Congressman Markey suggests "global warming deniers to start their own country"

Smokey says:
August 8, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Girma says:
“After human emissions of CO2 for 60-years, there was no change in the global warming rate in the period from 1970 to 2000 compared to that in the period from 1910 to 2000. As a result, according to the data, according to the science, human emissions of CO2 has NO effect on the global warming rate.”
Girma is exactly right.

No, Girma is exactly wrong. The data and science match up perfectly. It takes exponentially more CO2 to produce the same rise in temperature. Humans have been exponentially increasing CO2 emissions (a doubling every 60 years) beginning in 1880. Temperature rise has been linear over that time. This is exactly what to expect when you add insulation on top of existing insulation.
Correlation is not causation of course but there’s no conflict between theory and observation. The major problem for the CAGW crowd are that theory and data both support only a 1C rise in temperature with each CO2 doubling. There isn’t enough fossil fuel on the planet to support and sustain more than one doubling from current level. One or two degree rise in temperature along with a doubling of CO2 is beneficial – the indisputable testimony of the geologic column is that higher temperatures accompanied by higher CO2 makes for a greener, more biologically productive planet.
The only downside of one or two degrees warmer surface is 1 or 2 foot rise in sea level respectively. That’s a problem that isn’t difficult to deal with when you have 100 or 200 years to deal with it as it happens.
Where the CAGW crowd depart from science and data is this crap about tipping points. There is not one shred of evidence to support it. The earth has been much warmer with much higher CO2 levels in the distant past and there was no tipping point. The only tipping point supported by observation is that of tipping into runaway glaciation – i.e. an ice age. If anything it’s global cooling we should fear, not global warming.

GM, you want to know what a productive job is? Productive work produces value and increases prosperity. Sitting at a desk moving imaginary money or doing “research”* generally doesn’t produce value.
If you want to do productive work then do what I do for a living. Build stuff. I produce actual value rather than leeching off others or just hawking the self-serving idea of “consensus” and then hiding behind it when people argue with me.
* Research that actually produces knowledge is a value proposition but most of the “research” I’ve seen on AGW and many other issues is nothing but make-work designed to grab grant money or “prove” a priori assumptions. Much of it is little more than data trawling meta-studies used to “prove” that substance X is harmful this week even though it was proven beneficial last week. Causation? What’s that?

TerrySkinner says: at 3:03 am
“I just think it so funny that in America and in the UK the political parties most enamored of AGW are the strongest parties in the cold northern parts of the country…”
Actually, both countries have the most useless forms of so-called “democracy” (which is effectively dead in the UK), and the most corrupt and politicians. In Britain, the malign and corrupting influence of politicians has poisoned just about everything they’ve touched.
British politicians have either intimidated or bought-up civil servants, broadcasters, publishers, and nearly every public platform of debate about “global warming”. For example, only yesterday, the BBC was forced to issue a groveling public apology for “aggressive questioning” when interviewing a CRU scientist on a radio show about the Climategate emails last year. As for British “climate scientists”, thanks to the AGW mafia, their reputations and paychecks depend 100% on supporting the global warming racket.
Very few of the British, American, and Australian public believe in the global warming propaganda being spewed at them daily, but almost every politician does.

@GM
Tenure is a double edged sword that cuts both ways.
It forces those on the tenure track to hold the same views as those who will be deciding whether they get tenure or not. It also forces those not on the tenure track to either hold acceptable views or lose their jobs. It also allows those who have attained tenure to become unproductive and not lose their jobs as a result.

@GM
“I hope you realize that what you’re describing is not what people usually have in mind when they speak of chiropractic, and has a lot more in common with regular science-based medicine instead. I don’t know how familiar you are with chiropractic, but in its purest form is nothing more but a mix of witchcraft and mysticism, and it explicitly rejects the principles of science.”
So which kind of chiropractor is the guy running for public office in MA? A mystic or someone who actually knows enough anatomy to recognize legitimate problems and can correct them?
The point is that you don’t know. You just gave a knee jerk reaction based upon your prejudices. It is a logical fallacy called “guilt by association” and is a hallmark of bigots.

The guardian says, august 9th.
Out in the real world Russia is burning, Pakistan and China are grappling with floods and mudslides, and millions of people are starving after long droughts in Niger and the Sahel. The Arctic sea ice is reportedly melting at near record pace, land and sea temperature data show conclusively that the world is warming and 16 countries have experienced record temperatures already this year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/09/un-climate-change-cancun-mexico

@gm
“So yes, people will be dying, billions of them. But basically people here are telling me that billions dying and a global civilizational collapse are less worthy of consideration than their personal comfort….”
Must be all those selfish genes we inherited from the blind watchmaker…
Seriously, there are many legitimate problems we face. You mentioned some of them. Excessive CO2 emissions don’t happen to be one of the legitimate problems yet there are those who want to make it center stage. Strangling the global economy to fix a problem that isn’t a problem is counter-productive, possibly catastrophically counter-productive. It takes away from economic resources vitally needed to solve real problems.

GM:
Using blanket dismissal of your opponents position without actually providing any arguments against is often a sign of mere inability to provide them. You don’t win any points for that post.
———–
My post to you was not to win an argument or score points. I was not taking part in a contest, a pissing match, or a debate in front of a crowd freshmen and frat boys. It was written to get you stop pontificating and start providing verifiable facts: a Cher —”Snap out of it” —Moonstruck moment. As far as I’ve learned here on this site, there is no room for—or tolerance of—unsubstantiated claims or hyperbole. Yes, there are personal comments, quips, and satire, but if you state a point without foundation, you will hear from those who do the research. Sure, there are differing positions, but there is a decorum here and for the most part all views are given voice if one behaves. I wish I could say the same for the AGW sites, but they are heavily censored and preach to an ever-shrinking choir.
So what have I gleaned of you? Well, besides your declaration that you’re doing academic research, you are threatened by astrologers, Christians, chiropractors, the obese, C-word-ists (I don’t want to get snipped), office workers, junk food consumption, the ignorant and illiterate, dimwits and television viewers. There are probably many more (besides capitalists and right-wingers) but you have only provided a handful of posts (and if you don’t behave there won’t be any more).
From your responses I have posited that you are likely in your early to mid 20s and, because you believe yourself blessed with superior post-normal debating skills, you place yourself above all others who disagree. You feel helpless because no one is listening to (or obeying) your clarion call about the destruction of the planet, which you blame on those people listed above. You likely have strong Marxist leanings because the above list reveals a rigid intolerance of the proletariat. In four words: angry, elitist, frustrated and socialistic. Not a good combination, especially at house parties, bar rooms or on the dating scene.
I am likely twice your age and have seen and heard the dying planet claims before. So yes, I am skeptical when I see some of the same bad actors who warmed of the coming global freeze-up, oil shortage, population explosion (eugenics was the only solution for these social darwinists—perhaps this is what you are researching?) etc. in the ’70s return to the stage. Watermelons.
And in a few decades, similar characters will arrive from stage left with another crisis, just as shrill and calamitous as today’s, with the same goals—money and power—that will be just as false. I have also learned that the ideals of Marxism/socialism are a facade to gain power and control over people. It is slavery. If you manage to keep your privileges here, you may hear from some people who lived under that system and have very strong opinions of what that form of government is actually like. Do not debate with them.
While the arrogance of youth can get you started on the road of Life, it is the experience of age that will allow you to survive the journey with dignity and virtue.

@ur momisugly Sean Peake
I am by no means a socialist, and your post, and the use of the watermelon metaphor speaks volumes about where you’re approaching the debate from. As far as I am concerned, the distance between right wing and left wing is much smaller than the distance between a reality-based world view and either of those, so it doesn’t really matter that the distance between reality and the left is somewhat smaller that the distance between the ultra-right and reality. They are both detached from it.
This is a position arrived at based on what works and what doesn’t. Free markets do not work (unless you define achieving the maximal amount of destruction of the life support systems of the planet as the goal; at that they’re very good). Totalitarianism done by people who are in it for the power does not work either. But the people who warn about the dangers of overshoot are not people who strive for power and money. It is totally moronic to claim that someone who advocates for the complete abolishment of “the economy” and money as something of importance and switching to quantification of value in physical and thermodynamic terms is in it for the power and money. The driving force behind these warnings is the survival instinct that’s so fundamental to our behavior as a species (and to every other species) – primitively speaking, the concept of the selfish gene – some of us happen to realize that if the species goes extinct, our genes go extinct too. The majority doesn’t see that far into the future so they think that maximizing the number of offspring and hogging as much resources as possible in the present is the best evolutionary strategy. In the short term, yes, but in the long term it isn’t. But this is not about power and money.
P.S. You still haven’t provided any serious argumentation. The “they were wrong in the 70s, they will always be wrong” canard doesn’t count

Smokey says:
August 9, 2010 at 5:43 am
Knew it! There is something askew about tenured academics who buy into CAGW globaloney. Maybe it’s your attitude expressed in statements like: “So yes, the people are ignorant and illiterate.” FYI, those ‘ignorant and illiterate’ folks pay your way through life.

It’s another logical fallacy closely related to the guilt by association fallacy. GM demonstrated the guilt by association fallacy when he accused a particular chiropractor of being a mystic based on no more than a knowledge that many chiropractors are mystics.
The related fallacy that goes hand in hand with guilt by association is honor by association. GM is a scientist who honors himself and by association honors others. Climatologists are scientists so he accepts their findings by the honor system rather than through the exercise of due diligence. GM likely has little education in engineering disciplines like statistical mechanics, which must be understood to make sense of atmospheric CO2 consequences, and would have to devote an inordinate amount of time to investigating the claims of others that he honors when their area of expertise is largely outside his own. So he just accepts their conclusions and by virtue of reciprocity expects they’ll accept his conclusions.

GM says:
August 9, 2010 at 7:05 am
“…(AGW, Peak Oil-Gas-Coal, Peak Uranium, Peak Phosphorus, depletion of many critically important minerals, fossil aquifer depletion, ocean acidification, general ecosystem collapse, etc.),…”
“So yes, people will be dying, billions of them. But basically people here are telling me that billions dying and a global civilizational collapse are less worthy of consideration than their personal comfort….”
I think we have achieved Peak Drama!

Dave Springer says, “That’s nice congressman. But since you’re the icehugger isn’t the climate on the iceberg more to your liking?”
Excellent point! Logically, they should be finding us a desert island somewhere. Bring on the mojitos! We like it hot!

@Kate:
“If you don’t live in Britain, consider yourself lucky you don’t have to put up with eco-loonies like these.”
I had to see it with my own eyes, so I tracked down this independent article covering what you mention:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/all-new-homes-to-run-on-green-power-by-2016-2046499.html
I actually put my face in both my hands after reading it. If true then our new Coalition government is certifiable. That means the domestic energy consumption of between 200,000 to 300,000 new homes every year would have to be met exclusively by renewable energy or have £15,000 (with no doubt an extra 95% corruption – sorry “admin” – surcharge to also be added).