A Pat on His Orange Head

By
eric
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71
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At last, something.

Trump “pulled out” of the Paris Climate Change Agreement – agreed to by his predecessor back in 2015 and awaiting a majoritarian 55 of the earth’s nations to agree before it becomes binding within those countries.

That is to say upon the people within those countries – who had no say in the matter whatsoever beyond the gauzy connection between a Dear Leader, who may have received the electoral support of a minority of the citizenry at some distant election, claiming to “represent” them when he says Aye.

Trump’s saying Nay – regardless of the reasons why – is (yes) huge.

Especially as regards your car.

New – and old.

This has not been much discussed but ought to be.

Both, you see, “emit” carbon dioxide. Not much – the total atmospheric concentration of C02 is less than half a percent of the “air” we breath. Which is mostly nitrogen – almost 80 percent – the remaining almost 20 percent being oxygen and lesser gases.

There is much more Argon in the “air” – almost one full percent of the total! – than C02. But because Argon does not come out of the tailpipes of cars, it is not regarded as an agent of “climate change.”

But C02 is, we’re told – and the Paris Agreement would have cemented its regulation as a “pollutant,” just like gasses you can smell and which make you sick or even kill you – none of which carbon dioxide, in the fractional amounts produced by motor vehicles, could even possibly do to you.

Keep in mind that the grand total of all the carbon dioxide from every source, natural as well as man-made, that is floating around in the “air” is less than half of one percent of the total.

What percentage of that less-than-half-a-percent do you suppose is produced by motor vehicles?

You may perhaps have noticed a pattern.

VW was crucified over the fractionally higher amounts of an actual pollutant – oxides of nitrogen (NOx) which are reactive and potentially harmful to people – emitted by its diesel engines.

It was implied that the amounts at issue were huge and catastrophic – “up to 40 times the legal maximum!” it was endlessly screeched. But in fact, the amounts were minuscule – of relevance only insofar as they were higher than an arbitrary government standard. There was no burden of proof upon the government to establish that, in fact, these fractionally higher/minuscule increases in N0x emissions caused any harm to anyone.

It is the same – but much worse – with this carbon dioxide/“climate change” business.

First, because the amounts at issue are almost immeasurable. People in the mass have been taught by TeeVee to believe – and that is exactly the right word, in the religious sense – that “human activity” (not just the activity of motor vehicles) is pouring immense volumes of carbon dioxide into the air.

And yet, ask any of them how much of the earth’s atmosphere is composed of C02 and how much of that amount is produced by man-made sources. You are likely to get answers considerably higher than fractions of a whole number.

Second, because carbon dioxide – unlike oxides of nitrogen and other actual pollutants that choke you or give you cancer or otherwise represent a menace to health – is an inert gas. It does not make it hard to breath – not in fractional amounts, at any rate – and while it is indeed a “greenhouse gas,” the failure of the Experts tub-thumping “climate change” (nee, “global warming,” which didn’t market well) to honestly state how small the amount at issue is in the scheme of things, along with the claim that fractions of fractions of a percent produced by “human activity” are triggering catastrophic change, is either witch-doctoring or something much more malevolent.

Certainly, the climate is changing. It does that. One of the great idiocies of our age is that the public, a large percentage of it, has come to believe it is unnatural for the climate to change. And that any change they find disquieting or unpleasant – such as a particularly hot summer or a hard winter – is unnatural and more than that, caused by man and his infernal machines.

This fear is egged on by the political apparat and the media that is attached to it like a lamprey to the flanks of a shark. They both have much to gain. Also crony capitalists such as Elon Musk – whose entire “business” depends on the government mandating the manufacture and subsidizing the sale of his (cough) “zero emissions” electric cars and on the “carbon credit” extortion racket that provides his operating capital. Musk is quite understandably furious about Trump’s decision; see here.

As the Church Lady used to say on Saturday Night Live, it is all very convenient. 

The shuck-and-jive that’s been performed is to convince people a Dire Threat looms. And Dire Threats – which seem to pop up very conveniently whenever a prior one disappears – see, for instance the Dire Threat of Radical Islamic Terrorism, which popped up after the old excuse for everything, the Soviet Union, disappeared – always require Dire Solutions.

In this case, punishing regulation of motor vehicles.

Just ours, of course.

We will be required to pay more for new “compliant” ones, and their use will probably be limited or taxed, in order to “encourage” us to self-limit. This is already being done in Europe.

The older cars – “gross polluters” in the argot of climate change – may be banned outright. Also already happening in Europe.

Neither the Dear Leaders nor their Praetorians (e.g., the military and also the lesser Praetorians in law enforcement) will suffer much, if any diminishment. Dear Leader will not be driven around in a Prius. Just as Dear Leader – and the lesser leaders – will remain armed to the teeth even as they urge us to believe that guns offer no protection and only exacerbate violence.

But this Dear Leader has given us a respite. He will inherit the wind for it.

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Related posts:
  1. Today’s Thoughts . . .Nov. 5, 2013
  2. The C02 Trump Card
  3. Unsere Electric Only Zukunft
  4. The Orange Balloon Deflates
  5. From The Head Down

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71 COMMENTS

  2. I think everyone who is parroting the party line should read this quote taken from a Club of Rome (a Rock-o-feller funded think tank) white paper: “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention….and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself….believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or….one invented for the purpose.”
    ‘Nuff said.

  4. Does this mean we will get diesel choices again in the US or has the nail in that coffin been hammered all the way in?

