[Falcon] Re: Global Mean Temperature

[Surlethe]

I think it's interesting to consider the reasons for the mindset of "Hey, we're not causing it; it's the sun!" Really, it boils down to an excuse not to change policy and correct social inertia; after all, if there's nothing we can do about it, why change? This is knee-jerk defense of one of the downsides of free-market thinking: short-term gain far outweighs any long-term benefits.

[Darth Wong]

Here's some one-stop shopping for common global-warming arguments.

[Tahlan]

Emperor Wong, thanks for the link. I started reading the NERC info, and I'll get back to it after this post.

It's not very kind for me to say this, but it seems Falcon has done this kind of thing before. The title above his avatar says it all. Fundamentalist Moron: Obviously, this rank is for fundie morons.

From what I've seen from lurking about the site for a couple of months before finally registering and starting to get involved in the board, it really takes some effort to acquire that title.

If I were in Falcon's position, then maybe Russian Roulette would be a good thing after all.

[Surlethe]

It's not very kind for me to say this, but it seems Falcon has done this kind of thing before. The title above his avatar says it all. Fundamentalist Moron: Obviously, this rank is for fundie morons.

You know, you could have searched for a few threads and seen for yourself when he's pulled shit like this before. It's not like he's new.

[Sikon]

The dissent makes a compelling argument on several fronts, such as the notion that solar activity is far more crucial in driving the climate than CO2 levels.

Solar activity has had an effect in geological history, but the recent increase in average temperature does not match solar irradiance changes. Here's one illustration:



There are other factors, such as the effect of increasing greenhouse gases.

The IPCC doesn't want to mention solar causes because then they have no basis for all the political agendas that they're pushing.

It is important to distinguish between the Independent Online article and the IPCC predictions.

They are vastly different.

Global warming: the final warning

According to yesterday's UN report, the world will be a much hotter place by 2100. This will be the impact ...

Published: 03 February 2007

The article makes a variety of extreme claims without calculations or references aside from an implicit reference to the report published a day before its February 3rd publication, a report which does not make such claims.

Mark Lynas makes unsupported claims, predictions like "the Amazonian rainforest burns in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity"; "'hypercanes' (hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity) circumnavigate the globe"; and "humanity [will be] reduced to a few survivors eking out a living in polar refuges."

Essentially, the article claims that human civilization throughout more than a hundred million square kilometers of land will be totally wiped out. And the author doesn't say that is a worse-case scenario. Mark Lynas says "this will be the impact."

In contrast, the real February 2nd document released by the IPCC is based on peer-reviewed science, developed with quantitative measurements and calculations.

The last full report gave the following predictions for adverse effects:

* A general reduction in potential crop yields in most tropical and sub-tropical regions for most projected increases in temperature [4.2]
* A general reduction, with some variation, in potential crop yields in most regions in mid-latitudes for increases in annual-average temperature of more than a few °C [4.2]
* Decreased water availability for populations in many water-scarce regions, particularly in the sub-tropics [4.1]
* An increase in the number of people exposed to vector-borne (e.g., malaria) and water-borne diseases (e.g., cholera), and an increase in heat stress mortality [4.7]
* A widespread increase in the risk of flooding for many human settlements (tens of millions of inhabitants in settlements studied) from both increased heavy precipitation events and sea-level rise [4.5]
* Increased energy demand for space cooling due to higher summer temperatures. [4.5]

The February 2nd IPCC report is an extension of the careful science that led to the preceding, such as refining the estimates of temperature rise by 2100 to 1.8 to 4.0 degrees Celsius when they were a wider range of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius in the older report.

To say the Independent Online article is a misrepresentation of the IPCC's predictions is practically an understatement. The real science studied by the IPCC supporting global warming as human-caused and its effects is well-researched.

Demands for evidence are given with grins because all contrary evidence is simply banished by decree from the orthadoxy that holds all reasonable debate hostage with paranoia and name calling.

Some aspects of the current situation are clear, and they support global warming, not in the end-of-civilization style of that Mark Lynas article but in terms of undesirable effects as predicted by the IPCC.

For example, the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is known with certainty, given how straightforward chemistry can measure it:



And human emissions are also known:



Whatever the exact rate of increase, one can guess the situation that will occur until the energy source changes (e.g. to nuclear power and/or renewables): carbon dioxide levels rise to 400 ppm, 600 ppm, and so on.

Hopefully that will eventually change, but the default situation is extreme future levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, particularly given the amount of coal yet to be mined and burned if current trends continue.

The effect of carbon dioxide on infrared radiation is known from its spectral properties, and, not surprisingly, atmospheric measurements support what lab experiments indirectly suggest.

It is really to be expected that having already added 900 billion tons of CO2 has some effect. It is known that humans are capable of changing planetary temperature as I discussed in an older thread.

After much research the IPCC has determined the following, carefully adding up the effects of various human-released pollutants:



And this is an illustration of the overall situation:

[Darth Wong]

At least Falcon is consistent. He uses exactly the same tactics against global warming that he uses against evolution. Always accuse the entire scientific community of censoring data that doesn't fit with its claims. Cite any published data which can be even vaguely interpreted as refuting the science, without the slightest hint that he sees the irony in doing this after claiming that all contrarian data is censored. Refuse to provide any real evidence of this "censoring" other than finding examples of people who complain about it ... but are mysteriously not censored for doing so, and who never produce concrete examples of the data that they claim is being suppressed.

[Wyrm]

Most of the proposals to "fixing" global warming include some kind of anti-capitalist scheme like energy taxes, forced emissions reductions, forced purchase of pollution credits to redistribute wealth to the undeveloped world, etc...

What the hell makes taxes, forced compliance to regulations, and pollution credits "anti-capitalist", idiot? Rather than, say, making a normally externalized cost internalized? It's not anti-capitalist for companies to bear part of the costs for consequences they are partly responsible for.

As Einy said, capitalism is great at responding to change. But there has to be impetus towards the change you want, in this case, keeping climate change to a minimum. The hope is that when businesses have to directly pay for the cost of their contribution to climate change, they themselves will be at the vanguard of the green movement.

[Patrick Degan]

All I can say is that those of you who have drunk this kool-aid so greedily will deserve what you get when human advancement is ground to a halt by draconian energy policies.

Really? Care to outline just why this must be the necessary outcome or is this just a False Dilemma Fallacy you're tossing out in addition to all your other logical and factual errors?

[Falcon]

Of course, it's always best to
trust peer-reviewed science over research which hasn't come under the same
scrutiny, but is peer review always fair? An April, 2006 editorial in
the Wall Street Journal from Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor
of Atmospheric Science at MIT, included this paragraph expressing his
own frustration at the peer review process:

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific
journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted
climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused
without review as being without interest. However, even when such
papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA,
attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we
discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus
clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong
negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to
increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of
letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond
immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared
papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed
months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly
referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to
actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the
U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our
knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead
urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would
actually happen.

Mr. Lindzen is criticized by some for taking consulting fees from oil
and gas interests.

So an industry-paid shill says that the scientific peer-review process
is biased, and we're supposed to be bowled over by this?

Why mention industry paid shill and say nothing of the billions going
to the other side? There's a financial incentive in both directions and
a peer pressure incentive in only one.

That being said, here is a peer-reviewed article that looks at
solar activity as being responsible for up to 50% of the observed global
warming since 1900.

I thought you were trying to imply that such papers were being censored
by an evil global conspiracy of dishonest scientists. Why didn't they
censor this one?

No censorship is perfect, but its pretty difficult for anyone to
dissent when they're retaliated against so completely.

PS. It's intriguing to think that much of the climate-change could have
been caused by solar variations, but that in no way refutes the
connection between greenhouse gases and climate. The greenhouse effect is
well-researched and the underlying optical mechanism is rock-solid. It
does have an effect, and saying that there could be other
contributing mechanisms does precisely nothing to change that fact. Even
if there are no problems whatsoever with this recent paper's conclusions
and we take their worst-case scenario (ironically, after your blanket
dismissal of worst-case scenarios earlier), it still means that we have
to address the greenhouse-gas situation because we certainly can't do
anything about the Sun.

The greenhouse effect might be "rock solid," but what isn't so solid is the notion that mankind is
contributing enough greenhouse gasses to alter the climate enough that we could stop that alteration with any curtailment of our activities. Of the total greenhouse gasses out there the amount we
produce is relatively small and it would take terrible cuts to the economy
to make any meaningful reduction. Add to it that it seems plausible
solar activity is driving much of the warming and I see no reason to
start tearing down civilization, denying development to the third world,
and otherwise infringing on people's liberties.

I think it's interesting to consider the reasons for
the mindset of "Hey, we're not causing it; it's the sun!" Really, it
boils down to an excuse not to change policy and correct social inertia;
after all, if there's nothing we can do about it, why change? This is
knee-jerk defense of one of the downsides of free-market thinking:
short-term gain far outweighs any long-term benefits.

Yes, its precisely a reason not to change policy. Changing policy is
going to have terrible results in terms of liberty, prosperity, etc, and
for what? Over some paranoid doomsday predictions based on science
that may not be telling the whole story or even accurately telling a part
of the story.

Emperor Wong, thanks for the link. I started reading the NERC info, and I'll get back to it after this post.

It's not very kind for me to say this, but it seems Falcon has done this kind of thing before. The title above his avatar says it all. Fundamentalist Moron: Obviously, this rank is for fundie morons.

From what I've seen from lurking about the site for a couple of months before finally registering and starting to get involved in the board, it really takes some effort to acquire that title.

If I were in Falcon's position, then maybe Russian Roulette would be a good thing after all.

All it took for me to get this title was to maintain that science hasn't disproven religion. Indeed, science has no business intruding into religious or political spheres anymore than those areas have intruding into science. One of my main problems with the whole environmental movement is that its being used as a vehicle for a political agenda that emphasizes the supremacy of the state and state planning over the individual. Science is useful for learning about the world, but a line should be drawn when people try to state that "science says X" so now its time to take away some freedom because you're abusing yourself or the environment in a way science says is bad.

At least Falcon is consistent. He uses exactly the
same tactics against global warming that he uses against evolution.
Always accuse the entire scientific community of censoring data that
doesn't fit with its claims. Cite any published data which can be even
vaguely interpreted as refuting the science, without the slightest hint that
he sees the irony in doing this after claiming that all contrarian data
is censored. Refuse to provide any real evidence of this "censoring"
other than finding examples of people who complain about it ... but are
mysteriously not censored for doing so, and who never produce concrete
examples of the data that they claim is being suppressed.

I have no problem with evolution except when people make the leap to
somehow assume it disproves religion. I don’t always accuse the scientific community of censorship either, in fact, I can’t recall ever making such an accusation before about any other issue. Furthermore, there is no way that I can think of that one could document censorship except by individual claims of the censorship occurring. What ends up happening is that scientists who disagree are either brow beaten into voluntarily dismissing their claims or else put their claims out on their own which leads people like you to chortle “where’s the peer-reviewing.” They’ve presented the data, I’ve recounted some of it here, but no one listens to it because the establishment keeps it out of mainstream discussion. So basically, if it isn’t in the mainstream discussion it isn’t valid and if the mainstream discussion (pro-man caused warming) doesn’t think its valid it won't discuss it. How nice.

The dissent makes a compelling argument on several fronts, such as the notion that solar activity is far more crucial in driving the climate than CO2 levels.

Solar activity has had an effect in geological history, but the recent increase in average temperature does not match solar irradiance changes. Here's one illustration:



There are other factors, such as the effect of increasing greenhouse gases.

There are other factors, and the effect of increasing greenhouse gases is unclear at best.
http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

The National Center for Policy Analysis, for one, has this to say on the subject: “The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it. Instead, the warming seems to be part of a 1,500-year cycle (plus or minus 500 years) of moderate temperature swings.”

