Posted on 08/17/2006 2:18:05 AM PDT by Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit
Umm . . did you even read the first line of the article?
The title was from Reuters! The Chinese themselves just said they want to actually enforce the rules that are on the books. Come on DM, you are smarter than that.
"Yeah, go and earn money but don't kill the environment."
And this is the problem in America today. On one side you have radical environmentalists who understand that we need pristine land to live and on the other you have corporations, who produce their products and do at times pollute.
What we should be doing is putting both groups together to work together to produce the best solutions while eliminating government regs that stifle growth. Give incentives based on partnerships.
The "public good" is an overgeneralization of several rights and a lot of socialist junk. I have the right to clean air, CO2 doesn't make it dirty. I'm sure we've argued this before, but AGW is based on models that primarily use water vapor to warm the earth, CO2 only contributes a degree or two. If you insist on defining a "public good" then define it as a function of model output, then I can pay to have SO2 injected into the upper atmosphere or some other equally cheap solution to warming (if it is indeed a problem).
My guess is that in a face to face conversation we would find we agree on most points. Our mild areas of disagreement is what makes this interesting.
In terms of the anti climate change water vapour argument, I have posted about this before.
If you view the atmosphere (the greenhouse gasses that is) as a glass that is 99.99 water vapour, then it does make logical sense the .001% is irrelevant.
However, the reality is that it a glass is not the correct analogy, but rather a sensitive (yet sometimes self-correcting) balance. If you add too much is one direction you will get a signficant shift. We don't know how much that is and could be less than .001%. If you combine human emissions with what might be a normal cyclical warming, the shift could be very, very great and the self-balancing mechanism will take a time-period longer than is relevant for human beings.
Ultimately it is quite obvious from the time that I have been posting at FR that the climate change debate is moving in my direction and not the other way.
Even if you don't believe in it personally, it is simply time to start advocating reasonable measures based on conservative market mechanisms. Otherwise we are going to get something much, much worse, more costly and more destructive.
By the way, have you ever been to Switzerland? I have and I understand why they pay the price they do to keep their country looking like it does. Actually this is the first time I have ever, ever heard anyone criticize the way the Swiss run things. Very odd Palmer, very odd.
Again, I will repeat the challenge I make to all AGW enthusiasts. If your models really do predict warming, then let's use the same models to figure out the cheapest solution which will surely not be the limiting of CO2. Their general rejection of that challenge betrays their agenda which is anti-growth and ultimate anti-humanity. There is no "CO2 commons", there are much cheaper ways to deal with warming, if indeed it is a problem.
Environmental alarmists will scream about forest fires ignoring the fact that I know what I am doing. They scream about super hurricanes, then when we don't have any, they look stupid. If anything, they hurt your cause since the average joe will tune everyone out, alarmist or not.
Science isn't a democratic process though.
I know the IDer's wish it were so, but it isn't. Scientists need to base their recommendations on the best available science. Politicians heed or ignore their advice at their own peril.
At the moment I see every industrialized nation with leaders that more or less except what the overwhelming majority of the scientific community is telling them about man's contribution to climate change. The only exception is the American President. The same statement could be made about evolution.
Meetings, gotta go. When I warn about people tuning out, I am warning AGWers against hyping the threat. Don't hype. And if the models say it will warm, then the models can also tell us the consequences of the warming as well as the cheapest ways to fix it.
To put it more succinctly: "You can catch more flies with honey."
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