Friday, October 12, 2007

Sour Grapes?


Wild Grapes?
Originally uploaded by paynehollow
So, Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on education about human impact upon the environment. And the gnashing of teeth has certainly begun.

Feel free to post here the funniest, saddest or most ironic thing you've heard from our friends on the Right about Al Gore's Nobel.

The first couple I've heard have been relatively mild and of the "Stupid Nobel people. Don't know nothin'" type of commentary.

(Not that this complaint is without merit - Henry Kissinger?? REALLY??!!)

Still, this should make for some interesting sour grape mashing.

66 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

It's hard to feel sorry for the bunch that was hoping Rush Limbaugh would get it....

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Alfred Nobel's will WAS extremely vague on the parameters to be met for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. That has allowed some strange recipients over the years--usually when the Norwegian Nobel Committee was trying to help along a peace process by using the Prize to encourage the work. This almost never has worked:

Henry Kissinger was to share the prize with Le Duc Tho for the Paris negotiations over Vietnam. Tho became the first person ever to turn down a Nobel, arguing (rightly) that peace had not been achieved. Kissinger was one of the few Laureates to just pocket the money.

Other weird choices were Yasser Arafat, Yitzak Rabin, and Shimon Peres for Middle East peacemaking--that was never finished. All 3 men had been involved in terrorism earlier in their careers and some argued that Arafat still was. Several members of the Nobel Committee resigned in protest.

Another odd choice was Teddy Roosevelt, but at least he HAD negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

John said...

Feel free to post here the funniest, saddest or most ironic thing you've heard from our friends on the Right about Al Gore's Nobel.

Right here.

Dan Trabue said...

Verrrry interesting. US citizens have won Peace Prizes most often under the more oppressive presidents! A correlation?

bikingbrady said...

I usually listen to air1.com as I like Christian Rock, but they were doing their fund drive so I went to klove.com (sister station). They are both pretty conservative, but klove is probably worse. In their news they mentioned that Gore had won due to his work on the "supposed" Global Warming issue.

I quietly shook my head, scoffed, and turned on my own private collection of music in iTunes

John said...

The next question is: will Gore fly into Stockholm on a private jet to accept his reward, or out of principle, accept the award via teleconference?

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Er, John, whatever he does, he won't fly to Stockholm. Although MOST of the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, the Nobel Peace Prize, per Nobel's will, is awarded in Oslo, Norway.

This is actually an example of Nobel's own peacemaking. During his lifetime, Norway was a territory of Sweden's. It wanted to become independent and democratic (but restore its ancient monarchy as figureheads, same as with Sweden's ancient monarchy). Most of Sweden was okay with this, but a few were threatening war is Norway separated. In his will, Nobel, a Swedish citizen, specified Swedish institutions to award most of the prizes he funded and most of the ceremonies to held in Sweden and the medals awarded by the Swedish monarchy.
By contrast, the Peace Prize was to be awarded by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament and awarded in Oslo in the presence of but, not by, the Norwegian monarch.

Now, sadly, I think Gore will fly to Oslo. For a green, he flies more than he should. In the history of the Prize, the only person to not receive it in person was Jane Addams, who was already too sick and dying to come, and Dag Hammerskjold, who died while nominated before he could be awarded the prize--the only posthumous Laureate.

eyemkmootoo said...

I have also puzzled over the choice of Theodore Roosevelt . I was assigned to the warship which bears his name and for three years stared at quotes attributed to him which were displayed prominently throughout the ship. He didn't seem very "peacful" to me.

John said...

Thanks for the background, Michael. I didn't know that about the Nobel prizes.

eyemkmootoo said...

peacful

An old worn out keyboard
passed down from a friend
means kmoo should preview, then edit
then send.

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

eyemykmootoo, you aren't the only one to wonder at TR's selection. As I said, the Nobel Committee sought to honor TR as mediator of the Russo-Japanese peace treaty. But people around the world freaked out. The NY Times wondered why Norway would give a peace prize to "the least peaceful person in America." TR was the first sitting politician to receive the prize, rather than a peace activist or humanitarian.

But he was far from the last controversial choice. And, after receiving the prize, he did try to do more to work for peace than previously--even if he still had a penchant for "gunboat diplomacy."

ELAshley said...

OH, Please!

"...gnashing of teeth"? Such melodrama!

Sour grapes? How about disgust that junk science is being masqueraded and paraded about as 'efforts to affect world peace'?

Limbaugh didn't stand a chance, going so far as to say as much himself. For my money Oprah Winfrey's done more for world peace than Al Gore...

And to quote Dan at my place"

"I don't disagree, by the way, that the Peace prize has had some horrible recipients. Kissinger?? Arafat??"

The objections I and a good many on the Right have toward Gores 'award' is not sour grapes, but a lament that the Peace Prize is wasted on Junk Science... which, if it were good science would have been better presented for a Nobel prize in... Science

And perhaps there should be a certain measure of responsibility attached to Nobel prizes... like Olympic gold medals. For when the Peace Prize recipient of 1976-- one Betty Williams --speaking in front of an auditorium full of school children says,

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush..."

Well. No sour grapes. Just disgust that the Medal is wasted more often than not on persons who do nothing to advance "Peace". Besides which, when confronted with glaring inaccuracies and outright falsehoods in An Inconvenient Truth does Gore correct his 'Documentary'? No, he doesn't. When asked to publicly debate his conclusions does he agree? No, he flees-- intellectually speaking.

At least in Britain, school children have to be told about the Nine inaccuracies in Gore's political propaganda piece before An Inconvenient Truth can be viewed in a school setting.

