Global warming is a lie. 97% of the world’s climatologists are complete idiots who don’t know crap about anything.
Assuming it is real (“for the sake of argument” libertarians are always sure to qualify) then we should do absolutely nothing about it. Because it would be too hard and my brain hurts to think about it. Ironically, this means treating the Earth as one gigantic socialized “commons,” which libs typically rail against.
If one’s position is ultimately going to be #2, why even bother with #1?
Now concider GM is true. It is STILL useful for politicians to exploit this theory to support their ends.
Think, people, THINK. It can be both ways. And actually I am on a camp of believers, because, well, I trust science to certain degree at least. So no matter GM is true or not, it will be exploited 'till the evidence become overhelming.
I don’t think 97% of the world’s climatologists are complete idiots, but that doesn’t mean they are right. To put this in perspective, think about all the scientists and intellectuals hundreds of years ago who believed the world was flat or that the earth was the center of the universe. In another few hundred years, much of the science accepted as fact today will seem ridiculous and outdated. Right now there is a lot of pressure on climate scientists to research manmade climate change or its effects in order to get funding and/or publicity. The climate movement is totally politicized, and any scientist who questions the “consensus” is a heretic or a complete idiot. There is plenty of good science that finds no evidence to support the manmande theory, but this is brushed aside so the IPCC can proclaim that we’re headed for disaster.
If AGW is real, then I think “we” as individuals should do what we see fit. I think that millions of individuals acting rationally on their own without coercing others could fight climate change, or any other environmental problem, much more effectively than government. It is not worth it to sacrifice freedom in order to fight terrorism, climate change, or any other uncertain threat.
I bother with #1 because global warming is really an issue about freedom vs. tyranny, not about temperature changes. Once you understand that global warming is a lie, then you can begin to understand the strategies and tactics used by collectivist organizations like the UN to get control and power.
Your right MaikU, global warming is useful to politicians whether or not it’s really true. But there is huge difference between politicians who take advantage of truth and those who create falsehoods in order to serve their own purposes. I am trying to get people to consider that global warming is an example of the latter, in the tradition of the Soviet iron curtain or the Nazis who convinced people that flouride in their water would make them strong and healthy, rather than poisoning them. Other examples in America today would be the pharmeceutical companies who convince us that we need harmful drugs and vaccines, or the politicians who assert that marijuana is harmful and needs to be banned.
The real problem with climate change alarmists is this: If you are going to say that you have an epistemologically sound, hypothetico-deductive (“scientific”) theory, that these certain conditions exists, and that there is a certain course of action for those who value not boiling to death or submerging coastal cities, the scientist needs to exhibit predictive power. No climate scientist has yet exhibited such power. In fact from decade to decade, they have gone from cooling worries to warming worries and back.
All that we can actually glean from all this is that states thrive on crisis. Economics tells us that when a legitimate crisis is identified, a state can only ever be inferior to a system of free trade. If there were sound science behind global warming and CO2 was properly identified as a pollutant, the causality between its emission and the damages it causes could be known and the actions punished or legitimate, voluntary cap and trade schemes would evolve.
Libertarians aren’t opposed to the whole concept, just the bad science and state involvement. Isn’t state involvement bad science itself?
But, the same reason I believe global warming is real, is the same reason why I believe AGW is real. Because scientists tell me so.
As with all science, the results should be vetted tirelessly. Especially when people reccomend going back to the stone age to solve the problem.
Admitting that you believe AGW is real, does not mean you condone statism. It’s the same argument as not admitting poverty is a problem because of the specter of government welfare programs.
I think you are probably in the majority. It’s impossible to learn and research everything on our own, so we must believe things because “someone told us so.” I don’t believe in AGW because I have decided to trust different sources, not because I am a scientist who has analyzed all the data. I think it is important for people to realize that despite the so-called “consensus,” there are thousands of scientists who don’t believe in AGW, have no political motivations, and have research to back them up. The scientists in the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle are an example.
I agree.
I agree that believing in AGW does not necessarily mean you condone statism. However, poverty is a problem of a very different nature - it has been well-documented in the past and is a certain problem, whereas AGW involves projections into the future and much uncertainty.
I hope you will agree with me that if AGW is real, it is a very uncertain threat that should be dealt with without more government regulation. Individuals should be free to fight global warming on their own as they see fit, as long as they don’t aggress against the person or property of others.
Chaos theory has put a bullet in the idea that we can predict the behavior of complex systems. It is literally impossible to predict the behavior of any complex system that behaves in a non-linear way.
Also, the question of the science being legit or not is a moot point. The only way to protect and cultivate any scarce resource (the “earth” included) is through the protection and respect of private property rights. This applies to any type of pollution problem; even global warming.
I heard there is a bunch of methane in the ocean and if it heats up slightly tons of it will be released, methane is many times stronger then CO2 so it could be an issue.
However I don’t care about preserving nature primeval for its own sake. Look at something like ANWR, it’s Alaska ffs, how many people actually go up there? So this means just about anyone who advocates preserving it derives some satisfaction from just knowing it is there, what could be more ridiculous? They would probably develop like >1% of it because Alaska is massive.
Yet we get fed this stuff in our college environmental “biology” class.
Well put. Meteorologists can’t predict the weather in two days, but people think that supercomputers pumped full of faulty data can predict the the world’s future climate. People 100 years at now will laugh at us.
why did you pick 1 century? how do you know that is a large enough data set? Hasn’t there been mostly a leveling off over the last decade? I think I have also read that the CO2 effect as a greenhouse gas is logarithmic meaning that each additional ton of CO2 has a smaller effect than the ton that came before it.
My point was that people in the future will look back and see how silly our attempts to predict the future were. 100 years is just an arbitrary number.
although Methane is more potent, it dissipates much more quickly. I have also read that livestock actually does more to cause global warming that all of transportation.