
James Randi on "Global Warming" - nice1
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-revisited.html
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tdoggette
There's certainly legitimate causes to doubt AGW, but the Petition Project is
not among them. Frankly, I'm shocked to see Randi engage in such a blatant
appeal to authority, and an irrelevant authority (that is, scientists
primarily not in the climate field) at that.

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diego_moita
So first we had a bunch of pundits "discovering" that the peer review process
is flawed. Then, next step, we have a bunch of scientifically-untrained
pundits and non-specialists jumping into the debate and giving loud opinions
without understanding all the research already done.

This is debate is just becoming more ideological and less scientific.

P.S.: No, I don't know who this Randi is. But I am sure he's not a
climatologist.

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tdoggette
James Randi is a professional skeptic: he's the one behind the million dollar
prize for anyone that can demonstrate the paranormal under reasonable
conditions.

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idleworx
"professional skeptic" ... lol. as opposed to "professional gullibles"?

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Zarkonnen
The two things I don't understand about the "climate change is not man-made"
point of view are:

1\. What is the actual, plausible motivation for the entirety of the IPCC to
mislead people about climate change?

2\. Why are measures to reduce carbon output so maligned? At worst, they will
be a wasted effort. At best - if climate change is indeed man-made - they will
prevent huge environmental disasters. (Bangladesh mostly vanishing under the
sea, global food production collapsing, the oceans' food chain collapsing due
to acidification, etc.)

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Daniel_Newby
1\. Political power and money. They want a permitting system for most
equipment powered by carbon-containing fuels, and those permits will be
approved and audited by political appointees. Your pizzeria competes with a
Senator's nephew? The application for its oven gets "lost". You organize a
political rally against the incumbents? Your home furnace gets audited that
winter, and its thermostat locked to 50 deg. F until the "discrepancies" can
be explained.

2\. Because the necessary remedies would result in severe productivity
destruction, probably exceeding WWII (including fatalities). Energy is the
life blood of economic activity. The present depression is mostly a result of
an approximately 2% decrease in energy consumption for part of 2008. The AGW
reduction targets are 5% a year in perpetuity, which by linear extrapolation
leads to economic apocalypse.

~~~
Zarkonnen
1\. Sounds frankly paranoid. There are lots of ways of "screwing with the
little people" already. Carbon output reductions can be done by tax incentives
instead of a permitting system.

And why would a scientific panel be interested in giving power to a bunch of
political appointees?

While we're speaking of money, how about the motivations of the people with
the large stock portfolios they don't want to see devalued? The people with
the kind of money to hire PR companies to, say, astroturf a conveniently timed
"AWG is a lie" campaign?

2\. You do realise that we _are_ going to run out of resources on this planet
eventually, right? Saying that we must keep on increasing economic activity at
all costs lest disaster strike is a surefire way to guarantee disaster, not
just via climate change but via overfishing, deforestation and the resulting
land loss, pollution, etc.

Also, the decrease in energy consumption is clearly not the _cause_ of the
depression, but rather one of its _effects_. Things _can_ be done in a much
more energy-efficient manner.

