary starvation and exploitation of millions;
Then you and I agree fully.
: I think it's a Bad Thing for humanity as a whole, but I've never accused anyone who felt differently of being evil; your attempts to portray my posts as saying such things are nothing more than a straw man (thanks, RD!).
Again, I believe my sensitivity in relation to earlier posts is understandable. Several people have call me, and I quote, evil, morally deficient, greedy, and much more.
