8 ms·

What's up with "global warming" these days? I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substitu

by pvnick 13y ago

What's up with "global warming" these days? I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substituted the more general term "climate change" to deal with anthropogenic environmental stuff. I'm really crossing my fingers that preventing anthropogenic global warming is as simple as banning CFCs. A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered could seriously stress the economy.

duncan_bayne 13y ago
That must be what optimism looks like. You need to understand that many - a minority perhaps, but many - of the supporters of emission controls are opposed to industry per se, not the effects of same.
- guelo 13y ago
  And many - who knows what percentage - of deniers are motivated by hatred of liberals or environmentlists or Democrats or the UN or scientists. So what?
  - duncan_bayne 13y ago
    'Deniers' isn't a useful term - in fact, it's the kind of label that is designed to shut down debate. Like "communist" in the McCarthy era, or "defeatist" during WWI (hat tip to PG for opening my eyes to this). Leaving that aside, my point to the OP was that he was being naive in assuming that calls to limit industry would cease if CFCs were proved to be the sole agent of AGW.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      What term would you use? I can't think of one that's less loaded than "denier", which is at least fairly correct.
      - ams6110 13y ago
        skeptic
        mikeash 13y ago
        I thought of that, but it seems to have far too many sarcastic overtones.
      - duncan_bayne 13y ago
        I wouldn't use a term at all. There isn't a convenient description for a group of people whose opinions vary from "God promised he wouldn't drown the Earth, and that's why he creates rainbows" to "we think that CFC levels correlate better with climate data than CO2 levels". Terms like "denier" or "warmist" are only useful if you want to shut down reasoned debate.
        mikeash 13y ago
        I don't know that their opinions are as varied as all that. Certainly they express that full range, but in my experience, they're all just contrarians of one stripe or another at heart, with the "God" or "CFC" stuff being rationalizations that stem from a belief that climate change is false, rather than the other way around. If there were substantial numbers of people going from evidence to the conclusion that climate change is not real, then I could see not labeling them all with the same term, but there isn't.
      - waterlesscloud 13y ago
        Of all the things about the climate debate, the use of "denier" is the one I despise the most. It's very clearly meant to be pejorative and to up the political rhetoric level. It's taken directly from "holocaust deniers", and that's a shameful association to be making. I can't take anyone who uses the term seriously on the issue, it's just too much of political hack word.
andyl 13y ago
Yeah, what about the so-called 'global warming'?? We need to protect that oil and gas industry at all costs. BTW, I heard that evolution is just a 'theory', and many experts seriously doubt that it can be true.
- pvnick 13y ago
  We know much less about the climate than we do about evolution.
  - andyl 13y ago
    Yeah - it's all just so mysterious and uncertain. 97% of climate scientists might say that human produced carbon causes warming. (http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus) But that's just their opinion. There is still doubt. The imperative is to protect the oil and gas industry, and keep putting carbon into the atmosphere. It's great for the economy, and some say it's good for plants!
    - pvnick 13y ago
      "Consensus" is not a valid scientific argument. For the longest time it was the "consensus" that the earth was flat and that existence was only 6000 years old (although not if you ask early Catholic theologians - they always saw Genesis in a metaphoric light, but I digress). Between this and your last comment, your "scientific" arguments aren't very persuasive, they sound more like daily kos talking points.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        When was it the "consensus" that the Earth was flat? As far as I understand it, the Earth has been known to be round for approximately as long as people both thought to ask the question and attempt to figure out an answer. "Consensus" may not give us proof, but in the absence of compelling evidence against it, it's fairly strong. Yep, they could be wrong. But it's not the way to bet.
guelo 13y ago
That Fox News myth has been debunked http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin... But like a lot of propaganda it continues being spread after being killed. Zombie propaganda.
- pvnick 13y ago
  I'm not quite sure what point the article was trying to make. It simply read like an unnecessarily rude and polarizing circle jerk. One one had, the author vaguely hints towards some sort of conspiracy only to offer one of his own (Frank Luntz and his back-room terminology redefining). Pure crap.
breadbox 13y ago
"I'm really crossing my fingers that preventing anthropogenic global warming is as simple as banning CFCs." The snarky response of What's the weather like on your planet? has never seemed more appropriate.
HEYGRANDMA 13y ago
It's been called climate change for quite some time; for instance the IPCC was established in 1988: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc
AnthonyMouse 13y ago
>A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered could seriously stress the economy. A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered are lame. The key to reducing CO2 is to commit to a policy that will affect the energy market in a gradual, predictable way: A slow phase in of a carbon tax. Raise the carbon tax the equivalent of $0.25/gallon every year, forever. No increase in the year the tax passes. That means no economic effect this year. No change at all -- except that everyone now expects gas to be $5/gallon in four years, so if you're buying a car now you better get something with an electric motor on it. If you're investing in energy you better invest in renewables rather than petroleum. And then by the time the gas tax is $1 higher than it is now, the installed base of cars has been replaced with higher efficiency ones, so the burden of the tax is already mitigated because a) you're now buying less gas, and b) so is everyone else, so demand goes down, so the pre-tax price of gas goes down and cancels out a significant portion of the tax. Meanwhile the government collects a large pile of cash (largely at the expense of oil company profits -- what a shame) that can be used to subsidize the installation of renewable energy generating capacity, which creates jobs etc. etc.
- msandford 13y ago
  Given our government's not very excellent management of Social Security I wouldn't bet on them wisely spending on renewables when there are all kinds of other things the money could be spent on. As such I'm a bit skeptical of your proposal. EDIT: sarcasm removed
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    "The government screws everything up" is not an argument, unless the point of the argument is that we shouldn't have a government. We know the government is capable of doing bad things, but unless we intend for them to do nothing whatsoever, the idea is to do what we can to have them do something good rather than something bad. For example, the problem here is "how can we subsidize renewable energy efficiently." Obviously there are plenty of stupid ways to do that. See: Solyndra. Let me suggest a better alternative: Forget about which companies should get money or qualifications or anything of that nature. Just take the money from the tax and give it to the people generating electricity from non-fossil sources in proportion to the number of kilowatt hours they push into the power grid. No complicated rules, no governments speculating about which companies are going to succeed or fail, just this: you produce a KWh from solar/wind/hydro/whatever, you get a check. The end.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substituted the more general term "climate change"... Addresses a couple of your impressions rather directly: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin...