  5. I believe that CO2 has been chosen by the world’s elites as one justification for pushing globalism to the masses. The atmosphere knows no borders, therefore it must always be addressed through global edicts and treaties, if you believe the one world government apparatchiks. Listening to the two faced pols and media puppets you would think the world was going to end solely due to Trump saying no. My god, don’t people apply a minimum of critical thinking before just accepting everything fed to them from these guys?

  6. Eric, I love your commentary and your articles. Just one thing: the word is BREATHE, not breath. As in, “CO2 is an inert gas found in our breath as we breathe in oxygen.”

    Of course, the theta sound in the noun “breath” is the same as in “thistle”. In the verb “to breathe”, it is the same sound as you would find in “the”, “mother”, “father”.

    Get out your pruning shears and start cutting away.

  8. CO2, COShmoo. I was a mechanic on a submarine responsible for the operation and maint. of CO2 Scrubbers that removed the CO2 from the enclosed atmosphere. Believe me, human’s can stand a far greater amount of CO2 forever than is in our atmosphere. I am a retired utility plant operator and in this rocky mountain state we were not required to track CO2 emissions by the EPA, just NOX and CO. Likewise, I just got my emissions done on my car and hydrocarbons, NOX, and CO were tracked and the car had to be within their limits. But, while CO2 was read on my engine, there was no maximum limit it had to meet. This is proof that CO2 isn’t a threat or government would already require tracking it and putting limits on it. In all the states I have had emissions done, none mandated CO2 limits. The sheep are getting smoke blown up their backsides big time.

  9. Green libertarianism
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_libertarianism

    Green libertarians maintain that the government itself is responsible for most environmental degradation, either directly, or by encouraging and protecting politically powerful corporations and other organized interests which degrade, pollute and deplete the natural environment.

    Therefore, the government should be held accountable to all the same environmental regulations they place on businesses.

    Greens and Libertarians
    http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/greenlibertarians.html

    • The government is responsible. There were early pollution cases where property owners sued polluting neighbors. The government sided with the polluters demanding the victims prove the pollution was harmful because the ability to do so did not yet exist. Had pollution been dealt with as a property rights issue it could have been stopped decades earlier.

  10. The Paris Climate Agreement was an International Treaty. Treaties require 2/3 of US Senate approval to be ratified. Well, if one were to follow the US Constitution. This treaty was never ratified. Obama rammed it through illegally. I guess all Trump did was right a wrong.

    Why doesn’t anyone mention this important point about US Senate ratification? Just mention that, and its “Case Closed”.

    • Obama fully figured that Hillary would follow him in office, that his executive order (which it how it was rammed through) would stand. Even if the Senate been Democrat controlled, that ratification likely wouldn’t have had much of a chance. Plenty of Democrat senators represent areas that would suffer badly economically from this treaty, so they would have to vote against it, or at least not vote for it.

    • Hi Rush,

      Because it doesn’t matter. Just as the 4th and 5th Amendments don’t matter. We live in a Decidership. Not a Republic or even a Democracy…

      • Eric, I realize that the USA lives under a Decidership, or can it now be considered a Dicktatorship with Trump in power? What really upsets me are the millions of ignorant clovers that should have realized the Paris Climate Treaty was never legally binding because of the simple fact the Senate did not ratify it. You have millions of people living in the USA that don’t have the slightest idea about the powers of the 3 branches of government and how they are abused or ignored. Instead, you get millions of people attending the “circuses” (NFL, NBA, MLB games), and cheer wildly as the National Anthem is played, and machines of death fly overhead in a display of military power. These same people screaming out the National Anthem were probably groped/sexually molested to enter the stadium much as air travelers put up with on a daily basis from the TSA. They still live in some fantasy world where they believe the USA is the freest country on the planet, and can do no wrong no matter how many wedding parties it bombed in the Middle East this week. Sickening………

        • With you, Rush… I loathe the fuhhhhhhhhhttttttball cult, will not go near an airport unless it’s a family crisis and am disgusted by the imbecility of the mooing, lowing cattle…

  11. If I were a greedy sadistic bastard I’d be in favor of the “green initiative”. Think about it, you get the poor smucks to pay more for energy. Then you take their money, keep a bunch and bribe a few people in third world countries with what’s left over. That way their people don’t ever get to use the resources at all. More for me and my offspring and fuck the assholes in the third world, let them eat grass and live in a hole in the ground. Isn’t this what’s it’s really all about, at least for the people at the top of this pyramid scheme?

    And don’t think for a second that the “Green” tofu eating SJW masses here don’t partially understand this. They know they will still have their I-pods, $500 jeans and their coffee houses. They will never go and live off the land or get out of their parent’s basement for that matter. They just want everyone else to do it for them. And the fucked up part is that forcing poverty on the rest of the world makes them feel all self-righteous.

  12. The Paris accords are crony capitalist, UN undermining sovereignty, wealthy elite utopia building, and totally worthless in doing a damn thing with regard to climate change for the believers in CO2 bringing bad climate. Even James Hansen called the accords a fraud.

    But this is about political teams. And those on the team for it want it because they were told by their team to want it. But anyone with any thoughts outside of conditioning and programming knows the accords are a fraud. They are a fraud on every level.

  13. Hey Eric, brilliant blog…. a question, not sure if you know or can find the answer. They keep taxing us on co2 from our cars (I’m in london) and push us to keep buying new cars and scrapping our old ones. Now what I’ve heard is the co2 emitted from manufacturing a new car (from digging metals and oil to shipping it around the world) actually emits more co2 than if we actually run our old bangers to the ground…… my suspicion…. buy new car…. sales and GDP goes up…. tax is taken by government….. they act like they did a good job and save the world…. and 5 years later the sheep vote them back in…. whereas if we run our old cars…. no tax collected on new cars (here there’s a 20% Sales tax on everything, a pretty decent number on a 20k car)…. car sales drop, and suddenly we have problems….