And the National Aeronautic and Space Administration—NASA—isn’t so sure, either. “It may surprise many people that science—the de facto source of dependable knowledge about the natural world—cannot deliver an unqualified, unanimous answer about something as important as climate change. Why is the question so thorny? The reason, say experts, is that Earth’s climate is complex and chaotic. It’s so unwieldy that researchers simply can’t conduct experiments to check their ideas in the usual way of science. They often rely, instead, on computer models. But such models are only as good as their inputs and programming, and today’s computer models are known to be imperfect.”

http://www.globalwarming-2007.net/aware ... -not-sure/

The IPCC doesn't want to mention solar causes because then they have no basis for all the political agendas that they're pushing.

It is important to distinguish between the Independent Online article and the IPCC predictions.

They are vastly different.

Global warming: the final warning

According to yesterday's UN report, the world will be a much hotter place by 2100. This will be the impact ...

Published: 03 February 2007

The article makes a variety of extreme claims without calculations or references aside from an implicit reference to the report published a day before its February 3rd publication, a report which does not make such claims.

Mark Lynas makes unsupported claims, predictions like "the Amazonian rainforest burns in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity"; "'hypercanes' (hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity) circumnavigate the globe"; and "humanity [will be] reduced to a few survivors eking out a living in polar refuges."

Essentially, the article claims that human civilization throughout more than a hundred million square kilometers of land will be totally wiped out. And the author doesn't say that is a worse-case scenario. Mark Lynas says "this will be the impact."

In contrast, the real February 2nd document released by the IPCC is based on peer-reviewed science, developed with quantitative measurements and calculations.

The last full report gave the following predictions for adverse effects:

* A general reduction in potential crop yields in most tropical and sub-tropical regions for most projected increases in temperature [4.2]
* A general reduction, with some variation, in potential crop yields in most regions in mid-latitudes for increases in annual-average temperature of more than a few °C [4.2]
* Decreased water availability for populations in many water-scarce regions, particularly in the sub-tropics [4.1]
* An increase in the number of people exposed to vector-borne (e.g., malaria) and water-borne diseases (e.g., cholera), and an increase in heat stress mortality [4.7]
* A widespread increase in the risk of flooding for many human settlements (tens of millions of inhabitants in settlements studied) from both increased heavy precipitation events and sea-level rise [4.5]
* Increased energy demand for space cooling due to higher summer temperatures. [4.5]

The February 2nd IPCC report is an extension of the careful science that led to the preceding, such as refining the estimates of temperature rise by 2100 to 1.8 to 4.0 degrees Celsius when they were a wider range of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius in the older report.

To say the Independent Online article is a misrepresentation of the IPCC's predictions is practically an understatement. The real science studied by the IPCC supporting global warming as human-caused and its effects is well-researched.

I wasn’t referring to the Independent Online article, but to the actual IPCC and its failure to address the influence of causes other than man made mechanisms. Not everyone agrees with the IPCC, its methods, or its conclusions though. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=9591

The same draft version of the IPCC report contains a summary of the dozens of computer models for climate change that do not use the silly CIESIN storylines. Instead, they use a (probably overestimated) exponential increase in greenhouse gases, and still a central tendency of all of the models is around 2̊C of warming for this century, or very near the bottom limit of warming (1.5̊C) given by the IPCC.
The Times cites a broad consensus of scientists who believe human warming has been going on for some time now. This is very likely to be correct because of the propensity for recent warming to be in the winter and in frigid air--which is where greenhouse theory predicts the largest changes. But the IPCC climate models also show the average prediction is a straight-line warming, and that once it starts (at the surface it has been going on for decades) it continues at a constant rate.
As a result, if the warming of recent decades is largely a human product, then we know the rate of warming for this century, barring any major decreases in greenhouse emissions. That works out to right below 1.5̊C. Further, the winter/summer differentials between models also remain quite constant, which means this century is likely to experience a considerable warming of the coldest winter temperatures and relatively little change in the summer.
On the other hand, in order to reach the inflammatory and alarming projections described in the document leaked to the Times, one has to assume illogical social behavior, an ability to see the technology of the next 100 years better than anyone in human history, an argument about sulfate cooling that does not stand the test of reality, and a text changed by governments after the normal scientific review process.

Demands for evidence are given with grins because all contrary evidence is simply banished by decree from the orthadoxy that holds all reasonable debate hostage with paranoia and name calling.

Some aspects of the current situation are clear, and they support global warming, not in the end-of-civilization style of that Mark Lynas article but in terms of undesirable effects as predicted by the IPCC.

For example, the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is known with certainty, given how straightforward chemistry can measure it:



And human emissions are also known:



Whatever the exact rate of increase, one can guess the situation that will occur until the energy source changes (e.g. to nuclear power and/or renewables): carbon dioxide levels rise to 400 ppm, 600 ppm, and so on.

Hopefully that will eventually change, but the default situation is extreme future levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, particularly given the amount of coal yet to be mined and burned if current trends continue.

The effect of carbon dioxide on infrared radiation is known from its spectral properties, and, not surprisingly, atmospheric measurements support what lab experiments indirectly suggest.

It is really to be expected that having already added 900 billion tons of CO2 has some effect. It is known that humans are capable of changing planetary temperature as I discussed in an older thread.

After much research the IPCC has determined the following, carefully adding up the effects of various human-released pollutants:



And this is an illustration of the overall situation:

Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.
"In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."

Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.
All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr. Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's warming.
"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist."
The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.
Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."
The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence Earth's climate.
In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.
CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.
"I am therefore in favour of developing cheap alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether different issue." His conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right way to go."

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/stor ... 12aeb5&k=0

Most of the proposals to "fixing" global warming include some kind of anti-capitalist scheme like energy taxes, forced emissions reductions, forced purchase of pollution credits to redistribute wealth to the undeveloped world, etc...

What the hell makes taxes, forced compliance to regulations, and pollution credits "anti-capitalist", idiot? Rather than, say, making a normally externalized cost internalized? It's not anti-capitalist for companies to bear part of the costs for consequences they are partly responsible for.

As Einy said, capitalism is great at responding to change. But there has to be impetus towards the change you want, in this case, keeping climate change to a minimum. The hope is that when businesses have to directly pay for the cost of their contribution to climate change, they themselves will be at the vanguard of the green movement.

Capitalism is about free markets making decisions (individuals) not the government. It doesn’t matter if government makes the decisions via force, financial coercion, or some other mechanism, government interference in the free market is anti-capitalist. Companies should not be forced to shoulder the burdens anymore than anyone else in society. That kind of heavy handed government favoritism where one class is protected whilst another is punished isn’t healthy for society (since the people don’t see any consequences, but rather think that some evil rich company will get soaked) and it isn’t healthy for liberty either (today’s favored class may be tomorrow’s recipient of government punishment).

All I can say is that those of you who have drunk this kool-aid so greedily will deserve what you get when human advancement is ground to a halt by draconian energy policies.

Really? Care to outline just why this must be the necessary outcome or is this just a False Dilemma Fallacy you're tossing out in addition to all your other logical and factual errors?

Resources spent on less efficient means of energy production are resources that cannot go into furthering research, infrastructure, etc…

[Surlethe]

Yes, its precisely a reason not to change policy. Changing policy is going to have terrible results in terms of liberty, prosperity, etc, and for what? Over some paranoid doomsday predictions based on science that may not be telling the whole story or even accurately telling a part of the story.

Thank you for entirely missing the point, which was that the emotional motivation for your sort of crazy denials seems to be laziness. After all, we're fucked either way; you just don't seem to want to admit that we're fucked and it's our fault, so we can mitigate the effects of the fucking (use lube, if you will).

[Falcon]

Yes, its precisely a reason not to change policy. Changing policy is going to have terrible results in terms of liberty, prosperity, etc, and for what? Over some paranoid doomsday predictions based on science that may not be telling the whole story or even accurately telling a part of the story.

Thank you for entirely missing the point, which was that the emotional motivation for your sort of crazy denials seems to be laziness. After all, we're fucked either way; you just don't seem to want to admit that we're fucked and it's our fault, so we can mitigate the effects of the fucking (use lube, if you will).

No, my concern is strictly that we're going to be tossing away liberty for no point whatsoever.

[Aaron]

What liberty pray tell are we tossing away?

[Patrick Degan]

All I can say is that those of you who have drunk this kool-aid so greedily will deserve what you get when human advancement is ground to a halt by draconian energy policies.

Really? Care to outline just why this must be the necessary outcome or is this just a False Dilemma Fallacy you're tossing out in addition to all your other logical and factual errors?

Resources spent on less efficient means of energy production are resources that cannot go into furthering research, infrastructure, etc…

And just what sort of meaningless handwaving non-answer is that supposed to be? Just what is impelling the resource expenditure towards the alleged less-efficent means of energy production you assert here?

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

No, my concern is strictly that we're going to be tossing away liberty for no point whatsoever.

That's funny, you don't seem to care a whit if we toss away the right of two men or two women to enter into a contract legally indistinguishable from marriage, or the right to practice religions other than your own; therefore your apologism is specious at best.

What liberty pray tell are we tossing away?

I'd happily give away the 'liberty' to idle a vehicle engine for longer than fifteen minutes barring freezing weather or use as a generator. I had to deal with a bigass truck idling its commensurately bigass diesel ginny for TWO FUCKING HOURS right outside my window yesterday!

[Surlethe]

Thank you for entirely missing the point, which was that the emotional motivation for your sort of crazy denials seems to be laziness. After all, we're fucked either way; you just don't seem to want to admit that we're fucked and it's our fault, so we can mitigate the effects of the fucking (use lube, if you will).

No, my concern is strictly that we're going to be tossing away liberty for no point whatsoever.

As expected, you once more miss the point. You in particular have bought into the propagandized notion (ironic, given that you accused me of writing propaganda) that the anti-global warming lobby has falsified science and created a grand conspiracy of climate scientists who, motivated by some sort of profit agenda, work together to suppress evidence that humans are not in fact causing climate change. This, in conjunction with your apparent anarcho-libertarian blind acceptance of the free market (again ironic, considering the fact that you're a Christian) as the ultimate arbiter of freedoms, leads you to fear that building a bureaucracy to combat global warming will deprive the citizens of the United States of freedom (how this will do that, naturally, you don't specify). I understand your concern in the matter.

No, I'm speculating based on its consequences about the ultimate motivations of the people who originate and spread this sort of global warming argument, not the motivations of people, like you, who grab it hook, line, and sinker. There is certainly immense social and economic inertia pointed away from changes which would combat global warming; these arguments are, I think, ultimately knee-jerk defenses of that inertia.

[Wyrm]

Most of the proposals to "fixing" global warming include some kind of anti-capitalist scheme like energy taxes, forced emissions reductions, forced purchase of pollution credits to redistribute wealth to the undeveloped world, etc...

What the hell makes taxes, forced compliance to regulations, and pollution credits "anti-capitalist", idiot? Rather than, say, making a normally externalized cost internalized? It's not anti-capitalist for companies to bear part of the costs for consequences they are partly responsible for.

As Einy said, capitalism is great at responding to change. But there has to be impetus towards the change you want, in this case, keeping climate change to a minimum. The hope is that when businesses have to directly pay for the cost of their contribution to climate change, they themselves will be at the vanguard of the green movement.

Capitalism is about free markets making decisions (individuals) not the government.

And governments aren't made up of individuals? People are making decisions in either case.

You're wrong anyway. Capitalism is a way of distributing wealth. But it can only do so according to true need and merit if true cost is assessed and accounted for. This includes costs of climate change. It makes wrong decisions when they aren't (such as when costs are externalized), and a system that is making wrong decisions should be fixed.

It doesn’t matter if government makes the decisions via force, financial coercion, or some other mechanism, government interference in the free market is anti-capitalist.

Save your liberatarian bullshit for someone else. Free markets can't function in anarchy, where individuals use force to interfere in the free market. It's called "raping and pillaging." Free markets need some regulation in order to function as true markets of opportunity for all (I refer you to the Guilded Age/Robber Baron Era).

You seem to have this delusion that the free market will collapse into ruin if it's asked to shoulder the cost of environmental damage. (As if they wouldn't be doing so anyway eventually in the form of agricultural disruption due to changing patterns of rainfall and heat.) I say you're sorely underestimating the free market. Who do you think is going to be supplying all of the green technologies we're going to be buying in the green movement?

Companies should not be forced to shoulder the burdens anymore than anyone else in society.

And who's asking them to? I'm only asking them to shoulder the burden they're responsible for.

That kind of heavy handed government favoritism where one class is protected whilst another is punished isn’t healthy for society (since the people don’t see any consequences, but rather think that some evil rich company will get soaked) and it isn’t healthy for liberty either (today’s favored class may be tomorrow’s recipient of government punishment).

I say again: fuck your liberatarian bullshit. Government policy is as much a statement about what the public holds dear as free markets. And when unregulated free markets gives us child labor and unlivable wages, fuck yeah I'm gonna regulate it.

All I can say is that those of you who have drunk this kool-aid so greedily will deserve what you get when human advancement is ground to a halt by draconian energy policies.

Really? Care to outline just why this must be the necessary outcome or is this just a False Dilemma Fallacy you're tossing out in addition to all your other logical and factual errors?

Resources spent on less efficient means of energy production are resources that cannot go into furthering research, infrastructure, etc…

Funny, that's exactly MY argument for green technologies, environmental regulation, and so forth. You think regulating companies will induce industrial ennui and waste? Bullshit. They'll rise to the challenge.

For all you're crowing, you don't seem to have as much in capitalism as I do, with your lazais faire arguments.

[Patrick Degan]

Oh, and in regards to Nir Shaviv's paper which was seized upon by Denial Inc:

Linky

Shaviv and Veizer (2003) published a paper in the journal GSA Today, where the authors claimed to establish a correlation between cosmic ray flux (CRF) and temperature evolution over hundreds of millions of years, concluding that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide was much smaller than currently accepted. The paper was accompanied by a press release entitled “Global Warming not a Man-made Phenomenon", in which Shaviv was quoted as stating,“The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man”. However, in the paper the authors actually stated that "our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion-year time scales". Unsurprisingly, there was a public relations offensive using the seriously flawed conclusions expressed in the press release to once again try to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are influencing climate. These claims were subsequently disputed in an article in Eos (Rahmstorf et al, 2004) by an international team of scientists and geologists (including some of us here at RealClimate), who suggested that Shaviv and Veizer's analyses were based on unreliable and poorly replicated estimates, selective adjustments of the data (shifting the data, in one case by 40 million years) and drew untenable conclusions, particularly with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations on recent warming (see for example the exchange between the two sets of authors). However, by the time this came out the misleading conclusions had already been publicized widely.

[Falcon]

What liberty pray tell are we tossing away?

Economic freedom to consume the kind of energy you want to, to drive the kind of vehicle you want to, to purchase the kind of manufactured goods you want to. When the government uses taxes, or worse yet regulations, to interfere with individual behavior that is a type of liberty loss. Not only are you unable to behave freely economically in the matters directly related to energy, but the increased costs imposed by the government limits your ability to act in other spheres of the economy (since more of your wealth has been spent on energy).

Really? Care to outline just why this must be the necessary outcome or is this just a False Dilemma Fallacy you're tossing out in addition to all your other logical and factual errors?

Resources spent on less efficient means of energy production are resources that cannot go into furthering research, infrastructure, etc…

And just what sort of meaningless handwaving non-answer is that supposed to be? Just what is impelling the resource expenditure towards the alleged less-efficent means of energy production you assert here?

For example a lot of tax money has been dumped into research of fruitless alternatives like bio-fuels (http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=556418), and the like. Inferior alternatives aren't the only way that money is being wasted though; taxes and regulations on current energy producers\consumers (gas tax, prohibitations on drilling, etc) also needlessly drive up energy costs and retard economic activity since every dollar spent on energy can't be spent somewhere else.

No, my concern is strictly that we're going to be tossing away liberty for no point whatsoever.

That's funny, you don't seem to care a whit if we toss away the right of two men or two women to enter into a contract legally indistinguishable from marriage, or the right to practice religions other than your own; therefore your apologism is specious at best.

I have no problem with civil unions between homosexuals. I have no problem with freedom of religion (It would be foolish for me to be against freedom of religions seeing as how my own religion being a tiny minority religion within Christianity that could easily be obliterated by large mainstream majorities without religious toleration written into the law). Try again.

Thank you for entirely missing the point, which was that the emotional motivation for your sort of crazy denials seems to be laziness. After all, we're fucked either way; you just don't seem to want to admit that we're fucked and it's our fault, so we can mitigate the effects of the fucking (use lube, if you will).

No, my concern is strictly that we're going to be tossing away liberty for no point whatsoever.

As expected, you once more miss the point. You in particular have bought into the propagandized notion (ironic, given that you accused me of writing propaganda) that the anti-global warming lobby has falsified science and created a grand conspiracy of climate scientists who, motivated by some sort of profit agenda, work together to suppress evidence that humans are not in fact causing climate change. This, in conjunction with your apparent anarcho-libertarian blind acceptance of the free market (again ironic, considering the fact that you're a Christian) as the ultimate arbiter of freedoms, leads you to fear that building a bureaucracy to combat global warming will deprive the citizens of the United States of freedom (how this will do that, naturally, you don't specify). I understand your concern in the matter.

No, I'm speculating based on its consequences about the ultimate motivations of the people who originate and spread this sort of global warming argument, not the motivations of people, like you, who grab it hook, line, and sinker. There is certainly immense social and economic inertia pointed away from changes which would combat global warming; these arguments are, I think, ultimately knee-jerk defenses of that inertia.

You claimed that I was motivated by some kind of emotional laziness denial. That isn't true. You're correct that I think profit and ideology (read: lust for power) is a big motivation for many in the global warming movement. I disagree that free markets are anti-Christian. Perhaps anti pop culture understanding of Christianity, but not anti my understanding of Christianity. I didn't think that I needed to specify how that the efforts to combat global warming would infringe on liberty because its self-apparent. If you are being dictated to by the government on how much energy you can consume (carbon credits, regulations, taxes), how you can conduct commerce (methods of manufacturing, types of products produced, etc), what you can do with your own property (drill for oil, mine for coal, build a new power plant, etc) then the very heart of liberty (the liberty to be "left alone" by the government) has been struck through.

What the hell makes taxes, forced compliance to regulations, and pollution credits "anti-capitalist", idiot? Rather than, say, making a normally externalized cost internalized? It's not anti-capitalist for companies to bear part of the costs for consequences they are partly responsible for.

As Einy said, capitalism is great at responding to change. But there has to be impetus towards the change you want, in this case, keeping climate change to a minimum. The hope is that when businesses have to directly pay for the cost of their contribution to climate change, they themselves will be at the vanguard of the green movement.

Capitalism is about free markets making decisions (individuals) not the government.

And governments aren't made up of individuals? People are making decisions in either case.

You're wrong anyway. Capitalism is a way of distributing wealth. But it can only do so according to true need and merit if true cost is assessed and accounted for. This includes costs of climate change. It makes wrong decisions when they aren't (such as when costs are externalized), and a system that is making wrong decisions should be fixed.

Individuals making the decisions in the economy means that each individual has to make that decision. By your argument the dictator is an individual so his command economy must be capitalism.

Capitalism is a way of distributing wealth, but that doesn't mean that it isn't about individuals making economic decisions rather than government. It isn't about distributing resources by some arbitrary notion of need or merit either. It isn't up for you or I to decide that someone else is making a wrong decision with their property and then set about to use the coercive force of government to dictate our will upon them. That kind of authoritarianism and paternalism have no place in a free society.

It doesn’t matter if government makes the decisions via force, financial coercion, or some other mechanism, government interference in the free market is anti-capitalist.

Save your liberatarian bullshit for someone else. Free markets can't function in anarchy, where individuals use force to interfere in the free market. It's called "raping and pillaging." Free markets need some regulation in order to function as true markets of opportunity for all (I refer you to the Guilded Age/Robber Baron Era).

You seem to have this delusion that the free market will collapse into ruin if it's asked to shoulder the cost of environmental damage. (As if they wouldn't be doing so anyway eventually in the form of agricultural disruption due to changing patterns of rainfall and heat.) I say you're sorely underestimating the free market. Who do you think is going to be supplying all of the green technologies we're going to be buying in the green movement?

A free market necessarily entails the prevention of fraud or force. That is the true legitimate function of government in a free market. However, that government action can't be generalized to legitimize any government involvement in the free market. You can refer to the Gilded Age all you want, but it doesn't support your argument. There, the government often intervened on the side of big business. That kind of intervention is just as harmful as government intervention to step on big business.

The free market bears the cost of everything, the difference is that you want to step in and decide from which pocket that expense should come. If there is a problem (and there is a problem, energy is limited and will run out forcing a switch regardless of global warming) then the free market will, on its own, develop a solution. Government intervention will merely impede, delay, and thwart the market's natural inclination to adapt to new times. I can't think of anything done efficiently by the government, can you? Even worse, the government, with its monopoly on power, never goes out of business. At least in the free market if a company becomes wasteful and inefficient it goes broke to free up resources for fresh blood.

Companies should not be forced to shoulder the burdens anymore than anyone else in society.

And who's asking them to? I'm only asking them to shoulder the burden they're responsible for.

They're no more responsible for any of it than the people who buy their products. They're also in the best position with money, people, and organization to find solutions to the problem, but they won't be able to when you tax them into olbivian. Not to mention that it isn't the government's job to run around making subjective statements about who is responsible for what. If 20 million people buy a car and pollute the atmosphere it was mostly their fault. The company was merely fulfilling a market that the people created.

That kind of heavy handed government favoritism where one class is protected whilst another is punished isn’t healthy for society (since the people don’t see any consequences, but rather think that some evil rich company will get soaked) and it isn’t healthy for liberty either (today’s favored class may be tomorrow’s recipient of government punishment).

I say again: fuck your liberatarian bullshit. Government policy is as much a statement about what the public holds dear as free markets. And when unregulated free markets gives us child labor and unlivable wages, fuck yeah I'm gonna regulate it.

Government policy cannot be as much a statement about what the public holds dear as a free market because the government doesn't receive imput from each person (no 100% polls yet), the government policy is often a function of special monied interests who lobby government, and government policy is often driven by elitists. The free market on the other hand is a truely democratic place where millions of individuals dictate what goods are manufactured, traded, etc... A rich guy can lobby Congress and get a bill passed, but if someone doesn't want to buy his product he is out of luck.

Really? Care to outline just why this must be the necessary outcome or is this just a False Dilemma Fallacy you're tossing out in addition to all your other logical and factual errors?

Resources spent on less efficient means of energy production are resources that cannot go into furthering research, infrastructure, etc…

Funny, that's exactly MY argument for green technologies, environmental regulation, and so forth. You think regulating companies will induce industrial ennui and waste? Bullshit. They'll rise to the challenge.

For all you're crowing, you don't seem to have as much in capitalism as I do, with your lazais faire arguments.

They'll rise to the money and if the government invests the money poorly you'll get a poor result.

Oh, and in regards to Nir Shaviv's paper which was seized upon by Denial Inc:

Linky

Shaviv and Veizer (2003) published a paper in the journal GSA Today, where the authors claimed to establish a correlation between cosmic ray flux (CRF) and temperature evolution over hundreds of millions of years, concluding that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide was much smaller than currently accepted. The paper was accompanied by a press release entitled “Global Warming not a Man-made Phenomenon", in which Shaviv was quoted as stating,“The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man”. However, in the paper the authors actually stated that "our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion-year time scales". Unsurprisingly, there was a public relations offensive using the seriously flawed conclusions expressed in the press release to once again try to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are influencing climate. These claims were subsequently disputed in an article in Eos (Rahmstorf et al, 2004) by an international team of scientists and geologists (including some of us here at RealClimate), who suggested that Shaviv and Veizer's analyses were based on unreliable and poorly replicated estimates, selective adjustments of the data (shifting the data, in one case by 40 million years) and drew untenable conclusions, particularly with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations on recent warming (see for example the exchange between the two sets of authors). However, by the time this came out the misleading conclusions had already been publicized widely.

So we've got the scentific equilivant of he said she said. How nice, everyone can believe what they want to believe and accuse the other side of fixing the data. http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

[Darth Wong]

What liberty pray tell are we tossing away?

Economic freedom to consume the kind of energy you want to, to drive the kind of vehicle you want to, to purchase the kind of manufactured goods you want to.

You don't have that "freedom" right now, moron. Almost all manufactured goods, particularly vehicles, are subject to volumes of regulation. That's because, despite your libertarian wankery, ordinary people should not be allowed to make these choices for themselves. They're too ignorant.

Pure libertarianism ignores the enormous complexity of the modern consumer marketplace. Most people have no idea what the fuck they're talking about when it comes to 90% of the things they buy. They trust the authorities to make sure that their safety is being taken care of, so they can choose from a pre-filtered list of options on the basis of luxury and preference. That's why you have an FDA rather than letting people make their own judgments about the safety of medicine by Googling articles. And that's why judgments about the environment should be put in the hands of scientists, not ordinary people.

[Surlethe]

You claimed that I was motivated by some kind of emotional laziness denial. That isn't true.

Perhaps you should go back and reread what I wrote. Nowhere have I claimed that you in particular are motivated by some sort of lazy denial.

You're correct that I think profit and ideology (read: lust for power) is a big motivation for many in the global warming movement. I disagree that free markets are anti-Christian. Perhaps anti pop culture understanding of Christianity, but not anti my understanding of Christianity.

Obviously it's not against your understanding of Christianity. I don't see though how you can reconcile "love your neighbor" (remember, love your neighbor and love God sum up the law) with the effects of an anarcho-libertarian society, which effectively boils down to "fuck your neighbor".

I didn't think that I needed to specify how that the efforts to combat global warming would infringe on liberty because its self-apparent. If you are being dictated to by the government on how much energy you can consume (carbon credits, regulations, taxes), how you can conduct commerce (methods of manufacturing, types of products produced, etc), what you can do with your own property (drill for oil, mine for coal, build a new power plant, etc) then the very heart of liberty (the liberty to be "left alone" by the government) has been struck through.

Upon what basis do you found your premise that "liberty to be 'left alone' by the government" ought to be the ultimate arbiter of decisions regarding government policy?

[Aaron]

What liberty pray tell are we tossing away?

Economic freedom to consume the kind of energy you want to,

So you want the freedom to choose between say natural gas and heating oil to heat your home? Despite the fact that natural gas is 30% more efficent and will therefore cost you less in the long run and will help reduce our dependency on oil. At little cost to yourself to switch to gas.

to drive the kind of vehicle you want to,

To drive what exactly, a gigantic SUV or full size pickup that serves no purpose but to serve as a dick measuring device against your neighbor? When you could drive a car or small SUV hybrid, which again helps reduce dependency on forgein oil.

to purchase the kind of manufactured goods you want to.

To what end exactly? Perhaps your aware if I'm not mistaken that with the end of oil, the plastics industry is going to go for shit. So most of your personal goods are going to disapear. That sounds like a good reason to conserve to me.

When the government uses taxes, or worse yet regulations, to interfere with individual behavior that is a type of liberty loss.

Everything you buy from your TV to your car is already heavily regulated by the government jackass.

Not only are you unable to behave freely economically in the matters directly related to energy, but the increased costs imposed by the government limits your ability to act in other spheres of the economy (since more of your wealth has been spent on energy).

I've already pointed out one case (natural gas) in which you can save money and help the enviroment in one go without unduely comprimising yourself.

[PeZook]

Not to sound like a vulture here, but why didn't anybody ask Falcon to demonstrate why loosing a little liberty (in this case, liberty to pollute freely) is a bad thing, objectively? Without resorting to his pet ideology, that is.

[Darth Wong]

The historical example of leaded gasoline may be useful here. It was not the "free market" that got of leaded gasoline. It was scientists and doctors who drove the change to get rid of leaded gasoline, and they did so by encouraging lobbying at the legislative level, using mechanisms almost identical to the mechanisms being used now to promote change on global warming.

Consumers were and are ignorant and stupid, and would have continued buying leaded gasoline indefinitely if they were allowed to. And the people who pooh-poohed concerns over leaded gasoline 30 years ago were the same kind of people who blithely handwave away environmental concerns about greenhouse gases today.

[Patrick Degan]

Oh, and in regards to Nir Shaviv's paper which was seized upon by Denial Inc:

Linky
Shaviv and Veizer (2003) published a paper in the journal GSA Today, where the authors claimed to establish a correlation between cosmic ray flux (CRF) and temperature evolution over hundreds of millions of years, concluding that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide was much smaller than currently accepted. The paper was accompanied by a press release entitled “Global Warming not a Man-made Phenomenon", in which Shaviv was quoted as stating,“The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man”. However, in the paper the authors actually stated that "our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion-year time scales". Unsurprisingly, there was a public relations offensive using the seriously flawed conclusions expressed in the press release to once again try to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are influencing climate. These claims were subsequently disputed in an article in Eos (Rahmstorf et al, 2004) by an international team of scientists and geologists (including some of us here at RealClimate), who suggested that Shaviv and Veizer's analyses were based on unreliable and poorly replicated estimates, selective adjustments of the data (shifting the data, in one case by 40 million years) and drew untenable conclusions, particularly with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations on recent warming (see for example the exchange between the two sets of authors). However, by the time this came out the misleading conclusions had already been publicized widely.

