One reason why so many people don’t take climate change seriously is that the people who are constantly telling us it’s a crisis never actually act like it’s a crisis. They’re all-in for sacrifices by other people, but never seem to make much in the way of sacrifices themselves.
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Samizdata quote of the dayJune 5th, 2017 |
 37 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Case in point being Leonardo di Caprio and Al Gore who chastise the world for “polluting the environment” yet fly to their climate PR sessions in jets and live in huge, well lit mansions and generate more CO2 output in a few days than I will in my entire lifetime.
Not that there is anything wrong with expelling plant food, but they seem to think its an issue…
I don’t think this is illogical, Captain. I can sincerely believe that a hole needs to be dug, and that I would prefer you to dig it rather than me. To be perfectly frank, if sacrifices are to be made, I would definitely prefer not to be the one making them.
Oh yes, and the rich should pay more.
Once an idea has reached the stage in its life cycle where it is propagated mainly by celebrities odds are that it is close to death.
Let’s hope so anyway.
And, as Rand Simberg noted in his comments on Glenn’s piece (indeed, has been saying for some time), even the solutions they propose for other people to follow aren’t serious. If these great climate beanfeasts that “world leaders” keep jetting off to were proposing an outright ban on internal combustion engines, the closure of all coal-burning power stations, and a programme of building nuclear plants (as, in greenist eyes, an unsatisfactory but necessary interim measure), then I might believe them. But it’s all tinkering round the edges, grabbing the low-hanging fruit, inconveniencing ordinary people … and massive transfers of wealth. Which sounds deeply suspicious.
“One reason why so many people don’t take Islamic Extremism seriously is that the people who are constantly telling us it’s a crisis never actually act like it’s a crisis. They’re all-in for sacrifices by other people, but never seem to make much in the way of sacrifices themselves.”
Case in point – the President said we needed to be smart and get serious about the threat after the London attacks. So then he knuckled down and went golfing.
PaulH, that was truly a nonsensical comment. What was he supposed to do? He’s trying to keep out Muslims (if our courts will permit it), and he has already begun the process of strengthening border security by hiring more border patrols (and will do more once Congress appropriates the necessary funds). There’s not a whole lot more he could do until Congress acts. And even if there were, it wouldn’t be him personally doing it; it would be staffers and agencies. So I don’t care if a president (Trump or Obama) goes golfing. He’s on duty 24/7 and always reachable. I don’t care in the least where he happens to be physically. There are plenty of things about which to be critical of Trump, but golfing isn’t among them.
Leonardo di Caprio cares so much about CC that he flew a stylist from Australia to LA to style his bloody eyebrows for the Oscars.
He must be trolling right?
If only FDR had played golf rather than played a New Deal.
Laird: A couple of things. First, Trump thinks that criticising a president for golfing is legitimate, so I don’t see why I can’t.
More substantively, the purpose of the temporary parts of the ban was to give the relevant departments breathing space to revise their entry criteria to keep out potential terrorists. Given that they haven’t yet had that breathing space, I assume Trump is working overtime on finding alternate ways to ease the burden on them so they can carry out this vital reassessment. While he’s golfing.
Thanks for making my point though – criticising one individual for what he is or isn’t doing personally to combat a global issue rarely makes sense, no matter what the issue is.
I agree with that last sentence. I never criticized Obama for playing golf, or for taking vacations (although I do criticize his execrable wife for wasting so much taxpayer money on her travels!); in fact, I wish he’d done more of it. And I won’t criticize Trump for it either.
As to the original SQOTD: I don’t agree. Those who truly believe in the reality of CAGW (and there are many) don’t care if a mouthy celebrity is a hypocrite (assuming that they even know it). Our celebrities are supposed to lead lives of sybaritic excess; we not only tolerate it, we vicariously revel in it. The hypocrisy matters only to us “deniers”.
Back in the Seventies, global cooling, ozone holes and acid rain. Fast forward to the late eighties, global warming. Anthropogenic global warming. Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Now, since it hasn’t warmed nearly as much as predicted, catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. (No wonder we use acronyms like CAGW so often!)
How strange that all these diverse threats have exactly the same cure:
1) Put the Left in power.
2) Give them more money.
3) Do as they say.
4) Abase ourselves for our past sins that led to this. When you’re cold, wear a hair shirt instead of lighting a fire.
Why, you’d almost think these warnings are about the Left instead of the climate. But putting them in power is one catastrophe that putting them in power wouldn’t fix.
I agree with the OP up to a point, in that actions speak louder than words, but the reason that I don’t believe in dangerous man made climate change is that it appears to be based on the worst kind of junk science. Scepticism and criticism of their methods, data and conclusions are described by climate scientists as “attacks on science”. They seem to have forgotten that that is the way that science is supposed to work, you have to defend your hypothesis against all kinds of criticism, not just declare that you are definitely 100% correct and that anyone who disagrees is a denier. Sound science tends to be very good at making accurate predictions, unlike climate science which has proven to be a miserable failure in this respect. As a UK resident, I’m still waiting for the Mediterranean climate that I was promised.
Actually, aliens are causing global warming … an interesting essay by Michael Chriton HERE which gently debunks the “consensus” theory.
Also, the people who are most worked up about climate change are “liberals” (using that term in the current bastardized sense, as a synonym for “tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellator”). Why would I believe people whose basic socioeconomic policy is based on legalized looting? It’s like if you caught a guy with his hand in your pocket as he was trying to lift your wallet. If he said, “Hey, you shouldn’t be worried about me because the sky is falling!”–how much credence could you give him?
Ellen, re The Left:
Nominate for SQOTY. 😀
We are told that climate-sceptic scientists are supposedly in the pay of the oil companies and their research should therefore be ignored because the data will be cherry-picked and the interpretations will be partisan in a way that favours the profits of the oil companies. So far, so plausible. But those pushing this view never seem to level the same accusations of partiality at science funded by government, the results of which are treated as totally impartial and utterly lacking in bias towards their patrons.
Really? Who funds the ‘impartial’ scientists? Governments or their sock-puppet quangos. Who checks their research? Why, the sainted ‘peer review’ process, which a cynic might translate as ‘I’ve run it past a few of my colleagues who broadly share the same outlook and the same sources of funding as me, and they’ve all agreed what jolly good stuff it is so we can all apply for even more funding.’ What do governments want? More power, more tax revenues and more control over the lives of the populace. What do government-funded climate scientists invariably recommend? Why, what else but more government power, more tax revenues and more control over the lives of the populace.
How many proposed strategies for dealing with climate change would (A) enhance rather than restrict individual freedom, and/or (B) reduce the overall tax burden, and/or (C) shrink the power of the State, and/or (D) lead to increased unemployment among bureaucrats, and/or (E) reduce state intervention in the market economy? None that I’ve heard of. The overlap between ‘climate change scientists’ and ‘government supremacists’ seems to be approximately 100 percent.
I hear a lot here about global warming being little more than cover for the imposition of left-wing economic policies.
Very well then, what would be an acceptable market-oriented solution to the problem, in the hypothetical scenario where you were persuaded that AGW was a real problem? It used to be cap-and-trade when US Republicans first came up with the idea in the 90s, but that, too, is apparently the road to the Gulag today.
There does not seem to be anything of the sort on offer, other than “it’s not happening” or “it’s happening but it’s not really a problem” (or, illogically, both).
But there is a concrete solution on offer, as per Mr. Lomborg.
If you can
(A) identify specific harm
(B) to specific people
(C) caused by a rise in worldwide temperature
(D) which has resulted from human influence on that temperature,
then we should pool our resources and provide help as needed to those specific people.
“what would be an acceptable market-oriented solution to the problem?”
Although you’ve asked more or less the right question, apparently you didn’t understand it yourself. The correct answer is “let the market sort it out”. I don’t know what the end result might be; no one does. That’s the essential genius of free markets. The way you phrased your own response implies an expectation that some “wise man” will offer up an answer. That’s not how markets work.
And you threw in the qualifier “acceptable.” Just who decides what is “acceptable”? You? Politicians?
Some bureaucrat? The only “acceptable” solution is the one the market freely accepts without government interference.
By the way, “cap and trade” was never a “market solution.” It was always a government-imposed top-down mandate, which at its heart was either another source of revenue for a rapacious, ever-expanding government, or a vehicle by which politicians could dispense favors and thereby increase their power. Who would allocate the carbon credits? Who would set the rate and make the market? To whom would those fees be paid? Cap and trade was just a tax dressed up to look like a “market solution”, but the reality is that it was anything but. It was always a fraud.
Jib Halyard (June 6, 2017 at 1:49 am): “There does not seem to be anything of the sort on offer, other than “it’s not happening” or “it’s happening but it’s not really a problem” (or, illogically, both).”
There is nothing illogical in noting that the long branch of the hockey stick is fiction and the short branch, though seriously exaggerated by some inept data collection and some outright faking, is factual. Exactly as the left began pushing ‘new ice age’ in the early seventies (which morphed conveniently into ‘nuclear winter’ in the early 80s), the world began warming. Bang on cue as the left abandoned that for AGW at the end of the millennium, the warming trend halted. The warming trend may resume – or it may not. Once you remove the statistical absurdities of the proxy analysis, you are left with no strong reason to expect the warming trend to resume rather than reverse, nor to expect any such resumed warming trend to be a net problem rather than net benefit to the world.
PaulH (June 5, 2017 at 2:31 pm), Obama was blamed for spending far too much time on the golf course, so far too little doing his job. not for having golfing as a hobby. (Of course some people, like Laird, wish he’d spent more time on the golf course and less in his office with his pen and his phone.)
Churchill, in his book “Painting as a Pastime”, explains how essential it can be to relax the mind when under stress, and how painting, by forcing him to concentrate on something completely different, let him do this. Most people think this was wise. It will be time enough to criticise Trump’s golfing when he accumulates Obaman percentages of time on the golf course instead of at work. (Of course, some people will not mind if Trump’s style of government is to appoint competent subordinates and spend a great deal of his own time on the golf course. 🙂 )
Golf does not produce carbon, nor aid terrorists. If Leonardo di Caprio had spent time golfing, instead of jetting his stylist around, Glenn Reynolds could not have scored points off him. For your analogy to work, Trump would have had to speak of the London attacks and then return to some ‘Fast and Furious’-style operation of feeding unmonitored weapons to 3rd-world countries. Only then could he be analogously described as hindering in act what he supported in word.
Niall: Actually Obama was blamed by Trump for playing golf when he could have been doing something else: “Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter” That’s exactly the situation Trump is in now.
Further, in his first 100 days Trump golfed 19 times, compared to Obama’s once. That’s an estimate, as the Trump team sometimes try to hide whether he’s golfing. Clearly Obama picked up the pace significantly after that, once he’d got through those busy 100 days, but then imagine what Trump will do now that he can kick back and relax!
Finally, to reiterate what I said above, Trump wanted the Travel Ban to provide a breathing space while they implemented essential reforms without those evil-doers getting in to the country. Now that we’re passed that temporary period I assume he’s working hard on implementing and monitoring these essential reforms that are so secret we’ve heard not a single detail about any of them. While he’s golfing.
My rule of thumb since the 1970s has been: “If someone tells you to do something for one reason, then tells you to do the same thing for an entirely different reason, doubt the reasons.
Trump encountered, as one part of the Resist! movement, an attempted judicial coup, which (if you understand the law involved) improperly foreclosed most any immigration action he might take. There are enough rogue courts out there right now so that it’s predictable that most any action he might take is going to be shot down until he can get the courts back in their proper role.
To do that he had to get Gorsuch confirmed on the USSC, and then convince the court to take on the issue on an expedited basis.
He has now succeeded at both. Once the Court disposes of the injunction(s) and makes it clear that the executive controls this issue, I imagine we’ll be seeing quite a few of those essential reforms you seem so eager for Trump to accomplish.
bobby b: Trump’s reforms appeared (to the extent that we learned any detail) to be be focused on making the entry vetting significantly more in-depth. Now many would argue that this was an indication of Trump’s ignorance (the current process takes around 2 years, and is quite comprehensive already), but perhaps there is room for significant improvement. But there’s no indication that these reforms require judicial review to create. So perhaps you’re right, and the second the Supreme Court rules in his favour he’ll implement the plan that he has ready. My guess is there is no such plan, or at least not one that isn’t written on the back of an envelope.
Perhaps we can all agree on something though. Of all the significant problems facing Trump, the single best thing he can do for the country is go golfing!
