Maggie's Farm

That #@%&* Schwabe Cycle!

Maybe if madmatt (mad, it's "cite", not "site"), R. Mutt, and jay k. hang in there and keep blustering, they can fend off those damn glaciers headin' our way.

R.Mutt, childish name-calling aside, what are we going to do about PRC, which recently overtook USA in CO2 emissions? What's the plan?

An analysis should begin with the question at hand. The current debate on climate really ought to begin with the question "What is 'thought'?"

There's a place to help start thinking about that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

Once folks quit whoopin' & hollerin' each other to distraction, maybe something resembling "thinking" can start happening.

Okay, you're right, R. Mutt. Many of us are guilty of ridiculing the hysterical fringe of the green movement. What is the hysterical fringe? That which accuses every single dissenting opinion as being in league with evil.

"The USA, the EU and the rest of the industrialized West have to take the lead on CC initiatives in order to have any legitimate leverage on the PRC."

Okay, but we need to know the costs--all of them, including an honest appraisal of the cost of doing nothing. We're currently right in the midst of that study. The results aren't in (UN's politics-as-science initiative notwithstanding). You can't make that fact disappear with verbiage. Too many scientists on both sides of the question to make either side disappear.

What frightens conservatives is the specter of the gov't going off half-cocked on a "feel-good" mission, and causing great damage for no real return to anything other than the further concentration of state power.

Which, BTW, we all know is not a bad idea to many, leading them to use the weather (which is usually not ideal) as a socialist trojan horse.

Okay, go ahead and politicize the weather, it's a free country.

But the backlash is already including a lot of ordinary folks who are closing their ears completely, because they realize intuitively that normal (yes, 'bad' is normal) weather patterns have no political solutions, and that trying to assert that bad weather is proof of AGW and is furthermore curable flies in the face of recorded natural history--which has always included bad weather.

Can't we have some non-gamed data quantification before we start legislating?

And, so the oil companies are behind the reluctance to accept these assertions? Isn't this just a small step from asserting the gov't was behing 911?

C'mon--please--talk about needing a break.

But, you realize that millions of citizens work in the energy industry, and millions more have the shares in their retirement & pension funds, and that you are more or less accusing the whole complex of engaging in a conspiracy to suppress the life-and-death AGW information?

jay k, I think RR was referring TO your #7 when asking the question (your referring to the basis of the question as an answer to the question is just wasting time & space).

Here, let me help:

..."friends of science" which has received significant funding via anonymous, indirect donations from the oil industry. he also is affiliated with "the natural resources stewardship project" which is controlled by energy industry lobbyists."

I think RR was asking for some info which would mitigate RR's concern over the possibility that this is just made up agitprop (not necessarily by you personally but perhaps by someone else whom you may have read).

mamased, I can only speak for what I'm afraid of, and what I'm afraid of is people who use "99%" dishonestly (why?) and who don't define what "changing things for the better" means ('better' according to whom?).

and "joining the majority of scientific thought" is a phrase straight from the Dark Ages. Science is about facts, not opinions. I say this not to insult, but to try to further comment on the quality of the data.

If the data were clear, there'd be no argument. That there is argument means, ipso facto, that the data is not yet clear.

Even the palliative half-measures, the "just-in-case" prescriptions, have costs. what are they, and to whom do they accrue? What are the risks on the other side, and who bears those risks?

One risk to draconian caps on CO2 emissions will immediately accrue to poor folks the world over who are only lately, for the first time in human history, beginning to industrialize out of hand-to-mouth, what-will-we-eat-today, desperation.

What are you asking of these people? And what do you offer in return?

How can we legislate before we know more about these things?

What's with the rush?

Does anyone seriously believe the "atmosphere will be doomed in ten years" hysteria is anything more than a cold-blooded scare tactic mongered in order to achieve a political end?

i just googled the arcane & restrictive phrase [solar scientists deny AGW] and got a mere 19,000 hits, but i scanned the first two ('gregburch' and 'qando') and recomment them both--particularly qando's quoting of several high-ranking experts as to various aspects of the debate.

Particularly instructive is this para, which, note, involves the opinions of the very people who stand to benefit, via career advancement, monetary grants and fiscal appropriations, from the very existence of "a problem" (as opposed to "no problem"):

"A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities."

The quote is from Lawrence Solomon, whose name I encourage you to 'search'.

So, really, guys n gals, the real debate can't even get going, not even on a street corner or a school playground, much less among reasonabl adults, until the one side will quit demanding that everyone shut up and agree that there is a consensus on AGW.

jay k, that's okay, even if you did have some credible links, it would not prove that AGW exists on the basis that you don't like the people rebutting.

After all, there's money behind every PR campaign--money doesn't make the facts true or false, not on my side of the debate nor on yours.

mamased, most of those weren't my questions--answer phil.

No, I'm a conservationist and a really careful person who abhors waste and environmental damage. I have four kids and do care about their world after I'm gone. In fact, that's why I'm typing this sentence.

But "99%" is baloney, and you should quit perpetrating it. It shoots you in your own foot.

But, to answer your "What is it that you are afraid will happen if we work to stop climate change" --one word, "waste". --waste money, waste effort, waste time, waste lives.

Just listen to "...work to stop climate change".

Maybe I'm wrong--my ears are open--but that sounds like that old fairy tale King who drowned when the tide wouldn't obey his command to stop coming in. The lesson of the fable was to beware arrogance. Have you outdoors, and seen how powerful it is out there?

Jim Harrison, nice thesaurus, but you misunderstand the topic. It's not climate change--that's a constant after all--it's the "A" in the "AGW" that was under discussion.

RR, start by typing, say, [cost of Kyoto] into your favorite search engine.

