Oh, I missed that. Big praise coming from the king.

So quick to attack, so slow to comprehend. Liberal heaven.

Talk about double trouble.

I guess I'm mixing you folks up which is only natural since it is 20 or so against 1. I guess it was Daiwa whose argument was:

If that wasn't your point as well then my post was partially misdirected. In any case "this hypothesis never had significant scientific support" pretty much kills *both* your and his arguments. In his case it's because the "same scientific community" never predicted global cooling in the first place.

Your argument was slightly different in that you were referring to individuals who were caught up in the hype that as demonstrated had no "significant scientific support." However again your argument falls flat because it's not the fact the bulk of the uninformed public, caught up in some kind of hype, believe AGW, but the *fact* that the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion supports AGW that causes me to believe it.

Its silence was deafening? Whatever does that mean? Perhaps you mean the climate study folks were not out there instantly denying those ridiculuous claims as well. OK I see your point but so what? Was there really even such a thing as a climatologist in the early 70's? Certainly there were meteorologists and physicists and even geologists but did *anyone* at that time specialize in the study of long term climatic changes? I mean besides yourself that is. In any case I have no particular desire to defend a debunked topic from 40 years ago.

Nice beachfront property on Baffin Island perhaps?

You complained about being called a denier so I used an alternate term with the same meaning.

The situation is not analogous.  Big Tobacco did not have governments basing penalizing multitrillion dollar economic policies on thier work.

The assumption that climatology is a science like any other is false.

The notion that overwhelming agreement with something makes it fact, let alone infallible, has not been borne out by history.

The case that we must do what has been proposed to mitigate a problem that appears to 1) be less severe than the alarmists would have us believe and 2) be inconsequentially contributed to by man, at the cost to be incurred has not been made.

Putting aside whether you believe the alarmist's science is good or bad, there is no evidence that whatever we'll buy with all the money they propose to raise through carbon taxes will do squat to 'solve' the alleged problem.  But there are people and (evil) corporations which have positioned themselves to reap immense (dare I say, 'windfall'?) profits from such schemes.

Cap & trade is 'solution' still looking for a problem.

Nothing wrong with 'being green' - but that's as far as it should go.

Interesting twist - the article by the guy I don't think works for Exxon seems to have become invisible to Google.  My link in #32 still works (for now).

Do you folks *ever* listen? Do you actually read my replies or do you see red the instant you see a buzzword that annoys you and ignore the rest *assuming* that my beliefs are identical to your stereotypical beliefs of left wing ideology?

All I have claimed to be documented sufficiently to be taken as fact are two simple points.

1) Global warming is occurring.

2) Human activity has contributed to global warming.

That's *all* I have ever claimed to be true. To the best of my understanding all AGW implies are these two points. What I call a "denier" is someone that denies either of these two premises.

On the other hand, I have *repeatedly* stated (this being at least the 5th time) that the following points are perfectly legitimate concerns about which reasonable people may hold differing opinions within a wide range for legitimate argument.

3) How much will global warming actually affect us?

Anything from hardly at all to the direst of consequences proposed by the most extreme alarmists, with my own personal opinion lying somewhere pretty close to the middle of this range.

4) How soon will global warming actually affect us?

Again anything from tomorrow to the next one hundred years or possibly even longer and again, with my own personal opinion lying somewhere in the vicinity of 30 years to have the beginning of really noticeable differences (aside from a few polar bears) but this is really just a guess on my part.

5) What can we do to slow, stop or mitigate global warming?
 
Again anything from very little to a lot with again my opinion residing somewhere in the middle.

So as long as you can accept my points 1 and 2 then I consider your stance “reasonable.”

As far as where you stand on 3 through 5, I really don’t care. You may be on the very low end of all these things. That’s fine. I can accept that. I don’t totally buy it but I cannot say that you’d be absolutely wrong. On the other hand I figure somewhere in the middle of these ranges makes the most sense but I can’t say anyone at *either* extreme of these ranges is wrong.

