That’s not to say it’s not a good effort. (CHT to the reader who sent the link.)
What the gentleman in the video is doing, essentially, is applying decision theory to the question of global warming in the style of Paschal’s Wager.
The gentleman states his case well, has clear talent as a producer of online videos, and–best of all–he’s got a good attitude and a willingness to subject his argument to examination, which he expressly invites.
Unfortunately, I don’t think his argument works. There are two basic reasons.
First, he does not fully detail the cost and benefit analysis of the different options he explores. Under the option for global warming being false and us making vain efforts to stop a non-real phenomena, he treats the costs purely in terms of money, noting that there would be monetary costs that could (in a hypothetical and admittedly extreme scenario) lead to a global depression.
Opposite this on his diagram is the cost of global warming being true and us doing nothing to stop it. For that option he lists not only the monetary impact of global warming but also polical, social, and health costs (again, for purposes of the thought experiment, pushed to an extreme case).
The basic problem here is that he is cashing out the costs in detail in the latter possiblity but not in the former. In the "false and we waste our efforts" box he’s not fully attending to the fact that money is just a symbolic system used to regulate the flow of goods and services which have an impact on human existence. That means that if you divert monetary resources toward one goal you are thereby not pursuing other goals.
In fact, that’s tied to the definition of economics itself, which is the study of the use of limited resources that have alternative uses.
Our presenter, as well spoken as he is, is not attending to the alternative uses to which the wasted investment to cure global warming would have.
Let me put it this way: Each billion dollars that you spend trying to cure global warming is a billion dollars that you don’t have to put toward feeding people, or doing cancer research, or doing AIDS research, or developing new technologies that will extend and improve lives, or buliding housing, or anything else.
The effort to cure global warming thus has not just a monetary cost but a human cost.
Or let’s look at it this way: What happens if we have the global depression that the presenter asks us to consider?
Well, what happens in major depressions? People starve to death. They don’t get medical care. They can’t get educations that will help them for the rest of their lives. They can’t get jobs. They lose their homes. There are riots and political indability. Wars can start. Governments can get toppled or become more restrictive and authoritarian to keep control of the populace. Crime and black markets soar.
What we see then is that if we cash out the "global depression" scenario in terms of its human costs, we find a picture not unlike that presented in the "global warming is real and we don’t do anything to stop it" disaster scenario. There will be monetary, political, social, health, and other costs in both worst case situations.
This makes it impossible to distinguish between them in the way that the presenter wishes us to.
How many people will die if we bring on a global depression by messing up the world economy in a vain effort to stop global warming? I don’t know, but most of them will be in the third world, where economic development is desperately needed to prevent people from dying for all sorts of reasons, from malnutrition to AIDS to malaria to war.
Allowing economic development to proceed globally by not messing up the world economy in a vain effort to stop global warming will save lives.
Will it save more lives than if global warming is real and we do nothing to stop it?
There is simply no way to know in the abstract, by pitting hypothetical worst case scenarios against each other. If you imagine a global warming horror story that kills X number of people, I can imagine a global depression that kills exactly the same number.
Which brings up one of the limitations of this application of decision theory. I’m a big fan of Pascal’s Wager, but Wager-type reasoning is useful in a limited number of situations, and this isn’t one of them.
When you can point to comparable hypothetical disasters on both forks of the logic tree, you have to start asking which disaster is more likely to occur.
The presenter actually invites us to do this, but he doesn’t explore the effects of that, presumably because he thinks that the global warming disaster scenario superdominates the decision, such that even if it isn’t likely, it is so bad that we just can’t take the risk.
But if we flesh out the global-warming-is-false-and-we-vainly-try-to-stop-it scenario, we realize that the alternative doesn’t superdominate, and so we must turn from looking strictly at possible results of our actions to the likely results of our actions.
We simply can’t look at hypothetical disaster scenarios and base policity decisions on the fact that they are possible, without asking how probable they are.
