Hermann Goering on Anthropogenic Global Warming

Economics Political Theory
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21

Some minor points. I’ll let everything else stand.

Yet those who would put together an inter-governmental panel on climate change are.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars consume 3.5 million gallons of oil a day. The U.S. Department of Defense as a whole consumes more oil than the entire country of Sweden. Yet it’s somehow possible to make genuine political progress in the fight against incandescent light bulbs.

The concern is not with the volcano itself. The concern is with the unimaginable amounts of glacial ice that will be dumped into the ocean in a matter of minutes. And I didn’t say that this would warm the climate specifically, only that it will affect the weather.

22

You are not making it. I did make it. You’re only concerned with the non-problem of GW. And here’s something from your bio wich I wish would end this discussion, but of course I know it never will.

“While I prefer where possible to strengthen property rights and tort law protections against pollution, rather than trying to have federal regulation for everything, I also realize that for certain cases our shared tool of government may serve productive or even essential purposes”

So, you are a libertarian who believes that government is essential to protect the enviroment…

As for Exxon…They are green now ? Good for them. Eco-fascism may be a good survival strategy…in the jungle.

With respect to science I think that my view of it is humble, while yours is indeed full of hubris. You think that state funded ‘scientitsts’ have figured out how the world works using some debatable facts and a bunch of math formulae as premises - I’d call that naive, if it weren’t wholly politically motivated, wich, of course, it is.

23

The trouble with that is that there IS no place to stand that’s not on the Earth so that his lever can move the Earth. I’m not sure how that relates to global warming.

24

hjmaiere: thanks for the engagement. Sorry you`re leaving so soon.

Look, Im strongly opposed to the war, too. But those who started it and are burning through ferocious sums off-budget are the same ones who turned K street into a pork orgy feast while distracting us with loud claims that we need to be really, REALLY afraid of Islamofascists, gays, unmarried mothers who want abortions, enviros, liberals and immigrants. They are NOT the ones who are saying we should do anything about climate change other than study it. Given the Luntz memo and the Bush administrations famous closeness to oil and coal interests, its a wonder you dont think that the reason why theyve been stonewalling (and wailing about lefty enviros - even while ignoring the scientific, corporate, investor, foreign, defense, intelligence, religious and other concern) is because theyve been paid good money to do so (and have their own money at stake).

In any cas, an argument against he way is not an argument for denying climate change. Even Ron Paul has said that he thinks we should be actively discussing this issue with other countries.

By the way, it was Bushs father who, after much foot-dragging, signed the Framework Climate Convention that led to the IPCC - certainly not Dweeb Bush or Cheney. This administration approved the IPCCs reports only because it had no scientific grounds for refusing, after doing its best to water them down. FWIW, Exxon`s scientists are also active participants in the IPCC and has approved the reports.

The concern is not with the volcano itself. The concern is with the unimaginable amounts of glacial ice that will be dumped into the ocean in a matter of minutes.

Its hard to know wher youre coming from. It seems like youre saying that because we never know when our car might be hit by a meteor or lightning, fall into an unknown sinkhole or enter a patch of blinding fog that we shouldnt worry about how many drinks we have after we get in the car. Why exercise any control over ourselves, ever?

Further, as a scientific matter, its been known for decades that Antarctica has active volcanoes and new ones are still being discovered. But we have no evidence from seismic tracks etc. that any of this is new; in fact the one more recently discovered beneath an ice sheet appears to have been active for around 2000 years, so whatever effect its now having isn`t new - and Antarctic melting is accelerating:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080120160720.htm

http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/science/mterebus.shtml

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/coldscience/avolcano.htm

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-010

Juan:

Im happy you want to see subsidies eliminated, and good for you on saying it here before me - you win the race! Now I challenge you to keep finding ways to make common cause with those hateful enviros to make the world a better place. It might be a more successful stragegy than simply hating enviros. But if you choose not to, youre certainly in good company here, with folks who only want to argue with strawmen and those they can most easily demonize.

(In that connection, you might consider looking at my many posts on my blog about guys like Yandle, Callahan, Richman, Adler and others who are in favor of decentralization on climate change and elimination of subsidies, etc.)

TT: “While I prefer where possible to strengthen property rights and tort law protections against pollution, rather than trying to have federal regulation for everything, I also realize that for certain cases our shared tool of government may serve productive or even essential purposes”

You: So, you are a libertarian who believes that government is essential to protect the enviroment…

Juan, Im in favor of rolling back our federal government generally, but Im not an anarchist. As for why I believe that a government tole is necessary and how I think the government should play a role, I can lead a horse to water, but I cant make him drink. You can read the things I write and argue with me, or you can refuse - youre in charge of your own reality. But Mises himself did not argue against a state role in creating/enforcing proerty rights, and there are plenty of libertarians who agree. You`ll find some of them, and some of my further thoughts, here

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/12/draft.aspx

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/12/building-property-rights-for-common-resources.aspx

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/04/05/bruce-yandle-on-quot-no-regrets-quot-quot-free-market-environmentalist-quot-approaches-to-climate-change-policy.aspx

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/14/edwin-dolan-applying-the-lockean-framework-to-climate-change.aspx

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/17/fighting-over-the-wheel-of-government.aspx

http://libertarian-left.blogspot.com/

You: With respect to science I think that my view of it is humble, while yours is indeed full of hubris. You think that state funded ‘scientitsts’ have figured out how the world works using some debatable facts and a bunch of math formulae as premises - I’d call that naive, if it weren’t wholly politically motivated, wich, of course, it is.

It`s interesting that you, with your “humble” view, do nothing but makes unsupported, dismissive and conclusory statements about science, while I “arrogantly” try to explain my view and provide support for it. I do not believe that my view is perfect or complete, and I am always willing to test it, in the way Ludwig von Mises said:

“Man can never become omniscient. He can never be absolutely certain that his inquiries were not misled and that what he considers as certain truth is not error. All that man can do is to submit all his theories again and again to the most critical reexamination.” - Human Action

Is your view of the “non-science” of climate change really as “punture-proof” as you make it out to be? Why do you need to assume that Exxon has ever changed its mind on climate science (as opposed to its political interests)? It is investing millions in basic research to develop new, carbon-lite technologies.

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/04/murdoch-amp-149-other-top-vile-collectivists-capitalists-call-for-global-poverty.aspx

Regards,

Tom

25

Win the race ? What I think I win is the argument…

Is that more PCness on your part ? Am I a thought criminal ? You see, denying the party line is hate speech, isn’t it ?

What’s that supposed to mean ? If the ‘Bush Administration’ says that water is wet, am I expected to deny it ?

That’s not the point. You don’t seem to be a miniarchist either - that is the point. You don’t care about the rights of the individual. You’re interested in protecting the ‘enviroment’ by violating individual rights, through government, wich is essential (so you claim)

I think I’m arguing with you and I think you’ve not won a single one of these arguments - that is reality, not mine nor yours.

Too bad for Mises (but notice that creation and enforcement are different things). Anyway, since you like arguments from authority, take a look at the Austrian quiz.

http://mises.org/quiz.asp

So what’s the "Mises Institute approved"TM answer ? A, B, C, or D ?

I provided a better view of what is science and what is not. You’re not refuting that. The point is not whether GW exists or not, but is a different and more fundamental one. What is GW ? Can ‘science’ deal in a deterministic way with the weather ? Do you understand that problem ? It’s among other things, an information problem.

Right. Do you realize that cuts both ways ?

It’s more correct than your view of science - wich is just repeating what the establishment dishes out.

What’s that supposed to prove ? To me it proves, and I’ll repeat it for the third time, that people do politically correct things when it serves their self-interest. Also, firms do R&D. People at Exxon think that oil won’t last forever, so they look for other solutions. Does that prove that GW is a problem ? No. Does that prove that GW even exists ? No. All your arguments are non-sequiturs.

26

You are wrong. The Iraq Liberation Act was signed by Clinton. This was when the war really started. Clinton has killed as many innocent Iraqis as Bush 43, only his weapons of choice were disease and starvation by way of trade sanctions. Bill Clintion was also the one who signed the law requiring the phone companies to build their digital equipment in a way that allows the government to wiretap it in real-time. This is what made Bush’s illegal wiretapping possible in the first place. The destruction/invasion/occupation of Iraq was never about oil as such.

http://blog.mises.org/archives/008011.asp

Hillary or Obama might be likely to pay more lip service to diplomacy than McCain, but they will never willingly abandon the embassy and millitary bases being built there. The democratic politicians have accomplished nothing with regard to policy toward Iraq (or Iran) because they are just as much harlots in the employ of the plutocracy as the neocons. To maintain the illusion of political conflict, they happen to use a different set of lies. And one of those lies is that in order to save the planet from ecological destruction, they need political authority over the entire world.

That this is nothing new was exactly my point. Humans have long had a peculiar tendency to fill the cracks in our knowledge of the world around us with boogeymen. Those boogeymen get the blame for the bad things that happen to us when they happen for reasons we don’t otherwise understand. Throughout history, the predatory classes have used those cracks in our knowledge as systems of control by dictating which boogeymen live in which cracks. The weather has changed, and will change, sometimes catastrophically, for reasons that have nothing to do with humans. But this fact is useless as system of control and therefore receives no attention. It’s only the fact that the weather also changes for reasons we don’t understand that allows it to serve as a system of control.

27

Why is it that the debate over climate change on a message board about philosophy and economics is focused on science? Like it or not, you are not scientists. As far as I can tell, you don’t even understand the science. So why not deal with the question that is within your abilities: What would be the libertarian response to anthropogenic climate change if we knew that it were occurring?

28

Danny,

This forum is, I hope, devoted to philosophy and economics, not to pseudo - science - fiction. If you’re interested in cheesy sci-fi, fine, but don’t confuse it with philosophy. Now, from a philosophical POV it is quite legitimate to ask what the pseudo-scientific establishment is talking about, and it is quite legitimate to critize their flawed methods.

29

What I do not like is that this forum is full of nazi quotations.. I am not sure, if von Mises liked a forum with this content under his name..

30

Juan, from our past conversations you’ve made it clear that you don’t have an intimate enough understanding of the mainstream position to criticize it from a methodological standpoint. Your position is made even shakier by the fact that the mainstream position is a synthesis of a number of lines of evidence coming from multiple scientific disciplines, which means that a methodological objection needs to address the methodologies of a collection of fundamentally different branches of science. I’m comfortable saying that you aren’t qualified to offer that kind of objection.

I’m not saying that the mainstream position is correct. I’m only saying that the members of this forum have shown an almost embarrassing inability to critique the mainstream position with anything even resembling effectiveness. You guys simply don’t know what you’re talking about. So I’m suggesting that you might find your time better spent answering questions like the following:

If we knew that climate change were being caused by humans, what would the proper libertarian response be? What rights, if any, would be violated?

How should scientific uncertainty be dealt with in light of the fact that we might not resolve that uncertainty for a long time?

Can people legitimately be held accountable for damage that has not occurred yet? If so, how would this be done?

There are a whole lot of issues that need to be dealt with, and libertarians are dragging their feet. As political philosophers, we need to stop focusing on science and start focusing on political philosophy.

31

Danny, I don’t know what ‘past conversations’ you’re alluding to. In this conversation it’s been shown that GWarmers (is that a word ?) don’t know what empirical science is, what kind of problems it can solve and what kind of knowledge it can provide.

You don’t understand that either, and seem to instead like to play the central planner game - How should society be ‘designed’ given the non-problem of GW ? I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t waste my time solving non-problems wich if existed would be solved ‘by the market’. My only comment is, I suggest you don’t advocate anything that violates individual rights…I mean, you’re a libertarian, right ?

Right. That kind of question makes clear you’re talking about fantasy not about real political problems.

32

A good, consistent first step would be to ban community-members from having more than their fair share of children (two). That would absolutely result in fewer emissions. After ensuring their won’t be an excess of people, the community needs to ensure that no one produces more than their fair share of carbon. Whenever a community-member makes a purchase, the carbon-footprint of that item needs to be calculated and added to his/her yearly total. If the yearly total of carbon is exceeded, the community-member needs to buy carbon-credits to offset his/her excessive lifestyle. The cost of each carbon-credit should chosen by the community in direct, democratic elections.

33

AndyHoffmann, Mises was a proponent of the free flow of ideas. No one here is advocating Nazi principles, but the OP is quoting ideas which happen to be compiled by a Nazi which he considers good, and which do not have to do with the initiation of force. I doubt Mises would’ve thought it pertinent to exclude the ideas merely on account of the person putting them forward. I am no fan of the National Socialists, personally, but it’s not as if Hjmaere is calling for us to improve on the Final Solution or something of that sort.