As to how we should base policy, I believe we should try to address these things on the basis of a “middle of the road” scenario. For one thing if the alarmists are really right then you will have at least been doing *something* if not perhaps the most optimal thing if it really is doom and gloom, and if it actually turns out that global warming is much ado about nothing then you haven’t gone nutty for no apparent reason.

*This* is the *reasonable* approach for someone to take that does not consider himself to be an AGW expert and does not necessarily believe that the sky is about to fall in the next minute nor believes that we should hide our head in the sand and hope it goes away.

If you don’t think this is a reasonable stance to hold then truly it is *you* that is unreasonable.

I really don’t know what more I can say.

[edit] One other point I neglected to mention is "How much has man contributed to global warming?" Just like the others this is fair game anywhere from not much to a whole bunch, again with my opinion being something in the middle. As long as your answer is something above "insignificant" then we have room to argue. An answer of insignificant or negligible is in essence denying my point #2 which I would have to consider unreasonable. [/edit]

I know it's hard to believe, mumble, but it's not all about you.

Having said that, I must now be at least 'semi-reasonable' (as defined by you):

Global warming has occurred since the 'mini ice age.'  Not for the past decade, but it has.  So we (mostly) agree on that.

The effect of man's activities may make up a portion of the warming that has occurred.  I happen to believe, as do many others, that the portion in question is trivial and hardly globe-threatening.  So that's two we (mostly) agree on.

Regarding this:

I sort of agree with you here, but 'middle of the road' is a very vague target, unlikely to be palatable to the doomsday alarmist crowd (90% of reasonable people by your stated estimate).  Individual environmentally sound behavior probably makes sense to most people, including me.  Being forced to use (mercury-containing) CFL's does not.  Being denied clean nuclear energy does not.  Paying beef prices jacked up by methane taxes does not.  Being taxed for my farts does not.  Being told I can't eat a burger does not.  Being told I've 'exhausted my personal carbon allowance' does not.  You get my drift.

If we went about policy-making by meeting every potential adversity half way, regardless of any basis in reality, because 'what if it is real?' - we'd quickly exhaust the resources needed to actually do something useful.

As for the rest, Krauthammer had it pegged a year and a half ago.

It is hard to believe because you all seem to agree with each other. Perhaps I may be wrong but like I said if it wasn't for my presence in this thread it probably would have died 40 replies and 3 days ago. But I suppose it's possible it could have limped along with a post every other day for another week. Still without me there would be nowhere near the activity in this thread that there is with me so you could reasonably say that it *is* all about me.

Again you misunderstand. The 90% of people that I deem reasonable are the ones that agree with *me*. I don't particularly find the "alarmists" any more reasonable than the "deniers". I think that *most* people are like me in this regard. They accept the idea that global warming is occuring and at least partially caused by man but I doubt very few actually believe that either extreme is likely to happen and the most likely scenario is somewhere in the middle. That's where I think the majority of people are on this issue. Now if this is really 90% or only 50% that are actually in this middle ground I have no way to really know but the middle is where *most* people stand on *most* issues.

JU is a self selected set of pretty extreme right wingers. When you think that aeortar is a liberal when in fact he's pretty much a moderate conservative that's pretty telling how right wing this site is. I don't think you guys really know *where* the middle is.

I'm not familar with the CFL issue and I see no problem with a reasonable tax on an item that somehow causes pollution (assuming it does indeed cause pollution), but I agree whole heartedly about not wanting to have my farts taxed, or being prohibited from eating a burger, or being told I've 'exhausted my personal carbon allowance' (whatever that means). Who would? I don't see how you equate these things with a liberal agenda. They're not something I or anyone I know wants and I live in Massachusetts.

I'm not saying we should make policy "by meeting every potential adversity half way", I think we should be at the halfway point in global warming policy because that's where I think the problem lies.

