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TROPHY CASE


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Another World Is Possible: The Radical Alternative to Austerity by reyofishin unitedkingdom

[–]JRugman 5 points6 points ago

If I was young, unemployed, in debt, and facing a future with very little prospect for a decent life, I'd just find some rich arsehole to take out my dissatisfaction on. What we have now seems massively unfair.

If the rich want to cling on to their wealth behind fortified walls protected by security forces paid for by the public, while those of us who aren't as fortunate have to put up with crumbling infrastructure and dismal services, then maybe we should all think about finding another country to reside in. Or maybe, just maybe, we should stand up for the values we think this country should be about.

Richard Madeley reveals that the green blight has finally sunk Cornwall by ManBearPiggin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago

How many wind turbines have been built in Cornwall?

How to solve the energy and economic crises by RabidRaccoonin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 1 point2 points ago

My elected representative (John McDonnell) thinks this is a great idea ;)

How to solve the energy and economic crises by RabidRaccoonin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago

I'd much rather he'd run on a Thatcherite platform and just said that global warming was a load of bollocks, a la UKIP.

Me too. That way he'd never have been elected.

How to solve the energy and economic crises by RabidRaccoonin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 1 point2 points ago

Sixth, we will not regulate or price our way to a clean energy economy. Regulatory and pricing solutions tend to succeed when we have good, low cost alternatives to the activities which we are attempting to discourage or eliminate. We dealt with acid rain once we had access to low sulfur coal from the western United States and reached an international agreement to phase out CFCs only once DuPont demonstrated that they could produce a cheap alternative at scale.

Greens have, in recent years, substituted the almighty Market, in the form of a response to a carbon price signal, for their past faith in command and control regulations. But the substitution problem is largely the same. Without cheap technologies, carbon prices will need to be prohibitively high to drive a quick transition to low carbon energy.

Eleventh, we will need to embrace again the role of the state as a direct provider of public goods. The modern environmental movement, borne of the new left rejection of social authority of all sorts, has embraced the notion of state regulation and even creation of private markets while largely rejecting the generative role of the state. In the modern environmental imagination, government promotion of technology - whether nuclear power, the green revolution, synfuels, or ethanol - almost always ends badly.

Never mind that virtually the entire history of American industrialization and technological innovation is the story of government investments in the development and commercialization of new technologies. Think of a transformative technology over the last century - computers, the Internet, pharmaceutical drugs, jet turbines, cellular telephones, nuclear power - and what you will find is government investing in those technologies at a scale that private firms simply cannot replicate.

Twelveth, big is beautiful. The rising economies of the developing world will continue to develop whether we want them to or not. The solution to the ecological crises wrought by modernity, technology, and progress will be more modernity, technology, and progress. The solutions to the ecological challenges faced by a planet of 6 billion going on 9 billion will not be decentralized energy technologies like solar panels, small scale organic agriculture, and a drawing of unenforceable boundaries around what remains of our ecological inheritance, be it the rainforests of the Amazon or the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Rather, these solutions will be: large central station power technologies that can meet the energy needs of billions of people increasingly living in the dense mega-cities of the global south without emitting carbon dioxide, further intensification of industrial scale agriculture to meet the nutritional needs of a population that is not only growing but eating higher up the food chain, and a whole suite of new agricultural, desalinization and other technologies for gardening planet Earth that might allow us not only to pull back from forests and other threatened ecosystems but also to create new ones.

How to solve the energy and economic crises by RabidRaccoonin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman -1 points0 points ago

I think Cameron and Osborne played a clever Fabian strategy - not opposing things like FITs when the public seemed to support them but then quietly dropping them when public opinion changed.

So clever that Cameron is looking at a 60% disapproval rating.

How to solve the energy and economic crises by RabidRaccoonin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman -2 points-1 points ago

This initiative, with its rejection of market-based solutions, its embrace of the role of the state as a direct provider of public goods, and its willingness to think big, would seem to be an endorsement of Nordhaus and Shellenberger's thesis.

Are climate scientists a self-selecting set of climate activists? by publius_lxxiiin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman -2 points-1 points ago

We've all seen the laughable sophistry from RC.org and the like.

Have we? Or is this comment simply an ad hominem with the intention of avoiding having to recognise the evidence-based scientific consensus on climate change?

Why should the issue of 'trust' ever be a consideration for a scientist?

Denial: we all do it! by fungussain climateskeptics

[–]JRugman -1 points0 points ago

Actively questioning the causes of climate change and not accepting the evidence in support of the answer you don't want to hear is denial.

Eg - Q: How do you know climate change isn't being caused by fluctuations in GCR intensity? A: While there is no definitive answer to this question, the evidence suggests that the influence of GCRs on climate are far less than the influence of increasing GHGs and other anthropogenic factors.

Denialists are perfectly happy to 'actively question' the scientific consensus on climate change, because they have no intention of accepting any answer that they disagree with, even when the evidence is clearly laid out in front of them.