Consider this scenario: It is possible (certainly logically possible, and most would say ontologically possible as well) that there is an alien fleet speeding toward earth right now to destroy it with some kind of spiffy planetkilling technology (say, something that manipulates the sun to cause massive, instantaneously fatal global warming). The planetkiller will get here shortly, and the only chance we have to survive as a civilization is to throw the entirety of the world’s economic resources into building a massive planetary defense system to shoot down the planetkiller before it can mess up our sun.
While we already have the Apple computer needed for the effort, we don’t yet have all the other technology, and the only way we’ll get it is if we shut down absolutely all world economic activity and focus on this. That’s how tough the aliens are.
In contemplating this scenario, we could construct a grid like the one our presenter did and, if we paint the effects of the alien planetkiller in sufficiently vivid terms and then don’t explore in comparable detail the consequences of throwing all of our economic resources into developing a planetary defense system (like, for example, everyone starving) then it might look like the alien planetkiller scenario superdominates the discussion.
It would even superdominate manmade global warming!
But common sense tells us that we should not shunt all of the world’s economic activity into producing such a planetary defense system. The odds of there being such a fleet on its way to destroy us, and the odds of us being able to stop it if it gets here any time soon, are too remote.
It would be foolish and a waste of resources–and therefore a waste of human lives–to undertake that project.
And thus Pascal’s Wager can’t get us out of competing hypothetical disaster scenarios. If all a disaster has to be is possible in order to justify large-scale efforts being made to stop it then we will quickly run the world economy into the ground becaue there are a limitless number of possible-but-very-unlikely disasters that could happen.
What we have to do is go about the messy business of asking how likely are these disasters and what are the benefits and costs of undertaking particular projects to address them.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t engage in disaster preparedness or undertake specific projects to avoid potential disasters–even somewhat unlikely ones–but it is to say that hypothetical disasters of this sort–and global warming in particular–do not superdominate the decision.
It seems to me that most global warming believers are Pro-choice, Pro gay, and have formed God in thier own image and likeness. They see humans as the problem. They believe if you remove humans you save the earth. Just a thought.
The question is whether it’s more reasonable to think that taking action to safeguard the environment can lead to a worse fate than suffering a climate catastrophe.
I’d wager that anything one can conjure up as a negative side-effect of regulating industry in an environmentally responsible manner is eclipsed by an order of magnitude in the event of a climate catastrophe. Jimmy’s opportunity cost argument is fine, but the presenter’s diagram already factors it in as he does not include the $$ in the disaster box. If you want to add all the positive things that spending the $$ will add on the disaster side, then you can’t count the $$ against the first column. That’s double-counting.
There are many unlikely but possible disasters, as Jimmy points out. But very few can a change in public policy possibly affect. That’s what makes this particular problem stand out.
Just because the stereotypical environmental activist may negatively impact humanity via being a proponent of a variety of immoral choices (as Rick points out), it doesn’t mean that he or she doesn’t have a point.
My issue with his logic is that it ignores the economic impact of guessing correctly that climate change is correct and having taken the appropriate action.
If there are dire economic consequences for allocating so many resources to the environment when it is not necessary, then there would be the same consequences if it were necessary… what causes the economic catastrophe in the first box would cause a catastrophe independent of whether the money needed to be spent.
To put it bluntly, there is no smiley face in the take dramatic action column. That on top of Jimmy’s argument that the consequences are not just monetary sinks this whole argument in my opinion.
While we already have the Apple computer needed for the effort
Glory.
Also, isn’t he assuming we can do anything about global warming? This is one reason why I, and many fair-minding folk, won’t sign on to this. Not because we stick our heads in the sand as many global warmingmongers charge–but because the presuppostions are unexamined. When no one can answer the most basic questions like, “What is the average temperature of earth supposed to be?”, then all all our efforts are the equivalent of tossing maidens down a well to get good weather. It’s religion, not science.
