[Peace-discuss] [Fwd: [ronpaul-305] AGW?]

[E. Wayne Johnson]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[ronpaul-305] AGW?
Date: 	Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:14:14 -0400
From: 	Brian L <bdmarti at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: 	ronpaul-305 at meetup.com
To: 	ronpaul-305 at meetup.com



I find it interesting that this mailing list is having a discussion on 
climate change and I feel like throwing in my 2 cents.

First, I'd like to say that I think part of the problem when so called 
"deniers" are talking with "global warming advocates" is that they have 
often failed to establish a common universe of discourse.  They are 
talking about different things using different standards and before they 
get any where close to clearing this up the conversation has already 
broken down.

Often, I think even deniers agree that warming has happened, but they 
are arguing, rightly, that we don't know how much warming is man made 
and man's ability to quantify the "damages" even if there are some is zero.

For my part, I find that the following are so well proven that one might 
as well accept them as fact.  (I do recognize some of this may not be 
fact, but I feel no need to try disprove things that have evidence of 
this magnitude)

1.  Some "warming" has happened on the globe during the last century.  
We have excellent data about this and it's not really debatable. (how 
much of it is man made may be debatable)
2.  We, humans, have an effect on the climate.  However, when I say 
this, I grant it only to the extent that we would also have an effect if 
we walked across a muddy plain, or cut down a tree.  Everything in the 
universe is related and interacts, though the degree of interaction is 
often minimal to the point of being worth ignoring.
3.  CO2 is a green house gas.  We can test all sorts of properties about 
CO2 in closed experiments.   Our understanding of this fact is 
strong...but at the same time water seems like an even more important 
green house gas.
4.  Humans help the atmosphere to accumulate more CO2 than it otherwise 
would have if we were not here.

These things, I think are very true.  However, the conclusions drawn by 
the deniers and the climate change advocates are different, and in my 
opinion the jumps made by some advocates of global warming are not in 
any way reasonable.

Here is the type of conclusion that I find dubious:
Because we are adding CO2 at a rate that might not otherwise have 
happened THEN the Earth will warm up at a "dangerous" pace and we OUGHT 
to use force to decrease our CO2 output.

This type of conclusion based upon the facts above borders on insane.  
Here are a few reasons why:

1.  The Earth is such a complex system that we do not understand the 
actual effects of rising CO2 completely and we may never.  The ocean 
sucks up a lot of CO2, this changes the acidity level, and the plants 
may breathe better and small temperature changes affect plant growth.  
We don't know, and it is arguable that we can't know, what the complete 
effects of rising CO2 are on the entire globe (even by observing, we 
can't eliminate all other factors).  There is no Earth in a box that we 
can run controlled experiments on. The ability of the human mind to 
simultaneously understand advanced math, advanced physics, climate 
science, astronomy, and all other factors that may effect the climate is 
limited.   A little humility by the people causing hysteria may be 
called for.

2.  The concept of dangerous is too arbitrary and in this case it seems 
completely unjustified.   People and animals already output CO2.  
Burning wood outputs CO2.   Clearly we are all going to output some 
CO2...the idea that a scientist or politician could determine how much 
we should be "allowed" to output is kinda crazy when the types of 
"damages" we supposedly cause by this output happen over the course of 
decades, or possibly centuries or millennium.
     If I add another mole of CO2 to the atmosphere, and we assumed that 
the scientist could in fact tell us with certainty that I effectively 
decreased the life span of every person on earth by .0000000001 second, 
but I used that CO2 output to make vaccinations that  extended the lives 
of some people by decades, was it worth it?  How about children...we 
know they will add CO2 to the atmosphere, perhaps we should ban them?   
Maybe we ought to weigh the utility to society against the supposed 
damages?....of course then we run into the problem that people in a 
comma don't really have utility but they do emit CO2...and big people or 
athletes or genetic anomalies may emit more than their "share" of 
CO2...should we really put politicians in charge of trying to weigh 
these things against each other?  I'd say clearly not.  Better that we 
all live a little shorter free life than to clearly and objectively have 
our freedom limited and have subjectively bad choices forced upon us by 
people with the audacity to claim they know what's best.
The supposed damages caused by CO2 are so diffuse and long term that I 
find it unreasonable to consider them damages at all.  The fact is, the 
Earth will someday be gone no matter what we do, and the fact is that 
every person on the Earth will die.  It's also a fact that our rapid use 
of fossil fuels and expulsion of massive amounts of CO2 into the 
atmosphere has allowed more people to live longer, better, lives than 
could ever have been possible without said CO2 emissions.    It's not 
even like we're on a clear downward slope where the supposed damages 
have caught up with us and we're now dieing faster than we ought 
to...no...life spans are still trending up or are flat, and if you find 
a blip in this data, you'll be hard pressed to attribute it to CO2.

3.  Unless you live a life where you burn nothing, your moral high 
ground is limited...and all people on the internet fail this test.  How 
anyone can sit around saying "my expelling of extra CO2 is justified and 
yours isn't" boggles my mind.  If someone could point me to the 
objective CO2 emission morality scale I'd love to see it.   Even the 
supposed consensus of scientists that agree there is man made climate 
change have no consensus at all about what the absolute 
conclusions/ramifications of said change are or how to measure the 
supposed damages.

4.  The problem of enforcement is paradoxical.  Even if we could get the 
industrialized nations of the world to all "fairly" limit CO2 (and the 
concept of fair, is going to be subjective and prone to corruption), the 
only way to enforce this quota would be to physically stop the 
non-industrial nations from using ever more fossil fuels and emitting 
ever more CO2.  Jevon's paradox seems related to this idea...though 
instead of being more efficient and thus causing more fuel use, we 
instead use force to limit the efficient use of the fuels in industrial 
countries and thus cause the price of the fuels to drop and encourage 
their less efficient use in the non-industrial countries. The only way 
to stop the backwards countries from cheating and using the now cheaper 
fuels is to have lots of men with guns and bombs going around 
patrolling...and this would cost a lot of fuel.

5.  The rampant corruption and corporatism present in the US and other 
world governments should serve as a warning to those that are concerned 
about the damages caused by CO2 emissions, that the supposed cure of a 
government solution will likely be provably worse.  There are plenty of 
examples of legislation written by industry and corporations for the 
benefit of themselves.  When one goes to the government and asks them to 
impose "fair" limits over everyone for an issue where it is very 
difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend the damages what you 
actually get are measures written to favor industry...it's not even like 
the same "smart" people that might have the best understanding of global 
warming are the one's writing the legislation...it's lobbyists, 
corporations, and corrupt politicians.   Since there isn't an objective 
way to measure the damages, how could we possibly agree on a fair 
limiting solution?  I don't think it's possible, and yielding that 
authority would be a mistake.   Follow the money and the power...it's 
clear there is money and power changing hands over this issue and the 
rich and powerful gladly use hysteria and scare tactics to get ever more 
money and power.  The fact that rich and powerful may benefit certainly 
does not discount the possibility that CO2 is causing real, long term, 
damages...but it should make one skeptical of their solutions.   Motives 
are important.

So...this was longer than I wanted but I could keep rambling on even more.

In sum, I don't think it is reasonable to deny that climate change is 
happening, or even man made climate change.  Then again, to me it's like 
saying gravity is happening, or when a man throws a ball and it drops to 
the earth calling it man made gravity.  Sure, they happen, but do we 
comprehend the "damages" yet?  No.  Is hysteria justified?  no.  Is 
government action justified or even if it was could a fair solution be 
implemented?  quite doubtful.

Brian




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