subject:"Re\: Global warming silliness"

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:39 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 11/18/2013 9:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

 You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why the free
 market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.


 And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't noticed
 that a market requires government (including coercion) to define ownership
 and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't own any more stuff than
 you could carry and defend by force of arms.


 I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy can have,
 ... until bandits get power and perverts the elections and the state power
 separations (and get important control on the media, etc.).

 But we should make clear that a government has nothing to say about your
 food, medications, sports, religious or sexual practices, etc. As long as
 there are no well-motivated complains, the state can't intervene.


 So you think it's a bad idea for the government to require testing
 medications for safety.

The problem is always the same, the government has no incentive to
protect you, but a lot of incentive to protect lucrative businesses.
Crazy stuff is not only allowed but actually encouraged, like giving a
powerful nervous system stimulant to kids whose brains are still
developing, with little research on the long-term effects. This drug
is prescribed, by the way, because kids are bored in school. What a
shocker, must be a disease. Ritalin makes the kids more compliant and
productive. A bit creepy if you think about it, no?

Meanwhile paracetamol is mixed with other drugs like pain-killers and
opiates, so that people that abuse them get sick in horrible ways.

 You liked the old patent medicine system better?
 You don't like the government requiring food labels with contents?  How
 about airline safety requlations; why not just let the customers decide
 based on reputation (that's what libertarians want)?

You talk as if there are only these two options. I also prefer to buy
food that comes with a label of contents. Apparently, both you and me
would prefer products with such labels. So there's a market for it,
right? Then certification: private certification companies would have
less incentives to lie, because once they are caught lying they lose
our trust and consequently their business. In the current model, they
are caught lying but nobody can show up and compete on better
certification.

Telmo.

 Brent

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On 18 Nov 2013, at 18:13, meekerdb wrote:

 On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:

 On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
  solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

 Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
 for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
 government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?


 It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not because no
 one allows it to be.


  No one is going to clean
  up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there
  is
  no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

 The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
 would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
 reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
 times are myths or gross simplifications


 Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the logic would
 hold.


  The tragedy
  of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone wants
  something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
  prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
  organising somone else to do it.

 If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
 there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
 don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
 government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
 forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
 you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
 then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
 altruism.

 Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
 if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
 the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
 even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
 This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
 and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
 emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
 not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
 Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
 decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
 deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
 end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
 freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
 then some, and then give it to banks.

 Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
 be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
 routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
 are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
 transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
 coercion and market distortion.

  And if no one does it, we all end up worse
  off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science, although
  game theory has something to say about it.

 Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
 introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.


 You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why the free
 market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.


 And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't noticed
 that a market requires government (including coercion) to define ownership
 and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't own any more stuff than
 you could carry and defend by force of arms.


 I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy can have,
 ... until bandits get power and perverts the elections and the state power
 separations (and get important control on the media, etc.).

But how to create a system that prevents the bandits from getting there?

 But we should make clear that a government has nothing to say about your
 food, medications, sports, religious or sexual practices, etc. As long as
 there are no well-motivated complains, the state can't intervene.

 Bruno



 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-19 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 19 Nov 2013, at 10:27, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be  
wrote:


On 18 Nov 2013, at 18:13, meekerdb wrote:

On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:

On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com  
wrote:


On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free  
market

solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.


Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?



It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not  
because no

one allows it to be.




No one is going to clean
up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because  
there

is
no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.


The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
times are myths or gross simplifications



Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the  
logic would

hold.




The tragedy
of the commons is one reason to have governments, because  
everyone wants
something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they  
are

prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
organising somone else to do it.


If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige.  
You

don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they  
are
forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is  
that
you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power  
and
then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in  
more

altruism.

Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything  
or

even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this  
system

and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too  
great.
Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money,  
so I
decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations  
that I

deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
then some, and then give it to banks.

Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the  
incentive to

be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath  
you
are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to  
enter a

transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
coercion and market distortion.


And if no one does it, we all end up worse
off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science,  
although

game theory has something to say about it.


Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.



You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why  
the free
market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered  
my point.



And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't  
noticed
that a market requires government (including coercion) to define  
ownership
and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't own any more  
stuff than

you could carry and defend by force of arms.


I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy  
can have,
... until bandits get power and perverts the elections and the  
state power

separations (and get important control on the media, etc.).


But how to create a system that prevents the bandits from getting  
there?


This is a bit like: how to create an organism immune against disease?
There are no general rules. The US constitution was rather good, but  
has been violated repeatedly, perhaps since the assassination of  
Kennedy or after, or even before; it is complex.


I do have ideas, including the vote on programs, replacing the vote on  
persons. Maybe we should throw out the politics as job.
Politicians would be social workers, implementing only ideas which  
would have won the election. Everyone would have a task in the state,  
for a period of two years. It would be a social duty, with a  
reasonable

Re: Global warming silliness

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 6:13 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:

 On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
  solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

 Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
 for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
 government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?


 It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not because no
 one allows it to be.


  No one is going to clean
  up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there
  is
  no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

 The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
 would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
 reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
 times are myths or gross simplifications


 Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the logic would
 hold.


  The tragedy
  of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone wants
  something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
  prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
  organising somone else to do it.

 If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
 there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
 don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
 government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
 forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
 you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
 then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
 altruism.

 Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
 if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
 the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
 even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
 This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
 and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
 emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
 not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
 Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
 decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
 deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
 end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
 freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
 then some, and then give it to banks.

 Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
 be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
 routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
 are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
 transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
 coercion and market distortion.

  And if no one does it, we all end up worse
  off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science, although
  game theory has something to say about it.

 Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
 introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.


 You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why the free
 market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.


 And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men

I see I walked into a trap. Look back in the archives. You mentioned
your belief that people question global warming because they don't
trust the government. I argued that it's not such a bad idea to
distrust the government -- but never gave this as a reason to distrust
scientific models. Where's the straw man?

 that he hasn't noticed
 that a market requires government (including coercion) to define ownership
 and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't own any more stuff than
 you could carry and defend by force of arms.

No, without cooperation you couldn't own any more stuff than you could
carry and defend by force of arms. The dogma you're proposing is that
central government is the only way to promote cooperation.

Many alternatives have been proposed, like private arbitration courts
(this exists already, to a degree). If I enter a contract with you, we
have to agree on some court to have authority over disputes. Of
course, I'm free to ignore the decision of the court, but then will be
less likely to have people agree to enter contracts with me. There are
many others, you can google them. Or you can read this, for example:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

Could

Re: Global warming silliness

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 8:12 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
  solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

 Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
 for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
 government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?


 It isn't a question of not allowing the commons to be part of the market.
 YOU try convincing a private organisation to put lots of resources into
 fixing the commons. Try and persuade, say, Dell or Oracle or McDonalds that
 they should spend a substantial part of their revenue building motorways or
 fixing the climate, and see how far you get.

There is a huge market for roads. Both McDonalds and Dell need them to
distribute their stuff. Why would they not be built? Sounds like a
great investment. But there would be less roads, that's for sure. For
example, my bankrupt home country probably wouldn't have two highways
running 10 Km parallel to each other, like you can see here (A17 and
A1):

https://maps.google.com/?ll=39.880235,-8.539124spn=0.658647,1.18103t=mz=10

They both charge expensive tolls, by the way. A17 is always empty, but
that's not a problem because the company that built it has a
guaranteed minimum profits contract with the government that tax
payers have to support.

Reducing carbon emissions will not be a problem once the alternatives
become efficient, and thus profitable. Unless, of course, the oil
companies manage to lobby the government to prevent it.

If we are facing an extinction level event where the only chance of
survival is to shut down civilisation for a while, then we are dead
already. That is never going to happen, government or no government.

Telmo.

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 11/19/2013 1:09 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:39 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/18/2013 9:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

You seem to be arguing against a straw man here. I explained why the free
market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.

And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't noticed
that a market requires government (including coercion) to define ownership
and punish fraud. Without government you couldn't own any more stuff than
you could carry and defend by force of arms.

I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy can have,
... until bandits get power and perverts the elections and the state power
separations (and get important control on the media, etc.).

But we should make clear that a government has nothing to say about your
food, medications, sports, religious or sexual practices, etc. As long as
there are no well-motivated complains, the state can't intervene.

So you think it's a bad idea for the government to require testing
medications for safety.

The problem is always the same, the government has no incentive to
protect you, but a lot of incentive to protect lucrative businesses.

You mean the giant Ritalin industry?

Crazy stuff is not only allowed but actually encouraged, like giving a
powerful nervous system stimulant to kids whose brains are still
developing, with little research on the long-term effects.

My son was prescribed ritalin in high school and it helped him a lot. And his problem was
not that he was bored. I don't know why you think there is little research on long-term
effects? What's the research on the long term effects of HPV vaccines? Michelle Bachman
thinks they cause mental retardation - based on one anecdote.

This drug
is prescribed, by the way, because kids are bored in school. What a
shocker, must be a disease. Ritalin makes the kids more compliant and
productive. A bit creepy if you think about it, no?

Meanwhile paracetamol is mixed with other drugs like pain-killers and
opiates, so that people that abuse them get sick in horrible ways.

You liked the old patent medicine system better?
You don't like the government requiring food labels with contents? How
about airline safety requlations; why not just let the customers decide
based on reputation (that's what libertarians want)?

You talk as if there are only these two options. I also prefer to buy
food that comes with a label of contents. Apparently, both you and me
would prefer products with such labels. So there's a market for it,
right? Then certification: private certification companies would have
less incentives to lie, because once they are caught lying they lose
our trust and consequently their business.

And you think this company is going to do long-term research? How are they going to be
caught lying based on statistics from 20yrs after the fact? What would they have said
about alar on apples?

In the current model, they
are caught lying but nobody can show up and compete on better
certification.

Sure they can. There's nothing to stop you from starting a rating system for drugs and
selling it to consumers and doctors. Nothing except you don't have the money or time to
do the research and the only people who might fund it are the pharmaceutical companies.

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/19/2013 1:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy can have,
... until bandits get power and perverts the elections and the state power
separations (and get important control on the media, etc.).

But how to create a system that prevents the bandits from getting there?



Democracy permits you to vote them out.  The difficulty is finding a good replacement to 
vote in.  That requires activism and money - it can't be done by a system.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/19/2013 2:58 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 6:13 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:

On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?


It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not because no
one allows it to be.



No one is going to clean
up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there
is
no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
times are myths or gross simplifications


Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the logic would
hold.



The tragedy
of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone wants
something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
organising somone else to do it.

If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
altruism.

Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
then some, and then give it to banks.

Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
coercion and market distortion.


And if no one does it, we all end up worse
off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science, although
game theory has something to say about it.

Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.


You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why the free
market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.


And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men

I see I walked into a trap. Look back in the archives. You mentioned
your belief that people question global warming because they don't
trust the government. I argued that it's not such a bad idea to
distrust the government -- but never gave this as a reason to distrust
scientific models. Where's the straw man?


that he hasn't noticed
that a market requires government (including coercion) to define ownership
and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't own any more stuff than
you could carry and defend by force of arms.

No, without cooperation you couldn't own any more stuff than you could
carry and defend by force of arms. The dogma you're proposing is that
central government is the only way to promote cooperation.


No, just the only way we know that works for nation sized groups.



Many alternatives have been proposed, like private arbitration courts
(this exists already, to a degree). If I enter a contract with you, we
have to agree on some court to have authority over disputes. Of
course, I'm free to ignore the decision of the court, but then will be
less likely to have people agree to enter contracts with me. There are
many others, you can google them. Or you can read this, for example:

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-19 Thread Richard Ruquist

Reaganomics is hardly neo-liberalism


On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 1:02 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 11/19/2013 2:58 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 6:13 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:

 On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
 solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

 Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
 for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
 government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?


 It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not because no
 one allows it to be.


  No one is going to clean
 up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there
 is
 no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

 The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
 would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
 reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
 times are myths or gross simplifications


 Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the logic
 would
 hold.


  The tragedy
 of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone
 wants
 something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
 prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
 organising somone else to do it.

 If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
 there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
 don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
 government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
 forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
 you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
 then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
 altruism.

 Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
 if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
 the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
 even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
 This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
 and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
 emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
 not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
 Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
 decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
 deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
 end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
 freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
 then some, and then give it to banks.

 Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
 be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
 routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
 are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
 transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
 coercion and market distortion.

  And if no one does it, we all end up worse
 off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science,
 although
 game theory has something to say about it.

 Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
 introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.


 You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why the
 free
 market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my
 point.


 And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men

 I see I walked into a trap. Look back in the archives. You mentioned
 your belief that people question global warming because they don't
 trust the government. I argued that it's not such a bad idea to
 distrust the government -- but never gave this as a reason to distrust
 scientific models. Where's the straw man?


  that he hasn't noticed
 that a market requires government (including coercion) to define
 ownership
 and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't own any more stuff
 than
 you could carry and defend by force of arms.

 No, without cooperation you couldn't own any more stuff than you could
 carry and defend by force of arms. The dogma you're proposing is that
 central government is the only way to promote cooperation.


 No, just the only way we know that works for nation sized groups.


 Many alternatives have been proposed, like private arbitration courts
 (this exists already, to a degree). If I enter a contract with you, we
 have to agree on some court to have authority over disputes. Of
 course, I'm free to ignore the decision of

Re: Global warming silliness

On 11/19/2013 3:11 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 8:12 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?

It isn't a question of not allowing the commons to be part of the market.
YOU try convincing a private organisation to put lots of resources into
fixing the commons. Try and persuade, say, Dell or Oracle or McDonalds that
they should spend a substantial part of their revenue building motorways or
fixing the climate, and see how far you get.

There is a huge market for roads. Both McDonalds and Dell need them to
distribute their stuff. Why would they not be built? Sounds like a
great investment.

Because it's hard to collect money just from users of your road. Have you never used a
toll road? You act as though there is some government conspiracy preventing all these
wonderful libertarian solutions. There's not. They have all existed at different times
and places. There were toll roads. Private police forces. Private fire fighters. Private
armies. There still are some places. But in general they didn't work as well as public ones.

But there would be less roads, that's for sure. For
example, my bankrupt home country probably wouldn't have two highways
running 10 Km parallel to each other, like you can see here (A17 and
A1):

https://maps.google.com/?ll=39.880235,-8.539124spn=0.658647,1.18103t=mz=10

Reducing carbon emissions will not be a problem once the alternatives
become efficient,

But the efficiency depends on lots of externalities. When the fossil fuel industry was
getting started the emission of CO2 (and other pollutants) wasn't recognized as an
external cost. If is were, then fossil fuel might already be less efficient than nuclear
and wind. And it's not just overall efficiency that counts, it's incremental efficiency.
The market only considers the return on the increment of investment to be made. The
infrastructure for distribution and use of fossil fuel is already in place, so it's much
easier to profit by supplying more gasoline to cars than supplying electrical power to
cars. Even thought the latter is more energy efficient.

Brent

and thus profitable. Unless, of course, the oil
companies manage to lobby the government to prevent it.

If we are facing an extinction level event where the only chance of
survival is to shut down civilisation for a while, then we are dead
already. That is never going to happen, government or no government.

Telmo.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:



 2013/11/19 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
 
 
  2013/11/18 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
 
  On 11/18/2013 4:43 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 
  On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:23 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
  wrote:
 
  On 11/17/2013 4:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 
  On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
  wrote:
 
  On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 
  But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the
  government
  is
  not
 
  trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us
  about
  global
  warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You
  didn't
  find
  lies
  about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or
  even
  in
  arXiv.
 
  No, but then they come up with this plan
 
 
  What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan
  whatsoever.
 
  Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
  access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of CO2
  emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
  treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
  regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the
  main
  suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this
  not
  correct?
 
 
  That's the market based approach to reducing CO2 emissions by
  charging
  for
  the externalities.  But there is no treaty even on the table to
  require
  any
  particular solution or even to enforce any degree of reduction.
 
 
  that the way to solve the
  problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.
 
 
  So even the proposals don't give any new power to governments - they
  always
  had the power to tax.
 
  This is too simplistic. Taxes have a long and complicated history, and
  several types of taxes that are accepted today were very controversial
  not so long ago. For example, the income tax in the US came into
  existence in 1913, with ratification of the 16th amendment. My father
  lived a good part of his life under the fascist regime in Portugal. We
  had a thriving match industry, so there was a tax on lighters. I have
  the license he had to carry in his pocket to use his lighter. This tax
  would now be illegal because of a UE treaty that forbids this type of
  protectionism. It was made redundant before that by the
  post-revolutionary nationalisation and consequent destruction of the
  match industry.
 
  Then, also in the UE, we saw the social security system turn into a
  tax: first, people were convinced that they should put some money
  aside and let the government take care of it, so that it is later able
  to provide you with a pension. Now that this system is collapsing,
  existing pensions are being cut, future pensions are uncertain and the
  age of retirement is rising. Yet, people don't pay less to social
  security.
 
  The pattern seems to always be the same: an initial reasonable plan,
  then a slow slide down a long sequence of small corrections and
  mistakes that eventually lead to pure obligation with nothing in
  return. Now, most UE citizens are resigned to the idea that they have
  to pay taxes to make up for past mistakes and expect nothing in
  return. This was attained by a process of slow cooking.
 
  You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.
 
 
  Any
  proposed solution that does not involve further government
  intrusion
  in our lives is rejected.
 
 
  What solution is that?
 
  More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals exists
  and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always met
  with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying that
  all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
  these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that comes
  from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
  immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.
 
 
  Sure, there's a lot of luddite resistance fed by scares like
  Fukushima.
  The
  important role I see for government is driving the RD to LFTRs.
  It's
  too
  big and too politically risky to expect private investment to take it
  on.
  It needs government funded and government protected development -
  just
  like
  the internet, spaceflight, uranium reactors, vaccination,
  intercontinental
  railroads, and just about any other really big technological
  development.
 
  I'll comment on two: the internet and railroads.
 
  The internet is the synergistic outcome of a number of technologies. I
  am fairly certain that no government desired the internet as it exists
  today.
 
 
  First, that's your supposition.  If you named anything in the world as
  it
  exists today there would be some government, maybe even all people,
  who
  would want it to be

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-19 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2013/11/20 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

 On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
 
 
  2013/11/19 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com
 
  On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
  wrote:
  
  
  
   2013/11/18 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
  
   On 11/18/2013 4:43 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
  
   On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:23 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
   wrote:
  
   On 11/17/2013 4:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
  
   On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
   wrote:
  
   On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
  
   But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the
   government
   is
   not
  
   trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us
   about
   global
   warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You
   didn't
   find
   lies
   about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review
 or
   even
   in
   arXiv.
  
   No, but then they come up with this plan
  
  
   What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan
   whatsoever.
  
   Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
   access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of CO2
   emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
   treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
   regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the
   main
   suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this
   not
   correct?
  
  
   That's the market based approach to reducing CO2 emissions by
   charging
   for
   the externalities.  But there is no treaty even on the table to
   require
   any
   particular solution or even to enforce any degree of reduction.
  
  
   that the way to solve the
   problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.
  
  
   So even the proposals don't give any new power to governments -
 they
   always
   had the power to tax.
  
   This is too simplistic. Taxes have a long and complicated history,
 and
   several types of taxes that are accepted today were very
 controversial
   not so long ago. For example, the income tax in the US came into
   existence in 1913, with ratification of the 16th amendment. My
 father
   lived a good part of his life under the fascist regime in Portugal.
 We
   had a thriving match industry, so there was a tax on lighters. I
 have
   the license he had to carry in his pocket to use his lighter. This
 tax
   would now be illegal because of a UE treaty that forbids this type
 of
   protectionism. It was made redundant before that by the
   post-revolutionary nationalisation and consequent destruction of the
   match industry.
  
   Then, also in the UE, we saw the social security system turn into a
   tax: first, people were convinced that they should put some money
   aside and let the government take care of it, so that it is later
 able
   to provide you with a pension. Now that this system is collapsing,
   existing pensions are being cut, future pensions are uncertain and
 the
   age of retirement is rising. Yet, people don't pay less to social
   security.
  
   The pattern seems to always be the same: an initial reasonable plan,
   then a slow slide down a long sequence of small corrections and
   mistakes that eventually lead to pure obligation with nothing in
   return. Now, most UE citizens are resigned to the idea that they
 have
   to pay taxes to make up for past mistakes and expect nothing in
   return. This was attained by a process of slow cooking.
  
   You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.
  
  
   Any
   proposed solution that does not involve further government
   intrusion
   in our lives is rejected.
  
  
   What solution is that?
  
   More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals
 exists
   and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always
 met
   with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying
 that
   all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
   these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that comes
   from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
   immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.
  
  
   Sure, there's a lot of luddite resistance fed by scares like
   Fukushima.
   The
   important role I see for government is driving the RD to LFTRs.
   It's
   too
   big and too politically risky to expect private investment to take
 it
   on.
   It needs government funded and government protected development -
   just
   like
   the internet, spaceflight, uranium reactors, vaccination,
   intercontinental
   railroads, and just about any other really big technological
   development.
  
   I'll comment on two: the internet and railroads.
  
   The internet is the synergistic outcome of a number of
 technologies. I
   am fairly certain that no government desired the internet

Re: Global warming silliness

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:

 On 19 Nov 2013, at 10:27, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote:


 On 18 Nov 2013, at 18:13, meekerdb wrote:

 On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:

 On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:


 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
 solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.


 Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
 for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
 government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?



 It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not because no
 one allows it to be.



 No one is going to clean
 up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there
 is
 no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.


 The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
 would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
 reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
 times are myths or gross simplifications



 Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the logic
 would
 hold.



 The tragedy
 of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone
 wants
 something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
 prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
 organising somone else to do it.


 If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
 there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
 don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
 government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
 forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
 you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
 then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
 altruism.

 Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
 if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
 the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
 even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
 This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
 and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
 emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
 not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
 Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
 decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
 deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
 end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
 freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
 then some, and then give it to banks.

 Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
 be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
 routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
 are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
 transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
 coercion and market distortion.

 And if no one does it, we all end up worse
 off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science,
 although
 game theory has something to say about it.


 Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
 introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.



 You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why the
 free
 market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my
 point.


 And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't
 noticed
 that a market requires government (including coercion) to define
 ownership
 and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't own any more stuff
 than
 you could carry and defend by force of arms.


 I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy can
 have,
 ... until bandits get power and perverts the elections and the state
 power
 separations (and get important control on the media, etc.).


 But how to create a system that prevents the bandits from getting there?


 This is a bit like: how to create an organism immune against disease?

I see it like this too, and I feel Nature is a good inspiration here.
The immune system doesn't use centralised control either.

 There are no general rules. The US constitution was rather good,

I admire the US constitution too. In fact, my political position is
essentially to follow it (although I like to imagine possibilities for
peaceful world with further increases in freedom).

 but has
 been violated repeatedly, perhaps since the assassination of

Re: Global warming silliness

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote:



 2013/11/20 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

 On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
 
 
  2013/11/19 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com
 
  On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com
  wrote:
  
  
  
   2013/11/18 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
  
   On 11/18/2013 4:43 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
  
   On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:23 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
   wrote:
  
   On 11/17/2013 4:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
  
   On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
   wrote:
  
   On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
  
   But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the
   government
   is
   not
  
   trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning
   us
   about
   global
   warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You
   didn't
   find
   lies
   about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review
   or
   even
   in
   arXiv.
  
   No, but then they come up with this plan
  
  
   What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan
   whatsoever.
  
   Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
   access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of
   CO2
   emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
   treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
   regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the
   main
   suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this
   not
   correct?
  
  
   That's the market based approach to reducing CO2 emissions by
   charging
   for
   the externalities.  But there is no treaty even on the table to
   require
   any
   particular solution or even to enforce any degree of reduction.
  
  
   that the way to solve the
   problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned
   government.
  
  
   So even the proposals don't give any new power to governments -
   they
   always
   had the power to tax.
  
   This is too simplistic. Taxes have a long and complicated history,
   and
   several types of taxes that are accepted today were very
   controversial
   not so long ago. For example, the income tax in the US came into
   existence in 1913, with ratification of the 16th amendment. My
   father
   lived a good part of his life under the fascist regime in Portugal.
   We
   had a thriving match industry, so there was a tax on lighters. I
   have
   the license he had to carry in his pocket to use his lighter. This
   tax
   would now be illegal because of a UE treaty that forbids this type
   of
   protectionism. It was made redundant before that by the
   post-revolutionary nationalisation and consequent destruction of
   the
   match industry.
  
   Then, also in the UE, we saw the social security system turn into a
   tax: first, people were convinced that they should put some money
   aside and let the government take care of it, so that it is later
   able
   to provide you with a pension. Now that this system is collapsing,
   existing pensions are being cut, future pensions are uncertain and
   the
   age of retirement is rising. Yet, people don't pay less to social
   security.
  
   The pattern seems to always be the same: an initial reasonable
   plan,
   then a slow slide down a long sequence of small corrections and
   mistakes that eventually lead to pure obligation with nothing in
   return. Now, most UE citizens are resigned to the idea that they
   have
   to pay taxes to make up for past mistakes and expect nothing in
   return. This was attained by a process of slow cooking.
  
   You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.
  
  
   Any
   proposed solution that does not involve further government
   intrusion
   in our lives is rejected.
  
  
   What solution is that?
  
   More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals
   exists
   and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always
   met
   with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying
   that
   all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
   these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that
   comes
   from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
   immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.
  
  
   Sure, there's a lot of luddite resistance fed by scares like
   Fukushima.
   The
   important role I see for government is driving the RD to LFTRs.
   It's
   too
   big and too politically risky to expect private investment to take
   it
   on.
   It needs government funded and government protected development -
   just
   like
   the internet, spaceflight, uranium reactors, vaccination,
   intercontinental
   railroads, and just about any other really big technological
   development.
  
   I'll comment on two: the internet and railroads.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-18 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
 solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?

 No one is going to clean
 up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there is
 no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
times are myths or gross simplifications

 The tragedy
 of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone wants
 something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
 prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
 organising somone else to do it.

If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
altruism.

Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
then some, and then give it to banks.

Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
coercion and market distortion.

 And if no one does it, we all end up worse
 off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science, although
 game theory has something to say about it.

Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.

Telmo.

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-18 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:46 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
  solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

 Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
 for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
 government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?


 It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not because no
 one allows it to be.

Sure, and I don't blame people. We all spend about 12 years in the
government's education system. The manufactured consent relies on
several devices, namely political parties exploring human tribal
tendencies. This is why you see people defending Obama while he does
many things that they find repugnant. Another powerful weapon is fear.


  No one is going to clean
  up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there
  is
  no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

 The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
 would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
 reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
 times are myths or gross simplifications


 Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the logic would
 hold.


  The tragedy
  of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone wants
  something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
  prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
  organising somone else to do it.

 If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
 there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
 don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
 government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
 forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
 you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
 then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
 altruism.

 Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
 if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
 the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
 even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
 This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
 and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
 emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
 not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
 Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
 decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
 deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
 end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
 freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
 then some, and then give it to banks.

 Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
 be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
 routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
 are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
 transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
 coercion and market distortion.

  And if no one does it, we all end up worse
  off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science, although
  game theory has something to say about it.

 Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
 introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.


 You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why the free
 market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.

Well I tried to point out several examples on how it does. Trade
reduces violence, for example. In a free market, reputation is very
important. This is why careers can be destroyed in a free market, but
this never seems to happen to people who control means of coercion.
Reputation is a natural mechanism that our species evolved precisely
to deal with tragedy of the commons like situations.

With more freedom, people don't become suddenly irrational. Our
civilisation improves because we know more and our analytical skills
keep improving. Also because we taste better lives. I have a window
that faces a private courtyard. If I started throwing my trash out of
the window, my neighbours wouldn't be too happy about it. I wouldn't
want to do it either, I like my surroundings to be clean. None of this
would change with more freedom. Me and my neighbours have to cooperate
to hire someone to clean the common areas. Agreeing to do my part is a
contractual obligation for me to rent

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-18 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:23 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 11/17/2013 4:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government
 is
 not

 trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us about
 global
 warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You didn't
 find
 lies
 about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even
 in
 arXiv.

 No, but then they come up with this plan


 What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan whatsoever.

 Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
 access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of CO2
 emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
 treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
 regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the main
 suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this not
 correct?


 That's the market based approach to reducing CO2 emissions by charging for
 the externalities.  But there is no treaty even on the table to require any
 particular solution or even to enforce any degree of reduction.



 that the way to solve the
 problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.


 So even the proposals don't give any new power to governments - they always
 had the power to tax.

This is too simplistic. Taxes have a long and complicated history, and
several types of taxes that are accepted today were very controversial
not so long ago. For example, the income tax in the US came into
existence in 1913, with ratification of the 16th amendment. My father
lived a good part of his life under the fascist regime in Portugal. We
had a thriving match industry, so there was a tax on lighters. I have
the license he had to carry in his pocket to use his lighter. This tax
would now be illegal because of a UE treaty that forbids this type of
protectionism. It was made redundant before that by the
post-revolutionary nationalisation and consequent destruction of the
match industry.

Then, also in the UE, we saw the social security system turn into a
tax: first, people were convinced that they should put some money
aside and let the government take care of it, so that it is later able
to provide you with a pension. Now that this system is collapsing,
existing pensions are being cut, future pensions are uncertain and the
age of retirement is rising. Yet, people don't pay less to social
security.

The pattern seems to always be the same: an initial reasonable plan,
then a slow slide down a long sequence of small corrections and
mistakes that eventually lead to pure obligation with nothing in
return. Now, most UE citizens are resigned to the idea that they have
to pay taxes to make up for past mistakes and expect nothing in
return. This was attained by a process of slow cooking.



 You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.


 Any
 proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
 in our lives is rejected.


 What solution is that?

 More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals exists
 and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always met
 with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying that
 all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
 these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that comes
 from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
 immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.


 Sure, there's a lot of luddite resistance fed by scares like Fukushima.  The
 important role I see for government is driving the RD to LFTRs.  It's too
 big and too politically risky to expect private investment to take it on.
 It needs government funded and government protected development - just like
 the internet, spaceflight, uranium reactors, vaccination, intercontinental
 railroads, and just about any other really big technological development.

I'll comment on two: the internet and railroads.

The internet is the synergistic outcome of a number of technologies. I
am fairly certain that no government desired the internet as it exists
today. I can be fairly certain because they're using large chunks of
our money to try to make it go away in its current format. Many
different protocols were dreamt of. Creating a working internet
protocol does not take a genius. It just so happened that TCP/IP
gained popularity faster than other alternatives. A very great part of
what makes the internet what it is today is open-source software.
Sure, many companies and government organisations got in that action
too for a number of reasons. But we saw an entire unix kernel being
developed in front of our eyes by a Finnish kid and his followers. I
remembered when this was laughed at, something that only a gigantic

Re: Global warming silliness

On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:
On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com
mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com
mailto:lizj...@gmail.com
wrote:
This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?

It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not because no one allows it
to be.

No one is going to clean
up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there is
no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
times are myths or gross simplifications

Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the logic would
hold.

The tragedy
of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone wants
something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
organising somone else to do it.

If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige. You
don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is that
you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
altruism.

Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this system
and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too great.
Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations that I
deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
then some, and then give it to banks.

Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive to
be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
coercion and market distortion.

And if no one does it, we all end up worse
off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science, although
game theory has something to say about it.

Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.

You seem to be arguing against a straw man here. I explained why the free market can't
fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.

And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't noticed that a market
requires government (including coercion) to define ownership and punish fraud. Without
government you couldn't own any more stuff than you could carry and defend by force of arms.

Brent

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/18/2013 4:31 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

In fact, in the 90s Microsoft wasn't too happy with how the web was
suddenly exploding and out of their control. Using their monopolistic
position, they created a browser and gave it away for free, then
stalled its development. This created a tragedy of the commons
situation for the rest of us: we would all benefit from a better web
but this was too costly of a problem for any of us to face
individually, and there was quick profit to be made by just
cooperating with the status quo.


They also used their deep pockets to buy up small innovative companies that produced 
software that outcompeted parts of their office suite.  If the owners didn't want to sell 
at MS's price, the MS would announce that the *next* release of Windoze was going to 
include whatever made the competing software better - for free.  This of course would 
immediately kill the market for the competing software and the owners would be forced to 
sell.


MS also used their position to get computer makers, like Dell, to deliver computers only 
with MS operating systems. But hey, it's just the free market.  MS was prosecuted for 
restraint of trade and might even have been split into an OS company and an application 
company, except that the Bush administration came into office and essentially dropped the 
prosecution with a slap on the wrist.  The prosecutions in Europe proceeded with a little 
more severe penalties.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-18 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 18 Nov 2013, at 18:13, meekerdb wrote:


On 11/18/2013 1:46 AM, LizR wrote:
On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com  
wrote:

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free  
market

 solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?

It isn't part of the market because no one wants it to be, not  
because no one allows it to be.


 No one is going to clean
 up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because  
there is

 no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so.

The medieval times were not exactly a period of free market, so this
would be an example on how government can solve things... or not. In
reality, many of the things we learned in high school about medieval
times are myths or gross simplifications

Not the tragedy of the commons, however. But even if it was the  
logic would hold.


 The tragedy
 of the commons is one reason to have governments, because  
everyone wants
 something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they  
are

 prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
 organising somone else to do it.

If they are prepared to chip in a donation there is no problem. If
there is money to be made, the free market will be glad to oblige.  
You

don't seem prepared to call things by its names: the idea of
government is that, when people are not prepared to chip in, they are
forced to do so, ultimately by violent means. The paradox here is  
that

you are trusting a small group of people with this coercive power and
then expecting this small group and power asymmetry to result in more
altruism.

Again, reality is complex. Current forms of democracy would not work
if implemented in previous cultures, because people would not accept
the social norms that come with them. You cannot police everything or
even 1% of what's going on. Systems work because they become stable.
This stability does not come from consent (I was born into this  
system

and never consented to it, neither did you). It comes from the
emergence of sets of incentives. I disagree with many laws that I'm
not going to break because the personal cost to me would be too  
great.

Suppose I decide I don't trust the government with my tax money, so I
decide to take it instead and give it directly to organisations  
that I

deem worthy: hospitals, schools, research centres and so on. I would
end up in jail for chipping in. In fact government robs me of my
freedom to chip in, because they take all of my chip in money and
then some, and then give it to banks.

Incentives also emerge from free markets, importantly the incentive  
to

be nice to the people you trade with. Where there are more trade
routes there are less wars. If you are polluting the air I breath you
are being hostile towards me, and I am less likely to want to enter a
transaction with you. But these delicate balances can't arise under
coercion and market distortion.

 And if no one does it, we all end up worse
 off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science,  
although

 game theory has something to say about it.

Prisoner dilemma scenarios don't magically disappear once you
introduce coercion. In fact, I argue that they multiply.

You seem to be arguing against a straw man here.  I explained why  
the free market can't fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't  
answered my point.


And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't  
noticed that a market requires government (including coercion) to  
define ownership and punish fraud.  Without government you couldn't  
own any more stuff than you could carry and defend by force of arms.


I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy can  
have, ... until bandits get power and perverts the elections and the  
state power separations (and get important control on the media, etc.).


But we should make clear that a government has nothing to say about  
your food, medications, sports, religious or sexual practices, etc. As  
long as there are no well-motivated complains, the state can't  
intervene.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/18/2013 4:31 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

If I tried to buy some land and start an
independent city, stormtroopers would show up at some point. Even if
I'm not harming anyone. Even if I'm totally self-reliant.


Depends on what you mean by independent city.  If you just mean a place with homes and 
businesses - no problem.  But if you want to own a city with tax and police powers, then 
you need a charter from the state. This guarantees that you follow certain transparency, 
accounting, and democratic procedures in the governing of your city. And there are town 
(very small ones) that have been created in exactly that way.  By using stormtroopers 
you imply that not being able to create a city with your own stormtroopers is unreasonable.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/18/2013 4:43 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:23 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/17/2013 4:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government
is
not

trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us about
global
warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You didn't
find
lies
about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even
in
arXiv.

No, but then they come up with this plan


What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan whatsoever.

Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of CO2
emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the main
suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this not
correct?


That's the market based approach to reducing CO2 emissions by charging for
the externalities.  But there is no treaty even on the table to require any
particular solution or even to enforce any degree of reduction.



that the way to solve the
problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.


So even the proposals don't give any new power to governments - they always
had the power to tax.

This is too simplistic. Taxes have a long and complicated history, and
several types of taxes that are accepted today were very controversial
not so long ago. For example, the income tax in the US came into
existence in 1913, with ratification of the 16th amendment. My father
lived a good part of his life under the fascist regime in Portugal. We
had a thriving match industry, so there was a tax on lighters. I have
the license he had to carry in his pocket to use his lighter. This tax
would now be illegal because of a UE treaty that forbids this type of
protectionism. It was made redundant before that by the
post-revolutionary nationalisation and consequent destruction of the
match industry.

Then, also in the UE, we saw the social security system turn into a
tax: first, people were convinced that they should put some money
aside and let the government take care of it, so that it is later able
to provide you with a pension. Now that this system is collapsing,
existing pensions are being cut, future pensions are uncertain and the
age of retirement is rising. Yet, people don't pay less to social
security.

The pattern seems to always be the same: an initial reasonable plan,
then a slow slide down a long sequence of small corrections and
mistakes that eventually lead to pure obligation with nothing in
return. Now, most UE citizens are resigned to the idea that they have
to pay taxes to make up for past mistakes and expect nothing in
return. This was attained by a process of slow cooking.


You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.



Any
proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
in our lives is rejected.


What solution is that?

More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals exists
and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always met
with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying that
all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that comes
from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.


Sure, there's a lot of luddite resistance fed by scares like Fukushima.  The
important role I see for government is driving the RD to LFTRs.  It's too
big and too politically risky to expect private investment to take it on.
It needs government funded and government protected development - just like
the internet, spaceflight, uranium reactors, vaccination, intercontinental
railroads, and just about any other really big technological development.

I'll comment on two: the internet and railroads.

The internet is the synergistic outcome of a number of technologies. I
am fairly certain that no government desired the internet as it exists
today.


First, that's your supposition.  If you named anything in the world as it exists today 
there would be some government, maybe even all people, who would want it to be different, 
not as it exists today, in some respect.


But it was created and developed by government funded organizations.  By DARPA, 
by CERN.


I can be fairly certain because they're using large chunks of
our money to try to make it go away in its current format. Many
different protocols were dreamt of. Creating a working internet
protocol does not take a genius. It just so happened that TCP/IP
gained popularity faster than other alternatives. A very great part of
what makes the internet what

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-18 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2013/11/18 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

 On 11/18/2013 4:43 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:23 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 11/17/2013 4:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government
 is
 not

 trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us about
 global
 warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You didn't
 find
 lies
 about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even
 in
 arXiv.

 No, but then they come up with this plan


 What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan whatsoever.

 Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
 access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of CO2
 emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
 treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
 regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the main
 suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this not
 correct?


 That's the market based approach to reducing CO2 emissions by charging
 for
 the externalities.  But there is no treaty even on the table to require
 any
 particular solution or even to enforce any degree of reduction.


  that the way to solve the
 problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.


 So even the proposals don't give any new power to governments - they
 always
 had the power to tax.

 This is too simplistic. Taxes have a long and complicated history, and
 several types of taxes that are accepted today were very controversial
 not so long ago. For example, the income tax in the US came into
 existence in 1913, with ratification of the 16th amendment. My father
 lived a good part of his life under the fascist regime in Portugal. We
 had a thriving match industry, so there was a tax on lighters. I have
 the license he had to carry in his pocket to use his lighter. This tax
 would now be illegal because of a UE treaty that forbids this type of
 protectionism. It was made redundant before that by the
 post-revolutionary nationalisation and consequent destruction of the
 match industry.

 Then, also in the UE, we saw the social security system turn into a
 tax: first, people were convinced that they should put some money
 aside and let the government take care of it, so that it is later able
 to provide you with a pension. Now that this system is collapsing,
 existing pensions are being cut, future pensions are uncertain and the
 age of retirement is rising. Yet, people don't pay less to social
 security.

 The pattern seems to always be the same: an initial reasonable plan,
 then a slow slide down a long sequence of small corrections and
 mistakes that eventually lead to pure obligation with nothing in
 return. Now, most UE citizens are resigned to the idea that they have
 to pay taxes to make up for past mistakes and expect nothing in
 return. This was attained by a process of slow cooking.

  You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.


  Any
 proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
 in our lives is rejected.


 What solution is that?

 More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals exists
 and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always met
 with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying that
 all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
 these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that comes
 from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
 immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.


 Sure, there's a lot of luddite resistance fed by scares like Fukushima.
  The
 important role I see for government is driving the RD to LFTRs.  It's
 too
 big and too politically risky to expect private investment to take it on.
 It needs government funded and government protected development - just
 like
 the internet, spaceflight, uranium reactors, vaccination,
 intercontinental
 railroads, and just about any other really big technological development.

 I'll comment on two: the internet and railroads.

 The internet is the synergistic outcome of a number of technologies. I
 am fairly certain that no government desired the internet as it exists
 today.


 First, that's your supposition.  If you named anything in the world as it
 exists today there would be some government, maybe even all people, who
 would want it to be different, not as it exists today, in some respect.

 But it was created and developed by government funded organizations.  By
 DARPA, by CERN.


  I can be fairly certain because they're using large chunks of
 our money to try to make it go away in its current format. Many
 different protocols were dreamt of. Creating a working internet
 protocol does not take a genius.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/18/2013 9:44 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
You seem to be arguing against a straw man here. I explained why the free market can't 
fix the tragedy of the commons. You haven't answered my point.


And he's so concerned with anti-government straw men that he hasn't noticed that a 
market requires government (including coercion) to define ownership and punish fraud.  
Without government you couldn't own any more stuff than you could carry and defend by 
force of arms.


I agree with Brent. Government can be the best thing a democracy can have, ... until 
bandits get power and perverts the elections and the state power separations (and get 
important control on the media, etc.).


But we should make clear that a government has nothing to say about your food, 
medications, sports, religious or sexual practices, etc. As long as there are no 
well-motivated complains, the state can't intervene.




So you think it's a bad idea for the government to require testing medications for 
safety.   You liked the old patent medicine system better?  You don't like the 
government requiring food labels with contents? How about airline safety requlations; why 
not just let the customers decide based on reputation (that's what libertarians want)?


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-18 Thread LizR

Please look at this (and tweet / resend it if you agree).

http://act.350.org/sign/haiyan

Thanks! :)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-18 Thread LizR

On 18 November 2013 22:41, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 1:02 AM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
  This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
  solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work.

 Yes, but this is circular. You're saying that the market cannot work
 for things that you do not allow to be part of the market. The
 government has to exist, otherwise how is the government to exist?


It isn't a question of not allowing the commons to be part of the market.
YOU try convincing a private organisation to put lots of resources into
fixing the commons. Try and persuade, say, Dell or Oracle or McDonalds that
they should spend a substantial part of their revenue building motorways or
fixing the climate, and see how far you get.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-17 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government is
 not
 trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us about
  global
 warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You didn't find
  lies
 about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even in
 arXiv.

 No, but then they come up with this plan


 What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan whatsoever.

Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of CO2
emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the main
suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this not
correct?


 that the way to solve the
 problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.


 You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.


 Any
 proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
 in our lives is rejected.


 What solution is that?

More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals exists
and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always met
with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying that
all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that comes
from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.

Telmo.

 Brent

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-17 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013  Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:

 Global temperatures fell from 1950 to 1980 while CO2 atm content was
 rising. Can you explain that?


I can't explain that, nor do I understand why in the late Ordovician period
450 million years ago there was a huge 4400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere
verses 380 today, and yet the world was in the grip of a very severe ice
age. Apparently the climate dynamics of this planet is complicated and the
link between global warming and CO2 is not as straightforward as some would
have us believe.

  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-17 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.comwrote:

 wait to see what happens to the cancer rates over the next fifty years.


I don't now about Fukushima but I do know that the predictions of huge
increases of cancer from Chernobyl have proved to be enormous exaggerations:


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/world/europe/05iht-nuke.html?pagewanted=all_r=0

And however many cancers Fukushima turns out to have been made it is
unlikely to be more than the cancers made by a average run of the mill coal
power electric plant that never had a industrial accident.

  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

RE: Global warming silliness

2013-11-17 Thread Chris de Morsella

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2013 10:00 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com
wrote:

 wait to see what happens to the cancer rates over the next fifty years.

I don't now about Fukushima but I do know that the predictions of huge
increases of cancer from Chernobyl have proved to be enormous exaggerations:

No you don't know that at all. You don't have some crystal ball and are just
quoting from studies that have been criticized as very much low balling the
ultimate number of cancer deaths attributable to Chernobyl. Other studies
have come up with much higher numbers - ranging into the millions. For
example the TORCH report commissioned by the German Green Party that
included areas not covered by the WHO report that produced the 4000 figure
you quote. It concluded that the death toll from cancer is more likely to be
around 30,000 to 60,000 extra incurred deaths. We could go on till the sun
comes up - you present a study and I can present another study. It is hard
to correlate cancer deaths that may happen decades even after the
originating event with some event and the statistical methodologies used are
all open to argument --- and the numbers can be moved about by changing
boundary conditions etc.

Besides the cancer deaths, what about the 2,600 kilometer square exclusion
zone - that is a very big area. What is the dollar value on that? 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/world/europe/05iht-nuke.html?pagewanted=al
l
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/world/europe/05iht-nuke.html?pagewanted=a
ll_r=0 _r=0

And however many cancers Fukushima turns out to have been made it is
unlikely to be more than the cancers made by a average run of the mill coal
power electric plant that never had a industrial accident. 

So say you. You speak of Fukushima as if it was an event that happened in
the past - the disaster is still unfolding and Tepco cannot even say where
the nuclear material in the  cores of units #1, #2, and #3 is located. A run
of the mill industrial accident does not produce an essentially permanent
and very large exclusion zone - affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands
of uprooted atomic refugees -- as has Chernobyl and now once again
Fukushima. The cost to sequester the Fukushima disaster will run into the
many hundreds of billions of dollars - hardly a run of the mill price tag.  

There is nothing run of the mill about Fukushima - to suggest so is rather
obscene.

Chris

  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-17 Thread meekerdb

On 11/16/2013 2:37 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

2013/11/14 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com
mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com

Hi Alberto,

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com
mailto:agocor...@gmail.com wrote:
Yes.

I proposed myself not to argue against sectarian apocalypticists because
that is a waste of time,

Mentioning apocalyptic narratives is an important point. These are a
fairly common social phenomena across History and they seem to be a
coping mechanism of people who are unhappy with some status quo, and
that also don't understand its complexities. The biblical apocalypse
in the context of the Roman Empire is one example. Another one is the
Illuminati conspiracy theories. They come from people who feel they
got a bad deal from life and initiate this fantasy were the status quo
is evil and it's going to get what's coming.

That is exactly right. but it is necessary to distinguish between passive and active
apocalipticism. The passives do not claim an special knowledge of nature. They believe
in a supernatural phenomenon, and they rest waiting. The active ones believe in a
natural apocalypse and claim an special knowledge of reality, so they reject any critics
and are either open revolutionaries (like the marxists) or have a hidden agenda to
subvert the social order. The core of their motivations are megalomania, pride and will
of power.

This is from Voegelin:

The public interest has shifted from the nature of man to the nature of nature and to
the prospects of domination its exploration opened; and the loss of interest even turned
to hatred when the nature of man proved to be resistant to the changes dreamed up by
intellectuals who want to add the lordship of society and history to the mastery of nature.

Add? Despotic kings long preceded the Enlightenment and the idea of
individual freedom.

And this from Vaklav Klaus, formet Czech president, that know first hand the
ideological predecessors of the eco-alarmists:

A guy who was oppressed by the Communist Part and the Soviet Union two of the *most*
un-environmentalist organizations *ever*, and he want's to blame it on eco-alarmist?? It
is to laugh.

The debate on global warming is not about temperatures and CO2 levels. It is an
ideological war between those who want to change us (not the weather) and those who
believe in freedom, markets, human ingenuity and technological progress. Advocates of
climate alarmism ask an unprecedented expansion of government intervention in our lives.
We are being forced to accept rules about how to live, what to do, how to behave, what
to buy, what to eat, how to travel. Is unacceptable.

But that's nonsense. Typical straw-man the environmentalist are out to get us. Let's
see some actual quote of a respected environmentalist saying they believe in freedom,
markets, human ingenuity and technological progress.

Brent

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-17 Thread meekerdb

On 11/17/2013 4:25 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 8:41 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government is
not

trusted. However, it is not the government that is warning us about
global
warming. It is in the scientific research literature. You didn't find
lies
about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even in
arXiv.

No, but then they come up with this plan

What plan? Where is it? As far as I know there is no plan whatsoever.

Here with they I mean the people with the most political clout,
access to the media an so on who campaign for the reduction of CO2
emissions. Their demand seems to be for the signing of a global
treaty. This is a demand for empowering governments to further
regulate economic activity, now at a global scale, and one of the main
suggestions is some global tax based on carbon emissions. Is this not
correct?

That's the market based approach to reducing CO2 emissions by charging for the
externalities. But there is no treaty even on the table to require any particular
solution or even to enforce any degree of reduction.

that the way to solve the
problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.

So even the proposals don't give any new power to governments - they always had the power
to tax.

You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.

Any
proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
in our lives is rejected.

What solution is that?

More nuclear power and geo-engineering. Both these proposals exists
and there is interest on the part of investors. They are always met
with a lot of resistance from environmentalists. I'm not saying that
all of this resistance is unjustified, caution is a good thing in
these matters, but I definitely see a lot of resistance that comes
from some moral framework that sees these ideas as fundamentally
immoral, even more so if someone can profit from them.

Sure, there's a lot of luddite resistance fed by scares like Fukushima. The important
role I see for government is driving the RD to LFTRs. It's too big and too politically
risky to expect private investment to take it on. It needs government funded and
government protected development - just like the internet, spaceflight, uranium reactors,
vaccination, intercontinental railroads, and just about any other really big technological
development.

Brent

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-17 Thread LizR

This is quite simple. Markets ignore the commons, hence a free market
solution can't - or is highly unlikely - to work. No one is going to clean
up the commons, just as they didn't in medieval villages, because there is
no incentive for an individual, or a specific group, to do so. The tragedy
of the commons is one reason to have governments, because everyone wants
something done that no one will do off their own bat - but they are
prepared to chip in a donation towards the government doing it, or
organising somone else to do it. And if no one does it, we all end up worse
off (perhaps fatally so in this case). It ain't rocket science, although
game theory has something to say about it.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-16 Thread Alberto G. Corona

2013/11/14 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

 Hi Alberto,

 On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Yes.
 
  I proposed myself not to argue against sectarian apocalypticists because
  that is a waste of time,

 Mentioning apocalyptic narratives is an important point. These are a
 fairly common social phenomena across History and they seem to be a
 coping mechanism of people who are unhappy with some status quo, and
 that also don't understand its complexities. The biblical apocalypse
 in the context of the Roman Empire is one example. Another one is the
 Illuminati conspiracy theories. They come from people who feel they
 got a bad deal from life and initiate this fantasy were the status quo
 is evil and it's going to get what's coming.


That is exactly right. but it is necessary to distinguish between passive
and active apocalipticism. The passives do not claim an special knowledge
of nature. They believe in a supernatural phenomenon, and they rest
waiting. The active ones believe in a natural apocalypse and claim an
special knowledge of reality, so they reject any critics and are either
open revolutionaries (like the marxists) or have a hidden agenda to subvert
the social order. The core of their motivations are megalomania, pride and
will of power.

This is from Voegelin:

The public interest has shifted from the nature of man to the nature of
nature and to the prospects of domination its exploration opened; and the
loss of interest even turned to hatred when the nature of man proved to be
resistant to the changes dreamed up by intellectuals who want to add the
lordship of society and history to the mastery of nature.

And this from Vaklav  Klaus, formet Czech president, that know first hand
the ideological predecessors of the eco-alarmists:

The debate on global warming is not about temperatures and CO2 levels. It
is an ideological war between those who want to change us (not the weather)
and those who believe in freedom, markets, human ingenuity and
technological progress. Advocates of climate alarmism ask an unprecedented
expansion of government intervention in our lives. We are being forced to
accept rules about how to live, what to do, how to behave, what to buy,
what to eat, how to travel. Is unacceptable.



 I sense this a lot in the global warming issue. It works well as an
 apocalyptic narrative for people who dislike capitalism. It's even
 associated with purification rituals and sin: vegetarianism vs. meat,
 low carbon-emission cars vs SUVs and so on.

 This doesn't mean it's incorrect, of course. Only failed predictions mean
 that.

  but honoring those of you that are not seduced by
  the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it movement, I will say something:
 
  Climatic models are bullshit. if you look at how they adjust parameters
  looking at the climategate mails you will have no doubt. Starting from
 that
  funny way for manufacturing models, it is no surprise that they predict
  nothing as Telmo said.

 I once heard some old professor give the following piece of wisdom:
 any sufficiently complicated model is doomed to succeed. I agree. The
 more parameters you have in a model, the less you can trust it. The
 more you teak them to correct for failed predictions, the more
 meaningless it gets. The more models you have for the same thing, the
 less significant the correct predictions of a given model are. This is
 just basic statistics. I notice that the skeptics tend to show the
 predictions of a large set of models, while the proponents of the
 theory show less of them. Then the skeptics are accused of cherry
 picking, and this raises my eyebrows...

  There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because it
  behaves like the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I
  believe, dont want to fire up the wikipedia to get the real digits. That
 is
  why it is a good model.
 
  What would be a good test of a climatic model?. We know that at the
 glacial
  eras started when North and South America united by the istmus of Panama
  closed the free water movement between the atlantic and pacific. That
  changed the global water flow regimes and resulted in the two polar ice
  caps.
 
  It is easy to configure the continents in the climate models and see what
  happens in each configuration of the american continents. Why they dont
 try
  it?. Because they know that their models are lacking decades of research
 to
  get accurate enough for the simplest long term prediction.
 
 
  2013/11/13 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com
 
  On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 7:49 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
   Obviously there is more CO2 in the air than there has been for a very
   long
   time, and obviously the climate has changed somewhat in the last
 couple
   of
   decades (warmest on record, again and again). It's hard to prove the
   connection, of course, but the circumstantial evidence is
 overwhelming.
   Of
   13,950 peer-reviewed

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-16 Thread spudboy100


I am real ok, with this as well, I have read, in years past, the Amory Lovins, 
view on things. However behind all the savings, let us agree that due to 
Newtonian Laws, and Carnot Cycles, we cannot forever, postpone moving to a new 
energy regime. If you can do it with solar or antimatter, please do. No, I am 
not trying to be snarky about this, but we cannot move forward away from the 
dirty unless you can present the clean. I am ok with clean, as long as we 
really have it.


-Original Message-
From: Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Nov 15, 2013 9:03 pm
Subject: RE: Global warming silliness



 
 
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 5:14 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness
 

To perform a fix on the climate, and I am giving the IPCC supporters the 
benefit of the doubt, we must have abundant clean sources at the ready. We 
need terawatts of clean, because gigawatts are insufficient. Some can be 
replaced by higher efficiency homes and devices, and cars-but this will only 
takes us so far.  Think terawatts, not negawatts, and what tech we are going 
to use to replace the dirty? Faster please.
 
You ignore the potential easily realizable savings that can be achieved by 
retro-fitting our existing buildings and homes. Thiis is truly the low hanging 
fruit and the scale of potential on-going energy savings is huge. For example 
 
Read report: 
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/electricpowernaturalgas/US_energy_efficiency/
The global consulting firm estimates that $520 billion in investments would 
reduce U.S. non-transportation energy usage by 9.1 quadrillion BTUs by 2020 - 
roughly 23 percent of projected demand. As a result, the U.S. economy would 
save more than $1.2 trillion and avoid the release of some 1.1 gigatons of 
annual greenhouse gases, an amount equal to replacing 1,000 conventional 
500-megawatt coal-fired power plants with renewable energy.
 
Or the comparison given in the report “The reduction in energy use would also 
result in the abatement of 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse-gas emissions 
annually—the equivalent of taking the entire US fleet of passenger vehicles and 
light trucks off the roads.”
 
Achieving this kind of reduction in producing carbon dioxide and in annual 
fossil energy consumption is not nibbling at the problem around the edges – 
this represents the single largest and most important  immediate thing we can 
do to change the picture on the ground. And is something that will need to be 
done anyway. Doing this will increase the energy security (and military and 
economic security as well) of the US by making our country much leaner and able 
to prosper and live in comfort on far less energy – an carbon footprint impact 
the equivalent of removing the entire fleet of cars and light truck from the 
nation’s roads and highways. You cannot get more major impact than that.
Chris
 

-Original Message-
From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Nov 14, 2013 7:23 pm
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

On 11/14/2013 4:20 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
 Yes.
 
 I proposed myself not to argue against sectarian apocalypticists because that 
is a waste 
 of time, but honoring those of you that are not seduced by the 
 end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it movement, I will say something:
 
Alas, some people just can't be relied on.
 
 
 Climatic models are bullshit. if you look at how they adjust parameters 
looking at the 
 climategate mails you will have no doubt. Starting from that funny way for 
manufacturing 
 models, it is no surprise that they predict nothing as Telmo said.
 