    • What!?! How dare you apply LOGIC to this situation? Bad Brit, Bad Brit…
      Don’tcha know that thinking through to the logical conclusion is likely to get you placed on a government list somewhere (at a minimum)?

  15. Climate theory is a specie of mathematical modelling.

    Because the experimental conditions are uncontrollable.

    Such models are no more a science than is weather forecasting.

    When successful terraforming attempts are documented, the climate scientist and engineer will become reality.

    • Absolutely. And of course the Paris “Accords” have almost nothing to do with altering predicted climate outcomes (0.2 degrees C by the year 2100) and everything to do with the United States taxpayers being forced to subsidize the economies of China and India and the rest of the lesser developed world. I don’t recall any other nation ever providing subsidies to the US. Seems like it only flows one way.

      • To be fair, the rest of the world does subsidize the lifestyle of Americans by selling them everything they need and accepting only pieces of paper in return.

        • Dear Escher,

          Too many indoctrinated sheeple go online and accuse the Chinese people of all manner of criminal behavior.

          They blank out the fact that the US Federal Reserve System is the world’s largest and most successful counterfeiting ring. It legally counterfeits US dollars, or more precisely, Federal Reserve Notes, which are nothing more than IOUs issued by a chronic and habitual deadbeat.

          Instead of blaming the Zionist banksters, they blame the Chinese, for “stealing our jobs”, as if “jobs” were objects that can be “stolen”.

          • Bevin,

            I sincererly admire the Chinese race. And their being one of the oldest and greatest civilizations ever.

            They are fair but brutal when needed. And much more genuine and unselfconscious. I love going to a Chinatown, and everybody parks wherever and maybe even at the red curb right at the entrance. And there is no lip quivering altruism to be found.

            But just humans doing their thing, saying what they think. Pick your nose, have your kid take a dump in a trash can. Whatever is needed, none of this cloverism. Pure ego. But at a family level there is deep loyalty.

            No putting grandma in a home. You take care of your own.

            And maybe they are hurting the USA. But everyone hurts us. Our pockets are picked mercilessly. But it is more likely UK or Zionist or Triad or Wenzhou or whatever behind it.

            An assembled Iphone at Foxconn puts $14 dollars into the Chinese economy each. All the rest goes elsewhere not China. Maybe none of it to the US. Only more dollars spent on a high retail price.

            China’s rise is the great NAP miracle of the world right now. They didn’t conquer anything. Well maybe Tibet, Mongoli,a NW Muslim province(Xianjing?), but mostly 1.4 billion people are working. And many hundreds of millions are still at lowest poverty rate. A few dollars a week, or whatever, as low as it goes. Tho China is trying to rapidly infuse rural prosperity for Poor chinese and even trade with other nations.

            Many not so well off at all.

            India is rising too. But it is so witch doctory and cloveritic. So many smart people but so many restraints. Shaping up to be a mini US or Britain to be sure.

            You hold trillions in debt notes. What can you get with them 40 year old military technology. A bunch of hollywood movies you’re already pirating. Raw lumber coal waste cardboard grain.

            I love more the China of a hundred years ago so much more. But that’s gone now. Everything is rated PG13 now. At least under the bright lights, but in the darker alleys. Maybe still opium dens and silk robed ladies of delight. I really don’t know, but it seems possible.

            America is an open book. I wish I knew more about the hidden and unknown China. A sanitized window is always open. But I wonder what things are really looks, once off the beaten path.

          • Dear Tor,

            Thanks.

            The Chinese people are no angels. But neither are they demons. Like everybody else, they’re somewhere in between, with all the foibles of human beings. The difference is that Chinese people have different foibles than European, Middle Eastern, African, and American people.

            Re: primitive sanitary habits of Chinese peasants who have come to the Big City for the first time

            That’s a result of rapid urbanization and industrialization that outpaced social change. Many peasants’ habits are perfectly normal if one is living in a remote rural village.

            Basically these people are Chinese versions of the “Beverly Hillbillies”. They’re fish out of water, who don’t know the rules for this strange environment they’ve suddenly been thrust into. Adaptation will take a little time. It’s not the end of the world.

            Chinese who grew up in the major cities are no different than Europeans and Americans in that regard.

            Re: Tibet

            Most Westerners have never studied Asian history. They don’t know that Tibet merged with China back during the Tang dynasty (600 AD), by the same means that monarchies in the West merged with each other politically, through arranged marriages between royal families.

            Princess Wen-cheng, a member of the Chinese royal family, was married off to King Songtsän Gampo of Tibet.

            Later, during the 19th and 20th centuries, the British attempted to expand their empire in India to the northeast into the Tibetan region of China, and the CIA attempted to split Tibet off from China.

            That led to the modern era dispatching of troops to the Tibetan region to prevent such machinations from succeeding. That was NOT a case of “China invading Tibet”.

            • Sorry, that Tibet thing was just a throwaway comment that missed the mark. So Tibet merged into China 1400 years ago analagously to the way Florida merged into the US.

              It would be a bridge much too far, were Cuba and Mexico backed by Russia, China, and the UK, to demand Florida be considered still a part of a Greater New Spain and that the Sunshine State had been stolen by an earlier Government of the United State Empire.

              History of tea

              The history of tea spreads across multiple cultures over the span of thousands of years. Tea originated in southwest China during the Shang dynasty as a medicinal drink.

              An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text written by Hua Tuo.

              Tea was first introduced to Portuguese priests and merchants in China during the 16th century. Drinking tea became popular in Britain during the 17th century.

              The British duplicated Chinese tea production plantations, as well as tea consumption, in India, in order to usurp China’s property rights in the invention of tea.

              Ironic how Chinese are always accused of knocking off everybody else’s inventions.
              http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article.php?id=31781

            • Dear Tor,

              Sorry, I should have worded my reply more carefully. It was not intended as a rebuke of you. I now see how it might have come across that way. If so, it was purely unintentional.

              It was intended as a rebuke of the Western MSM, which has spun Tibet exactly the same way it more recently spun Iraq and WMDs.

              The Zionist owned Western MSM has misled the public in America and Europe something fierce.

          • We here in the Jew.S.A. tax and regulate businesses to death, to the point where no one in their right mind would manufacture anything here…and then we say that the Chinese are “stealing our jobs”!

            If it weren’t for immigrants here, you wouldn’t even be able to find anyone willing to do manual labor anymore. Our government subsidizes the making of illegitimate babies, and any teenager now knows that they can just get themselves boinked by a jigaboo and have a few kids, and be set until it’s Social Security time. Have 3 or 4 kids and never work a day in your life and have no husband to answer to, and take in just under $60K in total benefits (Welfare, foodstamps, subsidized rent; medicaid, etc.).

            Want to “supplement your income”? Just go to the doctor (no cost to you) and tell him your back hurts or your joints hurt, and he’ll diagnose you with fibromyalgia and you’ll get a monthly supply of pills that you can sell to your neighbors for a lucrative second income.

            What a mess this country and it’s people have become.

            Any time I see “Made in America” on something, I run from it, ’cause I know it’ll be ridiculously expensive and of inferior quality.

    • It’s not exactly terraforming but it’s rather similar in some aspects. The idea of fertilizing the oceans has been around for a while.

      One idea is to put Iron into the ocean in places that need more plankton growth. But it’s funny because if there was such a dire threat to the entire world of dying from global warming, then why is it that the environmental groups fight it tooth and nail? It was actually done once clandestinely by a group trying to save a salmon fishery off the coast of Canada. The environmental groups freaked out. But guess what? It worked, the salmon thrived big time. Oh and guess what Plankton takes out of the atmosphere?

      Care to guess why they oppose it? They believe that if it does work to remove CO2 that we will become less environmentally conscious and open more factories. There are other various scare tactics tossed in as well but that’s their main problem with it. If we find a way to remove CO2 by fertilizing the oceans then we will open too many new factories. I guess in a really oddball way I get their point. They would have eliminated a fake problem and then given the go ahead to create more factories that at least at some level usually do produce some forms of actual pollution that must be dealt with. But isn’t this rather like admitting that CO2 isn’t really the big problem they claim it is?

      If it’s such a dire threat why wouldn’t they be looking for every possible answer, especially an answer that could help feed people? Ooops that’s another bad part. If the Oceans were fertilized and fishing was greatly increased then the world population could rise and they don’t want that either.

      It’s almost as if their real goal is something other than caring for humanity at all. When they claim that “Mother Nature” comes first, I think that’s about the only thing they are honest about. If they could wipe man off the face of the Earth so that all the nice kind animals and plants wouldn’t have to suffer from man’s barbarity, the world would be a better place. Many of them are not about saving the Earth for your Great Grandchildren, It’s about saving the Planet itself and to hell with people, people aren’t natural anyway.

      • Check out
        http://www.infinite-energy.com
        and the NEW Energy Foundation.

        The MOST promising new clean energy technologies are shushed up by the “environmental” group’s. Thank God Fleischmann and Pons did a press conference to announce their results: apparent “low-energy nuclear reactions” (LENR) because otherwise they would have been peer-reviewed into oblivion by faceless baseless rascals from behind curtains.

        There was enough positive results in labs around the world to say Eureka until the crony corruptionmanaged to put a lot of the toothpaste back in the tube.

        But here we are and toothpaste is defeating their countermeasures. There’s growing interest in Japan and Italy.

        Next time they say Internet as a great thing the government did, remind them about Paradox, CompuServe, AOL, and the thousands of bulletin board systems in garages.

        And then ask them why governments ignore Eugene Mallove’s letters explaining the evidence for NEW Energy’s potential to deliver a million times more energy output per input at about a millionth the cost, and 100 percent clean!!!

        Japanese and Italians seem to be the ones leading the charge to develop this science.

        The big name rich enviro wackos need to be exposed for refusing to support these truly clean technologies. Yes they do know about them. Their are of their father the devil for robbing their gullible followers of this. For their own profits.

  16. I don’t really career if he “inherits the wind”, just so long as he’s not “breaking” it. Otherwise, we all may end up wearing filters up our butts in 10 years!

  17. I’m curious what it is that Oppositelock thinks we need to do? What is the level of emmission that is ok for the US?

    A friend of mine believe global warming and he thinks getting out of the paris deal was good because it lacked enforcement.

    Do we need to stop driving cars? No electric? Everything always seems to revolve around fees so someone else is getting rich.

    • Might as well ask how this blog can be profitable. Or how eric can get his wife back.

      Some questions are too complex and beyond our ability to scientifically answer.