This guy should have done some research. Amazingly, he is not the first person to have thought of odds and impacts of scenarios in this way. He might start with the decades-long modeling project executed by the Yale School of Forestry and Department of Economics to do for real what he is showing on a whiteboard. For that matter, he might have read the UN IPCC WG2 and WG3 reports which reference a lot of relevant research on this question.
Here are some (example) problems with his video:
1. His “bad case” is overblown and rhetorical. Under a reasonable scenario for global economic and population growth (Scenario A1B), the IPCC projects about 2.8C increase in global temperatures by 2100. According to any competent modelers (for example, the Yale project), this would lead to about break-even net global economic impacts, i.e., the positive benefits of warming would about equal the negative impacts. It’s only when you get to warming of about 4C in 22nd and 23rd centuries that you, according to the IPCC, see a net reduction in global GDP of about 1- 5%. That’s a lot of money, but it’s hardly the Armageddon that he is describing.
2. According to the IPCC, no global climate model currently predicts any of the disaster scenarios he describes for the next century.
3. Without any quantitative consideration of odds of an outcome, you could apply this same 2X2 matrix argument to the risk of space aliens descending from the sky and killing everybody. Why don’t we have crash programs that risk global depression against space aliens and a meteor strike and a global pandemic based on a modified version of Avian Flu and, and, and, and….? Because the list of such anxieties is endless and our resources are finite.
The classic method for quantifying wagers is Expected Value (EV).
EV = Probability of an event x Cost or Benefit of that event.
This is easy when the probabilities and costs/benefit are known (eg casino or board games) but the real fun starts when, as Jimmy points out, we enter the uncertainties of real world economics.
I am not an economist, I don’t know how many contributors here are. The most in-depth study so-far of the economic cost-benefit risk-analysis of climate change has been done by Professor Sir Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist of the World Bank on behalf of the UK government. His headline summary is
The cost of addressing global warming is about 1% of global GDP
The cost of not addressing global warming is about 5% to 25% of global GDP, depending on the severity.
BBC summary
HM Treasury source documents and replies to criticisms
I suppose other professional risk assessors eg those involved in insurance should be listened to
Lord Peter Levene Chairman of Lloyds – Catastrophe trends and climate change: A global insurer’s perspective
‘We cannot risk being in denial on catastrophe trends.’
‘companies which take climate change seriously have competitive advantage over their peers. And some of corporate America’s leaders are also beginning to figure out that ‘going green’ can be good business.’
Lloyds of London – insurers must tackle climate change
Even without the risk of climate change, some of the cost-benefits are probably agreed as desirable by everyone. eg trying to reduce reliance on oil from Middle Eastern fundamentalist despots or for Europeans, reduced reliance on Russian natural gas; more efficient vehicles and devices, improved insulation and ventilation – especially when replacing items. Many energy efficiency/conservation measures would be cost justified simply due to increasing energy prices because of depleting supply and increasing demand from China and India as they develop.
As for whether anti-global warming measures will hurt the poorest most, I think that diverting funds from global military spending would be even more beneficial, as that expenditure is considerably more than 1% of GDP, and in most countries of little economic benefit.
Global warming aside, we can still recycle. Can’t hurt.
Each billion dollars that you spend trying to cure global warming is a billion dollars that you don’t have to put toward feeding people, or doing cancer research, or doing AIDS research, or developing new technologies that will extend and improve lives, or buliding housing, or anything else
True, only if the billion dollars to cure global warming, does not itself, create more jobs, which creates more money, to fuel other areas. Money is rarely, if ever, a zero-sum game.
Global warming aside, we can still recycle. Can’t hurt.
Sure it can.
http://www.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/garbage.html
True, only if the billion dollars to cure global warming, does not itself, create more jobs, which creates more money, to fuel other areas. Money is rarely, if ever, a zero-sum game.
Right on. Let’s break all our windows so that there can be a boom in the window industry that will create more jobs, which creates more money, to fuel other areas.
It’s religion, not science.
