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Tuesday, March 11. 2014

For me, a climate change agnostic, the mocking of climate change is no better than the strident protests that the sky is falling. Charles Krauthammer, hardly a liberal voice, says, "I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I've long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." The last statement is critical because it implies that driving your kids to school in a Hummer is potentially hurting all of us.

The earth is an ecosystem, not an organism. Volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions have serious consequences on the planet, on species (extinctions, for example), on climate and who knows what else. If the carbon density is a factor leading towards an environmental disaster, and it is a big if, what suffer you to reduce your carbon footprint? Or would you rather be the thirty-five year old who doesn't buy health insurance because "statistically I am at low risk for serious illness." You do the math.

Also, and this is dicey, no one factors the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere every minute by 7 billion plus people not to mention the bovine methane from the cows contributing to your McDonald's diet. I'm just sayin' . . .

Posted by C.T. Azeff in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects, Our Essays at 13:01 | Comments (24) | Trackbacks (0)

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I think the global warming thing has been completely discredited. When the CO2 alarmists support nuclear power for generating electricity, I will pay them the attention they think they deserve. Until then, they are "watermelons" to me.

#1 MikeK (Link) on 2014-03-11 14:02 (Reply)

Lemme share in this nearly universal love fest of concern for the planet's health. Lemme assume that carbon emissions are harmful, in some manner yet undetermined and at some unknown time in the future. Call it warming or change or apple pie if you wish. Lemme forget for a second that one volcanic eruption can and has plunged us into years long periods of cold called little ice ages in our recent past and may again at any time and that such eruptions, all by themselves, dwarf the pollution emitted by humans in the past hundred years. And yet humanity and the planet endure. Lemme also forget that nobody, not even Al Gore, has yet claimed the ability to control volcanoes.

And now lemme remind myself that we are all concenred about C02 (carbon dioxide) emmisions. The chemical plants feed on. FOOD. That plants need to live. Should we maybe let more trees and bushes grow? More trees and bushes would eat more C02. Nah, let's shut down industry instead, let's move into caves and eat mushrooms instead, lets plug our cars into the wall jacks to charge them with clean electricity. Clean electricity we can have occasionally when it's windy or when the sun is shining. Electricity we can use until the materials used to construct and maintain those wind and solar farms are no longer manufactured.

So, and this is dicey, why has nobody factored in the amount of new greenery it might take to reduce C02? Did the tree hugger consortium turn into the, kill birds with spinning propellers and focused sunshine movement, when I wasn't paying attention? We don't care so much about radiation leaks or sulferic acid or polluted rivers any more? Not enough profit in that stuff? Much better to make profits buying and selling and transferring fantasy vouchers? Said vouchers gaining in value with each factory closed and every job lost? Paper that inevitably would not be able to purchase anything yet could not even be burned for heating or cooking becasue of the dreaded carbon footprint? Sounds like a great plan. I'm sure every country on earth will be gald to join in this noble effort to save the planet for the new stone age to follow and the few sturdy souls who will inhabit the globe. Certainly worth it, that CO2 has to go.

By golly, I believe the Wiccans with their crystals and potions are a more practical bunch than all of you global warmist freaks. And smarter. It's kinda funny in a humorous way that mass epic stupidity now passes for brilliant, sober, cautious and practical. But, that's just my opinion.

#2 KommiKillr on 2014-03-11 14:04 (Reply)

I like the way you think almost as much as I like your screen name.
But, since Maggie's has been slowly deteriorating, what with nitwits like Azeff now posting, I'll be dropping this site from my regular daily circuit.
Not even the occasional good looking woman is worth it anymore.

#2.1 Dan Knowles on 2014-03-11 14:16 (Reply)

C'mon Dan.....Maggie's is still the best eclectic site on the web.So hang around.

And we need people like C.T. Azeff just so the rest of us look smart.

#2.1.1 RickinNC on 2014-03-11 14:48 (Reply)

Been a number of large branches lopped off the tree of Maggie's over the years by insane arborists. We may now be looking at systemic root rot.

#2.1.1.1 XRay on 2014-03-11 22:13 (Reply)

Oh is that what happened to Doc Mercury. I wondered why we hear nothing from him anymore.

#2.1.1.1.1 Curtis on 2014-03-12 01:58 (Reply)

YEA!!

Thank you.

#2.2 Kathi on 2014-03-11 22:52 (Reply)

If you care about the planet (and its climate) you should be fundamentally opposed to the whole AGW/CO2 scam/hoax.

It's redirecting hundreds of billions of dollars from combating real pollution and making industry and the environment cleaner towards fairy tale "Carbon neutral" industries and "carbon offset" factories that do nothing but rake in the dough which then goes to paying the skyhigh utility bills of the eco-warriors with their macmansions that each have the "carbon footprint" of a small city.

Meanwhile, things like PCBs, SO2, NOx, soot, and other real problems are not addressed at all because they're not that "greenhouse gas" CO2, the evil incarnate of the Church of Gore.

I care about the planet, and its environment. I love nature.
And THEREFORE I will not submit to the ecomadness du jour.
Because I know it for what it is, a religious and anti-human campaign intent on destroying the human race for the sake of destroying it.