      Climate angst is a fatal conceit.
      http://cnqzu.com/library/Philosophy/neoreaction/Friedrich%20August%20Hayek/Friedrich_Hayek%20-%20The_fatal_conceit.pdf

      Modern civilization, and all of its customs and traditions, naturally led to the current order and are needed for its continuance, fundamental changes to the system that try to control it are doomed to fail since they are impossible or unsustainable in modern civilization.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Conceit#Summary

    • I never said “we” need to do anything. I reject the notion of the collective “we” because that implies someone is telling “us” what to do, screw that. “We” as a people need to quit supporting the ruling status quo and their pet corporations so that the market can give us the sort of energy that makes sense. If enough people pay more for clean energy, we’ll have clean energy, and if they don’t, well, that would suck, but it’s not my call or someone else’s call to make.

      I really hope that we do have clean energy before pollution gets out of hand, but I’m much more concerned about acid rain due to coal or thorium and lead in the air and water than I am about the CO2 concentration. As the US gets more affluent, we can indulge ourselves in clean energy (who wants soot and smoke?). This is the only workable solution for others – let them advance past the dirty stage of their economies as quickly as possible.

      I will never advocate for limiting growth or energy production because I do not want to subject my fellow man to poverty.

      • Hi OP,

        One of the things that drives me to spittle-spewing fury is that there is no technological or economic reason we can’t have brand-new $8,000 cars that average 60 MPG or more… which would by definition greatly reduce C02 and other emissions… because of government “safety” mandates that the government (that is, other people) have no moral business imposing on anyone.

        Whether a car has air bags or any of the rest is something that ought to be between the buyer and seller and entirely at the discretion of both.

        Whether a car can withstand piling into a barrier at “x” speed is a risk factor that is the owner/driver’s to assume or not.

        For years, as a young guy, I drove a ’73 Beetle. Horrifically “unsafe” by modern standards (mandates) but it never harmed me in the least and it saved me a bunch of money at a time when I didn’t have much.

        Imagine the modern version of such a car.

        But we aren’t allowed to have them… because some piece of shit in Washington has deluded himself into believing he is our parent and that we are his idiot children.

      • I wasn’t trying to say you believe in “we” by force. Just what do you think people need to do in order to lower co2 to a level that has a net decrease in order to save the world? If co2 is in fact a concern what should we do? Ideally what is to be done will be voluntary by talking and convincing people it needs to be done.

        Your example of choosing clean energy is a good one, the problem is it is expensive. Again we have gov’t getting in the way. Locally we have 3 mile island nuclear plant. For the last 2 years they have not sold into the electric market because it is too expensive. Nuclear should be one of the cheapest and is one of the cleanest sources.

        Is everyone running solar panels and batteries in their houses really cleaner than a nuke plant or a natural gas plant?

        I never hear anyone say what to do other than tax, tax, tax.

        • If it was up to me, the following would happen:

          1) Complete deregulation of the energy market. No more local monopolies. If someone wants to use Bloom Energy fuel cells to power neighborhoods, fine. Right now, the only legal way to get electricity is to buy from the local monopolist, even if you’ve got solar. I live in CA, where we had rolling blackouts once upon a time because the green idiots refuse to allow more generation capacity as the state grows. During blackouts, CalTrain proposed using their diesel locomotives, which are giant rolling multi megawatt generators, to supplement the grid. Nope, the greens wouldn’t have it.

          2) Remove GE’s stranglehold on nuclear. There’s no reason we should be using their 1960’s high pressure water design. India and China are building liquid salt thorium reactors and pebble bed reactors, which are fifty years more modern than anything we’ve got. Three Mile Island or Chernobyl can’t happen with these.

          3) Remove every kind of energy subsidy, tax break, etc. Consumers must feel the true cost of energy to incentivize them to conserve.

          4) Strict liability when it comes to provable damage from pollution. No regulatory indemnification.

          Between solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear we could cover a lot of our energy needs. We also have exciting startups working on both fission and fusion, there are six of them here in Commiefornia alone.

          • Hi Opposite,

            The great Robert Higgs once quipped, “Don’t just stand there, un-do something”.

            I agree with all of your proposals, all of them amount to un-doing something. Remove the artificial constraints that favor the corporate and political elite and the market will find efficient solutions when they are needed.

            Jeremy

  18. Live with legislation by the executive branch, die with legislation by the executive branch.

    If this is such a problem, why couldn’t the Democratic majority Congress get a law passed?

  19. Eric, you’re off by a factor of 10 in your CO2 concentration, it’s 0.04%, ten times less.

    I’m about to say some clover things, but I’m no clover, just well read on climate science since I worked on some related stuff.

    Nobody cares about argon because it’s not a greenhouse gas, it doesn’t trap heat like CO2 does. The three main greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are water vapor, methane and CO2. The earth would be a dead hellhole without them, freezing on the dark side and a furnace on the sunny side. Dead like Mars.

    Our temperature is like it is because of a very fine balancing act of heat arriving from the sun, leaving into space, with just enough of it trapped to keep things comfy for us. Mankind emits billions of tons of CO2 into the air, and like it or not, the science is pretty conclusive that we’re warming up the planet. The political scientists call it “climate change” because people see cooling and assume we’re not changing the planet, so they want to include cooling under the “our fault” banner, but it’s not, we’re warming what would have been here otherwise.

    CO2 concentrations on earth were significantly higher in the past, that’s how we had lush jungle times which supported giant plants, which in turn supported giant creatures of other sorts, they were also lower when the earth was much colder.

    I think the science on this is fairly conclusive, but we shouldn’t couple our acceptance of the science with our political response to it. I accept the notion of man changing the climate, because I’ve seen the numbers and crunched the math, however, I don’t accept the politicians’ handling of the situation. Their approach is corrupt, and penalizes poor countries and industries they dislike, and gives a free pass to their friends, disgusting. Case in point, Al Gore. He works to subsidize solar and punish coal and somehow magically manages to invest in those industries just before major decisions come down which make him richer.

    Bjorn Lomborg wrote a great book a while ago titled, “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming”. His premise is that we’re changing the climate, we certainly don’t have the tech to undo that and we can’t go back to the stone age like some wants us to, so spend money on addressing things which matter to mankind; access to clean water, food and medicine while we develop the technology that will eventually allow us to use less carbon fuel without penalizing mankind.

    • Hi SJ,

      I am very skeptical of anything the government – and government scientists and others on the payroll – say about “climate change” or any other thing.

      The term itself is demagogic, not scientific. It can encompass any “change” that occurs – and then the government attributes it to “human action.”

      I would be less skeptical if the incessant calls to “action” included the government. How many tons of C02 does the military emit? If the “threat” is so “dire,” how come the government isn’t cutting back its “carbon footprint”? Which is the biggest footprint of all.

      It is telling that all the “sacrifices” to be made are to be made by us serfs.

      Meanwhile, there is abundant evidence that the “data” has been jiggered with. Also, I am very dubious about the relative contributions made by cars and so on vs. natural sources. And as you note, C02 levels wax and wane and have done so for eons, long before man ever contributed any significant amount.

      Here is something of interest:

      A whistleblower says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rushed a landmark study claiming the planet was warming much faster than expected in order to influence international climate negotiations.

      Dr. John Bates, the former principal scientist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., told the Daily Mail NOAA’s 2015 study was meant “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”

      Bates said NOAA scientists made a “blatant attempt to intensify the impact” of global warming to eliminate the “pause” in temperature rise since 1998. The Daily Mail claims Bates showed it “irrefutable” evidence NOAA’s study relied on “unverified” data.

      Bates’ objections to the paper were ignored by his superiors, who let scientists make “decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation” in advance of a major United Nations climate summit in Paris, France.
       

      His statement to The Daily Mail comes amid an investigation into the NOAA study by House Republicans on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the committee’s chairman, subpoenaed NOAA in late 2015 for records related to the so-called “Karl study” that adjusted global sea surface temperature upwards, eliminating the “pause” in global warming since 1998.

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html

      • Oh, no disagreements with most of that. There is a lot of scientific fraud around global warming, as is the fear mongering. I wouldn’t trust government “climatologists” one bit, however, there is also real, peer-reviewed science out there. I’m well aware of how the models are only backward looking, and inconvenient evidence is ignored. There’s a feedback loop here too; you’re not likely to get grant money to study something that shows there’s no impending catastrophe.

        Like I said in my first comment, it’s very sad that the science has been conflated with government action. It’s made a lot of my libertarian anti-government friends reject solid science because the two ideas are so coupled. It’s hard to remain objective under such propaganda.

        • Hi Op,

          Agreed!

          One aspect of this that’s interesting to me is that a warming (whether normal/cyclical or man-caused) might be a good thing for us.

          More food crops, warmer temps, etc.

          • It’s good nearer the poles, sucks at the equator, and also creates overall climatic changes. The poles are warmer, wetter and less predictable, the equatorial areas are drier and hotter.

            The Sahara was once a lush sea and it’s full of whale bones, then it was a lush forest, and it’s only been a desert for 10,000 year or so (it’s not man’s fault). We’re seeing the beginning of such huge shifts right now. The honest scientists will tell you they don’t know how much man did there, how much natural change did, just that each contributed.

            This change is disruptive because the local ecosystems are very specifically adapted to their current climate, and even small climate changes can disrupt them. In human terms, things like crop failures or blights become more likely.

            Some change will be good, some change will be bad. Lomborg also mentions that in his book – accept the good, and spend money mitigating the bad to help people negatively affected, because we don’t have the technology to undo this, yet, but it’s fast approaching. Imagine the day when “green” energy is just as reliable and cheaper than coal, gas and oil. You’d be silly not to use it, and governments won’t need to force it down your throat.

    • Hi Opposite,

      The proper term, or at least the original one, for what we’re all supposed to fear is, “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.” After all, if it’s neither catastrophic, nor anthropogenic, why should we care. “Climate change” is a meaningless term.

      Yes, the basic science is settled. Absent other factors, doubling the level of CO2, will lead to about a 1 degree celsius rise in temperature. Now, if this is all that happens, we have nothing to worry about because the warming effect of CO2 diminishes exponentially as concentration increases. CAGW theory assumes a much higher level of radiative forcing (climate sensitivity) than could be produced by CO2 alone. The theory relies on positive feedback mechanisms that elevate the climate sensitivity from the non dangerous level of 1 degree per doubling to the possibly catastrophic 3 to 7 degrees per doubling. Skeptics argue that the feedback mechanisms are roughly balanced between positive and negative, and that the “real” climate sensitivity is probably 1.5 degrees or less.

      So, the science is settled, except for the defining aspect of CAGW theory. So far, all of the empirical evidence suggests a climate sensitivity much lower than predicted by the alarmists. Now, you’d think that the first response of a scientist, confronted with the fact that 30 years of data does not confirm the central aspect of the theory, would be to question the theory. Instead, the response has been to repeatedly manipulate the temperature record, posit all kinds of theories as to where the heat is hiding and to vilify those who properly question the central assumption of CAGW theory. On this, the only point that really matters, the science is most definitely not settled.

      Jeremy

      • Jeremy, oh so true. It shouldn’t take any thinking person long to get names of the “scientists” and check their backgrounds. Don’t think I ever saw any issue of any sort that the so-called experts or those in charge, didn’t have a dog in the hunt.

