Bill H says August 3, 2013 at 8:16 am
A Republican Case for Climate Action
By WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS, LEE M. THOMAS, WILLIAM K. REILLY and CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
Published: August 1, 2013
…
A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,
Pay more? Why? To do what? Reduce consumption? What does that do to jobs, the GDP and our overall standard of living (LIKE old ppl conserving RESOURCES in the winter by scrimping on spending for HEATING)? Any clue RINOs (the names above in bold)?
.
Ric Werme says:
August 3, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Gunga Din says:
August 3, 2013 at 12:49 pm
Neverwet:…
=============================================================
Hmmm. I wonder if it would hold up on a snow shovel?
Greg
August 3, 2013 1:32 pm
A Republican Case for Climate Action
By WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS, LEE M. THOMAS, WILLIAM K. REILLY and CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
“There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts …”
Sadly that is true, as RUCKELSHAUS, THOMAS, REILLY and WHITMAN demonstrate quite clearly.
David Ball says August 3, 2013 at 9:03 am
…
There is plenty of energy in our solar system. How do we get it safely and without destroying our atmosphere?
LOL… and heartily I light add … let me guess, liberal arts major (and not a hard science degree esp. not in the field of engineering)?
(I think that statement is attributable to David; pls pardon me if it’s not.)
.
Third parties in the US.
I wouldn’t ditch the Electorial College. Without it, what candidate needs, say Nebraska, if they they have NYC? But I would add that if the “winner” had less than 50% of the popular vote then a runoff election between just the top two would be held 1 or 2 months later. Extend the 50% rule to all Federal elections and a “Third party” wouldn’t be ignored and we wouldn’t have a repeat of what happened in 1930’s Germany where a monster won with only 33% of the vote.
Speaking of odd cases (or odd ducks), has anybody here kept up with what is happening to (or with) Adam Kokesh? (This would stem from an event back on the 4th of July “in the District”.)
Just curious …
.
London247
August 3, 2013 1:54 pm
As it is an open thread just a couple of ideas
1- Solar panels. I have a solar panel that absorbs Co2 and provides a storable source of energy. Is is called a tree. I can offer thousands of varieties including oak, beeech, and ash. They also provide a bio-diverse environment. This has the advantage of low production costs and does not require the covering of land with maunfactured panels with the required maintenace of panels and weeds. Can I copyright this idea?
2- If solar radiation increases then the water on Earth will evaporate. The air will be hotter and the water vapour will rise higher. This will then freeze including the heat of sublimanation. Initally at the polar regiond this will fall as snow. If melted then it will absorb the heat from the atmosphere. If there is no negative feedback the end result will be that the Earth becomes a snowball. The ice reflects further solar radiation and protects life in the oceans during the interregum. Thus in a contradictory way increased soalr radiation results in a snowball earth. I am open to informed opinion as to the flaws in this idea. But I am just trying to make peolple think about conventional wisdom. if there aren’t any major flaws we will share the grant money 🙂
neillusion says August 3, 2013 at 10:24 am
…
What if someone, perhaps somemany, perhaps here on WUWT, could identify or has identified the various ways of misrepresenting a fact or many facts and coin(ed) a phrase about them. I’m sure there’s a top ten to identify and find phrases for, with good, real examples to support.
Well, for starters, anything containing the infamous ‘weasel words’: “could”, “might”, “may” are flags denoting phrasing or phraseology of dubious (dishonest?) and dissembling meaning or content.
.
Doug Huffman
August 3, 2013 2:01 pm
As I recall, Kokesh is being held in a D.C. jail without bond. Details at his website http://adamvstheman.com/
arthur4563 says @ur momisugly August 3, 2013 at 8:42 am… electric cars.
The question is about battery life. The performance of electric cars is already as good as diesel or petrol. But not for long. Battery life has always been the Achilles Heel of electric cars.
So why?
Look at the periodic table of the elements. Simplistically,to store the potential energy you really want a solid (or easily compressed liquid) that has a high difference in electronegativity between it’s internal elements, the anode and cathode. Lithium is the first solid in the periodic table. It’s known to be at the extreme and has been known for decades. But they haven’t got it to work.
The lifetime isn’t there with Lithium. To go further away from Lithium requires rarer and rarer (expensive) elements or maybe compounds… maybe.