by pvnick 13y ago

duncan_bayne 13y ago

That must be what optimism looks like. You need to understand that many - a minority perhaps, but many - of the supporters of emission controls are opposed to industry per se, not the effects of same.

guelo 13y ago
And many - who knows what percentage - of deniers are motivated by hatred of liberals or environmentlists or Democrats or the UN or scientists. So what?
- duncan_bayne 13y ago
  'Deniers' isn't a useful term - in fact, it's the kind of label that is designed to shut down debate. Like "communist" in the McCarthy era, or "defeatist" during WWI (hat tip to PG for opening my eyes to this). Leaving that aside, my point to the OP was that he was being naive in assuming that calls to limit industry would cease if CFCs were proved to be the sole agent of AGW.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    What term would you use? I can't think of one that's less loaded than "denier", which is at least fairly correct.
    - ams6110 13y ago
      skeptic
      - mikeash 13y ago
        I thought of that, but it seems to have far too many sarcastic overtones.
    - duncan_bayne 13y ago
      I wouldn't use a term at all. There isn't a convenient description for a group of people whose opinions vary from "God promised he wouldn't drown the Earth, and that's why he creates rainbows" to "we think that CFC levels correlate better with climate data than CO2 levels". Terms like "denier" or "warmist" are only useful if you want to shut down reasoned debate.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        I don't know that their opinions are as varied as all that. Certainly they express that full range, but in my experience, they're all just contrarians of one stripe or another at heart, with the "God" or "CFC" stuff being rationalizations that stem from a belief that climate change is false, rather than the other way around. If there were substantial numbers of people going from evidence to the conclusion that climate change is not real, then I could see not labeling them all with the same term, but there isn't.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      Of all the things about the climate debate, the use of "denier" is the one I despise the most. It's very clearly meant to be pejorative and to up the political rhetoric level. It's taken directly from "holocaust deniers", and that's a shameful association to be making. I can't take anyone who uses the term seriously on the issue, it's just too much of political hack word.