Yup. And those in government who are promoting this are violating separation of church and state 🙂
Someone call the ACLU or AFSOCAS 🙂
Global warming aside, we can still recycle. Can’t hurt.
I recycle aluminum cans. Receiving 60 cents a pound doesn’t hurt 🙂
It’s religion, not science.
… most global warming believers are Pro-choice, Pro gay, and have formed God in thier own image and likeness…
JP2 and B16 seem to believe that global warming is human-caused.
Evangelical Catholicism
I am not an economist, I don’t know how many contributors here are.
No, but most of us understand economic’s fundamental principle: things are worth only what people are willing to give for them. This is why the global warming movent has jumped the shark–they have to couch everything in, “we are all going to die!” When people start crunching the numbers and realize this a re-packaged version of the Drake equation, they realize that well, yes, we all will eventually die, but won’t be because we refused to turn every national economy into a socialist quadroplegic.
Whoa. I wouldn’t say that. I think it’s fair to suggest the opposite, that the sort of person you describe would be likely to buy into global warming, but it doesn’t follow that people who buy into global warming tend to correspond to such a profile. Certainly I know devout Christians who accept human-caused global warming as an established scientific phenomenon. I don’t think such considerations incline the issue one way or the other.
It’s religion, not science.
… most global warming believers are Pro-choice, Pro gay, and have formed God in thier own image and likeness…
JP2 and B16 seem to believe that global warming is human-caused.
Evangelical Catholicism
Nice try, but no dice. The popes are certainly concerned about global warming among other things, but they make no real comments about substantial anthrogeneric global warming.
With people like this I always laugh at myself remembering that Life has this very uncanny bad habit of not dying with its 3.7 billion year record. Oh sure it’ll be crappy for for a couple of centuries, but you have to think of the big picture. 😉
I think Jimmy’s alien supposition does apply. To get the benefits of doing something on global warming, what we do must have the effect we expect. It’s possible to do a great deal and have no effect whatever. In which case, we get all the costs of doing something and all the costs of global warming. I believe the current approaches to be about as probable to succeed as the probability we would get the planetary defenses right for the hypothetical alien.
Most believe in the 1.2 degree (C?) raise in average global temperature over the past 100 years plus. That is what our collection of measurements says. Do we really believe that the IPCC’s computer estimates for the next 100 carry a high probabilty? Do we believe IPCC’s 20 inch rise in sea level or Al Gore’s suggested 20 foot rise? Can we believe in those who talk about “tipping points” in the climate as if we knew what they might be?
All that said, I think it would be good to get human carbon dioxide generation under control as the side effect could be bad. But I also think that needs to weighed reasonably against other costs.
Somehow, I think Jimmy will be watching Fantastic 4 II this weekend :^)
I have to say, for years I was skeptical of global warming claims, but in the last few years it looks to me like those who would like to deny the research pointing to the possibility of human caused global warming are stretching farther and farther (and looking less credible) because their arguments always seem to boil down to economic opportunism. Not that the other side is immune from economic opportunism (see CO2 credit purchases from 3rd world countries).
But I’m a Catholic first, and….well, it used to be Catholic first, conservative second, but the economic conservatives have pissed me off one too many times for that word to seem comfortable in my mouth. I’m certainly still socially conservative, I’d be pretty out of place among liberals too.
I try to be a good steward. On the personal scale, Pascal’s wager works in this situation. It doesn’t hurt me or my family to wash in cold water, buy local, walk or bike or take public transit rather than drive, buy less packaging, recycle, and just plain use less stuff. A lot of these things save money, some cost more money. But, as a Christian, money seems pretty irrelevant to the question. By doing these things, I may help reduce greenhouse emissions an infinitessimal fraction. But more to the point, they are good stewardship, and have been good for my spiritual and family life.