You think differently, that's fine. You think we should do less others think we should do more. In the end we probably will end up where I think we should be because that's just how things work.

As far as Krauthammer I'm not a big fan however I can agree with this point.

"Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean."

I've always been a big proponent of nuclear power, abundant nuclear power coupled with a decent electric car is the end to our middle east oil dependency. However you know who's against that don't you?

Something else we agree on.  Practically brothers in arms now. If nuclear energy can be scaled to power a submarine, I can't understand how the energy independence problem is not already solved (I know, I know - Exxon/Mobile, Texaco/Chevron).

And my biggest beef with AGW orthodoxy is in the point you quote from Krauthammer - the reluctance to do what's doable as opposed to what's economically ruinous & socially destructive.  All the moreso absent overwhelming evidence that 1) a rapid and truly destabilizing global warming (meaning one we couldn't accomodate to gradually) is occurring, 2) anthropogenic CO2 is the proximate cause of (and not simply associated with or a follower of) that rapid warming, 3) we know what level of CO2 beyond which we can not go, 4) we know what must be done to keep CO2 levels below that threshhold number, and 5) we have the technological capability to do so.  All five conditions must be met, in my opinion, to even begin to justify what is already being proposed.  Not one of them has been met so far.  After all that, there's the little detail of who foots the bill for 5).  We should probably also know that CO2 is the only thing that matters before we get to 5).

One little leftover - what you may consider 'laziness' might just be having other infinitely more worthwhile, necessary and/or useful things to do at the time.  I don't expect you to lower your snark quotient, but then you keep insisting you are *reasonable*, so who knows?.

And Saudi Arabia and the coal industry. All in all that political fight is far *worse* than healthcare reform in regards to the total dollar volume represented by the "vested interests."

Like I've said earlier AGW isn't really one of my hot button issues and I have no knowledge whatsoever as to what's actually in the Cap and Trade bill, or for that matter what state it's in, how close to passage it is, etc.

But with that in mind what makes you think that that there is a "reluctance to do what's doable" and that whatever it is that is proposed is "economically ruinous & socially destructive"?

Earlier you mentioned taxing farts, prohibiting hamburgers and a "personal carbon allowance". Where the heck are these ideas coming from? Are you really suggesting that Cap and Trade goes to the level of legislating individuals carbon emissions as if they were some corporation? If so this is starting to sound very much like the "death panel" concerns from the healthcare debate. Please tell me this isn't just some kind of right wing fear mongering.

Earlier I took a quick look at Cap and Trade and I'm really not all *that* interested in the bill one way or the other. It did seem to me to be overly complicated and not something that I would particularly favor but it also didn't jump out at me as anything that was "economically ruinous & socially destructive."

My preference as I mentioned in passing earlier would be to simply put in per industry limits on whatever pollutants that it's desirable to limit (carbon, coal ash, CFC's, whatever), set the limits at the current levels of production and gradually lower them over time along with a tax for exceeding them. I think this is what we have been doing all along for the last 20 years or so.

My understanding of Cap and Trade is that it "seemed" to be some kind of compromise that was designed to get around the above kind of hard dictated limits and instead allow companies to form a "market" (conceptually a good thing) that would allow individual companies and/or entire industries that were able to lower their emissions through some kind of innovation to sell part of their "license to pollute" to other companies and or entire industries that for whatever reason were unable to meet their limits.

I see the idea as somewhat unwieldy but overall the specific idea of providing a cap for total overall pollutants and then allow a market to develop so that the market could determine how to apportion the limits across individual companies and entire industries seems like not that bad of an idea, at least conceptually. I realize that the devil is in the details but what is so horrific about this kind of pollution reduction mechanism?

That's understandable.

But in that kind of case you could say something like "Interesting point but I'll have to get back to you on that" instead of some meaningless handful of words with an emoticon.

Or you could simply say nothing until you *do* have the time to respond intelligibly, which is far preferable over what appears to me to just being silly.