No sour grapes here, Dan and et al... none whatsoever. Rather, Disgust instead-- and that directed at the Nobel committee that chose Gore, rather than at Gore himself.

In closing allow me to quote the wisdom of Forrest Gump...

"Sorry I had a fight in the middle of your Black Panther party"

Erudite Redneck said...

It amazes me that people who aren't scientists are so quick to accuse others of relying on "junk science." I mean, really. I'm no scientist, and I don't try to pretend that I am. I'm not sure I agree with everything Gore says. Like most prophets, Gore is a divider! But what I do do is give him the benefit of the doubt as a leading thinker with proven credentials. Wait -- that means I THINK. Sorry. But I expect that, at the least, of everyone who dares have an expressed opinion. And I am always sorely disappointed.

Dan Trabue said...

Well, I'll have to admit to not being a scientist, as well. Having said that, there are two logical reasons why I think this Gore nomination is not a bad one.

1. Human activity IS damaging the environment, causing great damage to God's creation and our own lives. This is not really questionable, just a fact.
2. We in the West are not living in a sustainable manner. We need to change our ways. Plain math is against us being able to continue living the way we're living without a great likelihood of war and injustice resulting.

Because Gore is suggesting that we need to live more sustainably and is reaching people on a large scale with that message, I think this is a good nomination.

Eric, would you have one example of what you're calling "junk science" or "glaring inaccuracies" that Gore has advocated?

I've read the complaints you've posted at your site - such as this one:

The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming.

The others are similar. I could be wrong - I'm not an Inconvenient Truth expert or anything, I've seen it once - but I believe Gore in the film reports that some scientists have suggested that weather patterns that result in more hurricanes like Katrina may be attributable to global warming.

If I'm correct in that memory, then that is not junk science, just a fact. Gore reported that some scientists have that possibility, and some scientists HAVE suggested that possibility.

But as I said, I'm no scientist. Neither is Gore. He's a politician and he's made great efforts to effect policies that contribute to living unsustainably and, to that end, has done a decent job of presenting evidence to support that change of policy.

I think his work (notably the movie) probably sometimes is less than scholarly and may be slightly alarmist, but then, the consequences of Western policies being wrong are pretty serious.

I mean, we'd be pretty screwed if current policies lead to global economic collapses and energy and water shortages and the best our leaders could do would be to say "whoops, I guess we SHOULD have been more prudent in our actions. Dang, we were wrong. Silly us."

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Best one-liner on this Nobel was tonight by SNL's Weekend Update.
"Yesterday, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, in a stunning reversal, the Supreme Court took it away and awarded it to George W. Bush!" :-)

And about the "junk science" claim: You'll notice that the Nobel Committee gave 1/2 the Prize to Gore for alerting people to the magnitude of the problem and pushing for the kind of steps and urgency needed to meet the crisis. The other 1/2 of the Prize went to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the thousands of scientists around the world who toiled to bring about the consensus reports. Nothing junk about THEIR science.

John said...

"Yesterday, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, in a stunning reversal, the Supreme Court took it away and awarded it to George W. Bush!" :-)

Ha! I've gotta track down that video!

But seriously, EL Ashley, I'm astonished that you are have such a low opinion of Gore's heroic efforts to elminate the menace of Manbearpig. Were it not for his efforts to bring Manbearpig to the public attention, where would we be today?

Dan Trabue said...

Manbearpig?

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Manbearpig is a SouthPark ref., Dan. I don't watch the potty mouthed cartoon kids, either, but someone sent me the youtube of that episode when Gore won the Nobel. It was SouthPark's way of claiming that Gore is only seeking attention.

Marty said...

"Yesterday, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, in a stunning reversal, the Supreme Court took it away and awarded it to George W. Bush!"

Perrspectives has a great blog post
Conservative Nobel Prizes We'd Like to See. Speaking of the rage of the "conservative chattering class", they contend that the conservative right "are just hopping mad that they never win prizes designed to recognize contributions to, well, the rest of humanity". So they have listed some Nobel awards for conservatives. This one is my favorite:

Physics: George W. Bush. President Bush is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his groundbreaking work on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which declares that the entropy, randomness and chaos of the universe are ever increasing. The Bush Doctrine, with its three tenets of no safe havens for terrorists, preventive war and democracy promotion, has produced sectarian conflict and civil war in Iraq, Hamas control over Gaza, centrifugal forces in Lebanon and an Al Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan. Like global warming, Bush demonstrated that global chaos can be indeed caused by human action.

Eleutheros said...

Michael:"The other 1/2 of the Prize went to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the thousands of scientists around the world who toiled to bring about the consensus reports. Nothing junk about THEIR science."

That's right! How can thousands of scientists simultaneously be wrong.

OK, there's the criticism, might as well get it out in the open, that the "thousands" of scientist were bits and quips from thousands of papers and reports written by those scientists and the IPCC went cherry picking through the data much as Dan does the Bible and a great many of those scientists remonstrated that they said no such thing and came to no such conclusions.

Even at that, just look at the heavy guns the Panel has in its camp. Scientists who unequivocally said climate change was due to human activity. I mean just look at the top people on that list!

Dr. Nir Shaviv - Israel

Dr. Chris de Freitas - Universty of Auckland, NZ.

Dr. Claude Allegre - France

Dr. Bruno Wiskel - University of Alberta

Dr. David Evans - Australia

Dr. Tad Murty - Canadia Fisheries

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy Durham university

Meteorolgist Dr. Reid Bryson, University of Wisconsin

Economist E. J. Labohm

Dick Thoenes chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society.

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa.


Just how are these, the most knowledgeable and informed climate scientists in the world ALL wrong about the human cause of climate change??

Wait .... ah .... it seems EVERY ONE of these scientists have recanted their position. ALL of the now say they were mistaken about the human causes of climate change with many of them calling it hype and bogus.

And for good reason. Since the original hype scientists have considered such as the following:

Temperature recording devices that were once in outlying and rural areas were taken over by urban sprawl and the data they collect is tainted.

The ice caps on Mars are receding at about the same rate as they are on Earth, due, as they now conclude, to solar activity.

As the glaciers have retreated in the Alps, they revealed silver mines with the tools neatly stacked where the miners had intended to return in the spring, but the advancing glacier in prehistory had covered it until now.

The extant navigational rutters describing how to sail from Norway to Greenland used a northern rout with land navigation points from 1000 to about 1200. After that the route was more southernly and used ice features as navigational points.

And the growing list goes on and on. In the sober light of day a very great many of the scientists that first signed onto the man-made global warming hype have recanted based on better information and evidence to the contrary.

eyemkmootoo said...

Well then, I think kmoo may just have to purchase that coal stove after all.

ELAshley said...

"Consensus" is the most objectionable point in all of this...

What? Because a lot of scientists agree that the world is doomed because of Man's wasteful ways, that means the world is doomed?

What about all the scientists who disagree with the aforementioned Consensus group? Consensus B disagrees with Consensus A. If consensus establishes the truth of Scientific fact, who then is right? Both Groups form a consensus.

Science is far more than mere 'Consensus'. Consensus only means a bunch of people agree on something. But Scientific Fact is repeatable within a laboratory setting; however large or small the laboratiry.

The very fact that there IS a Consensus B is enough to throw serious doubt upon the 'Scientific Fact' of Consensus A's assertions about "man-made" global warming.

Alan said...

"The very fact that there IS a Consensus B is enough to throw serious doubt upon the 'Scientific Fact' of Consensus A's assertions about "man-made" global warming."

That statement makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, given how science actually works (as opposed to the happy fairy tale most people are told in High School about how science works.) I'd suggest a reading of Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".

Also, we scientists don't doubt Group A's position because there's a Group B who disputes it. We doubt Group A's position because science relies on informed skepticism. We'd doubt Group A's position even if no one disputed it. Second of all, the mere existence of Group B no more means that Group A may be mistaken than the existence of astrology means that astronomers may be mistaken.

And, how could the "most knowledgeable and informed climate scientists in the world ALL wrong about the human cause of climate change??" Because the veracity of a scientific claim isn't decided by the vitae of the person making the claim. Just ask a little known German patent clerk named Albert Einstein. ;)

As for why Gore et. al. didn't win a Nobel in "Science", perhaps that's because there isn't a Nobel prize in "Science." Nor is there one in climatology or meteorology or any other applicable scientific field. Heck, there isn't even one in Biology. Only the important sciences like Physics and Chemistry are represented, which is as it should be. ;) And I'm not just saying that because I'm a chemist. :)

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Nearly every night as I listen to the BBC World Service's World News Tonight program, I hear yet another report from a climatologist (or a group of them) saying that global warming is ocurring faster than expected even as recently as the last IPCC report.

Consider the following:

Traditional hunter societies in Greenland, Siberia, Alaska, and parts of Canada in the Artic circle are being hindered because of melting ice. Some are switching to agriculture--an impossibility before now.

Parts of Scandinavia now are warm enough each year that, for the first time in history, they are planting vineyards and exporting Scandinavian wines--while French and California vineyards are having shorter growing seasons due to heatwaves 5 years running.

They are now growing broccoli in Southern Greenland.

The fabled "Northwest Passage" is free of ice for much of the year.

Sea ice in much of the artic circle is not refreezing come winter, leaving parts of the artic ice free all year around (which, itself, will speed global warming).

The Sahara is growing more rapidly by the year. While desertification has many causes that are not related to global warming, climate change increases the speed of desertification.

These are just a few items about which I have heard over the last MONTH. Doubtless every one could be contested--and, unlike Gore, scientists are far more cautious in conclusions. But the total signs every night seem inescapable to me.

And, of course, the CONSERVATIVE thing would be to err on the side of caution, knowing that by the time final proof arrives, it would be too late.

Look at the difference between business reactions to the possible threat of climate change vs. Y2K. There was FAR LESS agreement among computer experts about what might happen in 2000 than with climatologists about global warming. But businesses took no chances: millions were spent to fix the problem. We'll never know whether the lack of anything happening on midnight 2000 was because so many acted to prevent disaster or because the threat was non-existent. But businesses and governments thought it wise to err on the side of caution.

In contrast, at least in the U.S., efforts are constantly made to take as little precautions as possible--even though the Pentagon has defined climate change as presenting even national security threats.

Hello? Me, I'd want to err on the side of caution. All that carbon in the air is bad for our lungs even if the skeptics about global warming are right. So the more we work at becoming carbon neutral, the better we and the world are off--dramatically so if we are facing a planetary emergency, but measurably so even if that crisis is overblown.

Err on the side of caution.

Eleutheros said...

Michael:"Err on the side of caution."

Alas, Michael, it's not so simple as that. First, we are in the midst of climate change. The question, the only real question, is whether it is due to human activity, and more to the point, if we did something differently right now, would it make any difference?

If climate change is natural and is going to happen any way, we must prepare for it as a reality. Different economic model, different farming methods, different industrial models to accommodate the present and coming climate reality.

By if human activity isn't causing climate change and we act as if it has and that by doing something different we can stop or reverse it, we will expending what little time and resources for no use and thereby failing to do the work of accommodating to the changing climate.

