I can’t decide whether this article by hyper-Progressive and Warmist Jonathan Chait highlights the idiocy of the Cult of Climastrology or liberals overall, so, let’s go with both
People Who Were Certain Climate Change Is Fake Are Now Certain That Paris Can’t Stop It
The most unintentionally revealing commentary on the Paris climate agreement came from National Review senior editor David Pryce-Jones. “I know next to nothing about the technicalities of the subject, but caught on television news bulletins great wafts of hot air,†he confessed. “It was highly enjoyable to hear President Obama claiming to be saving the planet that his foreign policy has done much to endanger … You don’t have to be a cynic to think that most countries, China and India in the lead, are never going to do anything that might harm their economic development, nor will rich countries commit economic suicide.†This was a real-time window into the conservative mind processing the Paris climate agreement, beginning from a point of frank incomprehension of (and lack of interest in) any specifics of the issue, and proceeding immediately to the conviction that the deal would fail.
The problem, to start off, particularly the headline, is that this is a falsehood: Skeptics do not say that climate change is fake. Au contraire, we understand that the climate is always going to change. What we are debating is the causation. The world has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age. Heck, there are even some skeptics called luke warmers who think that Mankind is responsible for at least 51% of the warming, but that we are in no way doomed. And, I’ll argue with anyone who says there has been no warming since 1850. And called them pure idiots.
But, let’s not forget that there are many Warmists, such as James Hansen, who say that the Paris agreement won’t stop ‘climate change’.
Then we jump into politics overall, and this is a real hoot
Conservative economic thought is structurally different from liberal thought. Liberal support for expanded government is based entirely in practical expectation that new programs can deliver concrete results — cleaner air, healthier children, higher wages for low-income workers, and so on. Conservative antipathy to expanded government is based ultimately on philosophical opposition. For that reason, data can change liberal economic thinking in a way it can’t change conservative economic thinking. Liberals would abandon, say, new environmental regulations if evidence persuaded them the program was not actually improving the environment, because bigger government is merely the means to an end. No evidence could persuade conservatives to support new environmental regulations, because conservatives consider small government a worthy end for itself. (As Milton Friedman once put it, “Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself.â€)
Obviously, we know what he writes about why liberals support bigger government is a lie, as is the lie about concrete results. The only programs liberals want to do away with are national security ones, which actually show concrete results, unlike the majority of programs liberals want.
Liberals have been given endless facts, particularly, in this case, on ‘climate change’, and they refuse to change their minds. They can’t even prove their own theories on climate change as hard facts, yet still refuse to change their minds. Instead, they just change the data/results.
Of course, ‘climate change’ has nothing to do with the environment. Give us fact based reasons, and we’ll support them. The thing is, we do not trust the motivations of Leftists pushing them. I bet support for universal background checks for gun purchases would poll near 100% amongst Conservatives. We know we’ll pass them. But, we also know that they are just a death by 1000 papercuts step for what Leftists want regarding banning private ownership of guns. The Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, and other similar laws are supported by Conservatives (oh, BTW, let’s not forget which side leaves the grounds around demonstrations cleaner than when they got there and which one leaves it an utter mess). We’re concerned with mission creep. Leftists always want a little bit more government power and control.
Chait summed it up nicely. Of course conservatism is an ideology different from liberalism. Conservatism already knows what will work – laissez faire – and no amount of evidence can shake their beliefs. It’s no coincidence that conservatives are more religious than liberals.
We certainly understand why Chait upsets you so – he hits close to home.
Anyway, the evolution of Denier “thought” is as obvious as it was predictable.
First, “There is no warming!” Some Deniers like William still hold to that theory even as he says there is warming! Whut’s Up Wit Dat has famously led the charge that the warming is not real. William frequently runs articles about the fudging and hoaxing of the temperature record. Just recently William ran a piece where the author claimed Arctic warming stopped decades ago. The Deni-o-sphere has been energized most recently by the RSS satellite modeling which suggests that the troposphere warming has stopped, even as all the other data contradicts RSS.
Phase 2 was “Only an idiot would say it’s not warming but it’s caused by ABC (Anything But CO2).” “AGW is just a theory.” “It’s not been conclusively proved that global warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels!” Not one plausible hypothesis explaining the current rapid warming has been advanced by Deniers.
Phase 3 is what Chait identifies as the “We can’t fix it anyway, so why bother?” phase.
Global warming is real and it’s caused by greenhouse gases. Everybody but US right-wingers realize it.
As Chait pointed out, conservatism is a top down ideology – conclusions drive the evidence rather than vice versa. You know it. It’s why Deniers stopped arguing the science.
Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions.
Liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
Speaking of liberalism…
…John Kerry, who could have been president of these United States, said that he looked forward to the seizure of Exxon’s assets for the crime of “proselytizing†impermissibly about the question of global warming.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428793/democrats-and-totalitarianism-2016
“It’s why deniers stopped arguing science.” That’s a howler. In reality, climate hoax deniers stopped arguing science a long time ago and started pushing politics. “Not one plausible hypothesis explaining the current rapid warming has been offered…” Sure it has- natural variability, and you don’t know it’s rapid because you have nothing to compare it to, as you know. “Some deniers like William still offer up that there’s no warming.” And J offers up nothing to refute that notion. “All other data contradicts RSS.” Why of course it does, it’s be altered. The land based data J talks about only covers about 50% of the earth’s surface. Satellite coverage is much greater than that.