So we've got the scentific equilivant of he said she said. How nice, everyone can believe what they want to believe and accuse the other side of fixing the data. http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

No we do not. We have a case where a scientist's words are being misquoted to force them to fit a particular argument. That is called "dishonesty".

[Wyrm]

Individuals making the decisions in the economy means that each individual has to make that decision. By your argument the dictator is an individual so his command economy must be capitalism.

Capitalism is a way of distributing wealth, but that doesn't mean that it isn't about individuals making economic decisions rather than government. It isn't about distributing resources by some arbitrary notion of need or merit either. It isn't up for you or I to decide that someone else is making a wrong decision with their property and then set about to use the coercive force of government to dictate our will upon them. That kind of authoritarianism and paternalism have no place in a free society.

You fucking think I don't know that, birdseed-for-brains?!! I just said that capitalism is a way of distributing wealth according to true need or merit, and didn't elaborate on that. Including who gets to say what that need or merit is — in capitalism, the parties involved in the transaction get to decide need or merit. If A doesn't need a flemmik, then he doesn't buy it. If B decides A doesn't deserve to own his flemmik, he doesn't sell it to A. Sounds like capitalism to me, you flying turkey.

A free market necessarily entails the prevention of fraud or force. That is the true legitimate function of government in a free market.

EXACTLY, YOU BASTED BUZZARD!! Quickly, now, who sets the standard of decent behavior? That's right: THE PEOPLE! People decide that it's unseemly to have (their) children work in sweatshops, thus you get child labor laws. People decide that certain products to have a certain expected standard of safety, and thus you get safety regulations. People decide that workers should have a reasonable expectation of safety while on the job, thus you get standards of job safety.

The people decide whether global warming (and environmental damage) is important to them, thus you get green taxes and environmental regulations.

Free markets take these group statements of what people consider important to them and redistribute weath accordingly. Companies that can deliever on these requirements get rewarded; those that cannot get penalized.

However, that government action can't be generalized to legitimize any government involvement in the free market. You can refer to the Gilded Age all you want, but it doesn't support your argument. There, the government often intervened on the side of big business. That kind of intervention is just as harmful as government intervention to step on big business.

Fuck you, you deranged raptor turd. Why do you think the government came to the aid of big business? Because the government was in big business's pocket!

The free market bears the cost of everything,

No, it doesn't. You'd be amazed how many services companies get absolutely free, or at reduced cost.

the difference is that you want to step in and decide from which pocket that expense should come. If there is a problem (and there is a problem, energy is limited and will run out forcing a switch regardless of global warming) then the free market will, on its own, develop a solution.

Bullshit. I have faith in the free market, but I recognize its limitations. The free market, especially in America, can and has been extremely short-sighted.

Government intervention will merely impede, delay, and thwart the market's natural inclination to adapt to new times.

Bullshit. If regulations can only impede businesses, then why do so many businesses boast exceeding those regulations as a selling point?

I can't think of anything done efficiently by the government, can you?

Roads. Police. Universal, free health care. That's for starters.

True, the good examples don't occur in America, but you have to broaden your horizons: these things can be done correctly.

Even worse, the government, with its monopoly on power, never goes out of business. At least in the free market if a company becomes wasteful and inefficient it goes broke to free up resources for fresh blood.

And misbehaving politicians get booted out of office and replaced with fresh blood. Your point?

They're no more responsible for any of it than the people who buy their products.

Sure they are! The company has direct control over what process it uses to manufacture a product. It has direct control of what resources it uses to make the product, and direct control of whether it decides to market a product with all its flaws and benefits. They are also responsible for all greenhouse gasses they pump into the atmosphere.

They're also in the best position with money, people, and organization to find solutions to the problem,

You'll often find they need a firm kick in the seat to do it, though.

but they won't be able to when you tax them into olbivian.

Sell your false dilemmas somewhere else. Nobody's talking about taxing them into oblivion.

Not to mention that it isn't the government's job to run around making subjective statements about who is responsible for what. If 20 million people buy a car and pollute the atmosphere it was mostly their fault. The company was merely fulfilling a market that the people created.

What about all the other 20 million people who didn't buy that car, but opted for the more fuel efficient car? They get hit too. We're all in this problem together, whether or not any individual helped cause it, or how much they contributed to the problem.

Government policy cannot be as much a statement about what the public holds dear as a free market because the government doesn't receive imput from each person (no 100% polls yet), the government policy is often a function of special monied interests who lobby government, and government policy is often driven by elitists.

DW already dealt with this turd.

The free market on the other hand is a truely democratic place where millions of individuals dictate what goods are manufactured, traded, etc... A rich guy can lobby Congress and get a bill passed, but if someone doesn't want to buy his product he is out of luck.

Bullshit. You've swung straight from betraying little faith in the free market to suckling its cock and calling it "daddy". Free markets are only this democratic when everyone has all the relevant data at their command. But a big powerful company has much power to limit control of information, for starters, and the customer, in his ignorance, buys his product anyway.

Funny, that's exactly MY argument for green technologies, environmental regulation, and so forth. You think regulating companies will induce industrial ennui and waste? Bullshit. They'll rise to the challenge.

They'll rise to the money and if the government invests the money poorly you'll get a poor result.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. My model has goverment translating the challenge into money, so that the company that rises to the challenge rises to the money, and vice versa. Now, care to elaborate why a private company would be able to see the correct path more easily than governments, especially given that the companies hasn't initiated this change themselves?