There are so many to choose from in this interview, I suppose I’ll just have to list them all. But #3 is the most profound.
From the Atlantic:
An Interview With Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling, Part Two – Conor Clarke
#1 …And what I don’t know is whether Americans are really willing to understand that and do anything for the benefit of the unborn Chinese.
#2 It’s a tough sell. And probably you have to find ways to exaggerate the threat. And you can in fact find ways to make the threat serious.
…
#3 But I tend to be rather pessimistic. I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening — you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth — that would get people very concerned about climate change. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
h/t to Tom Nelson
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Robin, re your true believin’ friends: You have to realize that your task is the same as [snip ~ no general religion bashing ~ ctm]
Practice on some of those, and then you can try talking to some of the AGW types, because it’s the same thing going on. Their biggest lies are the lies they tell themselves about how they are following science and rationality, when in fact they are pursuing a purely faith based enterprise based on the fact that it’s what everyone else is doing and they want to sit at the cool kids table.
What’s worse, if you ever do successfully point this out to them, they will hate you for it, hate you with the heat of a thousand suns, because that’s what always happens to someone who makes someone else see their own lies and hypocrisy.
You have to realize that you are dealing with Religion, not science here.
And Codetech – to comment more on your observations about this new faith filling a psychological need for people who’ve fallen away from more traditional paths: you could have added with the fire and brimstone speeches, it’s never just something bad that will happen – it’s all because YOU MUST BE PUNISHED FOR YOUR SINS!
REPENT, OH YE SINNERS OR YE WILL PERISH IN FLAME!!!
yep, that’s pretty much the AGW argument cut down to it’s basic core elements.
How about this one….!!!!!
20 July 2009
The Next IPCC
Speaking of the role of the next IPCC assessment report, due in 2014, its chair again strongly suggests that the role of the assessment process is to legitimate political decisions:
The group’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said he believes governments will look to the report for “validation … of their own decisions” being made now.
“But what if they make bad decisions?”
Posted by Roger Pielke, Jr. at 7/20/2009 08:35:00 AM
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/07/next-ipcc.html
Thomas Schelling was born in 1921 and is therefore 87 or 88 years old! He also specialized in game theory and the theory of decision-making and, if I recall correctly, was an architect of our brinkmanship approach to dealing with the Russians over Cuba. Hence he may be addicted to the precautionary principle, an important component of game theory.
I seriously doubt that he has looked at any of the data around climate and is simply assuming that the establishment scientists know what they are talking about.
Climate change will cause expanding deserts and droughts…….!!!!!
And than you read this:
http://www.skepticsglobalwarming.com/global-warming-myth/conspiracy/greening-deserts/?utm_campaign=feed=feed=blog
If you are finished reading the next publication you will find the highest number of quotes in a single publication presenting the biggest load of BS you have ever heard in your life time. It’s almost all “cake”.
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/07/make-us-let-you-eat-less-cake.html
Isn’t it a shame that scientists of all stripes have become gleeful nihilists.
Finally I have found you a quote from “jail”….!!!
http://canadianbluelemons.blogspot.com/2009/07/lord-black-pipes-in-on-climate-liars.html
I hope someone is keeping a record of all this stuff for publication. I know it is a bit immature to say “I told you so!” but with this, the greatest threat ever to democracy and freedom, greater than the World Wars or nuclear threat of the cold war, or any other mad scheme that has come along to test us, we will need to do a reckoning to try to renovate corrupted science for the future and to define in its starkness the near-miss of this self-inflicted planetary calamity.
@Robin
One issue I might raise is that the scientific consensus is that current genetically modified crops are safe to eat. Does this mean environmentalists support GM?
If so why do they tear up GM crops? Why do people ignore the consensus and give GM a bad name? Don’t they trust scientific opinion? If not why not?
Here a quote from Lemon responding to a warmist remark:
“The best you can do is point to an “expert” and call me a Dumbass?
I can find an “expert” who suggests we burn all the trees and coat the ocean floor with charcoal”.
“Global Warming – or whatever phrase you’re using today – is a modern day “Sky is Falling” deal with lots of Chicken Littles who are making tons of money from tryign to scare people.
The big fallacy is that the whole argument hinges on CO2 causing global warming.
Well, it has never done so in history of the world and has not done so in the last 8 years when CO2 has gone way up, and temps have stayed the same or declined”.
http://canadianbluelemons.blogspot.com/2009/07/lord-black-pipes-in-on-climate-liars.html (look at the responses)
Patagon (09:48:15) :
It should be said in defense of the Nobel price, that there is no Nobel price in Economics, but the “Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics” given by a group of Swedish banks unrelated to the Alfred Nobel foundation. Even Nobel relatives are fighting to clear his name: http://tr.im/tbD6
Alas, I have no excuse for the peace Nobel price, which is given by the Nobel foundation
While were at the renovation and revitalization of Science (my post above) we should also create an alternative prize to the Nobel. The NP has lost all credibility with its reckless awards – Arafat-Rabin (peace in Israel), IPCC (the AGW mess), Koffey Annan (1million Rwandans dead on his watch and his son hooked up to the oil for food program scandal), etc.