Or perhaps you could say something like “you know you might actually have a point there but I just don’t feel like chasing those links to determine if you’re right about it or not.”

Or perhaps on the rare occasion that you’re feeling particularly magnanimous “OK, perhaps the global cooling analogy wasn’t my best argument.” This one in particular would go a long fucking way.

I see your point to some extent but you must admit that this line of thinking can easily be viewed as the simple delaying tactic of claiming that we can't do anything until we do more study. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here but that's exactly what the tobacco companies did. They threw up a smokescreen of "controversy" and then claimed that nothing should be done because the "science" isn't "settled."

Here is the crux. The point is that the more pain something causes the greater the test it has to meet to be justified. However how much pain something causes as well as how sufficiently something has been "proven" are both very subjective things.

I mean if you truly believe that "what is already being proposed" is overly Draconian then your tests for satisfying the criteria will be high, if you feel that "what is already being proposed" is not such a big deal and are reasonable and prudent measures then it takes far less to justify them.

Again I'm taking the position of a non AGW expert and so I really have no basis to judge whether or not the criteria you list are satisfied or not. I suspect that if I were to dig into it that the scientific community may actually in fact have a reasonable (there's that word again) handle on your points 1 through 4 or at least 1 through 3 which in my mind justifies some action.

Heck even satisfying point 1 partially as in "truly destabilizing global warming is occurring" and dropping the rapid part justifies *some* response. I mean if the result is expected to be that sea level will rise sufficiently to totally flood *every* coastal city on the planet then even if it happens slow enough that we're able to evacuate the cities gradually then that's still a pretty destabilizing event even if it takes 100 years to occur.

It all boils down to how bad "what is already being proposed" really is and like I said I really don't see what everyone seems to be so afraid of but I'm willing to listen.

Doesn't matter if it's beyond our power to stop it.  Might be cheaper & less destructive to slowly evacuate than anything else.

Later.

Of course, *if* we can't do anything about it then we really have no choice.

The primary point of that paragraph was that just because something bad occurs over a longer period of time that doesn't mean that it should be *allowed* to happen. Just because it may take 100 years do you really think moving the entirety of the east, west and gulf coasts along with the entirety of Florida is the best way to go about it assuming of course that there is something that could be done to prevent or even just mitigate it?

You're probably talking about relocating 200 million people along with their homes, work, schools, everything. Essentially you'd be rebuilding at least 50% of the country 50 to 100 miles inland. That's pretty darn dramatic particularly if all we need to do to avoid it is to get back to 350ppm of CO2, or perhaps limiting ourselves to 450ppm or even 550ppm is enough. But it's this kind of range in policy decisions that I believe is prefectly fair game for discussion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation_scenarios

In any case not every person that believes in AGW also believes we have to get back to the 350ppm CO2 level for example. In particular I'm doubtful that could reasonably be achieved since we're already past that point. However if that's what the science says and the choice is that or have your grandchildren grow gills then OK but I would have to agree with you that hasn't been proven sufficiently enough to me to accept that level of pain trying to achieve it. However 450ppm seems a not so onerous limit, we still have some headroom under the cap and time to slow emission growth down by the time we get there. This is also consistent with my middle of the road scenario. Maybe this requires we give up New Orleans, South Florida and a few miles of coastline. Painful but livable.

But doing nothing is simply not acceptable to me and that's precisely what we've essentially been doing because we've been paralyzed into inaction unable to make a decision because the science isn't "settled".

Still interested in hearing what's so "economically ruinous & socially destructive" about "what is already being proposed" when you get the chance. Is it the 350ppm level that has folks so up in arms? If so then is it so bad to shoot for 450ppm?

There's a difference between being environmentally friendly, and reacting to alarmist hoaxes from the likes of Al Gore and other liberal media outlets.

Man-made Global Warming™ is a fraud.

"SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece