AGW Theory - Discussion

Yeah you have to agree with the ice cream that rips you off.

Now that's the scariest thought yet!

On Tuesday, Jeb Bush proposed to eliminate the Obama administration’s regulation of carbon pollution, and, in keeping with his self-styled goal of “growth at all cost,” proposes to make any further climate regulation essentially impossible. In any other democracy in the world, a Jeb Bush would be an isolated loon, operating outside the major parties, perhaps carrying on at conferences with fellow cranks, but having no prospects of seeing his vision carried out in government. But the United States is different. Here in America, ideas like Bush’s fit comfortably within one of the two major political parties. Indeed, the greatest barrier to Bush claiming his party’s nomination is the quite possibly justified sense that he is too sober and moderate to suit the GOP.

Of all the major conservative parties in the democratic world, the Republican Party stands alone in its denial of the legitimacy of climate science. Indeed, the Republican Party stands alone in its conviction that no national or international response to climate change is needed. To the extent that the party is divided on the issue, the gap separates candidates who openly dismiss climate science as a hoax, and those who, shying away from the political risks of blatant ignorance, instead couch their stance in the alleged impossibility of international action.

A new paper by Sondre Båtstrand studies the climate-change positions of electoral manifestos for the conservative parties in nine democracies, and finds the GOP truly stands apart. Opposition to any mitigation of greenhouse-gas emissions, he finds, “is only the case with the U.S. Republican Party, and hence not representative of conservative parties as a party family.” For instance, the Swedish conservative party “stresses the necessity of international cooperation and binding treaties to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, with the European Union and emissions trading as essentials.”

Okay, you might say, that’s just Sweden. But all of the other non-American conservative platforms follow similar themes. Germany’s conservative platform declares, “[C]limate change threatens the very foundations of our existence and the chances of development of the next generations.” Canada’s, writes Båtstrand, “presents both past and future measures on climate change. The past measures are regulations on electricity production, research and development on clean energy (including carbon capture and storage), and international cooperation and agreements including support for adaptation in developing countries.” Even coal-rich Australia has a conservative party that endorses action to limit climate change. All of this is to suggest that the influence of the fossil-fuel industry alone cannot explain the right’s brick-wall opposition to any steps to reduce emissions within the United States. Oil in Canada and coal in Australia both account for a far larger share of their countries’ economies (which are less than a tenth as large as the U.S. economy) than any fossil-fuel reserves in the United States.

Nor can a fealty to free-market theory alone explain the change, either. Free-market ideology traditionally recognizes a role for government when it comes to “externalities,” or actions that impose costs on others. Pollution is the most classic case of an externality — a factory whose production pollutes the air, or a local stream, should have to pay the cost. Even F.A. Hayek, in the anti-statist polemic The Road to Serfdom, conceded, “Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, or of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories, be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation. In such instances we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism.” Now, Hayek offered this concession to the role of government in the course of advocating for a pricing mechanism for externalities, rather than a crude ban. But he was recognizing that even the purest libertarians must concede the need for collective action of some kind when it comes to things like pollution.

It is also worth noting that the Republican Party used to fit in with the pattern of other international conservative parties. The Nixon administration created the Environmental Protection Agency and passed the Clean Air Act. The first Bush administration passed amendments strengthening it. Both of those presidents are considered, correctly, to be aliens to the conservative movement. The conservative movement has always opposed environmental regulation, and Republican leaders since the first President Bush — the GOP Congress since the era of Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and the current Republican presidential field — have followed conservative thinking. Indeed, administrators of the EPA from previous Republican administrations have endorsed Obama’s climate program, but they lack any influence or even legitimacy within the party today.

Rabid opposition is not the only quality that sets the GOP apart from other major conservative parties. The fervent commitment to supply-side economics is also an almost uniquely American idea. The GOP is the only major democratic party in the world that opposes the principle of universal health insurance. The virulence of anti-government ideology in the United States has no parallel anywhere in the world.