The other problem with erring on the side of caution is that so much of that erring is useless dust in the wind. Gore has profited mightily from his global warming hype not least among which is his company to broker so called "carbon credits". If you want to buy an SUV in this country, you can buy a carbon credit and they will persuade an African village to stop using the diesel to pump water and hoist the water up with a bucket instead (I didn't, by the bye, make that up).

I was in the thick of the Y2K preparations for a major corporation. There was nothing iffy about it. We all knew very well there was no danger three years before the fact. But a lot of people make a lot of money panicking over it. They are doing the same with climate change.

John said...

Yes, Manbearpig.

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Speaking of sour grapes, there's this:
http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/conservatives_and_al_gores_nobel?tx=3

ELAshley said...

"Because the veracity of a scientific claim isn't decided by the vitae of the person making the claim."

EXACTLY! Nor the claims of a 'Consensus'

Bubba said...

ElAshley:

Until Al Gore and others reduce their own gargantuan carbon-footprint, they have little room to ask anyone else to do the same, especially if it keeps poorer peoples in the dirt and despair of poverty.

The fact that Gore's rhetoric never seems to dramatically affect his own behavior indicates that that rhetoric is little more than political theater. If he really believes that we're facing a grave "planetary crisis" that can only be met by drastic changes in our behavior, he wouldn't be such a conspicuous consumer of precisely those goods and services that he thinks the rest of us ought to (be compelled to) do without.

What's noteworthy is that his fans and compatriots aren't absolutely livid at his consistent and flagrant betrayal of his supposed principles. Their criticism of him, when it's there, is as mild as can be: bless him, he flies more than he should.

It leads me to think they don't really believe the sales pitch, either. We're being asked to embrace an extraordinarily costly program -- in terms of both wealth and freedom -- by people who aren't very persuasive that they personally believe in the reality of the crisis that justifies that program.

In the face of such likely propgandists, wouldn't it be wise to err on the side of caution?

Dan Trabue said...

The fact that Gore's rhetoric never seems to dramatically affect his own behavior indicates that that rhetoric is little more than political theater.

On this, I agree - Gore's hypocrisy undoes his message.

But it does not negate the reality that we have unsustainable policies and have to change them. Whether we're forced to eventually by circumstances (and probably with much weeping and harm) or if we're wise enough to do so on our own, we need to change our ways.

Alan said...

"The truth of the matter is that there is enough evidence in history to show that periodic GLOBAL warming and cooling trends are natural occurrences...."

That is indeed true. So? The fact that the Earth has warmed and cooled in the past, not due to man-made causes, doesn't mean that the current trend cannot be man-made. It does mean that it makes it harder to determine the correlation between human activity and global warming, but it doesn't discount the correlation simply because global warming (and cooling) have been natural occurrences in the past.

Of course, some folks have unfortunately always underestimated the impact humans have on our environment. And, typically, we find out the hard way just how severe an impact just a small number of people can actually have on the environment. Consider the once "limitless" supply of old growth hardwood trees across much of the US. Gone. Looking for evidence that a relatively small number of folks can have catastrophic effects on the environment? Ask anyone who happened to live in Cleveland OH in June of 1969. Or the dustbowl of the early 20th century. etc., etc., etc.

The "money" argument also fails because the same can be said for the anti-global warming crowd. The question isn't whether or not there is money behind a particular type of research ... there wouldn't BE research without money behind it, either government or private money. (Thank God! I gotta eat, you know.) That argument sounds good, as if we scientists should be doing all this work for free, out of the goodness of our nerdy little hearts, but it fails upon even cursory examination.

Yes, the Earth can recover from even large-scale changes. Heck, life here started and restarted several times before it really got going. But some of us would prefer not to have to go through that in the first place.

The notion that we can either prepare for global warming, or attempt to decrease our footprint is a false dichotomy. Obviously it would be prudent to do both. It's called stewardship, and it's right there in the very first chapters of the Bible.

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Yes, there are periodic cycles of heating and cooling of the earth. NO, it doesn't explain current global warming because, as Anarctic ice records show, this is WAY out of proportion to previous times. The data is clear: This is human made, carbon-based, and, if not stopped, of disastrous proportions.

ELAshley said...

"...this is WAY out of proportion to previous times..."

Based on what evidence? Core samples? Estimations? Just how long have scientists been studying the Antarctic? Long enough to know this current trend is "WAY out of proportion"?

"The data is clear"

No. It is not. Hence all the bickering.

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

The Antartic ice leaves a record of previous warmings and coolings. So, we can read much farther back in time than we have actually spent studying the Antartic.

And the "controversy" and "fussing" is not among the scientific community--not over the big picture, as opposed to the details. Outside the U.S., there is virtually no controversy among ordinary citizens, either. Hmm--the Western country that is the MOST addicted to oil and has the lowest general scientific knowledge is the one with the controversy. Whaddayaknow!

Dan Trabue said...

Has anyone answered yet why the GW scientists are to be distrusted and their studies received skeptically, but the scientists who say they see no evidence that humans are impacting climate change are to be believed?

And why is it that the "liberals" are the ones advocating making policy conservatively? I think we'll just have to claim that title for ourselves, since the Big Spending, Big Gov't, anti-prudence types of "conservatives" in power aren't meeting classically defined Conservatism.

John said...

The crazy thing about critiques of Gore's own carbon overusage is that it's essentially the Chickenhawk Argument. If it's inconsistent for war supporters to not enlist, then it's inconsistent of global warming critics to fly private jets, etc. And vice versa. As Glenn Reynolds is often fond of saying of global warming "I'll believe that it's a crisis when people who say that it's a crisis act like it's a crisis." All true. But can't the same thing be said of the war?