First, the general circulation model developed at East Anglia is only one of a 
dozen or 
more and they all predict increasing temperature - including the pencil and 
paper 
calculation of Arhennius.  In fact it's trivially easy to see that increased 
CO2 
will 
raise the earth's temperature.  CO2 absorbs light energy in infrared bands that 
are 
otherwise transparent.  Without CO2 the planet would be too cold for human 
habitation (as 
already realized by Fourier).  The difficulty in making accurate predictions of 
how much 
the CO2 we're adding will raise temperatures comes from accounting for the 
positive 
feedback effect of water vapor.  Most models assume the world average relative 
humidity 
will stay the same.  Some try to model ocean circulation from deep to shallow 
and assume 
water vapor pressure stays in equilibrium with the ocean surface.  But these 
don't make 
any difference to the long term conclusion.
 
 There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because it 
behaves like 
 the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I believe, dont want 
 to 
fire up 
 the wikipedia to get

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-16 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 6:46 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:
 On 11/14/2013 3:30 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 4:19 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 Good one, Chris.

 But you can tell from the posts here that what drives the Deniers is fear
 of
 government.  In the U.S. since the Viet Nam war there has developed a
 widespread distrust of government as incompetent, corrupt, and
 oppressive.

 Well, it also doesn't help that almost everything that comes out of
 the government's mouth turns out to be a lie. They lied about WMDs in
 Iraq, they lied about closing down Guantanamo, they lied about
 repealing the patriot act (and in fact extended its scope through the
 NDAA), they lie about drugs, they lied about the scope of drone use,
 they lied about not spying on everybody and they lied about protecting
 whisteblowers. Just to name a few. These are all indisputable, direct
 lies about very serious matters.


 They are not indisputable.  For example, Obama promised to close Guantanomo
 but he was blocked by Congress.

Something was promised and then didn't happen. It doesn't really
matter by which mechanism the system avoided doing what the people
wanted it to do. Of course Obama's innocence here is very hard to buy.
Surely he could prevent forced-feeding is he were such a champion of
human rights. Given is many powers he could surely find some way
around the House blocking certain routes. This never seems to be a
problem when it comes to doing other things that go against the
constitution, like surveilling people without a court order or killing
citizens without a trial.

 One's failure after best effort, to do what
 is not possible is not exactly a lie.

Still a lie. If I promise to do something that I'm not sure I will be
able to do am I not lying?

Also he promised not to use Justice Department resources to try to
circumvent state laws and then he did.

  Many things said about recreational
 drugs, e.g. that heroin is addictive, are certainly true;

Sure, and many others are lies. Big ones. The biggest being the claim
that the war on drugs has a positive impact in society.

 and those were
 probably enough to convince the electorate that they should be banned.
 After all the nation even approved banning alcohol at one time - it's not
 just that people are misled about consequenses; the people like to impose
 their ideas of morality on others.  It's one of the problems of democracy
 and the reason for having constitutional rights.

It's an unsolved problem because the constitutional rights are then
reinterpreted to allow the government to do whatever it wants anyway.

 I don't remember the government ever saying what the scope of drone use is.
 There are obvious tactical and diplomatic reasons for being vague about it.

Obama promised to defend the constitution and then personally ordered
drone strikes on american citizens without a trial. Also there's the
crossing the rubicon moment of deploying military drones inside the
US. Doesn't any of this worry you a little bit?

 But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government is not
 trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us about global
 warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You didn't find lies
 about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even in
 arXiv.

No, but then they come up with this plan that the way to solve the
problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government. Any
proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
in our lives is rejected.

 As for oppression we have the humiliation rituals enforced by the TSA,
 the militarisation of the police forces, the ongoing attempts at
 censoring the Internet, total surveillance, free-speech zones, the
 persecution of brilliant benevolent kids like Aaron Schwartz, who
 committed suicide because we was going to be thrown into jail for
 downloading scientific papers. I am very sad that he had to go through
 that, but also happy that the bandits couldn't get their hands on him.

 Probably you're going to reply with some apologies for your favourite
 team, and claim that it's the other team's fault. I don't care about
 any of that. I care about the end result: lies. The Democrats vs.
 Republicans reality show is a clever way to explore our tribal
 instincts.


 You illustrate my point again.  You don't address the science behind global
 warming predictions or what to do about it.

I'm commenting on why it's reasonable to not trust the government, a
topic you introduced. We've discussed these other things already. Too
many models, too many parameters. Medieval warming period. Incomplete
knowledge about a complex system. The human cost of CO2 emission
reduction. The current inefficiency of renewable sources. The
environmentalists' opposition to nuclear power and geo-engineering.
All of these previous points did not disappear just because I'm
arguing that not

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-16 Thread LizR

On 17 November 2013 08:36, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 No, I am concerned that the global warming scare can be exploited to
 convince the people to relinquish more of its freedoms to the
 government.

 You mean the people still have some freedoms to relinquish?

The government doesn't need global warming, they've done very nicely out of
the war on terror.

And what is this straw man about giving governments more power? They don't
need more power, they need to divert some of the current massive subsidies
away from the oil industry into renewables. Not rocket science. They need
to stop being controlled by a certain sector of the economy. How does that
give them more power over the average person than they have already
acquired by (in the case of the USA) rewriting the constitution to disallow
free speech, and to allow unlimited surveillance?

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-16 Thread Telmo Menezes

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 9:12 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 17 November 2013 08:36, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote:

 No, I am concerned that the global warming scare can be exploited to
 convince the people to relinquish more of its freedoms to the
 government.

 You mean the people still have some freedoms to relinquish?

Yes, most do. Some don't. Ask Nadia Tolokonnikova, who had the idea of
confronting a total state:
http://news.rapgenius.com/Nadia-tolokonnikova-open-letter-on-hunger-strike-lyrics

 The government doesn't need global warming, they've done very nicely out of
 the war on terror.

Yes, you could have said the same before with the war on drugs.

 And what is this straw man about giving governments more power? They don't
 need more power, they need to divert some of the current massive subsidies
 away from the oil industry into renewables.

I'm fine with this -- although I would prefer no subsidising at all,
and letting real competition do its thing. But if they have to
subsidise someone, the oil industry definitely doesn't need it.

 Not rocket science. They need to
 stop being controlled by a certain sector of the economy.

I agree with the goal. I also believe that the only way to achieve
this is to reduce the scope of the government, given that the
government has abused and misused every single power that it has
obtained so far.

 How does that give
 them more power over the average person than they have already acquired by
 (in the case of the USA) rewriting the constitution to disallow free speech,
 and to allow unlimited surveillance?

We don't have a global tax system yet, for example. The advantage of
my plan is that it also addresses these issues.

Telmo.

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-16 Thread meekerdb


On 11/16/2013 11:36 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government is not
trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us about global
warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You didn't find lies
about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even in
arXiv.

No, but then they come up with this plan


What plan?  Where is it?  As far as I know there is no plan whatsoever.


that the way to solve the
problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government.


You're protesting against a plan that you imagine.


Any
proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
in our lives is rejected.


What solution is that?

Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 14 Nov 2013, at 18:48, meekerdb wrote:


On 11/14/2013 3:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
The use of science by government of science is of the type of  
pseudo-religion abuse.


?? Does not parse.


Sorry. Read instead: The use of science by governments is of the type  
of pseudo-religion abuse.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


  There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because it
 behaves like the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I
 believe, dont want to fire up the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is
 why it is a good model.


 Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching
 past data.

 I selected this paragraph alone to show that you, in your obfuscation,
don´t understand the difference between predicion (or retrodiction) and
tweking for  predicting (or retrodict) nothing AT ALL.

That is why I said that it is a waste of time to discuss the apocalypse
with the apocalipticists.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

So the measurements showing rising global temperatures and the noticeable
effects this is having, and the measured rise in CO2 since the industrial
revolution are irrelevant because the models aren't yet 100% accurate?

So let's sit on our hands and do nothing, just in case we make a better
world on the basis of false premises?

Give me strength.



On 15 November 2013 23:11, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:


  There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because it
 behaves like the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I
 believe, dont want to fire up the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is
 why it is a good model.


 Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching
 past data.

 I selected this paragraph alone to show that you, in your obfuscation,
 don´t understand the difference between predicion (or retrodiction) and
 tweking for  predicting (or retrodict) nothing AT ALL.

 That is why I said that it is a waste of time to discuss the apocalypse
 with the apocalipticists.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013/11/15 LizR lizj...@gmail.com

 So the measurements showing rising global temperatures and the noticeable
 effects this is having, and the measured rise in CO2 since the industrial
 revolution are irrelevant because the models aren't yet 100% accurate?

 The models are 0% accurate.
The other aspects that you mention are flawed as well.


 So let's sit on our hands and do nothing, just in case we make a better
 world on the basis of false premises?


 Not at all. As I said before, I have my own shit to attend. but I don't
advocate to forbid you to do something for it. Feel free to do whatever you
want.  I encourage you to expend all your money in the save the world
shit with mekerdb and other like you in brotherhood and harmony together.

Might even contribute to the movement. I will buy your next Documentary
from Al Gore et al. I definitively like scary movies.




 Give me strength.




 On 15 November 2013 23:11, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:


  There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because
 it behaves like the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I
 believe, dont want to fire up the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is
 why it is a good model.


 Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching
 past data.

 I selected this paragraph alone to show that you, in your obfuscation,
 don´t understand the difference between predicion (or retrodiction) and
 tweking for  predicting (or retrodict) nothing AT ALL.

 That is why I said that it is a waste of time to discuss the apocalypse
 with the apocalipticists.


  --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.




-- 
Alberto.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread Telmo Menezes

Hi Russell,

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 12:58 AM, Russell Standish
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:09:18PM +0100, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:32 PM, Russell Standish
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

The good news is that the figures I've seen is that its not such a
tremendous cost after all.

I am very interested in this. Could you be more specific? How can this
be? Was there some breakthrough in sustainable sources that increased
their efficiency?

The following is an article dealing with the economics in Australia of
PV vs coal fired stations

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/renewables-now-cheaper-than-coal-and-gas-in-australia-62268

And here is one for wind power:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/rising-risk-prices-out-new-coalfired-plants-report-20130207-2e0s4.html

These figure also do not include the existing carbon price of $20 per tonne.

Existing fossil fuel generators will continue for a while, though, of
course, particularly as renewables have not yet solved the baseload
supply problem. Vanadium batteries may be good for that.

Thanks for this. I hope it works.
Reading the articles I have a feeling that this is more related to
banks fearing investments in non-clean energy that could be subject to
increasingly high taxes -- even though it appears that the Australian
conservatives are not inclined to do that. I have no doubt that the
technology is improving and I hope it does, but I would be more
convinced if they addressed the hard numbers on the energy efficiency,
sans current economical incentives, be they regulation or market
conditions. Because I believe that those are the ones that will count
in the long term.

Part of the reason for my worry is that I saw heavy subsidising of
wind farms destroy the industry in my home country (Portugal). The
energy bill there is now about 60% taxes, to maintain the wind farms.
Keeping your house warm in the winter is too expensive, even for the
upper middle class.

Obviously fossil fuel will run out anyway, so even without climate
change
we'd have to do something.

Yes, but that something we have to do is very different depending on
whether or not we have to cut CO2 emissions and, more importantly, one
of the path leads to immense human suffering.

The point is whether we do something, or do nothing, energy costs
_will_ rise. Yes this _will_ lead to human suffering, either way. We
can either choose to pay a bit more now, and have less costs later, or
pay less now, and have steeper rises later.

I agree that energy costs will rise and this is a very serious problem
that we need to face. If you don't have to worry about CO2 so much,
it's easier and less painful -- the more expensive fossil fuels
become, the more economic incentive there will be for renewable
sources. In this scenario we can retain economic freedom, which is
highly correlated with prosperity.

A 10 or 20% energy cost increase to hasten decarbonisation by a decade
will save many billions of dollars of geo-engineering, or evironmental
restoration down the track.

Are you aware of geo-engineering proposals that would be very cheap?

Nothing earth-scale will be cheap, or easy to understand all the
consequences. Ultimately, it will need to come down to a cost-benefit
analysis, factoring in the unknowns as some kind of risk factor.

But if the technology break-throughs are real, we don't even have to
worry all that much, maybe. There will be a lot of money to be made in
moving to sustainable sources. Pushes for regulation make me suspect
that the technology is not there yet. In which case I agree with you.

Seems like quite an astute investment to
me. Our current conservative government, alas, doesn't seem to think
so.

Then there are the geo-engineering ideas that John mentioned. They
appear to be ignored. This makes the entire thing start to smell a bit
of religious moralism.

Telmo.

They're not being ignored. But they do require a lot more small-scale
research to understand their risk-benefit tradeoff.

I never see this as part of the discussion. I'm very skeptical that
this is being seriously pursued.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering

amongst many other similar experiments.

I can see why certain environmental movements have put geoengineering
off the table for political reasons, but this doesn't mean it
shouldn't be researched theoretically, and experimented practically on
a small scale so that we better understand the costs, efficacy and
risks if (or more likely when) it becomes a necessary part of the
total solution.

Ok, we agree.

As for carbon pricing, which is the current hot topic in Australia. As
a philosophical point, I am in favour of some sort of carbon pricing,
but I'm not enough of an economist and energy technologist to know the
ideal timing for its introduction, nor

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread spudboy100


To perform a fix on the climate, and I am giving the IPCC supporters the 
benefit of the doubt, we must have abundant clean sources at the ready. We need 
terawatts of clean, because gigawatts are insufficient. Some can be replaced by 
higher efficiency homes and devices, and cars-but this will only takes us so 
far.  Think terawatts, not negawatts, and what tech we are going to use to 
replace the dirty? Faster please.


-Original Message-
From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Nov 14, 2013 7:23 pm
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/14/2013 4:20 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
 Yes.

 I proposed myself not to argue against sectarian apocalypticists because that 
is a waste 
 of time, but honoring those of you that are not seduced by the 
 end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it movement, I will say something:

Alas, some people just can't be relied on.


 Climatic models are bullshit. if you look at how they adjust parameters 
looking at the 
 climategate mails you will have no doubt. Starting from that funny way for 
manufacturing 
 models, it is no surprise that they predict nothing as Telmo said.

First, the general circulation model developed at East Anglia is only one of a 
dozen or 
more and they all predict increasing temperature - including the pencil and 
paper 
calculation of Arhennius.  In fact it's trivially easy to see that increased 
CO2 
will 
raise the earth's temperature.  CO2 absorbs light energy in infrared bands that 
are 
otherwise transparent.  Without CO2 the planet would be too cold for human 
habitation (as 
already realized by Fourier).  The difficulty in making accurate predictions of 
how much 
the CO2 we're adding will raise temperatures comes from accounting for the 
positive 
feedback effect of water vapor.  Most models assume the world average relative 
humidity 
will stay the same.  Some try to model ocean circulation from deep to shallow 
and assume 
water vapor pressure stays in equilibrium with the ocean surface.  But these 
don't make 
any difference to the long term conclusion.

 There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because it 
behaves like 
 the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I believe, dont want 
 to 
fire up 
 the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is why it is a good model.

Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching past 
data.


 What would be a good test of a climatic model?. We know that at the glacial 
eras started 
 when North and South America united by the istmus of Panama closed the free 
water 
 movement between the atlantic and pacific. That changed the global water flow 
regimes 
 and resulted in the two polar ice caps.

 It is easy to configure the continents in the climate models and see what 
happens in 
 each configuration of the american continents. Why they dont try it?. Because 
they know 
 that their models are lacking decades of research to get accurate enough for 
the 
 simplest long term prediction.

More obfuscation.  If more solar energy is retained by the atmosphere the 
planet 
will get 
hotter until it can radiate as much as received.  Moving continents around can 
only affect 
the local distribution. This is the same tactic as Creationists who point to 
the 
clotting 
sequence or the flagellum and declare, Let's see evolution explain THAT.

Brent

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread spudboy100

For CO2 remediation, Klaus Lachner has designed his artificial tree. Its a 
pollution exchanger, designed by Lachner at Columbia university NYC. Its 
supposed to be 100 times more efficient at removing atmospheric co2, then a 
normal, deciduous, tree. Cost? Who knows? 

-Original Message-
From: Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Nov 14, 2013 9:05 pm
Subject: RE: Global warming silliness

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 12:26 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

On 14 November 2013 20:24, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com wrote:

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 7:29 PM

To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

On 14 November 2013 16:25, Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com wrote:

And to have the depth and breadth of understanding of the climatic systems
both atmospheric and oceanic to be able to say with a high degree of
certainty that there won't be unintended consequences that emerge out of the
geo-engineering intervention (especially if it is difficult to reverse). I
say this because as history shows we -- as a species (or culture perhaps) --
often fail to first understand before we act... there is quite a bit of
precedent.

 Yes of course. It would be preferable to stabilise the climate in its 
 current benign state, which has allowed us to develop agriculture and 
 civilisation, by simply (!) removing CO2 from the air.

That’s not removing it – it is recycling the energy carriers (the hydrogen and 
the carbon) into new hydrocarbons (requiring other systems and taking more by 
some factor energy to re-generate the hydrocarbon chains that are the liquid 
fuel. Certainly preferable to just burning more fossil carbon, but it is not 
removing carbon from the biosphere (it is returned as soon as the fuel is 
burnt). 

That's not removing it is a non sequiteur in answer to me saying we should 
remove it. I think we should, if possible, remove some of the CO2 from the 
atmosphere. Whether removing it is removing it I will leave it to others to 
judge.

 Were you perhaps responding to my next comment, which you've left buried 
 down below for some reason? The one where I say we should remove CO2 from 
 the air and combine it with water (and sunlight) to make petrol?
That is what I was responding to Liz – synthesizing hydrocarbons in some 
chemical process from CO2 and water + copious amounts of needed energy in order 
to reduce both the CO2 and H2O – would return CO2 into the biosphere as soon as 
the fuel was burnt. It is rec-cycling carbon through the biosphere; not 
removing it. IMO – I am not certain that this is the best use of the energy 
inputs that would be required in order to synthesize the hydrocarbon from CO2 + 
H2O. Why not just use the energy directly. Remember no process is 100% 
efficient so more energy is going to go in to making the fuel by a substantial 
factor than will ever be extracted from that fuel by burning it – transforming 
it into heat and then finally useful work. An ICE engine – a very efficient one 
operates at around 20-25% efficiency – and that is a modern efficient ICE. Do 
the math. Lets say it takes 200% the energy in inputs to produce one energy 
unit of synthesized fuel – even if by burning it you could turn it into 100% 
work the efficiency would still be 50%. Now multiply the 50% by the efficiency 
of an ICE engine and you are getting in a good case about 10% maybe at the very 
best 15% of the energy you are putting into to this artificial hydrocarbon fuel 
system.
Why not just use the energy directly? Sometimes there can be other factors that 
make it make sense to produce a liquid fuel even though it takes far more 
energy to produce it than can ever be extracted from it as useful work. For 
example, liquid fuels are essential for aviation for example – because of their 
power density; some energy is of low quality – for example wind energy (or 
nuclear or other big thermal electric power plant) that is being generated at 
3:30 am. So there is an argument for doing so, but it is a for niche reasons.

If so - yes, I realise that removing CO2 from the air and converting it to 
petrol is recycling it. Obviously. I'm not a complete idiot. The point is 
that doing that would be a short term solution that would make the economy 
more carbon neutral and wouldn't require creating huge amounts of new 
infrastructure. It isn't intended to be a universal panacea, merely a 
suggestion - a highly hypothetical one at this moment - for how we can use 
solar power to reduce the amount of stuff we're digging up and burning.

It would require a whole new infrastructure – the infrastructure

Re: Global warming silliness

The fantastic amount of subsidies to the solar energy (That not even
Germany will have enough budget to pay them) not only have destroyed the
familiar and industrial economy with such incredible amount of taxes. They
also *have stopped further solar cell research* in the countries where
these subsidies have been granted.

I leave as an exercise to figure out why that has happened. It is quite
easy. But I guess that some people here well versed in QM and cosmology
will be unable to figure it out.

2013/11/15 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

Hi Russell,

The good news is that the figures I've seen is that its not such a
tremendous cost after all.

I am very interested in this. Could you be more specific? How can this
be? Was there some breakthrough in sustainable sources that increased
their efficiency?

The following is an article dealing with the economics in Australia of
PV vs coal fired stations

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/renewables-now-cheaper-than-coal-and-gas-in-australia-62268

And here is one for wind power:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/rising-risk-prices-out-new-coalfired-plants-report-20130207-2e0s4.html

These figure also do not include the existing carbon price of $20 per
tonne.

Existing fossil fuel generators will continue for a while, though, of
course, particularly as renewables have not yet solved the baseload
supply problem. Vanadium batteries may be good for that.

Obviously fossil fuel will run out anyway, so even without climate
change
we'd have to do something.

Yes, but that something we have to do is very different depending on
whether or not we have to cut CO2 emissions and, more importantly,
one
of the path leads to immense human suffering.

A 10 or 20% energy cost increase to hasten decarbonisation by a decade
will save many billions of dollars of geo-engineering, or evironmental
restoration down the track.

Are you aware of geo-engineering proposals that would be very cheap?

Nothing earth-scale will be cheap, or easy to understand all the
consequences. Ultimately, it will need to come down to a cost-benefit
analysis, factoring in the unknowns as some kind of risk factor.

Seems like quite an astute investment to
me. Our current conservative government, alas, doesn't seem to think
so.

Then there are the geo-engineering ideas that John mentioned. They
appear to be ignored. This makes the entire thing start to smell a
bit
of religious moralism.

Telmo.

They're not being ignored. But they do require a lot more small-scale
research to understand their risk-benefit tradeoff.

I never see this as part of the discussion. I'm very skeptical that
this is being seriously pursued.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering

amongst many

Re: Global warming silliness

I mean, the subsidies are for solar energy production.

2013/11/15 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com

I leave as an exercise to figure out why that has happened. It is quite
easy. But I guess that some people here well versed in QM and cosmology
will be unable to figure it out.

2013/11/15 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

Hi Russell,

The good news is that the figures I've seen is that its not such a
tremendous cost after all.

I am very interested in this. Could you be more specific? How can this
be? Was there some breakthrough in sustainable sources that increased
their efficiency?

The following is an article dealing with the economics in Australia of
PV vs coal fired stations

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/renewables-now-cheaper-than-coal-and-gas-in-australia-62268

And here is one for wind power:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/rising-risk-prices-out-new-coalfired-plants-report-20130207-2e0s4.html

These figure also do not include the existing carbon price of $20 per
tonne.

Existing fossil fuel generators will continue for a while, though, of
course, particularly as renewables have not yet solved the baseload
supply problem. Vanadium batteries may be good for that.

Obviously fossil fuel will run out anyway, so even without
climate change
we'd have to do something.

Yes, but that something we have to do is very different depending on
whether or not we have to cut CO2 emissions and, more importantly,
one
of the path leads to immense human suffering.

A 10 or 20% energy cost increase to hasten decarbonisation by a
decade
will save many billions of dollars of geo-engineering, or
evironmental
restoration down the track.

Are you aware of geo-engineering proposals that would be very cheap?

Nothing earth-scale will be cheap, or easy to understand all the
consequences. Ultimately, it will need to come down to a cost-benefit
analysis, factoring in the unknowns as some kind of risk factor.

Seems like quite an astute investment to
me. Our current conservative government, alas, doesn't seem to think
so.

Then there are the geo-engineering ideas that John mentioned. They
appear to be ignored. This makes the entire thing start to smell a
bit
of religious moralism.

Telmo.

They're not being ignored. But they do require a lot more small-scale
research to understand their risk-benefit tradeoff.

I never see this as part of the discussion. I'm very skeptical that
this is being seriously pursued.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 11/15/2013 2:11 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why? Because
it behaves
like the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I believe,
dont want
to fire up the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is why it is a
good model.

Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching
past data.

I selected this paragraph alone

Selected? I thought you wrote it.

to show that you, in your obfuscation, don´t understand the difference between predicion
(or retrodiction) and tweking for predicting (or retrodict) nothing AT ALL.

I understand that to predict something with a computer program you have to provide
parameter values as well as dynamic equations. There is always uncertainty about the value
of those parameters: heat transfer coefficients, albedo, enthalpy... So when I compare my
model output to actual data (if there is any) I of course try adjusting some of the more
uncertain parameters to improve the fit because that will improve the predictive accuracy
of the model. I don't adjust them beyond the original uncertainty bounds, because then
it's just curve fitting. Curve fitting can give good predictions too, but it doesn't
given any insight into how the system works or what to modify to change it. I understand
this because I do it for a living. So I'm afraid it is you who are the amateur here.

That is why I said that it is a waste of time to discuss the apocalypse with the
apocalipticists.

There's nothing apocalyptic about global warming. Human will survive as a species. At
least so long as it doesn't trigger a nuclear war. But there will be a lot death and
suffering.

Brent

Re: Global warming silliness

I rephrase my affirmation as a question, so that even a kid can understand
it:

The models of the earth nucleus predict an inversion of polatity every
14000 years, just what happens in the real Eart nucleus.

What fact of the earth climate the climate models are capable to predict?


2013/11/15 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

  On 11/15/2013 2:11 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

   There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because
 it behaves like the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I
 believe, dont want to fire up the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is
 why it is a good model.


  Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching
 past data.

  I selected this paragraph alone


 Selected? I thought you wrote it.


  to show that you, in your obfuscation, don´t understand the difference
 between predicion (or retrodiction) and tweking for  predicting (or
 retrodict) nothing AT ALL.


 I understand that to predict something with a computer program you have to
 provide parameter values as well as dynamic equations.  There is always
 uncertainty about the value of those parameters: heat transfer
 coefficients, albedo, enthalpy...  So when I compare my model output to
 actual data (if there is any) I of course try adjusting some of the more
 uncertain parameters to improve the fit because that will improve the
 predictive accuracy of the model.  I don't adjust them beyond the original
 uncertainty bounds, because then it's just curve fitting.  Curve fitting
 can give good predictions too, but it doesn't given any insight into how
 the system works or what to modify to change it.  I understand this because
 I do it for a living.  So I'm afraid it is you who are the amateur here.


  That is why I said that it is a waste of time to discuss the apocalypse
 with the apocalipticists.


 There's nothing apocalyptic about global warming.  Human will survive as a
 species.  At least so long as it doesn't trigger a nuclear war.  But there
 will be a lot death and suffering.

 Brent

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.




-- 
Alberto.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 4:19 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote:


 And for nukes? I would say:  O N L Y  fusion!
 The 'old fashion' fission nuke may be even more danerous than fossil
 pollution.


Lets look at the disasters associated with various energy producing
projects:

In 1975 the Shimantan/Banqiao hydroelectric Dam in China failed and killed
171,000 people.

In 1979 the Three Mile Island reactor melted down and killed nobody.

In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down and killed 31 immediately
and 4000 many decades later.

In 1979 the Morvi hydroelectric Dam in India failed and killed 1500 people,

In 1998 a oil pipeline in Nigeria exploded and killed 1078 people.

In 1907 the Monongah Coal Mine in West Virginia exploded and killed well
over 500 people.

In 1944 a liquified natural gas factory exploded in Cleveland Ohio and
killed 130 people.

In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down and killed nobody.

  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/15/2013 5:29 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
The fantastic amount of subsidies to the solar energy (That not even Germany will have 
enough budget to pay them) not only have destroyed the familiar and industrial economy 
with such incredible amount of taxes.


Germany's Industrial Economy Destroyed!  Does Angela Merkel know about this? Does 
Alberto know about the fantastic amount of subsidy to the fossil fuel industry that is 
afforded to them by *not* charging them for the damage they do to the environment?


Brent
Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, I remember, which he said
should be carved in big letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon for
the flying-saucer people to find, was this:
   WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT
   BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP
Only he didn't say 'doggone.'
--- Kurt Vonnegut Hocus Pocus




--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

Germany was forced to reduce the subsidies retroactively, that means
breaking the contracts with already installed power plants. Like spain and
other countries. Even, so the taxes over electricity consumption would
provoke a revolution in USA.


2013/11/15 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

  On 11/15/2013 5:29 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

 The fantastic amount of subsidies to the solar energy (That not even
 Germany will have enough budget to pay them) not only have destroyed the
 familiar and industrial economy with such incredible amount of taxes.


 Germany's Industrial Economy Destroyed!  Does Angela Merkel know about
 this?  Does Alberto know about the fantastic amount of subsidy to the
 fossil fuel industry that is afforded to them by *not* charging them for
 the damage they do to the environment?

 Brent
 Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, I remember, which he said
 should be carved in big letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon for
 the flying-saucer people to find, was this:
WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT
BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP
 Only he didn't say 'doggone.'
 --- Kurt Vonnegut Hocus Pocus




  --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.




-- 
Alberto.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

Solar irradiance on the Earth is approximately 1.74×1017 Watts.

On 16 November 2013 02:13, spudboy...@aol.com wrote:

 To perform a fix on the climate, and I am giving the IPCC supporters the
 benefit of the doubt, we must have abundant clean sources at the ready. We
 need terawatts of clean, because gigawatts are insufficient. Some can be
 replaced by higher efficiency homes and devices, and cars-but this will
 only takes us so far.  Think terawatts, not negawatts, and what tech we are
 going to use to replace the dirty? Faster please.




-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 07:18, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 There's nothing apocalyptic about global warming.  Human will survive as a
 species.  At least so long as it doesn't trigger a nuclear war.  But there
 will be a lot death and suffering.


I agree. The question is whether our civilisation will survive. Without it
we may well be doomed to remain on Earth, and eventually get flattened by
the next passing asteroid, after a period of living in Medieval squalor. I
want something better for my descendants than that.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 07:34, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

 I rephrase my affirmation as a question, so that even a kid can understand
 it:

 The models of the earth nucleus predict an inversion of polatity every
 14000 years, just what happens in the real Eart nucleus.

 What fact of the earth climate the climate models are capable to predict?

 Rising temperatures.

Fourier could have told you that in the 19th century.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 08:20, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 11/15/2013 5:29 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

 The fantastic amount of subsidies to the solar energy (That not even
 Germany will have enough budget to pay them) not only have destroyed the
 familiar and industrial economy with such incredible amount of taxes.


 Germany's Industrial Economy Destroyed!  Does Angela Merkel know about
 this?  Does Alberto know about the fantastic amount of subsidy to the
 fossil fuel industry that is afforded to them by *not* charging them for
 the damage they do to the environment?

 Indeed. Never mind the huge subsidied they get on top of that. They pay a
few million dollars to political parties and get an astronomical return.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread Richard Ruquist

LizR
3:23 PM (29 minutes ago)
to everything-list
On 16 November 2013 07:34, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

 I rephrase my affirmation as a question, so that even a kid can understand
 it:

 The models of the earth nucleus predict an inversion of polatity every
 14000 years, just what happens in the real Eart nucleus.

 What fact of the earth climate the climate models are capable to predict?

 Rising temperatures.

Fourier could have told you that in the 19th century.

Liz, Global temperatures fell from 1950 to 1980 while CO2 atm content was
rising. Can you explain that? Richard


On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 3:23 PM, LizR lizj...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 16 November 2013 07:34, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

 I rephrase my affirmation as a question, so that even a kid can
 understand it:

 The models of the earth nucleus predict an inversion of polatity every
 14000 years, just what happens in the real Eart nucleus.

 What fact of the earth climate the climate models are capable to predict?

 Rising temperatures.

 Fourier could have told you that in the 19th century.

  --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/15/2013 11:06 AM, John Clark wrote:




On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 4:19 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com 
mailto:jami...@gmail.com wrote:



 And for nukes? I would say:  O N L Y  fusion!
The 'old fashion' fission nuke may be even more danerous than fossil 
pollution.


Lets look at the disasters associated with various energy producing projects:

In 1975 the Shimantan/Banqiao hydroelectric Dam in China failed and killed 
171,000 people.

In 1979 the Three Mile Island reactor melted down and killed nobody.

In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down and killed 31 immediately and 4000 many 
decades later.


In 1979 the Morvi hydroelectric Dam in India failed and killed 1500 people,

In 1998 a oil pipeline in Nigeria exploded and killed 1078 people.

In 1907 the Monongah Coal Mine in West Virginia exploded and killed well over 
500 people.

In 1944 a liquified natural gas factory exploded in Cleveland Ohio and killed 
130 people.

In 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down and killed nobody.


Not only that, coal mining releases a lot more radioctivity into the atmosphere than 
nuclear plants ever have.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 4:09 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

 in the past, when the earth was much warmer, sea level was several meters
 higher.


The sea was hundreds of meters higher in the past and will be so again
someday, but at a rate of one inch a decade we'll have plenty of time to
adapt.

 As you must know, melting ice


Which occurs at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

 is a first-order phase transition.  Heat is absorbed the phase change
 with no increase in temperature.


Yes, and that means more energy would be required to melt all that ice than
would otherwise be the case.

 Myrhvold himself says it will be a serious problem within 40yrs even if
 we cut CO2 emissions by 6% a year - and there's no reason to suppose we
 will cut them at all.  He considers the problem a serious pickle, which
 is why he proposes injecting particles into the stratosphere, like an
 artificial volcano, as a transitional remedy.  No doubt some
 environmentalist have criticized this as a risky geoengineering solution
 with hard to forsee side effects.


And no doubt you are correct, environmentalist claim we face a existential
threat from global warming, but whenever anybody proposes a solution their
response is always exactly the same, no no no.

   Environmentalists claim to occupy the moral high ground but because
 of a superstitious fear of all genetic engineering they oppose Golden Rice
 even to the point of criminal sabotage which could prevent 670,000 children
 a year from dying of vitamin A deficiency and 350,000 go permanently blind.
 Environmentalists blab on and on about the evils of chemical pesticides but
 when science develops plants that need much less of them they do everything
 they can to stop it. Instead environmentalists insist that 7 billion people
 can be kept alive and in comfort with moonbeams and hummingbirds and
 windmills powering blast furnaces.

   A straw man mockery of environmentalists.


Straw man my ass, environmentalists never met a energy source they didn't
hate. Wind farms are ugly, disrupt wind patterns are noisy and kill
birdies. Geothermal smells bad and causes earthquakes. Hydroelectric floods
the land and new dams may also cause earthquakes. Bio-fuel diverts needed
food production to fuel. Solar energy is so dilute that vast tracks of land
are needed and that will endanger a desert lizard you never heard of. And
of course there is the N word, the energy source so hated that tree
huggers dare not speak its name. I however sometimes take the heretical
view that the environmentalist's preferred solution to this problem,
freezing to death in the dark, may not be ideal.


  I have a friend who has been president of the local Sierra Club for many
 years and he's all for nuclear power plants,


From the Sierra Club official website:

The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.

For more crap see:

http://www.sierraclub.org/nuclear/

 especially LFTRs, to replace fossil fuel.


Good, I'm a big fan of LFTRs, too bad all members of the Sierra Club aren't
as enlightened.


  He has no problem with genetic engineering


 From the Sierra Club official website:

 Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or genetically engineered (GE)
foods have the potential to cause a variety of health problems.

For more crap see:

http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/

  John K Clark

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

[image: Inline images 1]


On 16 November 2013 09:54, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:


 Liz, Global temperatures fell from 1950 to 1980 while CO2 atm content was
 rising. Can you explain that? Richard

 Why should I? This is a complex system with an uncontrolled experiment
running in it. Since I was born the CO2 has gone up 25%, that is a major
piece of unintended planetary engineering, the effects of CO2 on solar
irradiance are well understood, and on average the global temperature is
going up just as predicted. There is a real, measurable effect, as the
firefighters of Australia and the entire population of the Phillippines
(amongst many, many others already affected by it) can tell you. Denying
its existence means being blind to the data - the (hehe) cold, hard facts.
Questioning the *reason *for it is at least somewhat sensible, though
becoming less so as emissions increase more rapidly and temperatures do
likewise, by what must seem to some people like, wow, what an amazing
coincidence. The main question is, what (if anything) can we do about it,
preferably before the oceans above the thermocline warm the 2 degrees
required to bring gigatonnes of methane out of suspension?

PS on the subject of the plateau shown above - maybe those other factors
deniers are always going on about were involved? Pollution increasing the
Earth's albedo, solar cycles, something to do with the second world war or
nuclear testing, whatever? Show me a graph measured by NASA or the Arctic
Institute where the temperature (and preferably the CO2) go back to their
1900 level and you'll have something worth discussing.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 10:07, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote:


 Straw man my ass, environmentalists never met a energy source they didn't
 hate. Wind farms are ugly, disrupt wind patterns are noisy and kill
 birdies. Geothermal smells bad and causes earthquakes. Hydroelectric floods
 the land and new dams may also cause earthquakes. Bio-fuel diverts needed
 food production to fuel. Solar energy is so dilute that vast tracks of land
 are needed and that will endanger a desert lizard you never heard of. And
 of course there is the N word, the energy source so hated that tree
 huggers dare not speak its name. I however sometimes take the heretical
 view that the environmentalist's preferred solution to this problem,
 freezing to death in the dark, may not be ideal.


So what do you call me, someone who is worried about the environment but
mainly because of the effects destroying it will have on humanity, who is
prepared to embrace all forms of alternative power including nuclear if
that will save us, and who thinks the best solution for the human race is
to improve our technolgy asap, and to whom the idea of returning to the
golden age of no dentistry and droit de signeur is an abiding dread?

A person hugger ?

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

2013-11-15 Thread Russell Standish

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 10:18:17AM +1300, LizR wrote:
 [image: Inline images 1]
 
 
 On 16 November 2013 09:54, Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 
  Liz, Global temperatures fell from 1950 to 1980 while CO2 atm content was
  rising. Can you explain that? Richard
 
 PS on the subject of the plateau shown above - maybe those other factors
 deniers are always going on about were involved? Pollution increasing the
 Earth's albedo, solar cycles, something to do with the second world war or
 nuclear testing, whatever? Show me a graph measured by NASA or the Arctic
 Institute where the temperature (and preferably the CO2) go back to their
 1900 level and you'll have something worth discussing.
 

This is due to the presence of aerosols. Ironically, cleaning up our
pollution has caused the planet to warm faster.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-mid-20th-century.htm

-- 


Prof Russell Standish  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics  hpco...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales  http://www.hpcoders.com.au


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 10:48, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

 This is due to the presence of aerosols. Ironically, cleaning up our
 pollution has caused the planet to warm faster.

 Yes I thought it would be something like that. I recently heard there had
been a (slight) drop in global temperatures caused by increased pollution
(possibly over China?)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 10:44, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:


 That is not a predicion that test the validity of a model. I can do the
 same with a program with then lines by adjusting three parameters.

 A real model would reproduce the evolution of ancient climates
 transitions, for example the initiation and evolution of the glacial era
 from well know paleoclimatic parameters, circulation of the oceans and
 shape of the continents, the solar cycles and the orbit of the earth the .

 Nut I'm  not talking about the prediction of the global parameters, (that
 ad hoc adjustment I can do it) . It must reproduce the changes in the ocean
 flows, the variations in extension of the polar ice caps,  not the mean
 temperature of the planet.

 The models are decades at least from reproducing that. Probably this may
 never will be possible.

 drop me a message back when this has been achieved.


Would you like that before or after the oceans swamp most of our farmland?

(PS I see you live nice and high above sea level. Talking the talk, eh? :)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

My own models and the one of star trekkers, Star warriors and in general
Sci-Fi aficionados indicates that the most probable catastrophe is an
alien invasion in the next 100 years.

We have only one planet to live. So I will consider you a bunch of retarded
deniers and brainless morons if you do not contribute compulsorily to the
creation of a

Rebel Alliance X-Wing
Squadronhttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonkwan/crowdfunding-rebel-alliance-x-wing-squadron
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonkwan/crowdfunding-rebel-alliance-x-wing-squadron

The consensus is there. You are warned.

2013/11/15 LizR lizj...@gmail.com

On 16 November 2013 10:44, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

That is not a predicion that test the validity of a model. I can do the
same with a program with then lines by adjusting three parameters.

A real model would reproduce the evolution of ancient climates
transitions, for example the initiation and evolution of the glacial era
from well know paleoclimatic parameters, circulation of the oceans and
shape of the continents, the solar cycles and the orbit of the earth the .

Nut I'm not talking about the prediction of the global parameters, (that
ad hoc adjustment I can do it) . It must reproduce the changes in the ocean
flows, the variations in extension of the polar ice caps, not the mean
temperature of the planet.

The models are decades at least from reproducing that. Probably this may
never will be possible.

drop me a message back when this has been achieved.

Would you like that before or after the oceans swamp most of our farmland?

(PS I see you live nice and high above sea level. Talking the talk, eh? :)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

--
Alberto.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 11:13, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

My own models and the one of star trekkers, Star warriors and in general
Sci-Fi aficionados indicates that the most probable catastrophe is an
alien invasion in the next 100 years.

We have only one planet to live. So I will consider you a bunch of
retarded deniers and brainless morons if you do not contribute
compulsorily to the creation of a

Rebel Alliance X-Wing
Squadronhttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonkwan/crowdfunding-rebel-alliance-x-wing-squadron

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonkwan/crowdfunding-rebel-alliance-x-wing-squadron

The consensus is there. You are warned.

Well my models are spot on. I have modelled quite a number of climate
change denier responses, and I generally find that when sarcasm, straw men
and blind insistence fail them, they fall back on ridicule. So far you have
hit every point on my graph.

Yet oddly enough all your comments *still* haven't stopped sea level rise
or melting glaciers or rising temperatures. Strange that. Maybe if you keep
them up long enough NASA will start recording a lower global temperature
and Mauna Kea will record less atmospheric CO2.

PS Have you considered changing your name to Alberto G. Canute?

Re: Global warming silliness

As i said before, it si worthless to talk with sectarian apocalipticists.
Your ideological ancestors were the worst people of the modern times. It
is no surprise that you lack the tiniest sense of humor. You are a true
danger.

2013/11/15 LizR lizj...@gmail.com

On 16 November 2013 11:13, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

My own models and the one of star trekkers, Star warriors and in general
Sci-Fi aficionados indicates that the most probable catastrophe is an
alien invasion in the next 100 years.

We have only one planet to live. So I will consider you a bunch of
retarded deniers and brainless morons if you do not contribute
compulsorily to the creation of a

Rebel Alliance X-Wing
Squadronhttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonkwan/crowdfunding-rebel-alliance-x-wing-squadron

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonkwan/crowdfunding-rebel-alliance-x-wing-squadron

The consensus is there. You are warned.

PS Have you considered changing your name to Alberto G. Canute?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

--
Alberto.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/15/2013 2:38 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
As i said before, it si worthless to talk with sectarian apocalipticists.  Your 
ideological ancestors were the worst people of the modern times.  It is no surprise that 
you lack the tiniest sense of humor.  You are a true danger. 


Alberto is just feeling peeved because his co-religionists can't burn scientists at the 
stake anymore.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

You have shown what you are and what you represent. I have nothing more to
say. You are your worst enemy.

I suspect that we have touched not only the beliefs, but the business of
some people here that live from big gobernment politics and ecoalarmist
demagogy.

2013/11/15 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net

  On 11/15/2013 2:38 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

 As i said before, it si worthless to talk with sectarian apocalipticists.
  Your ideological ancestors were the worst people of the modern times.  It
 is no surprise that you lack the tiniest sense of humor.  You are a true
 danger.


 Alberto is just feeling peeved because his co-religionists can't burn
 scientists at the stake anymore.

 Brent

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
 Everything List group.
 To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
 email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
 To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
 Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
 For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.




-- 
Alberto.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 11:38, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

 As i said before, it si worthless to talk with sectarian apocalipticists.
  Your ideological ancestors were the worst people of the modern times.  It
 is no surprise that you lack the tiniest sense of humor.  You are a true
 danger.

 I responded to your humour with more humour, which you seem to have missed
- so who is missing a sense of humour, again?

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 11:57, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

 You have shown what you are and what you represent. I have nothing more to
 say. You are your worst enemy.

 I suspect that we have touched not only the beliefs, but the business of
 some people here that live from big gobernment politics and ecoalarmist
 demagogy.

 If you can't win with facts, misrepresentation or sarcasm, out come the
insults.

So far, my climate denier models are spot on.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness


On 11/15/2013 3:16 PM, LizR wrote:
On 16 November 2013 11:57, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com 
mailto:agocor...@gmail.com wrote:


You have shown what you are and what you represent. I have nothing more to 
say. You
are your worst enemy.

I suspect that we have touched not only the beliefs, but the business of 
some people
here that live from big gobernment politics and ecoalarmist demagogy.

If you can't win with facts, misrepresentation or sarcasm, out come the insults.

So far, my climate denier models are spot on.


How many times does you model predict Alberto will post that he's not going to say 
anymore?  Just curious.


Brent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Re: Global warming silliness

On 16 November 2013 12:35, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote:

  On 11/15/2013 3:16 PM, LizR wrote:

  So far, my climate denier models are spot on.

 How many times does you model predict Alberto will post that he's not
 going to say anymore?  Just curious.

 :-)

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

RE: Global warming silliness

Show me these models that are 0% accurate – that is very hard to achieve,
except in the land of polemics, which is where I suspect you reside.

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona 
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 2:45 AM
To: everything-list
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

2013/11/15 LizR lizj...@gmail.com

So the measurements showing rising global temperatures and the noticeable
effects this is having, and the measured rise in CO2 since the industrial
revolution are irrelevant because the models aren't yet 100% accurate?

The models are 0% accurate.

The other aspects that you mention are flawed as well.

So let's sit on our hands and do nothing, just in case we make a better
world on the basis of false premises?

 Not at all. As I said before, I have my own shit to attend. but I don't
advocate to forbid you to do something for it. Feel free to do whatever you
want.  I encourage you to expend all your money in the save the world shit
with mekerdb and other like you in brotherhood and harmony together.  

Might even contribute to the movement. I will buy your next Documentary from
Al Gore et al. I definitively like scary movies.

Give me strength.

On 15 November 2013 23:11, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote:

There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because it
behaves like the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I
believe, dont want to fire up the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is
why it is a good model.

Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching
past data.

I selected this paragraph alone to show that you, in your obfuscation, don´t
understand the difference between predicion (or retrodiction) and tweking
for  predicting (or retrodict) nothing AT ALL. 

That is why I said that it is a waste of time to discuss the apocalypse with
the apocalipticists. 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com .
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
Alberto. 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
Everything List group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

RE: Global warming silliness

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 5:14 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

To perform a fix on the climate, and I am giving the IPCC supporters the
benefit of the doubt, we must have abundant clean sources at the ready. We
need terawatts of clean, because gigawatts are insufficient. Some can be
replaced by higher efficiency homes and devices, and cars-but this will only
takes us so far.  Think terawatts, not negawatts, and what tech we are going
to use to replace the dirty? Faster please.

You ignore the potential easily realizable savings that can be achieved by
retro-fitting our existing buildings and homes. Thiis is truly the low
hanging fruit and the scale of potential on-going energy savings is huge.
For example 

Read report:
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/electricpowernaturalgas/US_energy_effi
ciency/

The global consulting firm estimates that $520 billion in investments would
reduce U.S. non-transportation energy usage by 9.1 quadrillion BTUs by 2020
- roughly 23 percent of projected demand. As a result, the U.S. economy
would save more than $1.2 trillion and avoid the release of some 1.1
gigatons of annual greenhouse gases, an amount equal to replacing 1,000
conventional 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants with renewable energy.

Or the comparison given in the report The reduction in energy use would
also result in the abatement of 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse-gas emissions
annually-the equivalent of taking the entire US fleet of passenger vehicles
and light trucks off the roads.

Achieving this kind of reduction in producing carbon dioxide and in annual
fossil energy consumption is not nibbling at the problem around the edges -
this represents the single largest and most important  immediate thing we
can do to change the picture on the ground. And is something that will need
to be done anyway. Doing this will increase the energy security (and
military and economic security as well) of the US by making our country much
leaner and able to prosper and live in comfort on far less energy - an
carbon footprint impact the equivalent of removing the entire fleet of cars
and light truck from the nation's roads and highways. You cannot get more
major impact than that.

Chris

-Original Message-
From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net
To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Nov 14, 2013 7:23 pm
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

On 11/14/2013 4:20 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
 Yes.

 I proposed myself not to argue against sectarian apocalypticists because
that 
is a waste 
 of time, but honoring those of you that are not seduced by the 
 end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it movement, I will say something:

Alas, some people just can't be relied on.

 Climatic models are bullshit. if you look at how they adjust parameters 
looking at the 
 climategate mails you will have no doubt. Starting from that funny way for

manufacturing 
 models, it is no surprise that they predict nothing as Telmo said.

First, the general circulation model developed at East Anglia is only one of
a 
dozen or 
more and they all predict increasing temperature - including the pencil and 
paper 
calculation of Arhennius.  In fact it's trivially easy to see that increased
CO2 
will 
raise the earth's temperature.  CO2 absorbs light energy in infrared bands
that 
are 
otherwise transparent.  Without CO2 the planet would be too cold for human 
habitation (as 
already realized by Fourier).  The difficulty in making accurate predictions
of 
how much 
the CO2 we're adding will raise temperatures comes from accounting for the 
positive 
feedback effect of water vapor.  Most models assume the world average
relative 
humidity 
will stay the same.  Some try to model ocean circulation from deep to
shallow 
and assume 
water vapor pressure stays in equilibrium with the ocean surface.  But these

don't make 
any difference to the long term conclusion.

 There is a model of the earth nucleus. It is very good. Why?  Because it 
behaves like 
 the real nucleus. It invert polarity every 14000 years I believe, dont
want to 
fire up 
 the wikipedia to get the real digits. That is why it is a good model.

Just like climate models parameter values have been inferred by matching
past 
data.

 What would be a good test of a climatic model?. We know that at the
glacial 
eras started 
 when North and South America united by the istmus of Panama closed the
free 
water 
 movement between the atlantic and pacific. That changed the global water
flow 
regimes 
 and resulted in the two polar ice caps.

 It is easy to configure the continents in the climate models and see what 
happens in 
 each configuration of the american continents. Why they dont try it?.
Because 
they know 
 that their models are lacking decades of research to get accurate

RE: Global warming silliness

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona 
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 5:30 AM
To: everything-list
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

The fantastic amount of subsidies to the solar energy (That not even
Germany will have enough budget to pay them) not only have destroyed the
familiar and industrial economy with such incredible amount of taxes. They
also have stopped further solar cell  research in the countries where these
subsidies have been granted.

References?

I leave as an exercise to figure out why that has happened. It is quite
easy. But I guess that some people here well versed in QM and cosmology will
be unable to figure it out.

2013/11/15 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

Hi Russell,

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 12:58 AM, Russell Standish
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
 On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:09:18PM +0100, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:32 PM, Russell Standish
 li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

  The good news is that the figures I've seen is that its not such a
  tremendous cost after all.

 I am very interested in this. Could you be more specific? How can this
 be? Was there some breakthrough in sustainable sources that increased
 their efficiency?

 The following is an article dealing with the economics in Australia of
 PV vs coal fired stations

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/renewables-now-cheaper-than-coal-and-gas-in-
australia-62268

 And here is one for wind power:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/rising-risk-prices-out-new-coa
lfired-plants-report-20130207-2e0s4.html

 These figure also do not include the existing carbon price of $20 per
tonne.

 Existing fossil fuel generators will continue for a while, though, of
 course, particularly as renewables have not yet solved the baseload
 supply problem. Vanadium batteries may be good for that.

Thanks for this. I hope it works.
Reading the articles I have a feeling that this is more related to
banks fearing investments in non-clean energy that could be subject to
increasingly high taxes -- even though it appears that the Australian
conservatives are not inclined to do that. I have no doubt that the
technology is improving and I hope it does, but I would be more
convinced if they addressed the hard numbers on the energy efficiency,
sans current economical incentives, be they regulation or market
conditions. Because I believe that those are the ones that will count
in the long term.

Part of the reason for my worry is that I saw heavy subsidising of
wind farms destroy the industry in my home country (Portugal). The
energy bill there is now about 60% taxes, to maintain the wind farms.
Keeping your house warm in the winter is too expensive, even for the
upper middle class.

   Obviously fossil fuel will run out anyway, so even without climate
change
   we'd have to do something.

  Yes, but that something we have to do is very different depending on
  whether or not we have to cut CO2 emissions and, more importantly, one
  of the path leads to immense human suffering.

  The point is whether we do something, or do nothing, energy costs
  _will_ rise. Yes this _will_ lead to human suffering, either way. We
  can either choose to pay a bit more now, and have less costs later, or
  pay less now, and have steeper rises later.

 I agree that energy costs will rise and this is a very serious problem
 that we need to face. If you don't have to worry about CO2 so much,
 it's easier and less painful -- the more expensive fossil fuels
 become, the more economic incentive there will be for renewable
 sources. In this scenario we can retain economic freedom, which is
 highly correlated with prosperity.

  A 10 or 20% energy cost increase to hasten decarbonisation by a decade
  will save many billions of dollars of geo-engineering, or evironmental
  restoration down the track.

 Are you aware of geo-engineering proposals that would be very cheap?

 Nothing earth-scale will be cheap, or easy to understand all the
 consequences. Ultimately, it will need to come down to a cost-benefit
 analysis, factoring in the unknowns as some kind of risk factor.

But if the technology break-throughs are real, we don't even have to
worry all that much, maybe. There will be a lot of money to be made in
moving to sustainable sources. Pushes for regulation make me suspect
that the technology is not there yet. In which case I agree with you.

  Seems like quite an astute investment to
  me. Our current conservative government, alas, doesn't seem to think
  so.

  Then there are the geo-engineering ideas that John mentioned. They
  appear to be ignored. This makes the entire thing start to smell a bit
  of religious moralism.

  Telmo.

  They're not being ignored. But they do require a lot more small-scale
  research to understand their risk-benefit tradeoff.

 I never see this as part of the discussion. I'm very skeptical

RE: Global warming silliness

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona 
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2013 5:33 AM
To: everything-list
Subject: Re: Global warming silliness

 I mean, the subsidies are for solar energy production.

References

2013/11/15 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com

The fantastic amount of subsidies to the solar energy (That not even Germany
will have enough budget to pay them) not only have destroyed the familiar
and industrial economy with such incredible amount of taxes. They also have
stopped further solar cell  research in the countries where these subsidies
have been granted.

I leave as an exercise to figure out why that has happened. It is quite
easy. But I guess that some people here well versed in QM and cosmology will
be unable to figure it out.

2013/11/15 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com

Hi Russell,

On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 12:58 AM, Russell Standish
li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:
 On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:09:18PM +0100, Telmo Menezes wrote:
 On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:32 PM, Russell Standish
 li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote:

  The good news is that the figures I've seen is that its not such a
  tremendous cost after all.

 I am very interested in this. Could you be more specific? How can this
 be? Was there some breakthrough in sustainable sources that increased
 their efficiency?

 The following is an article dealing with the economics in Australia of
 PV vs coal fired stations

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/renewables-now-cheaper-than-coal-and-gas-in-
australia-62268

 And here is one for wind power:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/rising-risk-prices-out-new-coa
lfired-plants-report-20130207-2e0s4.html

 These figure also do not include the existing carbon price of $20 per
tonne.

 Existing fossil fuel generators will continue for a while, though, of
 course, particularly as renewables have not yet solved the baseload
 supply problem. Vanadium batteries may be good for that.

Thanks for this. I hope it works.
Reading the articles I have a feeling that this is more related to
banks fearing investments in non-clean energy that could be subject to
increasingly high taxes -- even though it appears that the Australian
conservatives are not inclined to do that. I have no doubt that the
technology is improving and I hope it does, but I would be more
convinced if they addressed the hard numbers on the energy efficiency,
sans current economical incentives, be they regulation or market
conditions. Because I believe that those are the ones that will count
in the long term.

Part of the reason for my worry is that I saw heavy subsidising of
wind farms destroy the industry in my home country (Portugal). The
energy bill there is now about 60% taxes, to maintain the wind farms.
Keeping your house warm in the winter is too expensive, even for the
upper middle class.

   Obviously fossil fuel will run out anyway, so even without climate
change
   we'd have to do something.

  Yes, but that something we have to do is very different depending on
  whether or not we have to cut CO2 emissions and, more importantly, one
  of the path leads to immense human suffering.

  The point is whether we do something, or do nothing, energy costs
  _will_ rise. Yes this _will_ lead to human suffering, either way. We
  can either choose to pay a bit more now, and have less costs later, or
  pay less now, and have steeper rises later.

 I agree that energy costs will rise and this is a very serious problem
 that we need to face. If you don't have to worry about CO2 so much,
 it's easier and less painful -- the more expensive fossil fuels
 become, the more economic incentive there will be for renewable
 sources. In this scenario we can retain economic freedom, which is
 highly correlated with prosperity.

  A 10 or 20% energy cost increase to hasten decarbonisation by a decade
  will save many billions of dollars of geo-engineering, or evironmental
  restoration down the track.

 Are you aware of geo-engineering proposals that would be very cheap?

 Nothing earth-scale will be cheap, or easy to understand all the
 consequences. Ultimately, it will need to come down to a cost-benefit
 analysis, factoring in the unknowns as some kind of risk factor.

But if the technology break-throughs are real, we don't even have to
worry all that much, maybe. There will be a lot of money to be made in
moving to sustainable sources. Pushes for regulation make me suspect
that the technology is not there yet. In which case I agree with you.

  Seems like quite an astute investment to
  me. Our current conservative government, alas, doesn't seem to think
  so.

  Then there are the geo-engineering ideas that John mentioned. They
  appear to be ignored. This makes the entire thing start to smell a bit
  of religious moralism.

  Telmo.

  They're not being ignored. But they do require a lot more small-scale
  research

RE: Global warming silliness