And so the “moderate” Republican climate position is that action is pointless, since countries like China will never reduce their own emissions. (No evidence of Chinese behavior seems capable of altering this conviction, which serves the handy function of justifying the desired conservative outcome without leaning too heavily on anti-science kookery.) The more right-wing position within the party — endorsed by the party’s leading presidential candidate and the chairmen of the science committees in both houses — is that thousands of climate scientists worldwide have secretly coordinated a massive hoax. And then the even more conservative position, advocated by the second-leading candidate in the polls, holds not only that climate science is a massive hoax, but so are evolution and the big bang. The “moderate” candidates are still, by international standards, rabid extremists. It is the nature of long-standing arrangements to dull our sense of the peculiar, to make the bizarre seem ordinary. From a global standpoint, the entire Republican Party has lost its collective mind.

A totally neutral title.

Anyway, didn't China also agree to a plan to reduce emissions(just in a longer timeframe than other countires, something like 2050)?

A totally neutral title.

Anyway, didn't China also agree to a plan to reduce emissions(just in a longer timeframe than other countires, something like 2050)?

They have absolutely zero plans to actually follow through with it. From their point of view, western countries crippling their economies is pure win because it makes them rely on Chinese exports even more. If them nodding their head to some promise for some future thing makes western countries more comfortable destabilizing themselves, well why the *** not do it?

Seriously AGW has never been about the environment, it's always been about power and control. They dupe you into believing in their cause because it makes you feel better, then use you to agree to give them more power that they then use to future their own gains and goals.

Or do you guys honestly, from the cankle's of your hearts, maybe even your colon, believe that Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden give two shits about the spotted owl, the world temperature or whether some single black mother of five (different daddies for each of em) can feed her kids? If you do then I got ocean front property to see you in Arizona.

progress is bad, we should feel guilty

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/25/yet-another-survey-shows-the-climate-change-debate-is-settled-among-scientists/?ref=yfp

92% - sample size is almost 2000

It's not 97%, but not everyone surveyed was a climatologist.

Can't use the 'grant money' excuse anymore since biologist, chemist, physicist and geoscientist don't get grant money for climate research.

That's the exact opposite of my stance on science in general. Believe it or not moving past fossil fuels would be progress, otherwise we wouldn't bother with research.

useful idiots

Yep in order to "move past fossil fuels" the progressives want to go back to a early 20th century life style

moving past fossil fuels would be progress

U.S. and China to Announce New Measures to Combat Climate Change (from 5 days ago)

China has arguably done more to reduce their emissions in the past few years than the U.S. has Perhaps partly because of the sheer amount of emissions they produce compared to us or because of their tighter control on the country's industries. Either way, to say they haven't done anything or won't be doing anything about CC is a complete fabrication.

Fossil fuels are an inherently limited resource. The claims of "we run out of oil by X" have traditionally missed their target, but it's madness to assume there's just a limitless supply of the stuff. They will run out eventually. Moving to other sources (mostly electric, via solar/wind/nuclear/whatever) is a more sustainable model.

The only plausible reason for wanting to stay on fossil fuels would be a financial stake, and I doubt any of you are oil barons. So unless you are an oil baron, you should have every possible motivation for getting away from them - for economic reasons, political reasons - you don't even have to get climate change involved to recognize that reliance on fossil fuels is a dead-end path. They've been great for getting us this far, but we no longer need them, so we should avoid relying on them.

... cow gas ...

Methane capture!

Its the way of the future!

(Not really factious.)

What


Fossil fuels are an inherently limited resource. The claims of "we run out of oil by X" have traditionally missed their target, but it's madness to assume there's just a limitless supply of the stuff. They will run out eventually. Moving to other sources (mostly electric, via solar/wind/nuclear/whatever) is a more sustainable model.

The only plausible reason for wanting to stay on fossil fuels would be a financial stake, and I doubt any of you are oil barons. So unless you are an oil baron, you should have every possible motivation for getting away from them - for economic reasons, political reasons - you don't even have to get climate change involved to recognize that reliance on fossil fuels is a dead-end path. They've been great for getting us this far, but we no longer need them, so we should avoid relying on them.

Oil is quite literally the best source of energy we've ever discovered.

Yeah, no.

It's like a bunch of radical religious zealots thinking that prayer and faith will solve everything.

Why Are Republicans the Only Climate-Science-Denying Party in the World?
New York Magazine

A totally neutral title.

No it is not a bit neutral. But it asks an important question.

Sehachan, will all the political parties in Italy is there one that universally denies climate science?