I think if you could prove to me connclusively somehow that CO2 and industrialisation are good for the economy and has no impact on the earth, I would still do all these things. They keep me and my family attentive to our surroundings and local community, they require us to live a hands-on life, to admit to ourselves that everything we have is a gift and it doesn’t do to be greedy or wasteful. By taking care of our resources, and being as independant from the ‘global economy’ (which, by it’s scale, is depersonalising) as we can, we enrich our local economy and the life of the community around us. More importantly, we live lives of gratitude to God for the richness of that community and the blessing even the most simple things can be.
Incidentally, don’t I recall that Jimmy is a big fan of the space program – which was and still is criticised for being a waste of money better used elsewhere? Any largescale efforts to offset global warming could be expected to have a similar effect on the economy that the space program did in its heyday – to boost it by creating a demand for new technology, creating new markets, lending itself to new breakthroughs in science which will have applications independant of climate. I highly doubt that any realm of human endeavor can be a zero-sum game. Heck, we even manage to make money of of the business of death and destruction, as disgusting as that is. (Whatever you may think of the necessity of military endeavors past and present, “disgusting” is still an apt word for it).
Personally, I think that Pascal’s wager does apply to the global warming debate.
Pascal’s wager goes like this: if you are an atheist, you do not live forever. Either you are right and you end up in the great nada when you die, or you are wrong and you end up in Hell, which IMO is worse than the great nada. In a way you still exist, but you are not really alive.
If you are a Christian, you have about a 50-50 chance. Either you are wrong and end up in the great nada, or you are right, go to Heaven, and live forever.
Now, apply that to global warming: If global warming really is happening on a major, life-threatening scale, then two things happen. Either we run our economy into the ground and then die, or we eat, drink, and be merry and then die.
If global warming isn’t happening, then we can either run our economy into the ground and die, or we can ignore the hype and keep our stable society.
Reading that over, I realize that my scenario doesn’t allow for our global-warming-reversal measures to actually work. If they do work, then that’s fine and dandy. But as a friend who knows more about science than I do says: “Global warming is real, it’s been going on since the end of the Ice Age.” Maybe human activity accelerates global warming a wee bit, but I think that if our planet’s going to fry it won’t matter what we try to do to stop it.
“The cost of addressing global warming is about 1% of global GDP… The cost of not addressing global warming is about 5% to 25% of global GDP, depending on the severity.”
Again, I just flat don’t believe these hypothetical numbers cooked up by people who have a vested interest in the disaster industry. Like someone said above, it’s like throwing maidens down a well hoping to get good weather. The computer modeling – as it touches on both climate and economic forecasting – is just digital voodoo. Garbage in, garbage out.
Not to mention, I am highly skeptical that this “1%” (yeah, right) for the environment will ever GET to the environment. The whole program would be about as cost effective as the anti-smoking ads. But hey, it supports the advertising industry, so what can it hurt?
Look at the DARE (anti-drug) program in public schools (and scout troops and churches, ad infinitum…). I don’t know how many millions (billions?) has been expended on that noble effort, but long-term studies suggest it has had little, if any, effect. I mean, it’s a nice thought, but…
This is not to say that I don’t believe in living in the most environmentally responsible manner feasible… I do. I think we really need to take a hard look at the impact we have on the environment, in a lot of ways. For instance, I think we ought to ban ugly, concrete-slabbish buildings, especially churches, but that’s another topic.
I’d love to live in something like a hobbit hole… only bigger.
Maybe human activity accelerates global warming a wee bit, but I think that if our planet’s going to fry it won’t matter what we try to do to stop it.
That’s my point. Not only is it completely ambiguous as to how much this “wee” is, no one has clue one if it can be reversed at all. Doing things when there is no idea whatsoever of the outcome is an appeal to magic.
Hey, I’m all for thrift and stewardship, less dependance on oil, etc. but because it is virtuous to do so. If I do such things as if they were a talisman against evil winds, I’m in big trouble. Instead we need to recognize how much neo-paganism is hiding underneath our modern fad concerns.
Does this mean that new ice age they were predicting back in the 70’s isn’t going to happen after all?
