10 reasons to reject global warming still stand
A couple of weeks ago, prompted by a listing of my most popular posts, Nick van der Leek assailed the then most popular (scroll down to the blue text), 10 reasons to reject global warming, which was itself a response to a comment of his on a Maverick magazine column I re-published here.
He did this not very well, I might add, and I’ve been idly mulling a mild fisking. This Day of Goodwill Boxing Day seems as good a day as any for it.
He wrote:
NVDL: I recently read a blog which listed the blogger’s top stories. I recall this person’s top blog was something like 10 Reasons Not to worry about Global Warming, or 10 reasons Climate Change is a Hoax. That strikes as [sic] the sort of delusional drivel smoking companies came up with just before their advertising was phased out: 10 Myths About Smoking, Why Doctors Smoke, Smoking Is Sexy and Other Benefits.
Except that I didn’t write anything about smoking. Nor do I have a pecuniary interest in writing marketing material either for or against the global warming hypothesis. If you want to claim that I’m wrong by all means do so, but then respond to what I actually wrote rather than railing against red herrings.
I can imagine that these sorts of bogus and brain dead stories are popular.
You haven’t yet shown that my story is either bogus or brain dead. And to do so, you’d have to convince me that all 10 reasons I cited are wrong. As I pointed out in the original post, failure to do so for any one of them would mean my key argument stands. (The key argument being that there is insufficient reason to accept the necessity for governments to enforce, by law, tax or otherwise, standards of behaviour consistent with the theory of global warming.)
I can also write popular popcorn crap for example:
1) Why AIDS isn’t worth worrying about
2) How to succeed without a matric
3) Slag off your boss and win
4) How to cheat on your partner and get them to love you more than they do now
5) How to lose weight by eating more ice cream
6) Make more money by working less
7) How to succeed without really trying
8) How to lie to people without giving yourself away
9) 10 Reasons Not To Save
10) Why Fast Food Is Healthier Than Home cooked Meals
But I didn’t write any of that, now did I? I wrote 10 reasons to reject global warming.
There’s a reason people would want to read the above garbage, and it’s a simple one: they want it to be true, they want a lazy, easy approach to getting what they want. In the same way, we want to NOT worry about Climate Change, because that allows us to do squat all.
You’ve ignored the possibility that worrying about climate change and doing something about it might not have any benefits at all; it might be ineffective. Or it might have benefits, but impose costs that exceed those benefits. Or, worst of all, it might cause harm instead of reducing it.
A cost-benefit evaluation is a lot more complicated than “we don’t want to incur costs”. In order to justify incurring costs, one should first be convinced that some benefit will accrue, and second, that the benefit is likely to exceed the costs. Uninformed speculation about my motives might constitute an attack on my character, but it does not attack my arguments.
You telling them [sic] it’s true, and the fact that your drivel is popular doesn’t make it any less drivel, it just shows the extent of our delusion, the desperate buy in, and how the stupid infect one another.
I never made any claim about what the post’s popularity means. In fact, I agree with you: the popularity of drivel doesn’t make it any less drivel, just like the popularity of global warming alarmism doesn’t make it any more true. And, to quote Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda, don’t call me stupid.
Today I did a statistical scan of the Top Stories on [a particular] website for the year 2007. It wasn’t a story on Lucky, or Gift Leremi, or a newsy political story. No, it was this:
I’m still waiting for a single actual argument against a single point I made. Your point is?
My point is, although the populace may be entertained and moved and interested by tabloid junk, the information we disseminate (whether through talking, emailing or blogging) ought to be sensible, rational and constructive (as least to the extent that we are), and certainly not intentionally the opposite. When we do this, we do so to our collective cost. We spread mediocrity and deaden our sensitivities, our value for life and the living depreciates in favor of laziness.
And this does not apply to you? Is global warming alarmism “sensible, rational and constructive” just because you say it is? Well, I say it is “intentionally the opposite”. Shall we flip a coin to see who’s right, or shall we rationally weigh my ten arguments against your extended non-argument?
Are we prostitutes for popularity, like Peter Keating (living only for cheap fame and sucking up to the approval of the mob) as opposed to a deeper, more personal, more integral and integrated vision - such as Howard Roark’s (in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead).
You chose a very curious example here. Did someone hack your blog and plant a mine? I seem to recall that Howard Roark was not given to toeing the “consensus” line, opposed the forcible imposition by governments upon individuals of rules and restrictions demanded by a majority, and resented being told how he “ought to” behave. Yet this is exactly what you’re telling me to do. I never cited popularity in support of my arguments. By contrast, you’re appealing to a “consensus” view, and have done so on several previous occasions to support the assertion that we must radically change the way we live to conform to your ideas of decency (including, memorably, accepting not that we might need alternatives to oil, but that “the happy motoring era must end”).
Otherwise we get lost in a cycle that is neither intelligent or useful, and it says a lot about the human animal and our lot, or what our lot can conceivably be.
Wow, flew away on that thought tangent….
And in all that tangential wordage, you presented not a single argument disputing any of the 10 reasons I cited for rejecting global warming. That’d be nil down, 10 to go, then.
There is reason for why your „10 arguments to reject global warming“ are not being taken serious.
All your “arguments” go “I am not convinced that…” Then, what follows are very brief IDEAS of what COULD speak against global warming. In this whole global warming-discussion, ideas were raised against global warming, and ideas were raised supporting global warming. Many were discarded others have been strengthened. The majority opinion now is: global warming exists. If you want your rejection of global warming to be taken serious, bring on more than “I am not convinced” plus a mere idea, without the whole reference and without outlining the facts speaking for or against it.
You are claiming over and over again that you have provided 10 arguments “against global warming”, “why I don’t believe in global warming” and “to reject global warming”. However only #1 really questions global warming as such. All of the following “arguments” ASSUME global warming as a reality: Even if there was global warming, I’m not convinced it’s very bad (#2), I’m not convinced it’s our fault (#3), I’m not convinced that environment can’t handle it (#4), I’m not convinced that CO2 is the cause (#5), I’m not convinced we can make a change (#6 and #7), I’m not convinced that we can afford making a change (#8), I’m not convinced this problem has priority (#9), I’m not convinced that people should be told what to do (#10).
…and it’s not like - as you imply – just one of your ideas must be true in order to disprove global warming.
Don’t take offence if people treat your unelaborated ideas, 90% of which are off-topic, as chit-chat.
Oh, there’s a “majority opinion”? Wow. That changes things. Used to be there was a “consensus”.
The wise need half a word, as they say. I made it perfectly clear and explicit that the phrase I used in the headline refers not only to the bare scientific phenomenon, but to the larger political argument that surrounds it — starting with “it exists”, going on to “we caused it”, then to “it’s a crisis”, to “we must do something”, and finally to “governments must force us to do something”. Nevermind the fact that one can hardly be “off-topic” when one sets the topic, but without these “off-topic” political implications, whether anyone thought global warming exists would be neither here nor there.
I do apologise for not writing a 200-word headparagraph explaining all that. I have this inexplicable habit of striving for brevity in headlines. I do apologise for simply stating the 10 reasons, without repeating in comprehensive detail the full arguments that would support each — most of which I have at one time or another discussed and/or linked to. I was taught not to inflict tens of thousands of words on readers in making a point or summarising a position. Must be I was taught wrong.
I trust my other readers aren’t similarly inconvenienced in their grasp of the points I stated by my failure to waste their time and insult their intelligence with windy discursiveness.
So, it’s still nil down, 10 to go, then.
Thanks dripab. 10-0 blah blah blah isn’t he clever. Scary more like. Jeepers it’s only thanks to Google that I hooked into this ‘taking my name in vain’ploy. I kinda wonder whether I need to care. Ivo if you really want a point by point analysis send me an email, and get a quote, because talking to yourself (known as one-sided dialogue) and quoting my text in the way that makes your argument for you (the way you have here) ain’t really the real thing is it. The reason why there’s no point by point discussion is because you don’t make any valid points worth discussing. It may not be obvious to you, but it is to others who don’t share your silly and obstinate delusions. I don’t think you want to debate, you want to show how clever you are and play Mr. Didactic. That’s fine, except on this subject you’re not. There are some valid points to be gleaned from Googling: “new climate records” and in generic international news. Try to focus on something new Ivo in order to learn something new.
If I weren’t prepared to debate, here, in public, my posts wouldn’t attract so many comments, and I wouldn’t bother responding to those comments. In fact, I started this blog to take discussions away from e-mail (where I spent the last decade or more debating these issues with others) and conduct them in a public forum instead. If you’re not up to that, you’re welcome to be a spectator.
I’ll grant that it must be intimidating to be required to change my mind not on one, or two, but all ten of the points of which I said I’m not convinced. Because that’s the least it would take. Until that happens, I cannot see any reason why anyone should even consider accepting the growth-sapping rules, restrictions and penalties the climate special-interest lobby would impose on productive people by government force.
Ok since everyone is all worried about faulty scientific data and false anylasis here is one thing that we know for scientific fact. A long time ago there were some periods of time called Ice Ages, and during those times humoungous glaciers covered from what I know North America and Europe. Now anyone who is against global warming please tell me how glaciers can disappear without an increase in global temperatures and don’t say that god did it because global warming is based off of science not personal religion.
For fact global warming along with global cooling are both natural events that have happened throughout earth’s history. In 1543 a polish astronomer named Nicholas Copernicus had a theory that the earth and other planets rotated around the Sun. The sun is the main source of heat for the planets and without defying the laws of science and physics heat from the sun dicipates over distance. Which that explains why Mercury is hotter than the earth and why Uranus is colder than the earth. People who believe global warming try to pin CO2 as the only culprit of rising global temperature, which is false. As I have stated the sun is the one cause of global temperature flucuations that can be scientificly proven. Man made causes of global warming cannot be scientificly proven because of our rotation around the sun, so anyone who claims we are causing global warming is guessing. Also we don’t have the technology to see how close we are to the sun and see if greenhouse gases really cause an increase in temperatures. AS our planet rotates around the Sun, the closer it gets the higher global temperatures get and is proven by Mercury and Uranus’s global temperatures.
As with all new theorys he encountered stiff resistance from many who wanted to stick with the idiology that new concepts can not happen. The same thing has happened with global warming and people who don’t want to believe what some call “liberal propoganda”. As the movie and book “An incovienent Truth” continues to be circulated by Al Gore, some people seem to believe his scare tactics and some don’t. I truly believe that he has exaggarated the truth and effects of global warming and assumes that everything that controls temperature will stay the same which probably will not happen.
And I should probably stop before I make a report.