Flying by Air- the carbon footprint

[stogie bear]

The hippies should make sun spots illegall! Then try to enfoce the law by popping over to the sun and issuing a court order!

[rob69in]

You can sum up global warming & all the hysteria that goes with it in one word: TAX!

[Torurot]

Looks like the C4 "doco" is well and truly busted.

https://www4.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/364852.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...7/03/swindled/
see comment 109

http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820

http://www.climatescience.org.nz/

[stogie bear]

I saw that docco, too. It made more sense than the hippies ever have. But you can't reason with zealots. They ahve found something to worship and they won't let it go. So long as they don't move to Thailand wiith their idiotic poison.

[katoeylover]

(Torurot @ Mar. 15 2007,12:15) Looks like the C4 "doco" is well and truly busted.

https://www4.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/364852.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...7/03/swindled/
see comment 109

http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820

http://www.climatescience.org.nz/

What a surprise.

The 4 links you have put there are all pro-climate change, grant gaining organisations.

It is not "busted" - it is another point of view. The facts are that they cant deny the evidence, they just read different things into the figures.

The points that i think are truly relevant are:

1. The temperatures/ice melt in the arctic are no different than are usual. Ice is forming in different places, as are glaciers.

2. CO2 Emissions come from many different sources than man-made CO2, the oceans, Rainforests and Volcanoes.

3. If it was nearly as serious as they say then why aren't they doing something about it, not pussy-footing around with a few tax hikes, but actually passing legislation banning the formation of greenhouse gasses.

Til someone can actually answer these questions then i will remain sceptical.

[Tomcat]

re Torurot
I think what he meant was that Wunsch is threatening legal action. he has today demanded an apology for misreading him about carbon and oceans.........the Doc producers have denied this...............

It was a good polished documentary i admit and it certainly would have swayed many but it has caused a stir none the less.
......

The Observer
A leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'.

He says his comments in the film were taken out of context and that he would not have agreed to take part if he had known it would argue that man-made global warming was not a serious threat. 'I thought they were trying to educate the public about the complexities of climate change,' he said. 'This seems like a deliberate attempt to exploit someone who is on the other side of the issue.'

[Guest]

(Tomcat @ Mar. 16 2007,02:17) re Torurot
I think what he meant was that Wunsch is threatening legal action. he has today demanded an apology for misreading him about carbon and oceans.........the Doc producers have denied this...............

It was a good polished documentary i admit and it certainly would have swayed many but it has caused a stir none the less.
......

The Observer
A leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'.

He says his comments in the film were taken out of context and that he would not have agreed to take part if he had known it would argue that man-made global warming was not a serious threat. 'I thought they were trying to educate the public about the complexities of climate change,' he said. 'This seems like a deliberate attempt to exploit someone who is on the other side of the issue.'

So the duped professor thinks the earth warming and releasing CO2 is dangerous, and that his true views were not shown on the documentary...

Who cares? He cannot get past the several other important points made in the film, including: CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas (water is), CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and rise on average 800 years after a warming trend begins and the sun is probably a much more important contributor to global warming than human activity, in spite of our own arrogance and self-importance.

The befuddled professor sits in his university tower and argues that we should take out a insurance policy by reducing carbon emissions, just in case, even though the earth has warmed on its own to much higher temperatures several times in the past.

The sheer absurdity and callousness of this policy, which sticks it to the poor in developing nations at the expense of western hang-wringing and jitteriness, is shameful.

[Torurot]

Where does the "Wests" policy "stick it to the poor" as I think you have alluded to before? To put things in some perspective, apparently 5% of the worlds population is consuming 25% of it's resources. No question that others not considered "the West" consumption is increasing, will continue to increase.

[Guest]

Any discussion of using up resources, or references to "5% of the population using 25% of the earths resources" reveals a profound lack of understanding of economics.

Wealth is created by moving resources from a lower valued use to a higher valued use. When higher utility is created, more wealth is created.

How do you even define what a resource is? Oil and diamonds are worthless mud and rocks. We create the utility in resources. Some nations rich in resources have never moved past stone age culture- while other countries that are literally nothing but a rock in the sea have prospered (Japan and Hong Kong).

All that is required for more utility to be created is to get out of people's way. Human beings inherently want to better themselves in their own lives. When you give them the protection of government to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, you get the pinnacle of progress. When you leave people scared that at any time the government may seize what they own, you end up with a dirt poor populace.

Technological progress and utility maximizers create the trend toward using fewer and fewer resources in a cleaner way. It is stone age to industrial age societies that create pollution- and it is a lack of property rights that allows pollution to flourish.

The ultimate examples of technology and utility maximization are nuclear power and software. Nuclear power could completely eliminate our need for fossil fuel burning, pollution emmitting combustion engines. If the US built 200 to 500 new nuclear power plants, we could virtually eliminate oil imports.

Nuclear power is clean, safe, and unfortunately feared beyond all supporting evidence. Some claim that 300 children a year die around nuclear power plants- but 250,000 people die every year from coal burning plants and their effects. Everything in economics is centered around understanding and recognizing that there are always trade-offs.

Software is perhaps the ultimate utility maximizer. It requires almost literally no resources- and yet it creates value. In the US, almost every person was a farmer at one point. Now, only 2% of our population farms, yet we are able to provide enough food not only for ourselves, but enough to sell in foreign markets and to provide as aid to poor countries.

I don't know any enviromentally skeptical economist that argues that everything should "stay the way it is" because human technology has never been "the same" from year to year. 100 years ago, people feared horse shit filling up the streets. Now the horse shit is coming from those who believe history starts every morning when they wake up.

A simple but sober glance at the human race will show that this is the best, safest, cleanest time ever to have lived, and there is no reason to expect that it will do anything but improve. Lifespans are up around the globe, incomes too. We do not live in a Utopia, we never have and never will.

There are wars, famines, and other atrocities every day. There always have been. But on the whole, would you rather live during the time that you could have died from polio, or worked 16 hours a day pulling a plough?

Who are these people that want a hot, flooded planet full of dirty water and genetically mutated killer foods? The hysteria from the left is just absurd. Refering to US political parties, since I am in the US- I don't know any Repulicans who are for dirty water. They have children and/or grandchildren, whom they love.

Innovations like food irradiation save lives, reduce costs, and extend the food supply. It can even lead to a smaller percentage of the population that has to be dedicated to farming, freeing more people up to create utility in low resource ways- like designing software, or engineering nuclear power plants. But those fear-mongers who simply hate Western Civilization protest things like food irradiation. Then we have e-coli outbreaks and people die. Those who protest the economic progression of utility maximization are directly responsible for those deaths.

So my question is, if you fear global warming, what are you willing to do about it? Shackling the nations that lead the way in technological progress is not the answer, this will only make everyone more vulnerable. Are you OK with a worldwide conversion to nuclear power? I'm OK with that. Are you ready for those nations that still hold on to socialist ideology to move forward into a capitalist economy?

Taxes and more government power are not the answer. Technological progress and utility efficiency will lead to a better life for everyone. The question you have to ask yourself is are you OK with the top percent of the rich to become 1000 times more wealthy than you, if it results in yourself becoming 10 times more wealthy than you are now?

As long as people cry about the hard rules of economic reality, they will insist on equality. Equality is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people around the world just within a couple of generations. Head my warning, the "cures" being proferred for global warming will cause more harm than any catastrophe predicted as a result of global warming.

[Torurot]

Yes a touching run through Economics 103, with a healthy dose of US fear mongering about the "Socialists" thrown in because "business knows best".. As I've said before, global warming is pretty much agreed on by both "sides", but the degree & the cause is what is in question. What I'm really interested in is where does the "Wests" policy "stick it to the poor" come in? It's been mentioned a few times, seems to me as some kind of reasoning or justification for the "West" not to change, or not a lot.

[katoeylover]

Because they are "forcing" the poorer countries to use different methods of power to run their countries, such as solar, wind and water, by cutting off fossil fuels or making them too expensive. And if they dont they are implementing global warming taxes on their exports.

[Torurot]

Sometimes Wind/Solar etc is the best choice, for e.g if your cell tower is in the middle of nowhere running cable to it is prohibitively expensive. Oil sells mostly on a world market, and some countries are prepared to sell it off market to certain others at a cheaper price. At the other end many of the "West" are happy to preach a certain model to others ("free" Market etc) while practising gross protectionism in their own. Is that what's meant by "sticking it to the poor"?. But to be back on the point, I still don't get how this affects the Carbon Footprint and global warming. Driving a Hummer as an extreme example is not productive, except in a "because I can" sense.

[Guest]

T-rot, you show an encyclopedic ignorance of economics.

[katoeylover]

Unfortunately it has been PROVED that other forms of energy, ie wind and seapower, are both more initially expensive and less efficient as an energy source.

By forcingthe third world nations into these types of power, then it is hindering there chance of progressing into world markets.

[Torurot]

As you wish Grunyen. In your selective view of economics somehow you omitted the explanation about "sticking it to the poor", the very bit I was interested in, and how this relates, if indeed it does to global warming? You will note that I never proposed "Shackling the nations that lead the way in technological progress".