34

I thought it was clear that the allusion to nazism underlined the totalitarian features of ‘enviromentalism’.

35

The quotes provide a good insight into the Nazi mindset, so yes you’re right. Either way, the complaint that Mises would have a problem with this is baseless, as he himself had no problem quoting his opponents to demonstrate the fallaciousness of their ideas &c.

36

Juan, at what point have I said anything about central planning? In fact, at what point have I ever advocated any policy? All I’ve said is that libertarians should confront the question of whether rights would be violated by climate change. Are you seriously going to evade that by trying to paint me as an alarmist/statist/enviro-fascist?

37

Not sure, but here’s what I think roughly. This is basically from an earlier post here, https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/can-the-free-market-solve-the-problems-posed-by-climate-change/935.

I think the problem of damage caused to property (assuming it exists) by anthropogenic warming is basically the same as that of air or water pollution.

If there is only a small amount of pollution, property owners will not even notice it, and have no right to complain, since any aggression would have to be noticeable. Some of the pollutants are absorbed by the environment as well. No aggression can take place unless the polluter releases more pollutant than can be absorbed and that will make a noticeable negative impact on the victim’s property. We can call the limit below which not aggression takes place, the threshold of aggression.

I would claim that everyone has a right to produce as much CO2 as they please so long as they do not cross the threshold of aggression. The first person to dump CO2 into the air homesteads the right to do so at the same rate indefinitely into the future. The pollution right becomes their property, and they can sell it, trade it, or pass it on to their children.

The first person to cross the threshold of aggression is a criminal no matter how little he contributed. Everyone who polluted before him is entirely innocent. Anyone who contributes new pollution is beyond the first criminal is guilty of any new damage which is caused. Any new CO2 source producing beyond the threshold of aggression would also have to be match by a carbon sink which absorbs at least an equivalent rate.

One of the upshots of this is that insurance and legal firms would have incentives to actually figure out the actual extent of anthropogenic climate change. And they would want to figure it out quickly and accurately. Insurance companies would want to know what the chances are that they would have to pay for their client’s pollution if it should happen to cause a rise in sea levels flooding someone’s home, or making someone’s farm arid and useless. Other insurance firms would want to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that damage to their client’s property was caused by some definite polluter to reduce the amount they would have to pay up. The pricing of risks will allow for economic calculation. The incentive for such firms would be to fund reasearch which would prove a causal relationship beyond a reasonable doubt so they could prove their case in a court of law.

This is almost the exact opposite to the way current research is done. The IPCC is an inefficient bureaucracy. Assuming only self-interest, all members of the IPCC have an interest in the growth of their organization. If they were to say that the risks of anthropogenic climate change were small, their organization would receive less funding due to the decrease in perceived importance of their work. If they were to produce conclusive and final research quickly, there would be no more need for their services in the future and they would lose funding. They have no incentive to be fair in their assessment, and every incentive to continue dragging their feet, when it comes to producing indisputable conclusions.

The current results produced by the IPCC are completely useless when it comes to matters of justice. They could not prove any aggression in any reasonable court of law.

Now there are many secondary arguments and debates surrounding the issue. Will warming be good or bad? Do CO2 concentrations lead or lag behind temperature over the last 400 000 years? Are the oceans warming or cooling? These tend to be fruitless discussions. One guy says one thing. The other guy says, “No, you’re wrong.” The first guy responds with the same and no one changes their mind.

But, I think the main argument from the IPCC runs like this (Correct me if I am wrong): We (the scientists) model the earth by dividing up the planet’s surface into a large grid. Each square of the grid approximates the equivilent section of the earth’s surface with average values. Then they subsystems for each grid to simulate things like the thermal energy transfer for land surface, oceans, atmosphere, and simulate changes in chemical compositions in systems like the carbon cycle, water cycle, ect. Many of the relationships are governed by physical, thermodynamic, and chemical relationships. Some of the relationships are unknown however, like the radiative forcing of various GH gases. So the scientists use their expert opinion to estimate parameters in the model. When the scientist finish their model a simulation is run. The simulations is recursive. The values for square of the grid are updated depending on the values in adjacent squares. Because these values are only approximate and any error only increases each iteration, simulation tends not to match past observations very well. So, the scientists start playing around with their parameters until the model closely matches past observations.

