WAIT. We were talking CO2 and climate change. Other environmental considerations can make sense. Every claim has to be weighted economically etc etc.

What we can be sure of is that we should never believe the good faith of the radical left in the process. They can't be trusted, as they are lying massively right now on the effects of climate change.

So basically what it's sensible is to take whatever issue becomes hot for the radical left and disregard it completly as we can be almost certain that they are fearmongering about it, as they do with climate change. We should use the radical left to filter for what it's reasonable, in the sense of taking every issue the make their own and delete it from the list of things we should care about.

They have a value scale that is the opposite of what is decent, moral, ethic and valuable to human life and so we can find an use even in such anti-humane positions: using them as a list of what NOT to do.

There is a lot of decent left, especially in europe. Sadly it is being smothered by aggression from the right and the radical left.

I should also remember you that the radical left is currently killing the best environmental approaches we could have.

We would need more nuclear, more hydro, more intensive farming and more GMO to reduce CO2.

The radical left is fighting tooth and nail against nuclear, against hydro, agaisnt intensive farming and against GMO, directly damaging the environment in the process.

So not only they are in bad faith about climate change (when they claim it is destructive for europe). They also actively oppose the best tools we have to reduce emissions.

microbet i would like to know your opinion on nuclear, which would be the perfect complement to variable 0 emission energy sources like wind, solar and so on.

I'd like to know if you agree that germany closing nuclear reactors and activating more coal plants is a crime against intelligence and economics more than a crime against the environment, and it has happened exclusively because of the radical left propaganda that convinced a lot of people that nuclear had to go.

Economic models like this are so difficult to get right because of the ridiculous number of external factors that aren’t included. Understanding it’s a net loss for humanity and will cause disruption is pretty clear, and given the huge risk that this brings should make a selfish person/group/nation pretty terrified based on your own logic.

When wars are fought over water it’s going by to be pretty hard to say the worlds got better

No its not a radical left thing. Its a people's thing. Esp after Tschernobyl and Fukushima a lot of people are afraid of nuclear. Not to mention that the waste issue hasnt been solved. Not to mention that it falls to tax payers to clean up the mess after a nuclear power plant reached its expiration date because the companies who made lots of money with it didnt make enough provisions for the clean up afterwards. Its easy to say "lets use nuclear" but when you ask people if they want to live close to a nuclear power plant the vast majority will simply say no.

People at times can be scared of many things. Evil people are those that play toward irrational fears, increase them in size and duration, and use them as political weapons.

It's is exactly the same thing that happens with the extreme right and immigration. It's stunning that you don't see how the dynamic is identical.

You take an irrational fear, you pump it, you play with it, and you get political power in the process, depriving society of something that is useful.

The waste issue can be a reason for state intervention in nuclear which i won't be against.

For the bold, that's absolutely not obvious. Because of course you give benefits.

Moreover, when, after the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima, seven German nuclear power plants were shut down with immediate effect, the property prices in the area fell by an average of eleven per cent – although it was now safer to live there. The reason: jobs are lost, the municipality loses commercial tax revenues, the purchasing power decreases. Thus, in the vicinity of nuclear power plants, the usual rules of the real estate market apply.

https://gudsol.wordpress.com/2017/10...drea-pugiotto/

Yes but please note that this model was built by leftists. So i mean, it's not like its a biased stretched attempt to model a "not so bad" scenario of climate change. It's the current state of science ability to predict the effects of climate change.

Please also be aware of the fact that in theory all burden of proof should be on the shoulders of those that want to limit freedom in a massive way.

So it's them that should come up with credible models where it is indispensable for survival to act really strong now. And they failed miserably to do so for europe.

So what do they do when they don't have any model that justifies their fearmongering at all for europe? they lie, constantly, with huge insane lies.

And they speculate randomly about stuff, like with the refugee scare, or now you with the water war scare.

Water access has often been a source of conflict for millennia. That's nothing new at all.

Will it get worse? perhaps. What about investing in desalinization, like some countries already do with wild successes? because giving real solutions isn't at all the aim of the radical left. They want unsolvable problems to keep the population under control for indefinite time while they "try to solve the problem".

And it's not like we haven't been through this already several times. I remember the frenzy over recycling paper. The monstrosities of the radical left on that topic were really interesting. "all forests would die" if you, evil selfish consumer, didn't stop buyin paper books.

Now it's pretty clear that sustainble forestry (and IT) eliminated the paper problem (not that it ever existed), so they switched to other stuff.

For the ozone, skin-cancer scare , we went through similar fearmongering.

matt ridley is pretty clear on that topic

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog...-as-a-problem/

It's not the first time the radical, immoral, anti-humane left takes environmental situations and uses it as a weapon against civilians. They want us to feel guilty, the same way the church had power on the minds and bodies in the past. They want to shame us into thinking we are a source of problem, we have to change way to "find the light". And of course we need them as guidance in the new enlightened era.

They are evil enemies of civilization.

This is such a stupid view of history. It’s meaningless because it’s based solely on your own insular view of who gets included in “we”.

Why it Italy included? Italy surely can’t claim much in terms of adding to humanity over the past 150 years. Mussolini says hi! You add it only because it’s included in the arbitrary category “western society”.

If we jump back in time between the 8th and 14th century Persians would be saying “we have done more than our fair share for the world”.

Your view is ahistorical and simply based on racism and ethnocentrism.

I think radio invention alone falsifies this assertion

Yes an arab in 1100 or 1200 would have been correct to claim cultural superiority at the time.

there is no racism or ethnocentrism into saying that uk , germany, italy, japan , the us etc etc in the last 150-200 years did incredible good things for the world in aggregate on net, better than any other human society in history. Because those country don't share race or ethnicity. What they shared and share some are powerful cultural institutions which are objctively better for human welfare than all other society in human history, and which the radical left is trying to destroy.

Technological progress is what helped humanity, and the places, societies and cultures that spearheaded technological progress did more for humanity than those that didn't. And 95%+ of technological progress happened in the last 200 years.

So while it is true that before industrialization other societies had done more for humanity, up to that point, than what became known as the "west", it's pretty clear that in the last 2 hundred years the west accomplishment have been so vast and so hugely positive in aggregate for humanity as to completly overshadow everyone else contribution in history.

But of course it's part of radical leftist ideology to deny and negate the exceptional, without par contribution to humanity welfare of western capitalism (because ALL THAT PROGRESS depending uniquely on the wild success of capitalism). It's all part of the disgraceful attempt to make individuals feel guilty, weak, in order to control them. Stripping people of healthy pride in their societies, in their history, is fundamental to substitute and subvert institutions and methods of organization that provided the best results in human history without par, which is the endgame of radical leftism.

The point. You missed it.

The point is that you call racism and ethnocentrism saying that the industrial revolution is the best thing that ever happened to humanity, and that the societies that unleashed it to the world are those that did most for humanity welfare in human history.

He thinks warmer days in winter is a good thing for mountainous regions which rely on snowpack for water...

There is no monolithic radical left. What is the Marxist, Maoist or Stalinist position on global warming, coal or hydro power? Lots of people who like charter schools, Jesus, and no inheritance tax are concerned about global warming. Lucian, you just say 'left' or 'radical left's for whatever you rant against.

As far as nuclear power goes, I wouldn't close any responsibly run plants, which means Germany shouldn't close any, and maybe they could even build some, but the nuclear plants and waste disposal in the US are a **** show and building more plants would be terrible. Waste disposal containers are like 3' thick and buried in carefully located places in Germany and in the US they arelike 1" thick and sitting out on the beach.

Mostly though it is unnecessary to build more. Solar and wind are cheaper and it's already not far behind if you include storage. The technology to move power cheaply long distances is also already in practice at scale in China. If you started planning a new nuclear plant today it would be obsolete before it went online.

That's such a terrible view. The holocaust alone negates any positive from Germany. How would the world look like if the Jews and other minorities werent killed and forced to find a new home. How would the middle east look like? The US became only what they are by stealing the land from the Indians. Do you think these acts outweigh the good? Also a lot of inventions came through the wars so do you think WW1 and WW2 were necessary to promote technological advancement? There were two world wars necessary to lead Germany into the light. 50 million people killed and you think we are already in the net positive?

You don't really deserve a breakdown of why you are wrong but the nonsense you spout really has to be demonstrated as such.

The conclusions you come to do not reflect the findings of this report. You cited the base model and claimed that this was 'best' and that all models supported you. This is a flat out falsehood, as can be seen by looking at the BHM-LR model from the same damn report.

So you have no leg to stand on in announcing that all or even the 'best' models predict that Europe would gain. The very study you cite undermines your assertion at the first hurdle.

To delve deeper, the reason that the BHM-LR model is not the base model is that it introduces the uncertainty of a further variable that is known to exist but is difficult to estimate. That variable reflects the cumulative effects of climate change. Here's what the report has to say about it:

By omitting this variable the study ensures its base model has more accuracy (based on a 66% confidence interval) but this is a trade off for underestimating the true Social Carbon Cost (SCC) associated with climate change. As evidenced in the very link you supplied, adding this variable to the study pushes the whole of Europe into the red.

Next up let's have a look at what the report fails to include. The first two of these are of obvious importance to the extremely long coastline of Europe.

Does the report include costs associated with ocean acidification? No

Does the report include costs associated with a rising sea level? No

Does the report include the costs of the predicted increase in the frequency of natural disasters (flooding for instance)? No

Does the report include costs associated with economic and social adaptation to climate change? No

All of these factors are considerable upward pressures on the CSCC of Europe (and everywhere else) but because they are difficult to incorporate with any great accuracy they have been left out of the model. Further self confessed omissions include the existence of transboundary effects:

Overall the study evaluates itself thus:

Thankfully the report (unlike you) is honest enough to point out its own omissions and the limitations associated with the things it does include. To take this report and assert it as proof positive of a communistic cabal lying to the populace about the dangers of climate change is the intellectual equivalent of putting on a big red nose and throwing custard pies.

This post is eye-opening. So when you debate online, you put on a mask, go to the_donald or 4chan, and debate against the racists and climate deniers, and you also come to 2p2 a "very left leaning forum" (seriously? Try going on some feminist forums for that, and see how they respond to you - THATS very left leaning, 2p2 is center-left). The question is, who are YOU? What are your REAL beliefs? Always putting on a mask and not being yourself is, at the very least, deviant behavior, and usually considered some type of mental illness.

Because according to you, you simply like to go on forums, under the guise of a "defender of the pillar of individual freedoms", and debate against your perceived bias of that forum or group of people, but what are YOUR true beliefs? As far as everyone else is concerned, you're someone that enjoys playing devils advocate and riling up folks, never agreeing with anyone, and furthermore, you'll readily admit to such actions, justifying them because you consider yourself to be a "defender of the pillars of individual freedoms". Go out into the real world and say that, to someone's face - try it on for size - and see how they react to you because you sound so ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous because it is clear to everyone here that isn't you, that you merely like to argue in bad faith (again, by your own admission) in an attempt to balance out a discussion and negate the bias of your perceived audience.

As to other folks being extremists, and you being a pillar of balance, it would do you good to read your own words, and I quote you once more... because it is quite clear that you are the extremist:

Abdication of basic morals about what? everything that makes life worth living has been developed by western countries in the last few centuries so all of humanity finds meaning only thanks to us. We owe nothing, zero, nada to human beings. We have been the best thing that ever happened to humanity already.

Luciom is the type of people that gives libertarianism such a bad rep.

Libertarianism at its core is extremely social. It simply doesn't work without some assumptions on humans' ability to cooperate and trust each other.

People like Luciom instead takes the axiomatic "every man unto himself" ethos and uses libertarianism as an excuse for their abhorrent beliefs. They simply fail to see that ethos is merely a starting point to show why and how humans have learned to cooperate.

The founding scripture of libertarianism is a story about sociopathic elites who "go Galt" and abandon society to live in their own gated community.

Furthermore, he doesn't really have any beliefs. By his own admission he just goes on internet forums to troll people under the guise of being "a defender of the pillars of individual freedoms" (LOL, seriously dude?), as evidenced by his compulsion to constantly disagree with everyone he enters a discussion with.

Libertarianism at its core is a bunch of old white guys who want it to be like the 50's again. Everything else is just lipstick on the pig.

That's true if you go back to the original meaning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D%C3%A9jacque

Every philosophy that is humanistic will be "extremely social", human beings are very social.

Where did i write against humans ability to cooperate and trust each other?

What would be my "abhorrent beliefs"???

I don't troll, i debate. And i have a very clear set of beliefs. I am what many would consider an extremist on the right on economic issues (not really, but more to the right than most people), and an extremist on the left for private rights issues.

Most people then share with me at least a part of my core beliefs. But otoh, most people are also very far from me on another set of beliefs.

I never found it very useful to focus on the areas of agreements (you say hey i agree, he says eh me too, then what? it's not like you can then go and drink a beer togheter on a forum) when discussing online (while live i instead use the areas of agreement as a way to develop healthy relationships).

I also live in a country where the median political position isn't that of americans, and where the political offer is very different.

If you want to know a real, existing political party that i could stand by even if not agreeing with everything, it's the right-wing part of ALDE in europe.

One example would be VVD in the netherlands (which is the first party there, so in that country i wouldn't be an extremist at all)

But in many countries those positions aren't represented AT ALL (italy included). So yes in italy, or in the US, i would be an extremist, to concur with the main lines of the biggest party in the netherland.

The 50s? every real libertarian i talked to in the us wants at least to go back to before federal income tax was legal, and before the fed was created. Every one of them see those events, and the new deal, as terrible occurrences.

I never read a libertarian praising the 50s (of 1900). I read a lot of them praising 19th century america.

To be clear i am not against the fed existing and operating with a lot of power with a fiat money, i am not against the existence of a federal income tax, and i don't hate the new deal with the same strength libertarians hate it. Because i don't even feel close to american libertarians. They are a parody like many things in american politics usually are.