        An old college buddy’s older brother is a professor at Princeton who’s specialty……now……is global warming. Yep, he and selected few go out 6 months of the year on a cruise, er uh, expedition and check O2 and temps in the ocean…..since at some point it’s all one ocean.

        He sends scientific reports to his brother who sends them to the RRRT and other than myself, we have some pretty smart cookies there. It’s easy to see after reading through one of these things they are looking for what they’ll find. It’s kinda like just having a hammer so there’s just one thing you look for. Their nails are data they can put in different streams they know are going to be carrying warm water. Nowhere do they ever mention the ice below the poles is getting deeper since they’d need to explain that. And explain that is what one paper from another source tried to tell us. I forget who it was except for a global warming bunch but they had the question of the depth of the ice put to them to which they answered, the ice was building deeper “because” of global warming. It was just a statement with no data to suggest why except that the surface of the poles had warmed(to what degree? they don’t say).

        So, how does the surface warming make the ice get deeper? Sh! don’t ask that question.

        I mentioned this one day about the 300 or so years of a mini-ice age starting in 1348 for the most part in Europe where there is written history. I guess the peat burning denizens of old England brought it on.

        For a few years now the Ring of Fire has been heating up and having a plethora of events which emit huge amounts of all sorts of gas including CO2. But unless there’s some major event it seems like the climatologists ignore the effect caused by the ring in it’s entirety.

      • You said: “Absent other factors, doubling the level of CO2, will lead to about a 1 degree celsius rise in temperature.” Just curious, what is the time-frame of this increase? One year? Ten years? 100 years? 200 years? Inquiring minds would like to know!!!(;>)

        • Hi William,

          The 1 degree Celsius claim can be shown in a controlled laboratory environment. To my knowledge, the first such experiments were done by John Tyndall in the mid 19th century. As for what will happen, and in what time frame, with the actual climate, nobody knows to any meaningful degree of certainty. All of the models run hot, even at the low end of the range. That is because, despite what we are told, the effect and significance of the many confounding variables is not well understood.

          Doomsday scenarios, combined with “urgent calls for action”, are based on assumptions of climate sensitivity that are not supported by the empirical data.

          Jeremy

          • Jeremy spoke in epautos today….

            Clearly I remember.Pickin’ on the boy.Seemed a harmless little fuck.
            But we unleashed a lion.Gnashed his teeth.And bit the recess lady’s breast….

            No Trend – Teen Love
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g778pbgesI

            They met during social interaction in Algebra class.
            She was expressionless at first, but then “smiled” to indicate submission.
            He rearranged his facial features to appear “friendly.”

            After determining that their popularity status was comparable,
            they decided that a “relationship” would be mutually beneficial.
            They were careful to be seen together
            at the local fast-food franchises.

            He had a stylized speech pattern.
            She used all the newest slang.
            When they talked on the telephone,
            they had troubled generating conversation stimulus.

            They programmed “arguments” into their “relationship”
            to make their lives seem “meaningful.”
            They could act “really mad” or “happy” or even “sad”
            according to the current pre-fabricated social circumstances.

            He had programmed his “personality”
            to conform to adolescent trends.
            She had synthesized her “emotions”
            based on accepted teen sex-role characteristics.

            They had copied all aspects of their behavior
            from what they had observed in society.
            Ego complex, insecurity syndrome
            Oo yeah, they were really “goin’ gud.”

            They were killed in an auto wreck as they were driving to and fro.
            After drinking two beers, he was pretending to be “drunk.”
            While the local popular radio station
            played the newest pre-designated, youth-oriented “top-forty hit,”
            he was decapitated in an explosion of flames and glass fragments.

            Her body was found crushed into the dashboard.
            A mini-cam report described them as “fine youngsters.”
            They never got a chance to fulfill their “career dreams.”

            Politifact says Tor’s too long for the format.
            Snopes says true, can’t he just talk about internal combusting conveyances as proscribed.

            Fact Check wonders why is he so mean and outrageous. He ain’t much. Can’t even cohere much. We NAPians really are our online personas. They are not just joyriding daleks we boost andstep inside and drive like we stole it and it’s a stepwife’s rental.

            We are each one and only one official substantials state approved true golden Dalek shells who are silver skied Scarro refugee conscientious objectors orange plains of grains and not to be mocked placelieges and timelords.

            Or else we will exterminate, exterminate, what is different, and not commanded, and not identical, and not asked for and correctly answered, EX TERM INATE , EXT ERMINE ATE,,,

    • Hi Opposite,

      Another thing that bothers me about CAGW theory is why hasn’t it happened before? James Hansen insists that increases in CO2 will, through positive feedback loops, eventually create runaway global warming. As you point out, CO2 concentration has been much higher in the past (some evidence suggests as much as 8,000 ppm). If Hansen is right, why are any of us still here to debate the point. What am I missing?

      Jeremy

      • CAGW doesn’t mean the earth will turn into Venus or something, but it will raise temperatures enough to cause many ecosystems to collapse and for our agricultural system to start failing. It’ll lead to human misery. That kind of stuff has happened in the past, and nature is a cold bitch, so the life that couldn’t deal died off and that which adapted lived on. We don’t want to be on the losing end of that deal.

        Life almost died on earth about 250 million years ago due to the Siberian Traps – giant volcanic activity which filled the atmosphere with CO2, methane and all sorts of chemicals. The climate change wiped out most sea and land life. We’ve got enough CO2 trapped in the earth to do this again, but it’s unlikely. This is the doomsday scenario, but the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The biggest real danger is making the earth not able to sustain 7+ billion people and we’d end up with a human famine and die-off.

