Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong. For the last few years I’ve been having fun antagonizing leftists by presenting them with inconvenient truths that expose their “science” for the religious cult that it actually is. Naturally, nobody has been able to answer any of these because their unscientific belief systems don’t support scientific methodology. Aside from the fun of annoying my lefty pals, the conversations haven’t been all that constructive. But maybe it can be.
I get in my Inbox newsletters from The Nation, basically the leftist equivalent to National Review. Although I never agree with their messages, at least they are well articulated (spend a few minutes at Kos or Huffington and you’ll see what I mean) opposing views and they don’t bother with the pretense of objectivity that so many MSM leftists use. So I got a good laugh a few weeks back when I saw this teaser for one of the articles:
“The United States is responsible for the vast majority of carbon emissions in the atmosphere which have created the kind of changes in the climate that have led to massive typhoons in the Philippines for the last three years in a row. For that, it owes the country more than a paltry $20 million for cleanup efforts”
Hopefully you got as good a laugh out of that statement as I did! I was curious and had to click the link that naturally was spectacularly devoid of any kind of supporting data or any analysis to back up that initial statement. That opening teaser is wrong on so many levels that I could probably drop an easy 2,000 words dissecting it, but I just don’t have the time or energy for that. But the quote did give me a good idea. In all of my debates with Global Warm Mongers I’ve been asking them to explain what they want to accomplish in the future based on past data. What If I tweaked my reasoning and instead of predicting the future based on models that may or may not work why no instead fix the past based on data that is fixed and pretty much incontrovertible? Here is my line of thought as to how the typhoons could make the case for what the Warm Mongers hope to accomplish:
We had Z number of typhoons over a certain period.
A preferred number would be Y typhoons.
Since typhoons are cause by climate change, we need to reduce/modify the change by X rate/amount to get back to a state that produces Y number of typhoons.
If Climate Change is fueled by carbon emissions we can now calculate the W units of carbon output that cause Xamount of change.
With the W amounts of carbon emission established, we can now state how much it needs to be reduced to the level ofV carbon emissions
With carbon emissions strictly limited to level V, we can apportion the reductions to the nations across the world.
With the carbon rationing now in place, we can begin estimating the costs for each individual country and enact policy accordingly.
From there our government can decide which companies need to be shut down, and how to tax the survivors. This can be enacted with a simple “Carbon Tax” on energy loved by the left. Because as everyone knows, massive regressive taxes to redistribute wealth from the world’s poorest people to overeducated bureaucrats as the means to control the weather is proven science!
Yes, we know that this isn’t going to happen. No, wait, it actually did. Bjorn Lomborg said that the “EU plans to waste $7 trillion on climate policies that will make no noticeable difference”. For those of you unfamiliar, Lomborg is the author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. Even though Lomborg still very much believes that human activity has contributed to variables in our weather, he determined that most of the studies behind the hysteria are based on flawed data, and that scarce resources are better spent otherwise. Don’t get too excited – Lomborg proposes using the money for other leftist causes, but he is vilified by the left for destroying their beliefs with those eternal enemies of leftists thought, math and data.
This same line of thought applies to demolishing other leftist philosophies. Whenever a discussion on health care starts, leftists throw out vague goals like “bending the cost curve down” or “everyone will be insured”. I’ve already pointed out the stupidity over assuming that having insurance equates receiving treatment, and I was also pointing out that Obamacare is the left’s version of “The Underpants Gnomes” before a few other conservative bloggers hijacked my “Underpants Gnomes” idea this week. But ask a leftist how we get from the passage of Obamacare to that hopey changey paradise where every person in America gets timely, state of the art medical treatment they get quiet about detail or specifics of their plan.
Or start talking about our national debt, and every good lefty will offer platitudes like “balanced approach” and “means tested” suggestions for “containing costs”. Ask for details about their plan and you get one of three responses:
1) Silence
2) Anger and changing the subject
3) A link to some “study” that is backed by bad data or horribly flawed theory that ignores the basic principles of Economics and/or Accounting.
Whenever my lefty pals go for option three I have a great time deflating them by pressing them on the problems with their theory or data and press them as to how they validated their numbers, which every single time forces them to circle back to answers 1 or 2. I’ve been sparring with my lefty pals for years, and this one has held true every single time without fail. And yes, I know that Conservatives haven’t exactly won this argument either, but considering that a plan that gets a balanced budget around 2040 is considered too extreme and gets attack ads depicting Paul Ryan as pushing Grandma off of a cliff that tells us volumes about how serious the left is on focusing on solutions as opposed to demagoguing the issues.
I’m willing to discuss any of these issues, but if you want to call for radical social engineering like Obamacare, or massive carbon taxes get all of your facts together and show me that you’ve looked at all of the sides of what you’re proposing – like how the your policies are destroying our prairies and killing rare birds.
Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog. Follow Brother Bob on Twitter @Brother_Bob.
From what I can discern from my lefty friends about their goal in stopping “global climate warming change” is that they wish to have San Diego’s weather without the earthquakes, but incessantly frozen arctic and growing glaciers — and too they wish the four seasons, yet without enough snow to hinder a trip to Starbucks. They want sunny weather for the solar panels, and they wish light but steady rains for the organic crops. In short, they sort of wish an acid trip.
@Jim Hlavac: That’s more detail than most lefties will give anyone =8^)
@Brother Bob — it’s a composite answer drawn out over several months 🙂
In the continual fear tactics, Greenpeace creates a holiday video to make children cry.
“Santa” Warns In Greenpeace Video Christmas Will Be Canceled Due To Global Warming
Unfortunately, their false “santa” hasn’t looked at current north pole conditions:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20131207.jpg
2013 Artic sea ice is up 60% from last year
Meanwhile, South Pole Ice has been steadily on the increase: Which means that Green Peace’s lying Santa impersonator goes on the “Naughty list”
A couple of years ago I was sitting in my office with a fellow employee who had stopped by for lunch. He was a younger person, in the more impressionable years that most of us have. He was going on about global warming and his concern for it.
Just for fun I asked if he had ever seen the TV show Ice Road Truckers. He said no, so I explained the program to him. His reaction was one of disbelief. He simply could not understand how truckers could drive over ice because global warming was supposed to melt all the ice and therefore what I was saying was impossible. The idea of 60 to 100 thousand pound trucks driving over ice really messed with his mind. I mentioned the network it was on and to give it a viewing sometime.
BroBob,
Your questions about ideal typhoon numbers reminds me of my early conversations with some (before the hacking exposed the lies) believers about what ideal temperatures they thought the earth should have.
@Jim Hlavac:
Your answer reminds me of their answers.
They wanted temperate zone climate for all the earth.
Even ”Mediterranean Climate” (only found in South France, Israel and So Cal) for much more of the planet.
They wanted the deserts of Africa turned into breadbaskets as well as the tundra of Siberia able to grow food crops.
I cannot image the solution, except that, in the Bible, before the Flood of Noah’s day, the entire earth was swaddled with thick clouds.
There was a watering mist every morning but no rain.
Apparently anything grew anywhere and people didn’t even need clothes!
Can you think of a solution that would bring us all into that ideal climate outside of re-establishing God’s Kingdom for all the planet?
He CAN control the weather!
Snow closes roads in Israel, is a source of wonder in Egypt
More bad news for the “Human created climate change” believers: Study: Earth was warmer in Roman, Medieval times