Marty said...

Trouble is... the war really is a crisis brought on by human action. I've got pictures to prove it.

Alan said...

"No. It is not. Hence all the bickering."

I hate to continue picking on you ELAshley, but you keep making these completely illogical statements.

First you suggest that there's "big money" behind the GW science and that's the reason for the consensus, incorrect as you believe it to be. Now you're suggesting that the data is unclear.

In fact, the data can be completely clear and there may still be bickering about it for any number of reasons, including your previous assertion about money. No doubt we'd see bickering over crystal clear data if, for example, a small number of scientists were being paid by British Petroleum. ;)

The fact that there's debate about conclusions does not mean that the underlying data is flawed, or unclear. It *might* mean that, but it doesn't have to, as you suggest.

ELAshley said...

What!? You mean Gore receives NO cash flow from An Inconvenient Truth? That celebrities who talk up man-made global warming DON'T earn dividends within their sphere of influence?

Sorry for not being clear earlier, but this is all I meant. Not that science itself is making a bundle off the frightened masses. If someone is willing to pay scientists to study the earth and its changing environment, who am I to argue? I'm a Capitalist! And besides... everyone's gotta eat.

But please don't try to tell me Hollywood and Gore aren't making a bundle off Global Warming. Even DiCaprio is getting in on it. And I distinctly recall a movie from just a few years back... a film I actually enjoyed, by the way... called The Day After. I don't know how much the movie made, but I know a lot of people clapped a lot of people on the back and said something to the effect of "Great movie! Let's do lunch."

There's lots of money being made here, especially with the SELLING and buying of bogus Carbon-Offsets... which look a lot like the Indulgences once sold by the Catholic Church, only those are more properly called SIN-offsets.

----
I don't feel picked on, Alan. Just having a friendly debate on the merits or lack thereof of ManBearPig...

[yes, I followed the link, and yes, it was humorous]

ELAshley said...

Sorry, The Day After Tomorrow, 2004

Alan said...

"But please don't try to tell me Hollywood and Gore aren't making a bundle off Global Warming."

I didn't. But please don't tell me that the oil industry doesn't financially support a good deal of anti-global warming research.

Strange that someone would be so sure that GW research would be tainted because Gore makes money off his movie, and yet ignore the fact that it's the oil industries that are certainly in line to profit from bogus research.

(Not to mention Bush administration "editing" of scientific reports that would be politically damaging.)

So, all the research on both sides is tainted because of who pays for it! Problem solved. That argument also has the advantage of casting doubt on all research done in the field without actually having to prove anything. :)

Fortunately that's not how it generally works in science. For example the phony research created by the tobacco industry wasn't criticized only based on the fact that the tobacco industry paid for it. It was criticized because it was shoddy research. One can, in fact, make a scientific judgement about the quality of research that goes beyond simply attacking who paid for it or who is making money from it. As I said above, those sorts of arguments simply don't mean much since we all gotta eat. :)

Dan Trabue said...

And so, again I ask: is there some reason to distrust the GW scientists any more or less than the anti-GW scientists?

And, lacking a concensus (although I don't think we lack a concensus), ought we not go with the more prudent approach/policies?

Bubba said...

Dan, does your approach include little more than persuading your fellow man to follow a certain lifestyle? If it doesn't, your call to hand vast amounts of power to the Leviathan state may be many things, but it hardly qualifies as an exercise in the prudence of traditional conservatism.

There's nothing prudent in giving the state virtually unlimited power to tell us how to live our lives.

Alan said...

"And, lacking a concensus (although I don't think we lack a concensus), ought we not go with the more prudent approach/policies?"

Indeed. Additionally, one would think that those who attempt to make the argument that preemptive military strikes against other countries in the name of "energy independence" would be at least as happy to work toward that same goal without having to kill people. It's a two-fer. :)

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

The "Leviathan state" has always had the power to regulate commerce. So, it certainly already has the power to put in hard caps on carbon emissions and set up a "cap and trade" system that encourages market ingenuity for the best methods of reducing carbon emissions. This was how CFCs were regulated and we stopped acid rain and have begun to heal the hole in the ozone layer much faster than we thought would happen.

The conservative claim that the state has no right to regulate the market is absurd. Without states, markets cannot even exist: The state creates standard weights and measures; the state creates common currency; the state creates infrastructure (ours is derelict, here); the state enforces contracts, breaks up monopolies, punishes insider trading. These are MINIMUM conditions for a market to even exist.
So, the question is not whether or not the state "should" interfere with the market for the common good, but what kind of intervention and how much. That's a real debate worth having--and pertains to efforts to combat global warming.
But the standard claim that the state cannot or should regulate the market is a failure to understand basic economics at all.

Dan Trabue said...

Thanks, Michael. I was fixing to respond to Bubba's query but my answer was long and sprawling (not unlike an poorly thought out, unmanaged and environmentally harmful city) and yours is much more concise.

Bubba said...

Michael, you may not have noticed, but I did not say that "the state has no right to regulate the market." What I said was that giving the state the massive new regulatory powers -- in this case, to remake society in the manner that the most radical environmentalists insist is necessary to address what you a crisis of "disastrous proportions" -- is not an instance of exercising traditional conservative prudence. Dan's pretending otherwise is laughable.