The first logical problem is that of false dichotomy (ies). Their are many more realities and possibilities than he presents. I think the other problem is that Do something and something is going to happen corner. It still garners the costs associated in taxation but magically doesn’t cause a depression??? Wow, if spending the money in one case (No gcc and we do something) causes a global economic depression, then why wouldn’t it in the other?? Because the climate changed? I don’t buy that. Yes, I agree global depression would cause significant political if not revolutionary social upheaval.
I think we should just run with what God gave us and do what we know is best with what we each got, write our congressman to state our opinion and go from their. The big thing is that we are good stewards of what God gave us.
Under the Mercy,
Matthew S
The History Channel had a program on the other night about the Top Ten Biggest Threats to our existence.
#5 was a black hole
#4 was an asteroid
#3 was a supervolcano (which the whole of Yellowstone National Park is part)
#2 was Nuclear War (it seems that although the Cold War is over, the Nukes are still pointed in the same direction)
#1 was, you guessed it, Global Warming. The program even had sound bites from an interview that Al Gore gave to the program.
I for one would work on disarming the Nukes and worry that in 2027 the asteroid Apophis will come so close to the Earth that it will pass between our man made satellite’s geosynchronous orbits and the planet (by the calculations now) and in 2032 it will come close again.
Apophis is coming for us!
Who is going to tell the Chinese they have to play nice with the other countries? Like its even possible for there to be any progress in reducing worldwide CO2 emissions in my lifetime.
“Does this mean that new ice age they were predicting back in the 70’s isn’t going to happen after all?”
Definitely yes….and no.
I can get more definite with more funding. $7M over the next 10 years ought to do it.
We can all walk together at least part of the way on energy conservation.
The governments and populations of the EU and most developed countries, have similar values, virtues and vices as the US. None of them intend economic suicide by their emission reduction plans. The UK government plans to reduce UK greenhouse emissions by 20%. Leftist and rightist EU governments have various strategies which do not involve any End-Time New World Order UN control of their populations due to Global Warming alarmism.
eg taxation schemes can be revenue neutral yet incentivise some actions and discourage others. Regulations on eg vehicle and equipment efficiency have not bankrupted the US in the past, it gave those industries a global competitive advantage.
One risk the US runs from a misdirected GW scepticism is that it will be left behind by other advanced economies whose industries have been incentivised by their governments to produce eg more energy efficient cars, equipment, power generators and novel technologies which even US consumers prefer because it costs them less to run.
“Who is going to tell the Chinese they have to play nice…”
Exactly. The “1% for the environment” thing is basically only going to come from a handful of Western countries. The Chinese are the most profligate polluters on the planet, and increasing every day. Anyone think they can be talked into curbing their economic growth for the Benefit of Mankind? Anyone? Bueller?
There is no use even talking about “taking action” if the Chinese and other mammoth developing countries (India, etc…) don’t go along.
Of course, I think “taking action” will accomplish exactly *diddly* in regard to global climate, even IF the Chinese magically turn all their coal-burning power plants into organic compost heaps.
Now, it WOULD make life a great deal more pleasant for all the creatures (humans included) who have to LIVE with the pollution caused by these power plants and factories.
And, to be fair, a great deal of this “development” has been at the behest of Western corporations operating in China and elsewhere (Mexico, Central & South America, for instance).
JIMMY WROTE: “It is possible…that there is an alien fleet speeding toward earth right now to destroy it with some kind of spiffy planetkilling technology… The planetkiller will get here shortly, and the only chance we have to survive as a civilization is to throw the entirety of the world’s economic resources into building a massive planetary defense system to shoot down the planetkiller before it can mess up our sun.”
Oh, great. One MORE thing to put on my to-do list. Thanks alot, Jimmy.
“I have to say, for years I was skeptical of global warming claims, but in the last few years it looks to me like those who would like to deny the research pointing to the possibility of human caused global warming are stretching farther and farther (and looking less credible) because their arguments always seem to boil down to economic opportunism.”