When the EPA introduced its Endangerment and Cause or Contribute findings for GHGs, it held a 60 day public comment period for any interested parties to raise questions relating to the findings. These were gathered, processed, and answered in an 11 volume publication which can be read online here. These responses provide clear refutations to almost all of the common questions raised by climate change deniers, and yet it's still common to find people claiming that the cause of recent climate change is the sun, or ocean currents, or the growth of cities, or that it's not warming, or that CO2 hasn't risen, or that the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or that it's all a reptilian conspiracy.

Even Fred Singer, of all people, thinks that Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name.

Richard Madeley reveals that the green blight has finally sunk Cornwall by ManBearPiggin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman -1 points0 points ago

Wow! Richard Madeley of all people thinks it's a "disgrace" that the local authority in the county where he has a holiday home, an area known for it's outstanding natural beauty, should have a policy of minimising waste sent to landfill?

Can anyone tell me WTF this has to do with climate change?

How would carbon emissions be reduced or discouraged under Libertarianism? by gnos1sin LibertarianDebates

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago

Assuming the first part has been done...

Who would enforce property rights when it comes to global common property like the atmosphere? Who would you turn to to prevent a steel works in Russia or Australia dumping megatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, thereby raising the concentration of CO2 in the air over your home?

Snow in mid-May as forecasters warn of possible summer washout by Kim147in climateskeptics

[–]JRugman -1 points0 points ago

Precipitation may become more intense but less frequent (i.e., longer dry spells) under GHG-induced global warming. This may increase flash floods and runoff, but diminish soil moisture and increase the risk of agricultural drought.

New research from last week 19/2012 by JRugmanin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman[S] -1 points0 points ago

3 downvotes so far.

'Sonic weapon' deployed in London during Olympics by igeldardin unitedkingdom

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago

Duration of the Olympic games: 2 weeks

I should have said: Cost of the infrastructure improvements associated with the olympic games: £6-7 billion.

'Sonic weapon' deployed in London during Olympics by igeldardin unitedkingdom

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago

Who gets to decide what the things we actually need actually are?

'Sonic weapon' deployed in London during Olympics by igeldardin unitedkingdom

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago

Got a source for that?

You're probably including the cost of running the games in that figure, which comes from LOCOG - a private company. The games themselves aren't funded by the public, they're funded by the corporate sponsors and ticket sales.

The public spending on venues, infrastructure and planning, via the ODA and the LLDC, currently stands at around £6 billion.

'Sonic weapon' deployed in London during Olympics by igeldardin unitedkingdom

[–]JRugman 7 points8 points ago

I'm a civil engineer who worked on the olympics.

When London won the bid seven years ago, I wasn't the only one who saw it as a huge boost to the engineering sector. When the economic crash happened, a lot of major engineering projects were cancelled, and a lot of engineers lost their jobs. Having the olympics kept a lot of people working during that time.

The £6-7 billion of public money being spent on the olympics is mostly going towards infrastructure improvements, and laying the groundwork for the legacy plan for the area around the olympic site.

While I completely disagree with how the olympics are being used as a showcase for corporate sponsors and the military/security industry, and as a land grab over one of the few remaining undeveloped areas of London, I also believe that the olympics has provided british engineering talent with an opportunity to create awesome power stations, tools, technologies, and infrastructure, which are likely to be completed on time and under budget. But as with most major civil engineering projects, the full impacts aren't going to be seen for another generation, and at the moment, all the focus on the games is about the spectacle and security operation that will be going on for three weeks in July and August.

Just to add a bit of perspective:

  • Cost of the Olympic games: £6-7 billion
  • Cost of Crossrail: £16 billion
  • Cost of Boris Island Airport: £14-20 billion (estimated)
  • Cost of High Speed 2: £32-36 billion
  • Cost of the Severn Barrage: £20-34 billion (estimated)

Real classy, guys. by PTTGx2in climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 2 points3 points ago

My mistake. Fixed.

Real classy, guys. by PTTGx2in climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago*

Why do you place so much importance on and continue to post links to this opinion piece by Warren Meyer, considering that it's full of innacuracies and unsourced claims?

we are talking about a maximum total change in atmospheric CO2 concentration due to man of about 0.01% over the last 100 years.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations in 1880 were 291ppm, compared to 392ppm today - that's an increase of 35%.

What skeptics deny is the catastrophe, the notion that man’s incremental contributions to CO2 levels will create catastrophic warming and wildly adverse climate changes.

'Catastrophic warming' implies a value judgement that is not part of the scientific consensus on climate change.

one degree due to the all the CO2 emissions we might see over the next century is hardly a catastrophe.

[citation needed]

one degree of warming from the greenhouse gas effect of CO2 might be multiplied to five or eight or even more degrees.

That is not an accurate representation of the scientific consensus on climate change, which states that sensitivity is between 2 and 4.5 degrees per doubling of CO2.