Once the scientists have produced their climate model, they make their forecasts. Based on this estimate of radiative forcing, the earth’s temperature will rise such and such an amount. Based on another estimate, it will rise that amount. And by creating a sample of temperature rises based on a range of parameter estimations, we come up with a statistical distribution. From this statistical distribution we conclude that the likelihood of the earth’s temperature rising 2 or 3 degrees over the next century is 90%.

What are the obvious methodological problems with the method? The method for producing the model isn’t really much different in principle than if I where to gather a bunch of past data in the form of points, and interpolate the data points in Excel.

While the science (if it should even be considered that) is uncertain it is inadmissible in a court of law. Anthropogenic GW damage (if it can be proven to exist) should not be treated as a regulatory issue. It should be handled by civil courts.

No. A person is innocent until proven guilty. Obviously, it is impossible to prove that someone will commit a crime in the future.

38

hjmaiere: Thanks for the more in-depth history of the war. Again, I largely agree with you as to the culpability other others for our imperial behavior - extending a long way back. But distinctions are still in order. It is the current crew who are responsible for invasion and ongoing bloodbath, and for stepping all over our Constitution. Yes, we have spineless Congresscritters and press, and a populace easily distracted by tribal reactions, to thank as well. SO yes, blame Dems and others for our empire too. But the current crew is definitely NOT champing at the bit to use climate change as a way to gain further control. But it`s extremely hard to say that their reticence is fuelled by concern for us, as they both rip us off over Iraq and continue to protect the prileges afforded to fossil fuel interests to use the atmosphere as a free dumping ground.

Humans have long had a peculiar tendency to fill the cracks in our knowledge of the world around us with boogeymen. Those boogeymen get the blame for the bad things that happen to us when they happen for reasons we don’t otherwise understand. Throughout history, the predatory classes have used those cracks in our knowledge as systems of control by dictating which boogeymen live in which cracks.

Again, this is astute and I agree with you. This is a very good reason to be skeptical about what government might actually bring us if we allow it to address climate change in any way. But of course it tell us NOTHING about whether or not our activities are actually affecting the climate in ways that ought to concern us.

The weather has changed, and will change, sometimes catastrophically, for reasons that have nothing to do with humans.

Okay - this is uncontested, so why do you keep repeating this mantra? Does the Simple and obvious fact that there are other factors that affect the climate tell us that humans CANNOT affect the climate? Are you saying that man will never have the ability to terraform Mars (via enhancing atmospheric GHGs), for example, or that we should never even consider geoengineering to prevent any serious warming or cooling of the earth? That we are helpess and insignificant?

It’s only the fact that the weather also changes for reasons we don’t understand that allows it to serve as a system of control.

Sorry, but I dont follow. Its true that we cannot easily change our behavior to influence the climate in ways we want, but it is the argument that we DO understand and the possibility that we CAN influence climate that are being trotted out to argue for a system of control.

39

Juan, I`m having difficulty continuing to find motivation to respond further in the face of your obtuseness, hostility and zero-sum approach to discussion. Even when we agree, you find a reason to crow and to question my good faith.

You appear to not be remotely familiar with Austrian views on “environmental” matters. Perhaps these posts can serve as an introduction to that, and to my take on it: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/18/cool-rationalists-or-conservatives-and-neocons-on-the-environment.aspx

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/12/cordato-humans-cannot-harm-the-environment.aspx; https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/12/draft.aspx.

Ill keep testing my reality; you feel free to keep telling me that Im wrong, without trying to persuade.

40

TokyoTom, here’s the problem I have.

Let’s assume the following 2 things:

  1. Humans are the main cause of global warming
  2. We can determine the point at which one’s “carbon output” is a violation of others’ rights (let’s assume it’s 10 tons per year)

If we were to be consistent in our views (and we must be), we must ban having children. At the very least, we must limit the number of children one can have. If I’m violating your rights by emitting 11 tons of carbon per year as opposed to 10, then I’m certainly violating your rights by emitting 10 tons of carbon and “emitting” 5 children, each of whom emit 10 tons per year, for a total of 50.

I don’t like that path at all. In order to maximize rights and liberty, we shouldn’t focus on something as nebulous as “global warming”. Should we combat “global cooling” for people who plant too many trees? Our environmental efforts should focus on combating carcinogenic emissions instead.