I think there’s pretty good evidence that earth’s climate has been warming lately. I haven’t found any good evidence that human activity is the cause of the very slight warming we seem to be experiencing. We’ve had a lot more significant warming in the past when human activity couldn’t possibly have been the cause. Frankly I think the human-caused global warming hypothesis is, as other commenters here said, neo-pagan magic, not real science. And politicians, of course, have a long history of loving and encouraging pagan magic.
Apophis is coming for us!
Didn’t Apophis die in the earlier SG-1 seasons???
I guess that’s what you get for skipping out on some seasons of SG-1!
Also, the abundance of asteroid flicks should help out with any imminent asteroid collisions by providing us with multiple scenarios and facilitate further contingency planning.
I opt for the Armageddon solution with a hint of Buscemi just for kicks!
Pascal’s wager only works because some of the values involved (getting to heaven, going to hell) are infinite. If the values involved were not infinite, then the probability of each of the outcomes would have to come into play, and the whole argument (potentially) breaks down.
Since however bad the effects of global warming will be, they aren’t going to be infinitely bad, the wager is inapplicable in the global warming context.
No need to re-iterate the thoughts in many of the comments but one additional counter-argument:
Acting on something that doesn’t exist can have negative effects beyond the economic, and as Jimmy pointed out associated political and social, consequences. To use an analogy, if I’m worried tomorrow it’s going to be hot in my house so I open the windows the previous night to cool the house down, I’m going to be regretting more than just the effort I put into openning the windows when a blizzard comes in tomorrow.
I think it is a VERY real possibility that by trying to muck with the environment when we don’t fully understand what the effect of our mucking, we’ll actually have a negative impact on the environment.
Regarding prudent practical actions, I think we would all agree on some conservation measures. I am curious about what specific measures the ‘believing’ governments (eg EU, UK) are taking/proposing which the AGW sceptics here consider to be economically harmful to those countries.
Does it really matter now whether Global Warming is true or not?
New jobs have been created all due to the hypothesis of GW and, in fact, many people are now benefitting from it.
One thing’s for sure — even if it were all false, you can be sure that there will be those who will be trying to safeguard their self-interests.
Here are my humble thoughts; we spend billions of dollars on fighting wars overseas as it is now, and there are no serious economic crisis or major depressions. Why don’t we manage ourselves better and bring our troops home and spend more more on enviromental issues. Why can’t we be moderate and keep our economy strong while at the same time creating programs and legistlation that will improve the environment, which is a good thing whehter global warming is as bad as some would have us believe or not.
Apophis is coming for us!
Hey!! DH & I are slowly watching our way through SG-1. Right now we’re in the middle of Season 3, and thus far, Apophis really is dead. If he is due to come back again at some point in the future, I do not want to learn about it from anybody here!!! 🙂
Careful Esau, merely creating jobs is not always a good. Unless the jobs contribute to society, eventually, they dissolve into nothing but welfare with some apparent (but hollow) activity attached.
Apophis in this case is the name of a real-life asteroid, not the villain from Stargate.
Careful Esau, merely creating jobs is not always a good. Unless the jobs contribute to society, eventually, they dissolve into nothing but welfare with some apparent (but hollow) activity attached.
Ed Peters:
I believe that was my point.
That is, since people are benefitting from the mere hypothesis of GW one way or the other, even if it were false, you can be assured that there will be those who will attempt to safeguard their self-interests by whatever means possible, even to the extent of promoting the appearance of truth if necessary.
Hey!! DH & I are slowly watching our way through SG-1. Right now we’re in the middle of Season 3, and thus far, Apophis really is dead. If he is due to come back again at some point in the future, I do not want to learn about it from anybody here!!! 🙂
Margaret:
Tell me about it!
SG-1 Fan:
Apophis in this case is the name of a real-life asteroid, not the villain from Stargate.
I believe Dr. eric had made that sufficiently clear. I just wanted to chime in, as it were, and take advantage of drawing an indirect reference due to the familiar name.
Ah, yes, I see.