To make an electric car you need something other than chemical energy. Cold fusion, perhaps, or just reduce energy demands via anti-gravity or…
Or stick with the judgement of Edison and use a combustion engine (until a fuel cell is cheap and more efficient than the internal combustion engine).
RE: your post NASA satellite data shows a decline in water vapor, realclimate.com says: “The issue is that technological changes over time to give radiosondes faster responses translate into a non-climatic artifact in their raw data over time. Basically, older sondes remember the lower (wetter) atmosphere for longer than newer sondes do, and that can give a seeming decrease. It is not however real. Note that only one older reanalysis product used the contaminated raw data (NCEP), and that all of the modern reanalyses don’t use it, and show much more consistent upwards trends.”
Doug Huffman says August 3, 2013 at 2:01 pm
As I recall, Kokesh is being …
Yes; per my prev post, I was just curious if any others were taking note of ‘events’ surrounding him. Just curious again, have you reviewed his past videos? Just curious how many others have spent any amount of time on this topic/subject.
BTW, ‘his’ FB account seems to have the most up-to-date and accurate info, incl a link to an interview with his attorney from last Monday I think … again, just curious …
.
What if someone, perhaps somemany, perhaps here on WUWT, could identify or has identified the various ways of misrepresenting a fact or many facts and coin(ed) a phrase about them. I’m sure there’s a top ten to identify and find phrases for, with good, real examples to support.
Good idea but I’m not in agreement with the methodology. There are families of mis-directions. A few different levels of distortion.
~Some words are euphemisms that have the same subject but without the emotional meaning (e.g. “collateral damage” and “innocent victims”).
That is an extreme case but the process is general. Use a euphemism – set the language – to keep the tone of the conversation on the level you want. There is no loss of literal meaning but a great loss of emotional meaning. This is allowed in scientific discourse but forbidden in poetry – where does it lie in politics?
~But some deceptions are on the level of meta-knowledge.
“False flag”: presenting an argument under a false position so one’s defence is not important and you can influence people by deliberately losing or shifting the debate. That is about the identity of the speaker; it is not about the text.
~Or consider “Lies by omission”. They are often just not reporting the scope of debate. Sometimes the scoping text is lost when reported onwards for a general audience and then it grows by the internet and no-one has deliberately lied. Where does the blame for that distortion lie? Where is the intention or plan? I like your idea. It would be a good thing to create. Godwin’s Law is to simplistic a shorthand; we need the theory behind it.
But it is not a short document to create and far beyond my time and ability.
One of my readers posted this thoughtful list of ‘traps’ that are there for the unwary in ‘climate change’ discussions. I thought it was worth a wider readership. So here it is, slightly edited.
‘About a year ago, puzzled by what looks like intellectual intransigence, I mulled over the various traps into which many appear to fall. The order below is not significant, and the explanation simplified.
1. The pollution trap, confusing particulates and harmful gases with carbon dioxide.
2. The political trap, where a position on AGW echoes the prevailing views of the left or right.
3. The social trap, where a person’s main social circles can inhibit discovery and analysis, and apply conformist pressure.
4. The guilt trap, to which some two generations in the western world have now been conditioned. “It is all our fault (the pronoun covers a raft of sins), and we must fix it.”
5. The presumption trap, that humans can control a dire global warming of such projected magnitude – the calculators you discuss above, Don, put the lie to that presumption. (In fact, I’ve been wondering whether the effects of our actions starting in the late 1980s in replacing our use of CFCs, may have been swamped by natural changes to ozone levels, and that we may have been congratulating ourselves undeservedly. The ozone story may well have boosted our presumption, anyway.)
6. The energy poverty trap, a myopia about how critical to the survival of so many is the availability of relatively cheap energy. Hansen’s “rivers of death” coal trucks are actually rivers of life to a billion or so, but I can’t see them from my favourite coffee shop. Out of sight, out of mind.
7. The trap of slicing science, illustrated by convictions that carbon dioxide has such an amplifying effect on water vapour, by unproven climate sensitivity values, by ignoring or distorting past history . . . .
8. The modelling trap – need I say more? See Fig 1.4 of the leaked AR5.
9. The consensus trap, the chimera of peer review, the clarion call that the science is settled.
10. The professional trap, where only “climate scientists” are competent to judge. That reminds me of a major plank of the Reformation, itself so critical to the Renaissance. This trap also uses the weapon of “ad hominem”.
11. The funding trap; to gain research $$s, too often scientists have to bow to the AGW icon, whether they like it or not.’
neillusion says August 3, 2013 at 10:24 am
…
What if someone, perhaps somemany, perhaps here on WUWT, could identify or has identified the various ways of misrepresenting a fact or many facts and coin(ed) a phrase about them. I’m sure there’s a top ten to identify and find phrases for, with good, real examples to support.
Well, for starters, anything containing the infamous ‘weasel words’: “could”, “might”, “may” are flags denoting phrasing or phraseology of dubious (dishonest?) and dissembling meaning or content.
====================================================================
Yes, but sometimes such words in honest science are used for the sake of accuracy.
What is the atomic weight of H2O? What if that H2O is deuterium?
Intent is what matters.
Gunga Din says August 3, 2013 at 2:34 pm
..
====================================================================
Yes, but …
I missed one; add “but” to the list …
.
/mild sarc
Doug Huffman
August 3, 2013 2:36 pm
Kokesh; yes, I watched his case develop. I spent much more time, at that time, with the Zimmerman trial, watching about half of it live. Kokesh was bearding the lion in its den and that never turns out well. That D.C. is a stateless mouse makes it much more demanding of respect for its authority.
Frank Kotler
August 3, 2013 2:36 pm
Roger Sowell says:
August 3, 2013 at 11:19
Nuclear is not safe.
—————————————–
True. No form of energy is safe. We need to do a risk:benefit analysis. Who reaps the benefits? Folks living now, or within 40 years… or 60 years… or however long we license the things for (until they fail?). Who is exposed to the risk? Folks living thousands of years in the future. The risk may(?) not be large, but we are exposing people who reap no benefit to “some” risk. I don’t see how to do an “ethical” risk:benefit analysis on that basis, so I’m “anti nuke”.
I’m afraid that nuclear (fission) power may be our “punishment” for not thinking up anything better. This is particularly likely if the carbonophobes get their way. How bad would that be? What would actually happen if we moved people back into the areas evacuated after the oopsies at Chernobyl and Fukushima? I imagine they’d see an elevated death rate, I doubt if anyone really knows by how much. But they’d be back in their homes. Might they be better off? Who decides?
Compared to no energy at all, nuclear (fission) is probably a win. I don’t thnk we’re faced with that choice, so I’d leave nuclear for an absolute last resort! If we get fusion working (any temperature will be fine), or perhaps Thorium, that may be a solution… if they live up to their promises. Remember, we were promised great things from fission, too!
I observe that you only need to swap two letters to turn “nuclear” into “unclear”!
geran
August 3, 2013 2:37 pm
Jim Cripwell says:
August 3, 2013 at 9:06 am
When I see the word “Obamacare”, I thank my lucky stars I live in Canada.
>>>>>
Make room for us “illegal aliens”….
Pay more? Why? To do what? Reduce consumption? What does that do to jobs, the GDP and our overall standard of living (LIKE old ppl conserving RESOURCES in the winter by scrimping on spending for HEATING)? Any clue RINOs (the names above in bold)?
.
circa 1915?
.
(The above excerpt is not actually from Roger’s original post.)
=============================================================
Hmmm. I wonder if it would hold up on a snow shovel?
A Republican Case for Climate Action
By WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS, LEE M. THOMAS, WILLIAM K. REILLY and CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
“There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts …”
Sadly that is true, as RUCKELSHAUS, THOMAS, REILLY and WHITMAN demonstrate quite clearly.
Gunga Din says: August 3, 2013 at 1:28 pm “Neverwet:…Hmmm. I wonder if it would hold up on a snow shovel?”
Outstanding! Better, my front end loader bucket that’s near useless for snow freezing in it.
Here’s my favorite
http://www.amazon.com/Suncast-SPF2450-24-Inch-Shovel-Fiberglass/dp/B000A239YC
LOL… and heartily I light add … let me guess, liberal arts major (and not a hard science degree esp. not in the field of engineering)?
(I think that statement is attributable to David; pls pardon me if it’s not.)
.
Third parties in the US.
I wouldn’t ditch the Electorial College. Without it, what candidate needs, say Nebraska, if they they have NYC? But I would add that if the “winner” had less than 50% of the popular vote then a runoff election between just the top two would be held 1 or 2 months later. Extend the 50% rule to all Federal elections and a “Third party” wouldn’t be ignored and we wouldn’t have a repeat of what happened in 1930’s Germany where a monster won with only 33% of the vote.
Speaking of odd cases (or odd ducks), has anybody here kept up with what is happening to (or with) Adam Kokesh? (This would stem from an event back on the 4th of July “in the District”.)
Just curious …
.
As it is an open thread just a couple of ideas
1- Solar panels. I have a solar panel that absorbs Co2 and provides a storable source of energy. Is is called a tree. I can offer thousands of varieties including oak, beeech, and ash. They also provide a bio-diverse environment. This has the advantage of low production costs and does not require the covering of land with maunfactured panels with the required maintenace of panels and weeds. Can I copyright this idea?
2- If solar radiation increases then the water on Earth will evaporate. The air will be hotter and the water vapour will rise higher. This will then freeze including the heat of sublimanation. Initally at the polar regiond this will fall as snow. If melted then it will absorb the heat from the atmosphere. If there is no negative feedback the end result will be that the Earth becomes a snowball. The ice reflects further solar radiation and protects life in the oceans during the interregum. Thus in a contradictory way increased soalr radiation results in a snowball earth. I am open to informed opinion as to the flaws in this idea. But I am just trying to make peolple think about conventional wisdom. if there aren’t any major flaws we will share the grant money 🙂
Well, for starters, anything containing the infamous ‘weasel words’: “could”, “might”, “may” are flags denoting phrasing or phraseology of dubious (dishonest?) and dissembling meaning or content.
.
As I recall, Kokesh is being held in a D.C. jail without bond. Details at his website
http://adamvstheman.com/
arthur4563 says @ur momisugly August 3, 2013 at 8:42 am… electric cars.
The question is about battery life. The performance of electric cars is already as good as diesel or petrol. But not for long. Battery life has always been the Achilles Heel of electric cars.
So why?
Look at the periodic table of the elements. Simplistically,to store the potential energy you really want a solid (or easily compressed liquid) that has a high difference in electronegativity between it’s internal elements, the anode and cathode. Lithium is the first solid in the periodic table. It’s known to be at the extreme and has been known for decades. But they haven’t got it to work.
The lifetime isn’t there with Lithium. To go further away from Lithium requires rarer and rarer (expensive) elements or maybe compounds… maybe.
To make an electric car you need something other than chemical energy. Cold fusion, perhaps, or just reduce energy demands via anti-gravity or…
Or stick with the judgement of Edison and use a combustion engine (until a fuel cell is cheap and more efficient than the internal combustion engine).
RE: your post NASA satellite data shows a decline in water vapor, realclimate.com says: “The issue is that technological changes over time to give radiosondes faster responses translate into a non-climatic artifact in their raw data over time. Basically, older sondes remember the lower (wetter) atmosphere for longer than newer sondes do, and that can give a seeming decrease. It is not however real. Note that only one older reanalysis product used the contaminated raw data (NCEP), and that all of the modern reanalyses don’t use it, and show much more consistent upwards trends.”
Yes; per my prev post, I was just curious if any others were taking note of ‘events’ surrounding him. Just curious again, have you reviewed his past videos? Just curious how many others have spent any amount of time on this topic/subject.
BTW, ‘his’ FB account seems to have the most up-to-date and accurate info, incl a link to an interview with his attorney from last Monday I think … again, just curious …
.
neillusion says August 3, 2013 at 10:24 am
…
Good idea but I’m not in agreement with the methodology. There are families of mis-directions.
A few different levels of distortion.
~Some words are euphemisms that have the same subject but without the emotional meaning (e.g. “collateral damage” and “innocent victims”).
That is an extreme case but the process is general. Use a euphemism – set the language – to keep the tone of the conversation on the level you want. There is no loss of literal meaning but a great loss of emotional meaning. This is allowed in scientific discourse but forbidden in poetry – where does it lie in politics?
~But some deceptions are on the level of meta-knowledge.
“False flag”: presenting an argument under a false position so one’s defence is not important and you can influence people by deliberately losing or shifting the debate. That is about the identity of the speaker; it is not about the text.
~Or consider “Lies by omission”. They are often just not reporting the scope of debate. Sometimes the scoping text is lost when reported onwards for a general audience and then it grows by the internet and no-one has deliberately lied. Where does the blame for that distortion lie? Where is the intention or plan?
I like your idea. It would be a good thing to create. Godwin’s Law is to simplistic a shorthand; we need the theory behind it.
But it is not a short document to create and far beyond my time and ability.
Correction: “too simplistic”. Sorry.
One of my readers posted this thoughtful list of ‘traps’ that are there for the unwary in ‘climate change’ discussions. I thought it was worth a wider readership. So here it is, slightly edited.
‘About a year ago, puzzled by what looks like intellectual intransigence, I mulled over the various traps into which many appear to fall. The order below is not significant, and the explanation simplified.
1. The pollution trap, confusing particulates and harmful gases with carbon dioxide.
2. The political trap, where a position on AGW echoes the prevailing views of the left or right.
3. The social trap, where a person’s main social circles can inhibit discovery and analysis, and apply conformist pressure.
4. The guilt trap, to which some two generations in the western world have now been conditioned. “It is all our fault (the pronoun covers a raft of sins), and we must fix it.”
5. The presumption trap, that humans can control a dire global warming of such projected magnitude – the calculators you discuss above, Don, put the lie to that presumption. (In fact, I’ve been wondering whether the effects of our actions starting in the late 1980s in replacing our use of CFCs, may have been swamped by natural changes to ozone levels, and that we may have been congratulating ourselves undeservedly. The ozone story may well have boosted our presumption, anyway.)
6. The energy poverty trap, a myopia about how critical to the survival of so many is the availability of relatively cheap energy. Hansen’s “rivers of death” coal trucks are actually rivers of life to a billion or so, but I can’t see them from my favourite coffee shop. Out of sight, out of mind.
7. The trap of slicing science, illustrated by convictions that carbon dioxide has such an amplifying effect on water vapour, by unproven climate sensitivity values, by ignoring or distorting past history . . . .
8. The modelling trap – need I say more? See Fig 1.4 of the leaked AR5.
9. The consensus trap, the chimera of peer review, the clarion call that the science is settled.
10. The professional trap, where only “climate scientists” are competent to judge. That reminds me of a major plank of the Reformation, itself so critical to the Renaissance. This trap also uses the weapon of “ad hominem”.
11. The funding trap; to gain research $$s, too often scientists have to bow to the AGW icon, whether they like it or not.’
Even the latest Piomas isn’t singing the alarmist tine!
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2_CY.png
====================================================================
Yes, but sometimes such words in honest science are used for the sake of accuracy.
What is the atomic weight of H2O? What if that H2O is deuterium?
Intent is what matters.
I missed one; add “but” to the list …
.
/mild sarc
Kokesh; yes, I watched his case develop. I spent much more time, at that time, with the Zimmerman trial, watching about half of it live. Kokesh was bearding the lion in its den and that never turns out well. That D.C. is a stateless mouse makes it much more demanding of respect for its authority.
Roger Sowell says:
August 3, 2013 at 11:19
Nuclear is not safe.
—————————————–
True. No form of energy is safe. We need to do a risk:benefit analysis. Who reaps the benefits? Folks living now, or within 40 years… or 60 years… or however long we license the things for (until they fail?). Who is exposed to the risk? Folks living thousands of years in the future. The risk may(?) not be large, but we are exposing people who reap no benefit to “some” risk. I don’t see how to do an “ethical” risk:benefit analysis on that basis, so I’m “anti nuke”.
I’m afraid that nuclear (fission) power may be our “punishment” for not thinking up anything better. This is particularly likely if the carbonophobes get their way. How bad would that be? What would actually happen if we moved people back into the areas evacuated after the oopsies at Chernobyl and Fukushima? I imagine they’d see an elevated death rate, I doubt if anyone really knows by how much. But they’d be back in their homes. Might they be better off? Who decides?
Compared to no energy at all, nuclear (fission) is probably a win. I don’t thnk we’re faced with that choice, so I’d leave nuclear for an absolute last resort! If we get fusion working (any temperature will be fine), or perhaps Thorium, that may be a solution… if they live up to their promises. Remember, we were promised great things from fission, too!
I observe that you only need to swap two letters to turn “nuclear” into “unclear”!
Jim Cripwell says:
August 3, 2013 at 9:06 am
When I see the word “Obamacare”, I thank my lucky stars I live in Canada.
>>>>>
Make room for us “illegal aliens”….
Meanwhile,back at the ranch.
http://live.wsj.com/video/border-collies-born-to-herd/2EC6DD8E-F01A-4AC7-B14A-24BED2B047C9.html#!2EC6DD8E-F01A-4AC7-B14A-24BED2B047C9
Who needs nuclear when you have homeless
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/pedal-power-in-detroit-green-gym-for-the-homeless.html