#3 J.T. Wenting on 2014-03-11 14:25 (Reply)

It might not be good for humanity to spew carbon dioxide, but the plant kingdom called demanding more CO2. Oh, and warmth.

It is fashionable, especially for those who live in the 911 bubble with rapid emergency services, as well as their environmental controls inside their cocoons, to think of themselves as gods, masters of nature. But to burst their bubble, if we become a threat to the Earth, it will kill us all and let the cockroaches have a shot. People are aghast that we could lose a whole airline, but it is a big world with many natural forces constantly working.

#4 JKB on 2014-03-11 14:30 (Reply)

When the climate alarmists actually aligned their actions to their great concerns, perhaps I'll take another look.

Firstly, I'd like someone to explain to me what is so harmful about a moderately warmer earth should it actually happen. The last dozen years or so haven't demonstrated any actual warming.

#5 phil g on 2014-03-11 15:36 (Reply)

@ Azeff.....what exactly are you "just sayin'"? Your post is nonsense.

The skeptics of catastrophic AGW theory have been proven right by the very models produced by the alarmist community. A doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere and a warming of 1 degree C will be beneficial and may be the only way we get 8 billion people properly fed and clothed.

#6 Eric on 2014-03-11 15:41 (Reply)

Seriously? Have you ever really thought about this? When most of us think something is bad for us we take action. We lose weight, we quit smoking or drinking, we drive slower, or in some other way we reduce our risk. Can you name one proponent of global warming who has reduced their carbon footprint in any meaningful way?

#7 FRP on 2014-03-11 17:16 (Reply)

Seems these scientists think they can reduce incredibly complex systems to something as understandable and predictable as a ball on a spring. See wolf discussion in post above.

#8 Mark on 2014-03-11 20:22 (Reply)

The comparison of "statistically I'm at low risk" with the supposed minor impact of lowering a carbon footprint is fallacious.

Lowering your carbon footprint is generally very expensive, whereas the supposed gains are minor (assuming there are any gains). The trade-off is, supposedly, we win a few extra years for our grandkids.

Taking the risk and not getting insurance can be justified with a simple actuarial analysis. While I may be the winner and get away with it, so will a very large proportion of others like me. It's worth the risk, most of the time. (I am not the kind of person who takes that risk, though all my friends did when we entered the workforce and none are any the worse for wear.)

My reducing my carbon footprint by 10% can cost me a substantial amount of money TODAY. Justify what the gains are. You can't. It's not possible. Even if you assume global warming is real, the best potential justification is that you prevented an .00000X rise in temperature over the next 60 years. All for a measly $10,000 annually to keep my footprint 10% lower. That's a crappy trade. It's a lousy investment.

Assuming AGW is real, the market can fix global warming easily and it won't be too late. Technologies to soak up CO2 exist, but they are very expensive to initiate. However, as the price of fossil fuels continue to rise due to increased usage, general inflation will make these technologies (as well as many others currently undiscovered), more valuable and worthwhile than investments today.

The entrepreneurial spirit wins every time man has been faced with situations that are pressing. If AGW folk are TRULY concerned, rather than having petitions signed to force me to pay for something they believe in, perhaps they should band together and invest in a company which is designed to REDUCE CO2 in the atmosphere TODAY. Surely there is profit in this if they put their minds to it.

No, they'd rather force others to pay for their lack of scientific and economic insight.

#9 Bulldog on 2014-03-11 20:44 (Reply)

I'm plugging for 800 ppm CO2 as the ideal level. Healthier plants, better climate. And, after all, we are just recycling, with a little help from volcanoes, what has been sequestered in limestone, coal, and oil.

#10 chuck on 2014-03-11 21:07 (Reply)

Ok, I've got a doctorate in chemical engineering, and I have no idea what you are trying to say with "carbon density".

The first paragraph is harmless, if a bit silly. The second one degenerates into nonsense, with a bit of gratuitous idiocy about health insurance thrown in. The third is keeping the second company.

Reading between the incoherent lines, I assume Azeff is trying to bring up the Precautionary Principle. Which is one of the most misapplied rules of thumb when it comes to environmental problems, mostly because it assumes outcomes that are not very predictable. "If we don't do X, even though we don't really know that it would result in Y, non-Y is so awful we ought to just do X anyway." And he misapplies it about as one might expect someone who is apparently lacking basic understanding of chemistry and physics. There are two big problems with it applied to AGW: first, we don't know that doing X will result in Y; second, we don't know whether Y or non-Y is really happening because the data is so a) poor quality, b) inadequate in the time scale we are studying; and the result of doing X is most assuredly bad in lots of other ways ... all done at great loss of economic liberty and ceding huge chunks of the economy into the hands of morons, not unlike the Soviets in the 1930's.

Please, you guys can't be that hard up for someone to write intelligently?

#11 ruralcounsel on 2014-03-11 21:47 (Reply)

Not a good first paragraph here, by CTA, certain words could have been chosen better. Though the post itself can be taken as a should get something up missive, IMO.

