The doctor comparison made me LOL because both me and my wife have have been seriously misdiagnosed by 10 or more doctors. And my wife was a victim of malpractice.

Not that my experience means anything, but I do love how a paragraph that says 'appeals to authority aren't valid' is responded with an example of an appeal to authority. Awesome.

Sigh this thread.

Who do you think is more qualified to be an authority on climate change: tv weatherman or climatologists with PHDs? Among climatologists with PHD's, 9/10 is pretty close:

"A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 76 out of 79 climatologists who "listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change" believe that mean global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and 75 out of 77 believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures"

"Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey in August 2008 of 2058 climate scientists from 34 different countries. Question 21 "How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?" received 34.6% very much agree, 48.9% agreeing to a large extent (5–6), 15.1% to a small extent (2–4), and 1.35% not agreeing at all."

So whats your argument? That we shouldn't even try to estimate the externalities of anything? That we shouldn't worry about any economic activity that imposes a cost onto anyone because we can't estimate it exactly? I think we should make policies in line with the externality estimates given in the peer-reviewed literature, and right now, the findings of the peer reviewed literature are clear. From a metastudy about the social cost of carbon:

"Even the most conservative assumption lead to positive estimates of the social cost of carbon (cf. Table 1) and the Pigou tax is thus greater than zero."

http://www.economics-ejournal.org/ec...ticles/2008-25

And this isn't even taking into account all of the ancilliary benefits of CO2 reduction.

This has little to do with the ability of economists to estimate external costs. And even with wide ranges in external cost estimates, there is still a strong case to be made for implementing pigouvian taxes and offsetting these tax increases with reductions elsewhere.

Who has been wrong about what exactly?

Such taxes can be modified so that they are more progressive themselves or combined with more progressive taxes elsewhere:

"In August 2007, the World Resources Institute and the Brookings Institution jointly published a policy brief by Tufts Univ. economics professor Gilbert E. Metcalf, outlining a national carbon tax paired with a reduction in the payroll tax. The brief, available here, assesses the impact of a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (equivalent to approximately $60 per ton of carbon) which is used to rebate the federal payroll tax on the first $3,660 of earnings per worker. This tax swap is both revenue-neutral and distributionally neutral. (Harvard professor and former Bush Administration economist Gregory Mankiw mentioned the Metcalf paper in a Sept. 2007 New York Times op-ed, which we discuss on our blog.)"

http://www.carbontax.org/issues/soft...-carbon-taxes/

Sorry to hear about you and your wife's difficulties.

The appeal to authority argument gets confused a lot. I am not arguing:

"scientists say x, thus I have proven x to be correct"

That would be a fallacy. I am instead arguing:

"scientists say x, so x is more likely to be correct"

This does not imply that science or scientists are never wrong. Just that the opinion of science is more likely to be correct about empirically answerable questions than other sources of information. From a position of ignorance, this way of interpreting evidence is perfectly valid.

No one disagrees with "scientists say x, so x is more likely to be correct", so your post is essentially useless.

But you are just asserting that the IPCC was wrong over and over. This isn't true at all.

I find the models and theories largely convincing and the outsider criticism has been severely lacking in my opinion and in the opinions of people who I respect when it comes to science.

Once you concede the above, as well as the premise that most climatologists and economists agree that greenhouse gas emissions impose significant external costs, then its not too hard to make a case for mitigation policies like pigovian taxes. Especially if such policies have significant auxiliary benefits (like reductions in other forms of pollution), are budget neutral (assuming they are offset by reductions in other taxes), and are designed to be non-regressive.

I mean, do I continually have to spoon feed you here? I've posted this several times already, so here it is again:

Those policies will not work because people, especially the developing world, will not constrict themselves to poverty. If the US and Europe choose to fall on their own sword, their sacrifice will be for absolutely nothing (not to mention a privileged few will make billions because their friends wrote the law).

And yah, if you believe in things like 'budget neutral' then someone has a problem with science itt, and it's you.

Its true that you've posted that several times, but its just an assertion, not an argument. How would a revenue neutral non-regressive carbon tax 'constrict people to poverty'?

How exactly would a revenue neutral carbon tax be a sacrifice? You keep assuming that it would be harmful to the economy without actually explaining why. Again, its just taxing stuff that produce externalities more (like energy) while reducing taxes on stuff that don't produce externalities (like income). Why would this be bad for the economy? And who would make 'billions' off such a scheme?

I don't understand what your objection is here exactly; its been done before:

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/...-tax-survives/

I'm talking about the developing world. The easiest, cheapest and most efficient method of power consumption produces CO2. Therefore, the easiest way for impoverished areas to grow economical involves emitting CO2. Holding back their CO2 emissions causes the 3rd world to remain impoverished. Without holding the developing world back, there is no possible way to significantly cut back CO2 emissions globally.



A 'revenue neutral' carbon tax is a sacrifice because it is stealing money from one group to give to a less efficient group. 1 dollar towards gas produces a lot more energy than 1 dollar towards w/e alt energy. Less efficiency = Higher costs = Sacrifice. Econ 101 ftw.

This conservative believes in the truth of science, but also believes in the lying manipulation of those facts and/or parts thereof by the liberal literati and media.

Global warming? ROFLMBFAO

The Earth is doing what it has been doing for hundreds of millions of years. These extended cycles will continue and repeat, regardless of the presence of human ego. It is the height of elitist hubris to think that the human species can do anything of consequence to this insignificant planet in this insignifacant galaxy in this unchartable universe.

The Icelandic volcano and others, and seismic movements will reshape the planet more emphatically and permanently than choosing plastic over paper at the local supermercado.

The Twinkie(TM) will last longer than this trash theory, and will harm the planet less.

you see how this "argument" is at the very best a heuristic right? It has about the same amount of validity as those with the opposing heuristic who find it obvious that 6.5 billion people burning millions of years worth of oil in a couple centuries WOULD make a big difference.

C'mon Rush talks loud (so I assume he''s a scientist) and he says we're too unsignificant to alter anything. Case closed, nerds.

except observed reality shows that it hasn't made a big difference

temperatures are a big yawn compared to earth's history
CO2 levels are a big yawn compared to earth's history

cue 13ball putting up some graph with blatant data manipulation

Ah, but would not even you admit that usability theory is more appropriate to a poker web site forum than the detailed, and obviously Nobel-classed, debates that have preceded?

Sweet, straw man into an ad hominem. Nice use of fallacy.

Believe it not, there are actually scientists, including ones who work on climate models, who dispute the validity of many of the MMGW predictions being made.

The fact that you purport observations that match that guy's decision making heuristic doesn't validate how poor of an argument that is. This is true for people on either side of the opposing heuristics (it is obvious man couldn't affect the environment vs it is obvious man couldn't affect the environment). Whether either of these sides is demonstrated to be true independently doesn't increase the validity of their arguments.

As for history, I don't think anyone denies the temperatures or co2 levels have precedent. However this alone doesn't illegitimize global warming, the fact that man is causing additional warming which can have significant negative consequences over a short period of time historically speaking doesn't depend on whether or not their have been higher maximums in the past.

I suppose you are correct that if you are going to present a terrible rational, you may as well do it on an poker forum where there might be enough people arround to nod their head and defend you.

the onus is still on the warmers to establish a non-falsifiable positive feedback due to the uptick in CO2 emissions due to man

this hasn't happened yet by a wide margin

I think you mean falsifiable.

So, the DISCUSSION is the product, and the means are irrelevent?

oops... I suck... too busy spewing all over the internetz

I should write, "falsifiable, but not already shown incorrect"

Actually:

1. Plants consume co2. Plants feed humans. There are more and more humans to feed every day. We need more plants every day to feed the additional humans. We need more co2 to make more plants to feed more humans. Thanks to burning fossil fuels, we can accomplish this good thing for all humanity.

2. The arctic ice masses are melting (and refreezing, but for argument sake let's stay with the melting thing) which generates billions of metric tons of water into the environment. Additional humans need on average 125 pounds of water per new person, so we need that captive water supply to build and nourish new people. So far, melting arctic ice has built a billion new people in less than 100 years. Thanks to global warming, many new and better people are on the horizon.

Yes, my regional Mensa group newsletter is too confining a format for my enlightening theories, but I accept your apology.

Switching to a burden of proof argument doesn't let you off the hook for trying to defend and undefended claim or for strawmaning the "history" point. Besides, the "onus" is on anyone making a declarative claim ldo.

As for feedback, what specifically are you talking about? Some sort of net feedback? There are dozens of feedback mechanisms, both positive and negative, that are understood at various levels of certainty. Is it one of these in particular you are talking about or a sort of aggregate of them? Noone is denying stefanboltzman if that is what you are talking about...