Skeptics, however, point out that the computer models were built by scientists who have only a fragmented, immature understanding of complex climate systems.

Ad hominem.

Moreover, these scientists approached the models with the pre-conceived notion that CO2 is the main driver of temperatures, and so it is unsurprising that their models would show CO2 as the dominant factor.

[citation needed]

In fact, the period 1978 to 1998 featured a number of other suspects that should have been considered as potentially contributing to warming.

[citation needed]

If CO2 is but one of several causes of warming over the past decades, then current climate models almost certainly have to be exaggerating future warming.

That's flawed logic, based on an incorrect assumption that CO2 is the only driver of warming considered in models of the climate system.

Only by attributing all of the past warming to CO2 can catastrophic future warming forecasts be justified.

False. The scientific consensus states that: "Most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was very likely caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation."

even the 0.7C of measured historic warming is well under what the climate models should have predicted for warming based on past CO2 increases and their assumed high sensitivity of temperature to CO2 levels.

False. You need a much longer time frame to measure equilibrium climate sensitivity to an ongoing forcing.

to believe a forecast of, say, 5C of warming over the next 100 years, we should have seen 2C or more of warming over the past century.

[citation needed]

the evidence continues to accumulate that these forecasts are wildly overstated.

[citation needed]

the overall trend in global temperatures has been generally flat for the last 10-15 years, and have remained well below Hansen’s forecasts.

False. The overall trend in global temperatures has continued to rise, and Hansen's 1988 forecast remains accurate within a margin of error.

global warming has been rebranded by alarmist groups as “climate change” and then more recently as “climate disruption.”

False. The term "Climate Change" has been in use since the sixties, and it was the Bush administration that oversaw it's rise in mainstream political consciousness.

no mechanism has ever been suggested wherein CO2 can cause climate change in any way except through the intermediate step of warming.

A warming climate is a changing climate.

In an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warned of the world being battered by more and more Katrina style category 5 storms; in fact, 2009 and 2010 have seen record low levels of global cyclonic activity, despite relatively elevated temperatures.

Records indicate that category 4 and 5 hurricanes as a percentage of hurrican activity is increasing, which supports Gore's statement.

The truth of the matter is that ice is indeed melting and sea levels are rising today – as they were in 1950, and 1900, and even 1850 (long before much man-made CO2).

False. There has been a change in the rate of ice melting and sea level rising, which are increasing due to the warming of the climate.

Alarmists like to call climate skeptics “deniers,” usually in an attempt to equate climate skeptics with holocaust deniers.

False. Climate denier is a descriptive term for a person who denies the evidence of anthropogenic climate change.

what skeptics deny is the need to drastically reduce fossil fuel use – a step that will likely be an expensive exercise in the developed west but an unmitigated disaster for the poor of Asia and Africa.

[citation needed]

These developing nations, who are just recently emerging from millennia of poverty, need to burn every hydrocarbon they can find to develop their economies.

[citation needed]

Studies that have avoided Mann’s mistakes have all tended to find the same thing – whether looking over a scale of a century, or millennia, or millions of years, climate changes absolutely naturally. Nothing about our current temperatures or CO2 levels is either unusual or unprecedented.

[citation needed]

Mama Mia! Italian Paleoclimatologists Discover Little Ice Age Extended Well Beyond North Atlantic Region by AlyssaMoorein climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 1 point2 points ago

I'll answer your questions, but only after you've answered mine.

If you think someone has comitted a crime, is it wrong to call for them to be put on trial? Isn't that how justice works?

If, in fact, the climate warms to the extreme extents of current forecasts, should anyone be held accountable for the resulting impacts?

Mama Mia! Italian Paleoclimatologists Discover Little Ice Age Extended Well Beyond North Atlantic Region by AlyssaMoorein climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 1 point2 points ago

No matter how many times you post this, I still don't get what you're trying to say.

If you think someone has comitted a crime, is it wrong to call for them to be put on trial? Isn't that how justice works?

If, in fact, the climate warms to the extreme extents of current forecasts, should anyone be held accountable for the resulting impacts?

Mama Mia! Italian Paleoclimatologists Discover Little Ice Age Extended Well Beyond North Atlantic Region by AlyssaMoorein climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 1 point2 points ago

So you've never heard of Christopher Monckton, Ken Cuccinelli, or Marc Morano?

TIL about the "Cooler Heads Coalition": they coordinate about 20 conservative thinktanks to oppose climate change mitigation by ItsJustAConspiracyin climateskeptics

[–]JRugman 0 points1 point ago

I was joking.

If you've never heard of Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (Myron Ebell), or the George C. Marshall Institute (Fred Seitz, William Happer, Roy Spencer, Sallie Baliunas), despite my many posts drawing attention to their past activities, then you'd be a pretty shitty lobbyist. For someone who's prime interest is climate change policy, you're incredibly uninformed.

Of course, if you were actually a paid lobbyist, then there's no reason at all for you to admit to it, so your denial of the accusation is pretty pointless.

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