#12 XRay on 2014-03-11 22:08 (Reply)

The AGW climate scare industry is rife with misinformation, out right fabricated information and covering up good information that doesn't support their game. This is a scam designed to extort money and power for the elite. Doesn't it strike you as odd that the only cure for climate change is higher taxes, limiting rights and access to energy and special benefits for those who contribute to the politicians who push this scam? A lot of the climat data limits itself to the period from about 1970 to 1998 a period of warming. They refuse to talk about or accept the period from 1998 to 2014 because there has been zero warming. If you began the statistics starting in 1934 we would have actually had global cooling though 2014. If you begin the stats in 1850 then we have indeed had some (about .5 C) warming. But if you begin the stats around 1150 we have had about 1.5 C cooling. If you begin the stats about 10,000 years ago we have had about 8 C of cooling. So what, exactly, is the right temperature for the earth and when should we pick the starting point in history to measure from. The same thing tends to be true about CO2. In the past atmospheric CO2 was 4 times greater then today and it was 6-8 C cooler. So does increased CO2 cause warming or cooling or have any effect at all? WHat is the right amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? Our current percent of atmospheric CO2 is not historically high and in fact 100 years ago it was historically low. So is the CO2 of today abnormal or was the CO2 of 100 years ago abnormally low? Humans contribute about 1% of the total amount of new atmospheric CO2 and volcanoes and related activity contribute about 97%. So would committing economic suicide while Russia and China continue to use cheap energy spewing 10 times as much CO2 as we do be a wise decision? The simple fact is the world is being conned and nothing we can do is going to change the fact that the earths weather changes cyclically and will continue to do so. We can either smarten up and reject the con men or we can fall for it and become a 3rd world country.

#13 GoneWithTheWind on 2014-03-11 23:52 (Reply)

Does anyone know how these AGW alarmist intend to make profits off this scam ? who is perpetuating this obvious farse. follow the money they say . Control the weather ? Give me a break. As we say in NH, "I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday". Anyway who decides what the correct climate looks like ? It seems Volcano's contol everything relative to carbon emmissions. Those who worship at the alter of Al Gore and his band of brain dead merrymen dont deserve the attention they are getting.Instead of AGW and the destruction of the earth,lets discuss something more current and pressing which these clowns know alott more about. Just ask them about The destruction of the American health care system as being accomplished by the Administrations Afforable Health Care Act.
Yash

#13.1 john Nester (Link) on 2014-04-06 20:10 (Reply)

You will know CO2 is a real problem when beer, alcohol and carbonated drinks come under fire. I will pay attention then.

#14 Blick on 2014-03-12 00:43 (Reply)

Blick: You will know CO2 is a real problem when beer, alcohol and carbonated drinks come under fire.

CO2 in beer and wine comes from fermentation, so is carbon neutral. CO2 in soft drinks is usually captured from other processes, such as flue gas, so add little carbon to the atmosphere.

#14.1 Zachriel on 2014-03-12 09:27 (Reply)

So drink and be merry!

#14.2 Zachriel on 2014-03-12 09:31 (Reply)

"...the mocking of climate change is no better than the strident protests that the sky is falling..."

It seems to me that it is the climate change alarmists who are being mocked. Those doing the mocking seem to be all over the spectrum when it comes to whether or not they believe that climate change is occurring.

Why are climate change alarmists (actually AGW alarmists for the most part)? Because they say stupid things like:

"The Earth has a fever and just like when your child has a fever, maybe that's a warning of something seriously wrong," Gore said on "Good Morning America" today.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/GlobalWarming/story?id=2110628

They are mocked because they hide inconvenient data, worship computer models that show no evidence of accuracy, modify data they don't like, refuse to let their data or methods be investigated, and then call themselves "scientists".

They are mocked because their behavior does nothing to support how they demand everyone else behave.

They are mocked because they deserve to be mocked. Relentlessly.

Is it in my, or the planet's interest to reduce MY carbon footprint. I don't know. Maybe if we had honest data and honest scientists using honest methods we'd know. In the meantime I reduce "my carbon footprint" to the extent that it saves me money or makes me happier at reasonable cost.

And as for young people buying prepaid health care "insurance"... They aren't generally concerned about their health - they are generally healthy and don't see much need to pre-pay for healthcare services they don't use. Now, if "health care insurance" were packaged and sold like actually insurance, perhaps they'd purchase it. Not likely we'll ever know since the last thing anyone seems to want is actual "health care insurance". What everyone seems to want is to send who knows how much money off into the " health care system" rather than ever paying a "health care services bill" that actually makes some bit of sense.

If you want to solve a problem you must first clearly define the problem. Until we start talking about "payment for health care related services" rather than "health care" we won't solve the problem. Health care services, of various quality from poor to incredible, are widely available. It is paying for them that represents a big problem for some people.

#15 Knuckkehead (Link) on 2014-03-12 11:19 (Reply)

That word agnostic--I'm not sure it means what you think. You seem to be describing something a little closer to a mildly skeptical convert.

The fact that we can't be sure about something doesn't mean it makes sense to adopt any old expensive, disruptive action, "just in case."

#16 Texan99 on 2014-03-12 16:10 (Reply)

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Tuesday, March 11. 2014

Climate worries