The esteemed Mr Chait wrote:
If Mr Chait’s claim is correct, shouldn’t we see the evidence of that with regard to programs which have not achieved the successes promised, or even any success at all? If the poverty rate today is very similar to the poverty rate in 1965, when President Johnson declared a war on poverty, it would be fair to say that our anti-poverty programs simply have not worked; do the left say that we should abandon those programs, or do they say that the reason they haven’t been successful is that we haven’t spent enough money on them? The Supreme Court said, in Grutter v Bollinger, on June 23, 2003, that Affirmative Action programs in government institutions could be continued, and that the Court expected that such programs wouldn’t be necessary in 25 years; on Wednesday, half of that 25 years will have elapsed, and economic and educational results for black Americans are no better today than they were 12½ years ago, and are arguably worse. Do the left believe that, since Affirmative Action programs are simply not working that they should be abandoned?
We were told that sex education classes in the public schools would reduce teen pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births; today 70% of black children are bastards, and the illegitimacy rate among whites is steadily rising. Why don’t the left tell us that we should abandon sex education classes in the public schools, since they have simply not worked to produce positive results?
I would be interested in seeing some examples of programs advocated by the left which, having failed, the left now wish to abandon.
I believe in science. I believe that in computer modeling nothing is more appropriate than the acronym GIGO. I believe when you have to re-brand your product (global warming to climate change)in a hot second it’s because you have a bullshit product. I believe the Earth’s temperature and climates are not static. I believe that when you put a temperature station on a tarred roof on top of a 30 story building in the middle of an urban heat island, you are going to have increased temperatures. I believe that when it’s shown you’ve had to shame, vilify, and lie about people that challenge your research, you’ve got a bullshit product. When government agencies have to go back and “adjust” quantitative data to fit their narrative, they have a shitty narrative. When you cite proprietary rights as reason to not release information that corroborates your adamant insistence that the world is about to end, you are bullshitting. When one of the progenitors of your warming cult (M. Mann) has been busted for lying that he won a Nobel, you have a proven liar as the prophet of your cult. Should I go on…
Mr. Dana,
It’s a common debate tactic to argue that a policy that doesn’t eliminate a problem is a failure.
Since laws against murder don’t eliminate all murders, should we eliminate the laws?
Global warming is causing climate change.
The primary flaw in your argument arises out of your ignorance. The IPCC was formed in 1988 to investigate global warming. So the primary international body to work on global warming was formed early on and named the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s untrue to claim that someone changed global warming to climate change.
So you don’t believe the Earth is warming? Tell me, if you place a thermometer in one of Tony Watt’s fanciful “hot spots”, why would the temperature there INCREASE over the years, unless there was warming? Shouldn’t it just have an average temperature higher than rural thermometers?
The Earth is warming (even William admits this from time to time, when it’s convenient) from CO2 we’re adding to the atmosphere.
Please do if you have anything relevant to add.
Hoss figuratively handed your ass to you and you keep shoving your head farther up it.
Hilarious!
I would feel sorry for you drowningpuppy, but you’re just such a pathetic buttwipe and fluffer.
How’s that mass transit working to reduce costs and energy usage? Glad you asked:
Fares, meanwhile, grew by just 2 percent, and the industry as a whole collected just $15.1 billion in fares while spending $42.4 billion on operations, $11.0 billion on maintenance, and $6.0 billion on capital improvements.
It looks like Joe Taxpayer is paying for 3/4ths of the mass transit costs. As well as paying his own commuting costs. But that is good, right, because it saves energy?
the average energy cost was 3,141 BTUs per passenger mile, which is almost identical to the average energy cost per passenger mile for cars in 2013 (which was 3,144).
Mass transit has identical energy usage as driving cars.
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=11228
via Coyote Blog
Jeffrey wrote:
Laws against murder reduce murder, at least personally, since I have thus far declined to strangle several assholes who very definitely need it.
Now, your straw man argument might have some validity, if the programs you support were demonstrating some effectiveness, but they really aren’t: the poverty rate persists within the band it always has, more Americans are on
food stampsSNAP than ever before, sex education in the public schools has been followed by an increase rather than a decrease in the bastardy rate, and after fifty years, Affirmative Action has not increased black success rates in schools or the economy.The left, which very cleverly coined the term the “reality-based community” to describe themselves, refuse to look at reality, refuse to admit that the programs they have championed, along with quite literally trillions of dollars in spending on those programs, have not produced the positive results the left claimed those programs would.
It’s interesting that the only reason you don’t murder someone is because it’s against the law.
It’s only your opinion that certain policies have had no effect or have made things worse.
We spend more on the military than we do on welfare yet we still have wars – we have more enemies than before! Clearly the military has not been effective.
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