Global Warming: Opinions and Politics

selmaborntidefan

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Look, scientists always have an out that enables them to waste billions. They put the little disclaimer "if current trends continue," knowing full well the living organism of the Earth does not occur in a vacuum of trends continuing infinitely. Once again I point to how AIDS and the ozone layer was going to kill us all. Now it's global warming, which they had to rename climate change because it isn't "really" warming.

And while I did miss the sarcasm, the fact remains that predicting the temperature 50 years from now is pure folly and a religious practice since you can't even tell me the temp ten DAYS from now. Amazingly enough I follow the temps enough to think its hilarious that if they're right it's right on but if they're wrong - especially BAD wrong (say 15 degrees) - for some reason it is ALWAYS they have the temp 15 degrees higher - NEVER do they ever say it will be 75 but its 90, yet they do say 75 and its 60.
 

Bodhisattva

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We should follow the lead of Europe. They've had massive tax increases to stop global warming and ..... temperatures haven't been improved by the bloating of the bureaucracy at all .... um .... but they stopped it from being worse!
 

CharminTide

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Look, scientists always have an out that enables them to waste billions. They put the little disclaimer "if current trends continue," knowing full well the living organism of the Earth does not occur in a vacuum of trends continuing infinitely. Once again I point to how AIDS and the ozone layer was going to kill us all. Now it's global warming, which they had to rename climate change because it isn't "really" warming.
You're being extremely disingenuous here.

The world reacted to the ozone layer fears in the 80s and enacted a global treaty (essentially every country in the world signed on) to eliminate CFC emissions over the coming years. As a result, it was announced in the early 2000s that depletion of the ozone layer was dramatically slowed and is now predicted to reverse to pre-1980s levels in the coming decades. This change was a direct result of global reaction toward this threat.

Tons of research and policy dollars were thrown at the HIV crisis. We have since developed excellent antiretroviral drugs that control the disease so well that someone abiding by their HAART therapy with an undetectable viral load actually has the same life expectancy as someone who is HIV-negative. The advocacy for proper sexual education (read: not abstence-only) and the distribution of condoms by schools and health organizations has decreased STI rates dramatically. You say these things aren't a problem now, but simply ignore the fact this is so precisely because we addressed these issues.

You've pointed out two great success stories where humanity has acknowledged and faced man-made threats* and emerged victoriously. Had we ignored the ozone and HIV crises the way that many in this thread advocate we now ignore AGW, they may indeed have become insurmountable problems today.

* It's unclear how SIV jumped from primates to humans; many theories abound.
 

TideEngineer08

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I have five questions. Is the earth's climate changing in a destructive way? If so, is mankind responsible in a major way for that change? If so, is it possible to do anything to stop it? If so, what is the cost of taking that action? Is the cost worth the benefit?

I have never heard the last three questions addressed in any substantive way. They are, in my opinion, even more important than the first two.
Global Warming/Climate Change/Manbearpig is so much like the gun control debate to me...

I've not yet heard one thing suggested to combat this "problem" that does anything other than transfer wealth and power from one group of people to another. Some of the crap coming from the UN and our government is laughable at best.
 

RammerJammer14

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Setting aside whether or not we can control the climate, are you suggesting that global warming is equally relevant to all insurance companies and all forms of insurance?

Property & Casualty Insurance?
Life Insurance?
Annuities?
Disability Insurance?
Health Insurance?
Travel Insurance?
Pet Insurance?
Credit Insurance?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
Was just commenting on the fact that I find the survey asinine. As in, I don't think the government should require an explanation on why you didn't answer the survey, but the other way around. It was a poorly worded post.
 

cuda.1973

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We should follow the lead of Europe. They've had massive tax increases to stop global warming and ..... temperatures haven't been improved by the bloating of the bureaucracy at all .... um .... but they stopped it from being worse!
Ask me about their stupid RoHS laws. Need to get that lead out of all solder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't have dangerous substances in our land fills! The children, the children! Blah, blah, etc., blah.

OK, pressed for time, but in short.....................

When you take all the lead, out of solder, the solder develops something known as "tin whiskers". Which cause stuff to short out, and fail. (Some speculation it is behind some of the Camry issues. Don't hold me to it..............have not looked into it. Just showing a possible example.)