andyl 13y ago

Yeah, what about the so-called 'global warming'?? We need to protect that oil and gas industry at all costs. BTW, I heard that evolution is just a 'theory', and many experts seriously doubt that it can be true.

pvnick 13y ago
We know much less about the climate than we do about evolution.
- andyl 13y ago
  Yeah - it's all just so mysterious and uncertain. 97% of climate scientists might say that human produced carbon causes warming. (http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus) But that's just their opinion. There is still doubt. The imperative is to protect the oil and gas industry, and keep putting carbon into the atmosphere. It's great for the economy, and some say it's good for plants!
  - pvnick 13y ago
    "Consensus" is not a valid scientific argument. For the longest time it was the "consensus" that the earth was flat and that existence was only 6000 years old (although not if you ask early Catholic theologians - they always saw Genesis in a metaphoric light, but I digress). Between this and your last comment, your "scientific" arguments aren't very persuasive, they sound more like daily kos talking points.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      When was it the "consensus" that the Earth was flat? As far as I understand it, the Earth has been known to be round for approximately as long as people both thought to ask the question and attempt to figure out an answer. "Consensus" may not give us proof, but in the absence of compelling evidence against it, it's fairly strong. Yep, they could be wrong. But it's not the way to bet.

guelo 13y ago

That Fox News myth has been debunked http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin... But like a lot of propaganda it continues being spread after being killed. Zombie propaganda.

pvnick 13y ago
I'm not quite sure what point the article was trying to make. It simply read like an unnecessarily rude and polarizing circle jerk. One one had, the author vaguely hints towards some sort of conspiracy only to offer one of his own (Frank Luntz and his back-room terminology redefining). Pure crap.

breadbox 13y ago

"I'm really crossing my fingers that preventing anthropogenic global warming is as simple as banning CFCs." The snarky response of What's the weather like on your planet? has never seemed more appropriate.

HEYGRANDMA 13y ago

It's been called climate change for quite some time; for instance the IPCC was established in 1988: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc

AnthonyMouse 13y ago

>A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered could seriously stress the economy. A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered are lame. The key to reducing CO2 is to commit to a policy that will affect the energy market in a gradual, predictable way: A slow phase in of a carbon tax. Raise the carbon tax the equivalent of $0.25/gallon every year, forever. No increase in the year the tax passes. That means no economic effect this year. No change at all -- except that everyone now expects gas to be $5/gallon in four years, so if you're buying a car now you better get something with an electric motor on it. If you're investing in energy you better invest in renewables rather than petroleum. And then by the time the gas tax is $1 higher than it is now, the installed base of cars has been replaced with higher efficiency ones, so the burden of the tax is already mitigated because a) you're now buying less gas, and b) so is everyone else, so demand goes down, so the pre-tax price of gas goes down and cancels out a significant portion of the tax. Meanwhile the government collects a large pile of cash (largely at the expense of oil company profits -- what a shame) that can be used to subsidize the installation of renewable energy generating capacity, which creates jobs etc. etc.

msandford 13y ago
Given our government's not very excellent management of Social Security I wouldn't bet on them wisely spending on renewables when there are all kinds of other things the money could be spent on. As such I'm a bit skeptical of your proposal. EDIT: sarcasm removed
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  "The government screws everything up" is not an argument, unless the point of the argument is that we shouldn't have a government. We know the government is capable of doing bad things, but unless we intend for them to do nothing whatsoever, the idea is to do what we can to have them do something good rather than something bad. For example, the problem here is "how can we subsidize renewable energy efficiently." Obviously there are plenty of stupid ways to do that. See: Solyndra. Let me suggest a better alternative: Forget about which companies should get money or qualifications or anything of that nature. Just take the money from the tax and give it to the people generating electricity from non-fossil sources in proportion to the number of kilowatt hours they push into the power grid. No complicated rules, no governments speculating about which companies are going to succeed or fail, just this: you produce a KWh from solar/wind/hydro/whatever, you get a check. The end.

Lagged2Death 13y ago

I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substituted the more general term "climate change"... Addresses a couple of your impressions rather directly: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin...