McDonald in Nature

Yes Richard,

And you are completely neutral on this topic 🙂

Climate science is a religion.

That doesn’t make it wrong, mind you. Religions like Christianity teach us to be kind to our neighbours and to attempt to do good. Personally that appeals to me.

But one thing about religions is they intend to impose their dogma on others.

For instance, liberalism is a dogma which says that all people [] are equal no matter what. No scientific evidence to the contrary would even be tolerated. Cut funding to the researcher who suggests the blasphemy of even asking the question. If I build a successful company with my own sweat and bricks and then decide I don’t want to hire [GROUP A] or [B], liberalism has no problem dispatching the State to put a gun to my head and force me to do otherwise, even if I can provide convincing scientific evidence that hiring these groups will hurt my well-deserved profits.

This aggressive notion of equality no-matter-what might appeal to Richard Tol, and so he does not feel particularly constrained by its dogma the way he does by the dogma of climate science.

But one imagines that the spokeperson for [] might feel differently.

Who is right? Depends entirely on your values.

[ENTRY EDITED FOR UNNECESSARILY INFLAMMATORY LANGUAGE]

I think people of a socialist disposition generally, love latching on to the delusions of human induced Climate Change (or Climate Disruption) (or Clean Energy Future). Global Warming is so 90’s.

Here they have the platform to dismantle the sovereignty of nations and to preach their religious mantra to career politicians who in turn latch onto the doctrine of which the really know zero about. Frank Mac has no scientific qualification whatsoever but it doesn’t stop him taking sides in a scientific debate. The science is very much divided. Climate Change is politics not science you see.

Politicians, NGO’s, like minded journalists learn phrases like climate change denier and climate change skeptic and make statements like we need to take firm action now.

The implications of course mean: being able to use your hairdrier once a week. A global one child policy. Halving the national herd. Maybe no national herd. Regular power outages. Air Travel limited for business purposes only. Mandatory home inspections for unecessary energy waste. How else will we achieve 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050 from 1990 levels? Go back to the stone age!

An Taisce are promoting a Green Schools Programme. Many schools have their Green Schools flag flying at school entrances. I’ve also seen some of the literature school kids are being taught around reducing CO2 output becuase CO2 is a “pollutant”. I wonder how teachers cope teaching photosynthesis where CO2 is taken in by plants to make food. All our food is the result of a pollutant. Great stuff. Whoever said journalists reported both sides of a debate rather than the personal opinions and agendas of the writers?

Classic IE thread. The nuts all come out to rally around a Richard Tol post.

“there is far from scientific consensus on the subject”

Richard Tol doesn’t have any data . Did it fall behind the couch?

Are there any plans to bring the global eco summits to “the world’s first carbon neutral convention centre*”?
(*according to the National Convention Centre Dublin’s website).

It seems that there’s a market to be tapped here. I’m not thinking about green technology/reseach but green bureaucracy/ talking shops / negotiations. There’s lots of free office space in Dublin, is there demand for an international green bureaucratic hub?

I don’t really care about much of the data anymore as it is all so ideological.
One thing that sparks my interest though is by some measures France has a lower per capita co2 emission then China.
Now at this moment in time France has a higher living standard by & large, at least today or maybe 10 o clock tommorow the markets might change that statistic.
But it eats more meat – even energy intensive fois gras , drives more cars per person , they go on longer holidays etc etc.
But anyhow – there you have it.
Now I know China is the workhouse of the world & all which makes a massive difference to every calculation.
But perhaps the cleaner air and lower Co2 emissions over France has something to do with them guys splitting a lot of atoms & the Chinese still doing a lot of chemical reactions to coal – maybe.

My question is – Why do most of these guys want us to do Windmills & waterwheels ? – do they have a deindustrilisation agenda ?
Me thinks they do as that is the only other method of reducing Co2 on a large enough scale to make any bit of difference.
I want to eat well & stay warm – I don’t want to die young for a idea that maybe open to debate.

@ Ultan Murphy

” But no Richard Lindzen, no Henrick Svesnmark, no Bob Carter, no mention of the Sun causing climate change”

No mention of the fairies that cause the bread to rise in any cookery books. Just Jamie Oliver and Darina Allen.
No balance .

in case y’all missed this.
http://crookedtimber.org/2011/11/26/stupid-revealed-preference-arguments/

btw ultan. richard lindzen is an extreme contrarian. he also thinks smoking doesnt cause lung cancer not to mention the fact that [SMEAR].

its a bit ridiculous to cite the @great global warming swindle” as a serious piece of work. its was a hacket job. look into it, its not a serious piece of work.

From wiki:

“Carl Wunsch, professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT, is featured in the Channel 4 version of the programme. Afterwards he said that he was “completely misrepresented” in the film and had been “totally misled” when he agreed to be interviewed.[7][30] He called the film “grossly distorted” and “as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two”,[31] and he lodged a complaint with Ofcom. He particularly objected to how his interview material was used:
In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous—because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening.[7]”

@The Dork of Cork
fwiw the commentators/scientist i read generally call for a mixture of nuclear and renewable. obviously it’d be great if we could get all the energy we need from renewables but most people realise that this aint the case.

fair enough but is it ok to quote from other sources??, i think its important since people tend to brandish lindzens name about like a talisman , look a real scientist(“from mit” wow so he must be right) and use it to create the impression of some great scientific debate. which in reality doesnt exist. now personally i dont necessarily think that he’s corrupt , id more emphasis the fact that he’s way off the consensus on the subject(i notice in the harpers link below that he was previously a “skeptic” on cfcs destroying the ozone). however i dont think my comment was that out of line.

from harpers: http://dieoff.org/page82.htm

“Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled “Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,” was underwritten by OPEC. Singer, who last winter proposed a $95,000 publicity project to “stem the tide towards ever more onerous controls on energy use,” has received consulting fees from Exxon, Shell, Unocal, ARCO, and Sun Oil”

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/lindzen-in-newsweek/

“Finally, we find it curious that Lindzen chose to include this very lawyerly disclaimer at the end of the piece:

[Lindzen’s] research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.

Richard, one thinks thou dost protest too much! A casual reader would be led to infer that Lindzen has received no industry money for his services. But that would be wrong. He has in fact received a pretty penny from industry. But this isn’t for research. Rather it is for his faithful advocacy of a fossil fuel industry-friendly point of view. So Lindzen’s claim is true, on a technicality. But while the reader is led to believe that there is no conflict of interest at work behind Lindzen’s writings, just the opposite is the case.”

No debate on the environment is complete without an understanding of the nature of capitalism.

http://monthlyreview.org/2011/12/01/capitalism-and-the-accumulation-of-catastrophe

“Over the next few decades we are facing the possibility, indeed the probability, of global catastrophe on a level unprecedented in human history. The message of science is clear. As James Hansen, the foremost climate scientist in the United States, has warned, this may be “our last chance to save humanity.”1 In order to understand the full nature of this threat and how it needs to be addressed, it is essential to get a historical perspective on how we got where we are, and how this is related to the current socioeconomic system, namely capitalism.

Fundamental to the ecological critique of capitalism, I believe, is what world-historian William McNeill called the law of “the conservation of catastrophe.” For McNeill, who applied his “law” to environmental crisis in particular, “catastrophe is the underside of the human condition—a price we pay for being able to alter natural balances and to transform the face of the earth through collective effort and the use of tools.” The better we become at altering and supposedly controlling nature, he wrote, the more vulnerable human society becomes to catastrophes that “recur perpetually on an ever-increasing scale as our skills and knowledge grow.”2 The potential for catastrophe is thus not only conserved, but it can be said to be cumulative, and reappears in an evermore colossal form in response to our growing transformation of the world around us.

In the age of climate change and other global planetary threats McNeill’s thesis on the conservation of catastrophe deserves close consideration. Rather than treating it as a universal aspect of the human condition, however, this dynamic needs to be understood in historically specific terms, focusing on the tendency toward the conservation of catastrophe under historical capitalism. The issue then becomes one of understanding how the exploitation of nature under the regime of capital has led over time to the accumulation of catastrophe. As Marx explained, it is necessary, in any critique of capitalism, to understand not only the enormous productive force generated by capital, but also “the negative, i.e. destructive side” of its interaction with the environment, “from the point of view of natural science.”

@Seafoid,

Environmental destruction was far greater under communist and socialist regimes than in the capitalist west. Environmental standards were never a priority for such regimes. Further, environmentalists were not tolerated as their criticisms were regarded as a threat to the state.

@ Richard,

I think Frank’s views are well known. Impartiality is not a criterion for op eds anyway.

@BunBury
No you are not alone BubBury – Dork numbers are Growing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns9HqlXs1NE

@Tol
What do you think of introducing a new VRT tax for sub 100 G / KM vehicles.
They can use the A+ designation to save paperwork.

@ Dork

Thanks. I’ll know what car to buy next time. But Skoda are owned by the VW Group. Big dilemma: buy more oil from corrupt Arab regimes or buy goods from (supply own adjectives here) Germans.

@BunBury
Yes the world is full of Dilemmas.
For instance the Fiat 500s new .9 litre seems the most frugal (yet quick) of the petrol cars.
Its Got a amazingly powerful for its size 2 cylinder engine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhDkNhhVbfk

but it looks like a woman’s car…… unless you are a Italian male.

Me thinks we will Target 2 those payments to our German overlords.

Looks like the Italians were cheating with their EU emission tests.

Or more likely the much smaller engine block compromises the quality of the EU tests.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/forums/t/16758.aspx
In the real world, the engine has to work extremely hard(relative to an old fashioned larger displacement engine), assisted by the turbo(and turbos improve fuel consumption over a similarly sized NA engine).

Fiat says in the official tests that the Twinair is 23% more efficient than the 1.4 in the 500 but offers similar performance.

They fail to mention the fact that the 1.4 in the 500 does not have direct injection or Multiair, so in a like for like comparison this engine is NOT 23% more economical in theory, and with only 37 -40 ish mpg in the real world.
It seems the Skoda Greenline beats the offical tests hands down in the real world while the Fiat .9 litre is a sporty slightly thirsty little vehicle.

Maybe they sacrificed real fuel consumption to get below 100 g / km which I think is tax exempt in the UK !!
The carbon rabbit hole gets deeper.

I don’t think that this post is the kind of thing that IE should be about.

Richard writes some really interesting posts, but this is the kind of thing that would be best-served by his own blog. No particular economic insight, just a thought that someone on another blog should use more objective language in a comment piece. Meh.

And as others note, it takes a certain chutzpah to wail about other people being mean to your very good friends in the climate change denialist camp when your article is clearly intended as a smear.