Here are my humble thoughts; we spend billions of dollars on fighting wars overseas as it is now, and there are no serious economic crisis or major depressions. Why don’t we manage ourselves better and bring our troops home and spend more more on enviromental issues. Why can’t we be moderate and keep our economy strong while at the same time creating programs and legistlation that will improve the environment, which is a good thing whehter global warming is as bad as some would have us believe or not.
Eric:
I take it money towards anti-Terrorism initiatives should only be a secondary concern in comparison to Global Warming programs?
I agree the environment is important, but to become so complacent in our attitudes toward terrorism just because 9/11 happened oh so many years ago and Global Warming has become the latest craze; this does not make any sense — at least, to me.
No, I was writing about the Alien! ;-p
Seriously, this asteroid “Apophis” is really going to come WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too close for my comfort. I’ll be 53 the first time and 60 the second time!
C’mon this thing very well could hit our planet!!!
This is a great analysis Jimmy!!! Thank you.
I like pie. If we have more global warming, will it make my pie stay warmer for a longer period of time? If so, I like global warming, because warm pie is good pie.
Longer golf season. And golf courses in places too cold for them now. Where do I go to make a reservation to golf in Greenland?
The EU has been planning to reduce its CO2 emissions, but most European countries and the EU overall have not only not reduced it but they have actually increased it.
All waggling of fingers at the US is nothing but a pose.
BillyHW, I read the article… interesting…
The biggest flaw is the both column “A” results are the same. It is just as expensive to fight global warming successfully as unsuccessfully. So the only true smilely face is in the first quadriant (No action, Global Warming false).
I don’t know how any of this can be terror inducing.
Dread maybe, but terror is more akin to shock; not a chronic fear like dread.
You know, aside from the fact that if we do have a supervolcano or asteroid impact that blocks out the sun and cools the earth, the first people the rioting mobs will lynch will be the global warming prophets…
Whether or not human caused GW is a reality, as stewards of the Earth, named so by God, we really COULD do a better job of not turning it into a giant trash heap. I know the trash heap method is cheaper, but seriously, we should do AFFORDABLE and EFFECTIVE things where we can, rather than junk up the earth to afford another yacht for some CEO. I frankly find it offensive they can junk up things of the public, such as rivers and the air with near impunity.
Oh, and I think that DOES include at least SOME recycling, contrary to above poster. I can hardly believe that can places would pay $.60/lb. if they weren’t seeing SOME benefit.
Watch this video and replace “Global Warming” with “Abortion”, the rows with True (Abortion kills an unborn child) and False (Abortion does NOT kill an unborn child), Column A and Column B with “Make illegal” and “Remain legal” respectively.
Same logic suggests that all logical folks must be pro-life and Roe must be overturned immediately (because hey, we don’t *know* when life exists…)
The “silver bullet” would become quite tarnished for this gentleman, I’d wager. 😉
The option that is not on his grid is that “Global Warming” is real and that it has nothing to do with human activity.
If that is the case and we follow his scenario we would create the global depression and the totalitarian effort that would be necessary to bring it off, and still have the negative effects of environmental upheaval. The worst of both worlds.
His hidden presumption is still that we are the cause of global warming so we are back to square one without solving the problem at all. Nice try though.
I’m with LJ as above, but I noticed something else on a rewatch. I believe it was also noticed above. The global depression in the false/yes box disappears in the true/yes box, i.e. no happy face, just pick your poison.
JP2 and B16 seem to believe that global warming is human-caused.
But Leo, acknowledging that
conspicuous consumption + reckless abuse of natural resources = bad
does not put them in the camp which seeks to re-establish the indulgence trade for sins against Mother Earth. The Earth didn’t create us and is not owed our total worship and adoration. No one can deny the large role a desperate neo-paganism plays in this. Pseudo-scientific earth worship seems to be the next resting place for anti-theistic intellectuals after the fall of Communism. All of it is just one rebellion after another against the concept of God as Father.