Then, read some of the entries--the reputable ones, that is.

Who said Apollo was a waste? The Moon really exists after all.

Halliburton, check in on its website, too. Composed of engineers, regular folks who work hard and make a decent living. Earns midrange corporate profits, pays a lotta taxes, does projects no other outfit does, is victim of jillions of tons of misinformed agitprop ink ever since the GOP entered the White House. But, fun to say crappy things about, with knowing winks and soi-disant cynicism.

mamased, agree with much of what you say. But just for grins do search "synfuels" for a nice peep into a previous top-down effort to mandate a non market-rationalized energy source.

I'll quit hogging the thread, but close with, I agree with every letter of Tom C.'s post above.

IMHO he's exactly right--including his speculation on the psychological drivers behind many of those involved in this sudden explosion of an AGW issue.

peteathome, just for the record, that overcharge was a mid-level subcontract (HAL uses lots of subs) malfeasance that amounted to a fraction of a percent of a brief period of biz, and was caught, punished, and repaid.

HAL if you say so "worked for Saddam" but the operators were multinational oil companies employing any and all other international construction & engineering firms that had contracts in the oilfields.

HAL was instrumental in snuffing Saddam's purpose-set Kuwaiti oil field fires that did burn off a percent of the world's reserves and could easily have doubled or tripled that loss, absent a can-do C&E effort to extinguish the some 600 burning wells, properly and quickly.

HAL has also lost quite a few employees to enemy action in the mideast--how many C&E's are able to field a large enough, capable enough, resourced-enough labor force to cope with those sorts of conditions and do the job? None.

And that's the source of the infamous early no-bid contract. Look into the reality of the no-bid contracts--see how many have been let, and when, and why.

And really, folks should research the Dubai move (a new mideast operations HQ, not the corporate HQ, no employees surrendering USA citizenship, and a wash on USA taxes), so that it can be seen for what it is--a company trying to grow a return for its shareholders (that's what built American prosperity), and getting its operations people closer to the major clients' areas of concentration. Heck, read the company press releases, read the WSJ and even the NYT stories. Don't read moonbat blog threads, they all think it's because Bush & Prince Bandar are gay lovers.

If there is a tinge of HAL delight in escaping the corrosive anti-HAL propaganda in USA, well, I can't blame HAL for that--that's been a PR campaign by the DNC, aimed at Bush, Cheney, and the war effort, and if HAL managers want to go where they're not hated, well, so would I, so would you, so would anyone.

Sorry to run on and on--but I know some HAL folks, and I follow the company as a shareholder at times, depending on which way the stock is moving (I like to buy high and sell low). And I'm sick of all the fricken baloney I hear about this great scandalous company skuldugging on in plain sight. I mean, as if. Really. What has happened to critical thinking in this country?

I think the self-esteem movement has created a monster that believes it can just think whatever it wants to think, regardless of any complications like objective factual truthful reality.

And this monster is right, it CAN, if it wants to, think whatever it wants to think--but it better be prepared for more and more confusion, disorder, hatred, anxiety, error, waste, stupidity, control by masters, and multinational corporations that decide they want to operate elsewhere.

Well, I agree that 20% is way more than 1%. And that ass pimples are ungood. So your case is partially persuasive, RR--well done!

Search results:

[Stern Report Summary], over a million hits

[Stern Report Critique], three quarters of a million hits.

So clearly there are many who do not automatically accept Sir Nicholas Stern's report.

Small wonder, as he's the British Labour Party's chief economist, and as such is at least somewhat a politician.

Since the UK Labor Party is, you know, famously foursquare in favor of gov't control of all aspects of society, and since we're ostensibly trying to get some un-biased data, I would definitely select and read some of the more reputable of those three-quarter million critiques.

If, that is, you're after 'truth' rather than 'victory'.

Lastly, RR, no need to feel sorry for HAL employees.

They're free to quit anytime.

Just like any employee anywhere in the free world. Unhappy? Just quit, try something else. No one will arrest you.

One more thing, RR. Try this little thought experiment.

Say you have a slight seasonal allergy attack, and your old auntie pressures you to go to a terminal brain cancer clinic to get tested. You go, and the clinicians run some mysterious, technical tests the reliability of which you do not really understand.

Next, they give you a four hour all-star PowerPoint mixed-media quadrophonic auditoreum presentation, introduced and hosted by big name stars, that maximizes all the dangers and horrors of terminal brain cancer.

Next, while you're all vibed up on the horrors of the malady, they give you another presentation (this time it's a thirty-second cassette tape on a little scratchy portable cassette player on a card table in the back hall on your way back from a restroom break) which minimizes the pain, cost, danger, recovery, and unreliability of elective exploratory terminal brain cancer surgery.

So, there you are, terrified by all those ghastley, grisly details, surrounded by the clinicians in their white lab coats standing there with contracts and releases ready to sign, waving ballpoint pens in your face, impatient for you to authorize the surgery.

Can you remember that you may not even have terminal brain cancer?

What should you do? Unless you want to be a moron, you will get a second opinion, and maybe a third, before you elect the surgery.

Especially if, say, for instance, that first clinic is perhaps badly in need of business, and/or is staffed by terminal brain cancer exploratory surgery partisan advocates. And if those things are so, who will inform you? Not the clinicians, for sure.

Maybe a competing clinic will inform you? But what if you can't believe it either (since it has a bias to discredit the first clinic)?

What to do, what to do?

Only one sensible answer--study the whole thing yourself. Apply critical thinking to facts.

Until you have a handle on all the relevant facts--DON'T LET ANYONE WITH A SCALPEL NEAR YOUR BRAIN (or your wallet)!