Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

MY, MY, MY!
Can you say, “Distort the truth?”
I am almost at loss on how to reply. Almost!
I am a scientist working in the nuclear power industry. I have also been a life long computer geek (from long before the phrase was even coined). With all due respect to the good Professor his argument are full of hole and his links are dead. Did you try to click on the one for the ” American Petroleum Institute’s estimates of oil supply.”

Yes, there may be enough energy for the world to sustain our current growth. But the argument relies on assumptions that may or may not be true. And the assumption you make are based on your politics. Are you taking into account the Chinese? The Chinese are one of the fastest growing car markets on the planet. What happens if the rest of the planet decides to adopt our life style? Then there is the thorny question of where is the oil and can we get it.

Ultimately I am a realist. A country overrun with obesity is not going to cut back. In the end we will probably have to go nuclear. However if the professor is so good at predicting the future maybe you can next week’s lottery numbers off him. An uncertain future means you should take a CONSERVATIVE approach to what tomorrow brings. Not throw an orgy of consumption.

I have seen a lot of numbers massaged and graphs rescaled to distort the truth but this wasn’t even a good attempt. Lets give it the old college try next time.

I’m no expert in any of the above fields, so I won’t get into all of the arguments, but I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt that global warming does exist and that it can very much be harmful if the average temperature of the Earth rises something like 5 degrees Celsius. Where the controversy lies is whether or not human industrialism is the cause of global warming.

“An uncertain future means you should take a CONSERVATIVE approach to what tomorrow brings. Not throw an orgy of consumption.”

EXACTLY. It distresses me that the rebuttal to many environmentalist concerns is “well, we don’t know yet how harmful it’ll be…”

There’s a great deal of generalizing and cherry picking on your part here. The first point of his you bring up assumes that we go to nuclear and solar power. The third point you bring out is true of only the forests in developed countries. Outside countries like ours, he concedes deforestation is still a problem.

His fourth point makes a great number of assumptions, even as it debunks others. Not every species he speaks of will be one that only occurs locally.

On the fifth point, he’s not as clear cut on the subject as you would put out here. He discusses strategies for dealing with fossil fuels with contingencies for both global warming and the lack of it, for example. He is skeptical, but I’m not sure how being a computer programmer should raise the value of his skepticism too high.

As for easily managing the problem, I’d be very careful about that idea. The reason why we’re even having this discussion is the relatively low quality of our models as to what the human created increase in CO2 will do to our environment.

The fact is, CO2 is, and always will be, a very effective absorber of infrared radiation. That will have an effect on the atomsphere. We know this because we’ve had a good look at our sister planet Venus. Anybody says Global Warming can’t occur, ask them why it’s hot enough to melt aluminum on the surface of Venus.

No, the debate is about how much CO2 it will take, and how quickly it will happen.

If we are too generous in our allowances for industry and auto manufacturers in terms of CO2 emissions, the results will be fatal to many of our economies, and will devastate cities centers that form the heart of our current civilization. If you think the potential loss of Seattle, San Fransciso, Los Angeles, Sand Diegor, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Charleston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and all the ancillary ports and industrial centers are of little concern, then I wonder what kind of incident it will take to get a response out of you.

I will admit that some have taken environmental issues to ideological and religious extreme, and that some people are simply not arguing by the facts. Both sides, unfortunately, have people like this, who are all too willing to exaggerate in the name of their agendas and all too unwilling to do their homework to decide what their agendas will be, much less what they will say in support of it.

If we are to mitigate the problems of human pollution of the environment, we must do so on the facts for natural laws will create the outcome, not our ideas nor our opinions.

It would do conservatives good to understand that all markets operate within contexts, and some environmental issues, given enough time, can put significant limits on the productivity of our economies.

I don’t see how not having conclusive proof of a developing problem absolves us of all concern and all responsibility.

There are some classic sophistry techniques utilized by John McCarthy. Example, he can’t argue that species aren’t going extinct because the overwhelming documentation and evidence is to the contrary. So, instead, he cleverly redefines the issue on his own terms - namely, that it is only uninteresting and unimportant species which are going extinct.

Hmmm.. how is it mankind is capable of such careful and selective habitat and environment destruction as to affect ONLY uninteresting and unimportant species? And, unimportant and uninteresting to whom? A host of medical researchers have stated that species are being extincted faster than they can hope to research their potential benefits to future medical advancement. Certainly seems these at least some of these species now extinct held out interest and potential importance to medical researchers.

I will leave it to readers to discover his other sophistry magic in the quoted text.