So, the EU notzys allow exemptions for military, medical, and other vital electronics.

Now..............who can guess who got the first exemption?

"What do we get, if we are right?"

I dunno.............a "post thanks".

Anyway.............it was Swatch!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, talk about a vital bit of electronics, that will never end up in the land fills, en masse, (how is that, for Eurospeak?) that needed an exemption, since their stuff would not work, without that exemption.

So............the same idiotic rationale. It has nothing to do with protecting anything. Just a way to exert control over folks, and extort money, for the privilege of doing what free people should be able to do.

Notzys.

This is why my ancestors left Italy, 100 years ago, to get away from this crap. And now we have folks who want to cram it down our collective (oops.............another think-speak term!) throats.

They can cram it up theirs!
 

Tide1986

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A humorous perspective on the climate change hysteria:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs.../01/22/the-insiders-the-planet-in-peril-yawn/

If you are worried about the survival of the planet, January has not been a good month. On Jan. 15, the New York Times revealed that a “broad study” shows “ocean life faces mass extinction” because of human activity, while The Guardian featured new data from two international studies that declared humans are destroying “the core components of a planet suitable for human life.” Downer. The very next day, no less than NASA sounded the alarm that “2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880.” Despite the fact all this gloom and doom was being reported, it doesn’t appear that Americans took much notice. Instead of panicking about the impending collapse of human civilization, a glance at the top three Google searches on Jan. 17 informs us that Americans were busy worrying about first, the Whitney Houston biopic; second, the controversial Sia video for “Elastic Heart”; and third, some racy pictures of Amber Rose.
 

Tide1986

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In honor of my fellow climate catastrophe skeptics:

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/my-life-as-a-climate-lukewarmer.aspx

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.

This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.

I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.


Marlo Lewis has provided a handy list of the range of opinions that come under the "lukewarmer" label. I subscribe to each of these in some form or to some degree:
"In general, I would describe a ‘lukewarmer’ as someone who:

 

Tidewater

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In honor of my fellow climate catastrophe skeptics:

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/my-life-as-a-climate-lukewarmer.aspx

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Now, you've gone and done it. Blasphemer.

No medieval monk was more fanatical, and I mean literally frothing at the mouth fanatical, than my father is about global warming. Torquemada was a moderate wussy on Catholicism compared to my father on man-made global warming.
Yet, he still drives to the store to do his shopping, buying commodities carried to the store in trucks, heats his house with natural gas, uses electricity to power his computer, television, and pays for it all with money earned working in industry over 40 years. Curbing man-made global warming is something that is supposed to impact other people. not him. He believes, and therefore should be exempt from any pain associated with acting on his beliefs. If acting on man-made global warming causes others to lose their jobs, so be it. He's retired and has already earned his retirement money. Everyone else can go jump in a lake.
 

PacadermaTideUs

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Now, you've gone and done it. Blasphemer.

No medieval monk was more fanatical, and I mean literally frothing at the mouth fanatical, than my father is about global warming. Torquemada was a moderate wussy on Catholicism compared to my father on man-made global warming.
Yet, he still drives to the store to do his shopping, buying commodities carried to the store in trucks, heats his house with natural gas, uses electricity to power his computer, television, and pays for it all with money earned working in industry over 40 years. Curbing man-made global warming is something that is supposed to impact other people. not him. He believes, and therefore should be exempt from any pain associated with acting on his beliefs. If acting on man-made global warming causes others to lose their jobs, so be it. He's retired and has already earned his retirement money. Everyone else can go jump in a lake.
His froth sounds like that of a man who's trying desperately to assuage an intense sense of guilt without actually having to sacrifice those things which are at its source. Like somehow, frenzied protestations make him feel a wee bit better. I'm not able (or willing) to give up the comforts, but by god, I can at least violently denounce them.
 

PacadermaTideUs

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Not really GW-related, as weather forecasting is not the same thing as climate forecasting, but it was made peripherally related by Bill Nye, The "Science" Guy, when he preemptively declared the northeast's "historic" blizzard a result of climate change. I wonder if he'll still hold that view now that the blizzard turned out to not be so historic.

On a side note, I don't think those folks up in New England really have a clue what an actual hurricane feels like.

Maureen Keller, who works at Gurney’s, an oceanfront resort in Montauk, New York, on the tip of Long Island, said: “It feels like a hurricane with snow.”
A quick look at Montauk's weather over the past 3 days reveals that the highest observed winds occurred early last night, with sustained winds of 29mph and gusts up to 48mph. Of course, true hurricane-force winds are at least 74mph sustained. Gusts at that minimal Category I strength tend to be minimally in the 90mph range. So Maureen, you were only about 2/5 of the way there.
 
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Tidewater

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His froth sounds like that of a man who's trying desperately to assuage an intense sense of guilt without actually having to sacrifice those things which are at its source. Like somehow, frenzied protestations make him feel a wee bit better. I'm not able (or willing) to give up the comforts, but by god, I can at least violently denounce them.
Yeah, without having met him, you pretty much nailed the man. (I mean, he's my father and I love him, but we simply cannot talk about this topic).
On a related note, he also wants his social safety net payments to be as high as possible. Whether they will bankrupt the country after he is gone does not matter a wit to him. He wants all the "benefits" he can get. You, me and the country can go to the Infernal Regions after he is gone. He does not care.

He is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.
 

Bamabuzzard

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I never realized as a kid how much of a smug, arrogant know-it-all Bill Nye was.
Yeah, I watched him in a debate and though I can't restate the formula exactly. He was using a formula to "prove" either the age of the earth or something like that and in the formula there was an element that was "assigned" a value and deemed to be a constant. Now, I'm no rocket scientist or brain surgeon. Heck I can wreck the English language in a few short sentences. But I couldn't help but notice that in his formula of "proof" there were two elements of it that were purely speculative. The "assigned" value and the assumption of a constant. The constant was a degree of change in the climate or something like that over "X" amount of years. The other guy called him on it but Nye just glossed over it and talked around it.
 

CajunCrimson

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Yeah, I watched him in a debate and though I can't restate the formula exactly. He was using a formula to "prove" either the age of the earth or something like that and in the formula there was an element that was "assigned" a value and deemed to be a constant. Now, I'm no rocket scientist or brain surgeon. Heck I can wreck the English language in a few short sentences. But I couldn't help but notice that in his formula of "proof" there were two elements of it that were purely speculative. The "assigned" value and the assumption of a constant. The constant was a degree of change in the climate or something like that over "X" amount of years. The other guy called him on it but Nye just glossed over it and talked around it.
A "made up" constant is fairly normal for the left....it's the same formula that was used to determine that my insurance rates were going to drop $2500/year -- instead, they went up $7200/year --

Someone owes me $10K/year -- sorry for the tangent....
 

TideEngineer08

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Yeah, I watched him in a debate and though I can't restate the formula exactly. He was using a formula to "prove" either the age of the earth or something like that and in the formula there was an element that was "assigned" a value and deemed to be a constant. Now, I'm no rocket scientist or brain surgeon. Heck I can wreck the English language in a few short sentences. But I couldn't help but notice that in his formula of "proof" there were two elements of it that were purely speculative. The "assigned" value and the assumption of a constant. The constant was a degree of change in the climate or something like that over "X" amount of years. The other guy called him on it but Nye just glossed over it and talked around it.
Even setting aside the politics (and it is politics, not science) I've just noticed over the last few years (in which he has enthusiastically inserted himself into the global warming/climate change debate) that he is really arrogant and condescending even in matters not related to the subject at hand. For example, his little flippant remark about Belichick. He just comes off as really petty and small minded. And that is not "The Science Guy" that I enjoyed watching so much when I was a kid in school.
 

Bamabuzzard

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Even setting aside the politics (and it is politics, not science) I've just noticed over the last few years (in which he has enthusiastically inserted himself into the global warming/climate change debate) that he is really arrogant and condescending even in matters not related to the subject at hand. For example, his little flippant remark about Belichick. He just comes off as really petty and small minded. And that is not "The Science Guy" that I enjoyed watching so much when I was a kid in school.
He's a real dbag. I also watched him on a round table conversation where someone asked him why he and those like him "talked down" to others with differing opinions on science etc. He basically said "Because we know we're right." The dude just looked at him in amazement (not in the good way mind you). Yes, he is very narrow minded.
 

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