Oops should have put quotes around Patagon’s post “It should ……Nobel foundation”
One wonders how bad a calamity he would wish for before it dawned on him to wish to be wrong.
“We’re going to have to find some institutions that determine which developing countries get the assistance, and how much. And we’re going to have to have some intermediate organization to administer the funds and ensure that they are used for what they are intended for.”
What could possibly go wrong?
::rubbing hands together:: Get your resumes ready peeps. Oh wait, we’re not part of the elite, leftist, Nobel Prize winning crowd that plans to run everything.
Nevermind.
This is the most true quote I have heard for the last three years:
“The risk of impacts from climate change is rapidly growing—not from potential future changes in the weather, mind you, but instead, from potential massive government oversight in how we generate and consume energy”.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/07/01/the-risk-of-impacts-from-climate-change-is-growing/
Twisted!!!!
Summer Cold Breaks 1897 Temp Records in Gore’s Home State — Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga Set Or Tie Record Lows
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2057/Summer-Cold-Breaks-1897-Temp-Records-in-Gores-Home-State–Nashville-Knoxville-Chattanooga-Set-Or-Tie-Record-Lows
Bernie (10:43:25) :
Thomas Schelling was born in 1921 and is therefore 87 or 88 years old! He also specialized in game theory and the theory of decision-making and…
It is fascinating to study game designers and their obsessive addiction to brinkmanship. Anytime you see an event teetering on minutia (hanging chad, a single at bat, survivor, etc) you are seeing the games designer. They discard normal behavior in favor of “a close finish.” Mechanical excitement. It takes little intelligence to see these games designers and misanthropes the same. One concludes they are so thoroughly unacquainted with real human behavior – they must be impostors. Or posers at best. Misanthropy on this scale reveals a disturbed mindset alienated from reality.
I don’t know much about climate control, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, so I know this is a bunch of bunk baloney.
Ron de Han:
Great post re the record low highs in Mich this weekend.
My good buddy Joel Goldberg who runs the website michwine.com tells me that his sources indicate that this years grape crop in N. Mich has been “devastated” by the low temperatures we have experienced over the last six months. I suspect the same thing is occurring in Ont where the vineyards are a HUGE part of their economy.
Ironically, the state of Mi wants to push more acreage into vineyards. With the possible onset of severe global cooling given the length of the current Solar Minima [per David Archibald] anyone initiating a vineyard venture in this state at this time is courting financial disaster.
Just to put the AGW cap and tax business into perspective (potential financial costwise ): “Neil Barofsky, the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, plans to deliver his report Tuesday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.” In which he will say that the TARP and associated Govt programs will cost us about $23.7 TRILLION . http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/20/watchdog-financial-bailout-support-reach-trillion/
So add the cost of the Cap & Trade Blackhole, and the “Meds for Everyone Plan” cost. I figure about $50TRILLION by the time it’s all added up. I wonder how many barrels of tar, and bags of feathers we could buy for that?
C’mon, I dare you.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/challenge-to-climate-change-skeptics.html
bluegrue (06:04:46)
Sorry for being harsh, but IMHO #2 and #3 border on quote mining. For anyone actually being interested in the context, go and read the last Q & A of that interview.
The rest of the interview is indeed interesting. Schelling pretty much concedes to a point that I’ve made many times, that a strategy that maximizes economic growth will lead to better outcomes for most of the world than any efforts to control the climate, even if there was the slightest possibility that such control was achievable. That is, of course, for the “poor”, for whom more than half a century of money down the rat hole has been so successful at improving their state, that we need to commit to another century or two of the same failed model, so the leftist elites don’t run out of things to hock the rest over. One might think that a Nobel winning economist would suggest expanding the model of India and China, where allowing the intrusion of market principles into what had been complete command economies has led to the largest growth in the middle class in the history of the world, would be the best plan for the poor of the world, but like all good Socialists, he’s sure that the utter failure of their system to improve the lot of any its’ victims was a result of it not being quite big enough. If we let them control the entire world, then it’s just got to work this time, right? But for me the money quote which truly captures Mr Shelling’s economic genius is this, “Yeah, except that if the developed countries — the OECD or something like that, plus Japan — if they are really serious, they’ll tell India and China and Brazil, “we’re going to provide enormous assistance to help reduce your dependence on fossil fuels. And we don’t expect you to pay for it yourselves. We will pay for it because we’re rich and you’re not”. I would have thought that a man who has spent over a half century studying economics might have noticed that the US federal deficit has just surpassed $1 trillion for 3/4 of the fiscal year and that the biggest source of the money we’re borrowing to keep our house of cards from collapsing faster than the WAIS is…. wait for it….CHINA!
Nobel prize?
Not so much. algore and Arafat the cultural misfit.
Nothing Noble about it.
It is a political prize design to flatter certin people.
Back to china. Yes I care about their unborn. More than they care about the human rights of the current chinese.
They reduced aerosols during the Olympics by closing factories. Firing people works well enough for America to adopt the practice.
Perhaps if the Chinese placed more value on unborn Chinese I might possibly, maybe, on a frosty day in a very hot place, be inclined to consider it.