Truthfully, I agree that the state is necessary to ensure a free market, particularly in enforcing the rule of law against theft, violence, and fraud. I could quibble with your particular list, as the state is not an absolutely essential actor in the creation of money, nor is the state required to create standards, as ANSI and the ISO demonstrate. But the fact remains, yes, in the real world, the state is required to ensure a free market.

That doesn't mean that all state intervention is equivalent in terms of the impact on freedom. It can well be said that a market is free even if the state "regulates" that market, if such regulation is limited to things like the criminalization of theft, violence, and fraud. If regulation includes price-fixing, the market isn't as free as it could be. If regulation includes seizing property without due process or just compensation, then it's not really free at all, comrade.

But I was not arguing about any of this. I was just disputing the stupid notion that the massive regulations required to implement the plans of the enviro-Marxists -- at a cost literally hundreds of billions, and that's just for the first step of Kyoto -- is nothing more than a matter of simple prudence.

Dan Trabue said...

Bubba, I would probably begin by promoting ONE bi-fold single solution to the problem: That we pay for things as we go and that we pay real prices for things.

Do you think that's conservative or liberal?

Inane name-calling (enviro-marxists) is not especially helpful to conversations, by the way. There are relatively few actual marxists in the US - although I have run across many young folk who think they are, when you talk to them much, they're not really.

So, do you think it wise to pay for things as we go and pay actual costs for them?

Alan said...

"What I said was that giving the state the massive new regulatory powers -- in this case, to remake society in the manner that the most radical environmentalists ..."

Well, let's see what these radical environmentalists have to say. Let's take ... oh, say... Al Gore for example. On the "Inconvenient Truth" website he encourages people to urge national leaders to switch to renewable energy, protect and conserve forests, and reduce emissions.

Radical! ;)

In fact, much of the regulation proposed already exists. For example, we already have CAFE standards. Making them stricter doesn't add more regulation. Those regulations already exist.

But even if we were to agree that this actually required the sort of governmental-regulatory-doomsday scenario that some suggest, what's worse? Their doomsday scenario, or ours?

BTW, for my own edification, I did a little back of the envelope, stoichiometry calculation and I estimate that a gallon of gasoline creates about 20 POUNDS of carbon dioxide. So even small lifestyle changes can add up quickly.

Carpooling, for example doesn't require any governmental regulation at all -- and it saves you lots of money. Buying locally grown produce at the farmers market doesn't require any governmental regulation at all -- and it saves you lots of money (and the food is better, and you're supporting your neighbor, etc.)

Dan Trabue said...

Strike one and two, bubba. You wanna swing again?

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

It's been awhile since I watched An Inconvenient Truth, so I will stay away from what Al Gore proposes as a private citizen. I belong, however, to the eco-group known as Environmental Defense. ED's proposals for combatting global warming due include some government regs: stricter CAFE standards; hard caps on CO2 emissions. But most of their recommendations for meeting and surpassing Kyoto are giving the market the right signals so that a combination of lifestyle changes (e.g., carpooling, biking, public transportation, comprehensive recycling, less AC in summer and less heat in winter, etc.) and market innovations work to solve the problem.

Such market innovations--from alternative fuels to solar heating and much more--should generate enough economic profit to offset any burdens taken on by not allowing businesses to dump unrestricted CO2 into the air. That is, they will if we start now. Otherwise, we will be purchasing new technologies from others.

Bubba said...

Dan, it seems to me that you do not seem willing or capable of maintaining fair standards in these discussions between those with whom you agree and those who don't.

You earlier have not only allowed others to use the "chickenhawk" epithet, you used it yourself. Only now are you concerned with what's edifying:

Inane name-calling (enviro-marxists) is not especially helpful to conversations, by the way.

But this concern for what's useful doesn't stop you from this really insightful comment, the totality of your next comment here:

Strike one and two, bubba. You wanna swing again?

How is this "helpful to conversations"? It's not.

Seems to me that, so long as a person is on your side of a given discussion, he can say whatever he wants, no matter how controversial or inflammatory or even how childish. You tolerate it, you often celebrate it, and you sometimes indulge in it yourself.

But if someone dares to disagree with you, you prove to be extremely sensitive to the least little thing, to someone's presuming to reach conclusions about you that you don't like if those conclusions aren't prefaced with qualifying statements like "it seems to me", or to someone's daring to summarize what you've written rather than quote you verbatim.

The subject of this blog entry -- presuming that there are "sour grapes" over Gore winning the Nobel Prize -- is ample evidence just how much you're interested in a serious discussion.

Sometimes you do a better job at masking your partisanship, such as when you asked the legitimate question of why limited-government conservatives support large military budgets. But you weren't interested in a serious answer: you even criticized my detailed response as too lengthy, though I've never seen similar criticisms for the equally verbose Michael. No, it's clear the question wasn't asked to prompt a legitimate answer from conservatives. I suspect instead that you just wanted to get others to provide the sneering, liberal response: we conservatives are hypocritical in our warmongering.

Now, you write about how name-calling isn't useful immediately before this "strike one" nonsense.

You're not concerned with civility, not really. You just want to use it as a weapon when it's convenient and ignore it when it's not.

Eleutheros said...

Alan:"The notion that we can either prepare for global warming, or attempt to decrease our footprint is a false dichotomy."

Straw man, that. The question isn't about decreasing the footprint, rather it's whether a change in our activities will mitigate or reverse climate change.

Nor is it a matter of doing "both". The sort of changes in our behavior that will prepare us for a changing climate will leave a much smaller footprint. But, alas, all things that leave a smaller footprint, or more to the point, appear or are hyped to leave a smaller footprint actually do so. Fake carbon credits are a case in point.

According to the very supposed consensus of warmist scientists we are already past the tipping point. We can't reverse climate change no matter what its cause. All we have left is to adapt to it.

Nor is this happening. And the reason is best experessed by:

Dan:"But it does not negate the reality that we have unsustainable policies and have to change them."

It is the liberal belief that the source of all problems and solutions to them come from a central authority that bids fair to do us in. If we are to meet the realities of climate change (depleting energy, food, and water), it must be done by individuals.

Policies are only vague shadows of the collective behavior of the people. Policies do not shape our behavior, our behavior shapes policies.


Belief in this central policy myth leads to the Orwellian position taken by several on this list, to wit: "Oh, you might be living sustainably and have a very tiny footprint, but I couldn't turn my back on the rest of the world like that. No, I've got to keep writing letters to the editor and campaigning for politician with the better policy."

Those without the courage of their convictions are forever waiting for that policy change before they do anything substantial. But in the mean time, says they, I will write another letter to the editor, just as soon, of course, as I go down in my SUV to get another triple cheeseburger.

Alan said...

"Straw man, that."

People on blogs seem to try to discount anything as a "straw man" argument. In the words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." I did not, for example, make a ridiculous claim, attribute it to conservatives and then knock it down. What I did was simply say that we can prepare for global warming AND decrease our footprint at the same time. Though complimentary, those are not the same things, and they are possible to achieve at the same time.

What a convenient self-contained argument the conservatives have: GW doesn't exist, and there's nothing you can do to stop it!

Huh? LOL

Well, let's go fire up the SUV then, since we're all going to burn. Or we can hope that conservatives' sighs of futility and their throwing of hands up into the air will cool the planet. ;)

Or perhaps we can work to decrease our impact now, hoping that better technologies to reduce GW gasses arrive in the future. Even if we were to agree that it's too late to reverse the effects, there is wide agreement that we could at least decrease the severity.

"Belief in this central policy myth leads to the Orwellian position taken by several on this list,"

Now see THAT would be an example of a straw man argument ;) Orwellian? LOL Excellent.

Eleutheros said...

Alan:"People on blogs seem to try to discount anything as a "straw man" argument."

Real argument at hand:

It's a choice between preparing for climate change and preventing climate change.

The straw many you actually built and then addressed:

It's a choice between preparing for a climate change and reducing our footprint.

Couldn't have come up with a better example of 'straw man' if I had tried. Make up something no one asserted and knock it down to avoid what they really said.

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

"It's a choice between preparing for climate change and preventing climate change." Says who? I haven't noticed anyone arguing that but Eleutheros. We cannot prevent ALL climate change (and shouldn't). We can and should prevent much human caused global warming, while preparing for that which we cannot change.

Eleutheros said...

Michael:"I haven't noticed anyone arguing that but Eleutheros."

You need to greatly widen your horizons, then. It is absolutely central to the discussion. As I and several others (and in the wider world, a great many others) have pointed out, the notion that human activity has caused climate change is far from universally accepted. Making changes in industry, agriculture, and energy use in general based on the belief of the human cause of climate change, and (this is very important) the belief that said change can be reversed by a change in human activity could be disastrous if that belief proves to be groundless.

At a school where I was employed many years ago the idiot coach bought a car for his daughter to take to college. When he opened the trunk, he found that that was a leak and the trunk was full of water. Rather than bail it out, he got out his electric drill and drilled a hole from underneath.

In spite of the steady flow of liquid, the level didn't seem to be much going down much so he drilled three more holes. Still the level hadn't gone down in the trunk. Finally the flow eased to a dribble and then stopped altogether.

Still the trunk was full. The idiot had drilled four holes in the gas tank.

If the warmers are wrong about the cause of climate change, or even if they are wrong that the drastic changes proposed will slow or reverse it, then decisions will be implemented that leave us exposed to unimaginable disasters of famine and lack of water because we spent our time trying to relive the climate status quo rather than preparing for change.

ELAshley said...

Here's some questions: Is Atlanta's current water emergency the result of Global Warming, or the Army Corp of Engineers? Is every drought a harbinger of global warming? Or does the Earth wobble on its yearly trek around the earth? Or maybe the sun goes through periods of relative heating and cooling? Why are Martian polar regions melting? why are other planets experiencing an increase in global temperatures?

Surely it's not all some cosmic coincidence? And why was there a consensus in the late seventies of an impending era of global cooling ? Was the planet doomed then? What about DDT? How is it that a single author can write a book-- Silent Spring --convince all of academia that DDT will destroy the ecosystem (and consequently, the birds), successfully getting the world to ban DDT only to see millions die of Malaria, and other insect-borne diseases...?

what of those unintended consequences?

Al Gore was considered, pretty much, an eco-kook shortly AFTER he became Vice President-- Earth in the Balance. How much time did the Earth have in 1993 when THAT book came out?

Dan Trabue said...

And I ask again: Why should we be skeptical of GW scientists and accepting of those paid by oil companies?

Anyone can cite any number of studies to back almost anything (even that the earth is 6000 years old). Don't make it factual.

Eleutheros said...

Dan:"And I ask again: Why should we be skeptical of GW scientists and accepting of those paid by oil companies?"

That either/or choice isn't what's on the table. Oil company "scientists" say that Peak Oil is baseless and groundless. When reminded of the facts and pressed for details, all they can come up with is "Well, we COULD discover a lot more oil, ya never know." And even at that, other petro-scientists "know" very well that there is not a lot more oil to be discovered and why.

So no one who isn't a reed flopping in the wind, bowing at the alter of "scientist", accepts either side entirely on faith. Certainly not "scientists" whose status and income depend on oil companies.

But on the warmists' side, it's the bad taste of duplicity that first creates the doubt. Supposedly 2600 scientists signed on and yet we find out that most of them (that is MOST of them) were simply being quoted from this or that work out of context and without their backing or leave.

Then we have the lion's share of prominent scientists who have examined the contrary-wise data of the past half decade and have recanted their position.

We have all the unexplained evidence against the possibility of human induced global warming, no need to go over it again here unless you want to.

Added all together it's a wobbly, insubstantial proposition and nothing to bank our future on.

If we are to survive the coming difficulties, we can't engage in "My scientist is bigger than your scientist!" We've got to educate ourselves.

So ... Dan, in light of that, I can tell you why I quite misdoubt the human influence on the climate much of which is outlined above. It doesn't depend on faith in a scientist or group of scientists, it depends on examining the facts and phenomena and coming to my own conclusions. Can you tell us why you DO believe in human induced climate change. If we take the stack of scientists off the table and depend instead only on science, what is there to compel us to think that 1) Human activity has caused climate change and 2) Changing human activity will alter or reverse climate change.

Alan said...

"If we are to survive the coming difficulties, we can't engage in "My scientist is bigger than your scientist!" We've got to educate ourselves."

Absolutely.

Notice though all we've heard in this discussion is what we always hear: My scientist is bigger than your scientist, your scientist gets paid, etc...

I'd love to hear the skeptics actually talk about why they think the effects of aerosols on global warming are overestimated, or why they think that the correlation between greenhouse gas concentration and global temperature increase is bogus, or any number of other actual scientific topics rather than mudslinging. But so far, in this conversation, as with most I've been involved in, its all bun and no meat.

"It's a choice between preparing for climate change and preventing climate change."

False dichotomy. There's no reason we can't try to do both. Or at the very least if climate change is not preventable, lessen the severity. Apparently saying such an outlandish thing is a straw man, but I still don't understand why. LOL

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Alan, it's my understanding that aerosols are only indirectly a global warming problem. Their big problem (before reformulation) was that the CFCs they emitted helped erode the ozone layer. They weren't directly a greenhouse gas. However, the holes in the ozone DO add to global warming. So, aerosols have an indirect effect.

Most CFCs have now been banned and the results have been a faster healing of the Ozone layer than most could have guessed. If we stop dumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, we may get lucky and correct global warming problems faster than we expect, too.

Alan said...

Actually Michael, I was talking about aerosols, not aerosols. :)

Aerosols are tiny particulates in the air that are the result of combustion, but other processes as well. Initial calculations regarding global warming were incorrect and didn't match observations because scientists neglected to take into account the complex contributions of aerosols in their contributions. They can both capture heat, but also "shade" the Earth from the Sun, hence the complexity of understanding their role. Some suggest that we intentionally work on "global dimming" ie. releasing massive amounts of aerosols into the air to counteract global warming. But there's debate about whether or not that would help.

However, you're right, aerosol *cans* did eliminate CFCs several years ago. Unfortunately CFCs were replaced with butane (usually) which is a green house gas.

Michael Westmoreland-White said...

Thanks for that explanation, Alan.

Eleutheros said...

Alan:"Apparently saying such an outlandish thing is a straw man, but I still don't understand why."

I suppose I'm becoming less surprised that you don't, although I don't see how it can be explained any more simply.

The strawman isn't saying we could do both prepare for climate change and prevent climate change. It was substituting in "lessening the footprint" for "prevent climate change" as if it were a given that the one will guarantee the other.

Setting off on a windmill jousting course to prevent climate change could not only detract from the preparations that need be made, it could actually scuttle and sabotage the preparations.

Eleutheros said...

Michael:"Most CFCs have now been banned and the results have been a faster healing of the Ozone layer than most could have guessed."

CFC's in aerosol cans entered into the fray only marginally. It was CFC's used as refrigerants that were the target.

Just as with global warming, there is no clear consensus about what happened. The hue and cry was against CFC's supposed cause of an accelerated rift in the ozone in the 1980's. Skeptics at the time showed that the ozone content of the atmosphere went in cycles and the "hole" had not suddenly appeared in the 1980's but in the early 1950's and in the '50's scientists predicted that the cycle would run its course until about 2000 (which it did).

Was the ozone content of the upper atmosphere depleted by CFC's and then restored by their ban? Maybe. But maybe not.

What is intriguing about the question is that before the 1930's the most common refrigerant was ammonia and sometimes other chemicals such as methyl-chloride which is quite poisonous. DuPont developed an alternative CFC refrigerant. But it was expensive and didn't work all that better than the much, much cheaper ammonia.

Hyping a few instances where people had been poisoned by methyl-chloride, DuPont was able to manipulate the weak minded into crying for the ban of all chemicals as refrigerants except, of course, those to which it held patents.

DuPont finally settled on the the formula for Freon-12. Don't you find it the least bit mysterious that the ozone situation suddenly became a crisis the very year the patent was to expire on Freon-12? Very oddly DuPont's new (and patented) Freon-134a (an HFC not a CFC) has been found to not be a threat to the ozone.

What deepens this notion is that it has happened so many times before. When DuPont developed a new line of wood preservatives but couldn't sell them because of the cheaper and more effective creosote, suddenly we found that creosote was a major carcinogen and it was banned.

CCA treated lumber was not viewed as a health hazard until the patent was expiring for one of the mamor processes for treating the lumber and a major lumber company developed an industrial process for Copper Azole treatment with which it competed.

The list goes on and on. It is odd how many things are fine and safe until just before the patent expires.

Liberals are such an easy mark for industrialists.