        Read about the “snowball earth” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth). It shows one giant geologically induced cycle that periodically freezes the earth solid for millions of years, then geological processes reverse it. No matter what we do, one of these will hit us at some point in the far future. By then, I hope we have the technology to change the earth’s climate on purpose.

        • Hi Opposite,

          Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.

          Hansen, when describing the runaway greenhouse effect, has claimed that “the oceans will begin to boil” and “life on earth is over”. He is describing the effect of a positive feedback loop that results in instability and collapse of the system. He is not describing a future equilibrium that makes human life difficult, but a total collapse of the system that allows for any life. So he, at least, seems to believe that the “earth will turn into Venus or something.”

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACHLayfA6_4

          I still think that the central issue is climate sensitivity. Alarmists continually misrepresent the views of skeptics (denier is a vile word, meant to shame and silence skeptics) by asserting that they don’t accept the science of global warming. This is nonsense. Skeptics and alarmists agree on the vast majority of the science, they disagree about the level of radiative forcing caused by CO2. If the skeptics are right (as the data suggests), we have nothing to worry about. If the alarmists are right, there is probably little we can do (except further enrich the Elites through carbon credit/offset/trading scams).

          The level of climate sensitivity assumed by the alarmists seems to imply the doomsday scenario Hansen describes. The fact that this has not happened seems to be strong evidence against the theory (the Siberian Traps seem vastly different to me than the relatively minor increase in CO2 concentration we see today).

          Jeremy

          • Hansen is a politically useful zealot and has been proven wrong repeatedly. He’s a spokesperson for the CAGW alarmists, so you need to take everything with a grain of salt.

            If you want a sane scientists view (who believes in AGW), check out Richard Mueller. He was sure that humans weren’t responsible, went out to prove it, and discovered that we very likely are. He sticks to the science mostly keeps out of the politics.

            • Hi Opposite,

              I have checked out Richard Muller and, while he is not a politically useful zealot like Hansen, he does seem to be mostly battling strawmen. He has constructed what he claims to be a better temperature record going back to 1750. From this he concludes:

              – Global average temperatures haves increased. Which skeptics deny this?
              – There is a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature. Which skeptics deny this?
              – The current increase in CO2 is likely due primarily to human activity. Which skeptics deny this?
              – The current warming is due primarily to human activity. Many skeptics dispute this but few, if any, deny that human activity plays some role.

              I have also heard him claim that the current warming is unprecedented. This claim is almost certainly false. Again, the central issue is climate sensitivity. The level assumed by the alarmists does not conform to current empirical data or the historical record.

              All of the government proposed “solutions” embrace this unrealistic assumption. The consequences of acting on this unfounded assumption will likely be far more expensive and far more destructive than the adapt and mitigate policies suggested by Lomberg.

              Global warming alarmism is to the left what terrorist hysteria is to the right. Apostles of both take a small risk and amplify it to ridiculous levels. Both offer only one “solution” to the “problem”. Both propose policies that negatively affect “regular” people while concentrating benefits to the richest and most powerful people on earth.

              I understand that you are not an alarmist. Still, I think, from what you’ve wrote, that you give too much credence to the assumptions of climate sensitivity embraced by the alarmists.

              Here is a talk by Freeman Dyson entitled “Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society”.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFLjUt2leM

              All of it is worthwhile. The section on global warming starts at 10:50.

              Kind Regards,
              Jeremy

              • There is no warming if one removes the “adjustments” made to the temperature record. In fact the adjustments to CO2 are very well correlated. In other words the key to the entire warmist case is their adjustments. The problem is their adjustments are arbitrary and easily provable to be unnecessary. At best they are making systematic correction to random error. In large datasets random error drops out. Thus they impose a signal. The signal they are looking for.

                • Hi Brent,

                  What you say is true about supposed recent warming. But, there seems to be little doubt that global temperatures have increased over the last 200 years. The reaction to this should be, “so what?” Despite their hysterical posturing, no one in the first world has been negatively affected by global warming. In fact, the only people who have been hurt by global warming are those in the third world who are forced to pay the price so that pampered, rich, virtue signaling douchebags in the west can feel morally superior.

                  To anon,

                  The problem is that the right approach is to properly apply the precautionary principle and do nothing. Despite the hysterical claims, nobody knows what the climate will be like 100 years from now. If warming occurs that proves problematic, a wealthier world will be better able to adapt. “Doing” something now, through coercive government schemes, will reduce general prosperity but concentrate even more wealth and power among the elites. In addition, all of the current proposals will likely have little or no effect on the supposed problem.

                  Jeremy

        • Not to be to much of a wise guy, but if we all get our knickers in a twist about what will happen in the long run, it is helpful to remember, in the long run we all are dead…

  20. The whole ‘climate change’ dialog~n~debate is dumb. To think that humans can change earth’s temp and atmospheric gas concentrations is like thinking that ants, if left to their own devices, will built a metropolis and compete in derivatives markets. Insane.

    What is MOAR insane is these idiots forget that CO2 is used in plant photosynthesis. CO2 in with H2O and out comes O2 and energy for the plant. They sort of need CO2 to respirate, and we sort of need plants if we want to keep living, but let’s not put leashes on the 800 pound gorillas stepping on our feet during the slow dances.

    I don’t trust Trump at all. Even when it looks like he is doing something halfway decent, it has got to be for nefarious other reasons. No politician can ever do the right thing, in the right ways, for the right reasons. So as far as this Paris Agreement Pull-out, whatever. Pull out, abandon the Ship of Fools.

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