Nope. The single best thing he can do is continue on with Not Being Hillary. The second most important thing is to be available to nominate more Supreme Court justices. He can play badminton all day every day so long as he does these things.
Unless you’re coming from one of the war-torn Muslim countries. I know quite a few Somalis and Ethiopians, as well as some Syrians, who arrived here after an approximately four-month process. Plus, when they come from an area where record-keeping has become sketchy, the “comprehensive” investigation is quite illusory.
“the current process takes around 2 years, and is quite comprehensive already”
Typical parroting of leftist talking points.
1) 2 years (accepting that figure as accurate, which I do not) is the length of time it takes to get to the head of the line. It has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of time actually spent by an embassy worker reviewing the file. That’s probably about 10 minutes.
2) The file review can be as “comprehensive” as you like, but it’s only as good as the information available. And most of those countries either have no usable data available or won’t provide it. We can’t verify names, or places of birth, or anything of significance on a large percentage of those “refugees”. GIGO. The only way for vetting to be meaningful is to deny admittance to anyone who comes from one of those countries, unless and until they start providing real data.
Laird.
1) I was actually parroting the well-known leftists at the US Department of State: “The total processing time varies depending on an applicant’s location and other circumstances, but the average time from the initial UNHCR referral to arrival as a refugee in the United States is about 18-24 months.” (https://www.state.gov/j/prm/ra/admissions/). The 10 minute thing is, I assume, typical parroting of rightist talking points; I physically saw far more time than that go into my own routine immigrant visa, let alone what happened in the background.
2) So someone from a failed state can’t prove their refugee status because failed states tend not to produce great documentation, and even if they do it can’t be trusted because, you know, failed state. And if someone is coming from a country with stable, non-corrupt governmental institutions sufficient to provide unimpeachably sourced proof of their refugee status then presumably they can’t be refugees, because what would they be seeking refuge from? Congratulations, you appear to have eradicated the refugee crisis through the application of simple logic. Perhaps that’s what Trump has been working on while on the back nine.
I will grant that my “10 minutes” was hyperbole (although probably not by much), but the State Department quote you cited does nothing to refute my point: it’s waiting time, not vetting time. Show me some data on how many minutes a caseworker (or whatever they call them) actually spends working the file, calling other nations’ embassies for confirmation of data, etc., and I’ll consider it. (And yes, the State Department is completely dominated by leftists, and has been for decades.)
If a failed state can’t produce data, that’s not my problem. It’s certainly no justification for admitting tens of thousands of undocumentable people, some of whom are guaranteed to be terrorists or terrorists supporters (ISIS has already confirmed this) into my country. I’m sorry for the true refugees among them, but again: not my problem.
The Germans are the people who scream loudest about C02 emissions – yet are they building nuclear power stations (as even James “Gaia Man” Lovelock admitted was the logical thing to do if one believed in the C02 emissions are dangerous theory)?
No the Germans are not building nuclear power stations – actually they are going to close all their nuclear power stations. Indeed the “Green” movement generally is ANTI nuclear. This makes their statements about “climate change” about as sincere and logical as the vile Economist magazine (on just about any other matter).
Another reason to doubt is that specific prophecies don’t come true. The Islands called The Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, do not seem to have drowned, even though they were claiming that nasty rich countries would need to pay to compensate them when the waves destroyed these low-lying islands. I believe the islands are still dry, and not inhabited by mere-people, merely people.
Any other doomsday lists to laugh at?
Laird: Here’s one data point – http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-australia-refugees-idUSKBN18J0GA – the last stage of vetting takes up to six hours for interviews, plus an unknown amount of follow-up based on the results. Undoubtedly most of the time is spent with a folder sitting on someone’s desk, and based on my experience even the ‘active’ time seems to have a measure component of requesting and handling documents that have already been submitted, often several times.
On the ‘not my problem’ point, I guess that’s something we’ll just disagree on.
PaulH, good article; thanks. Glad to see that happening; it seems to be a reasonable start to the process. But note that this is a new process (the “extreme vetting” Trump has been calling for), which should have been in place all along but wasn’t. The State Department’s “2-year” claim remains utter crap, the sort of intentional dishonesty I would expect from them (especially during the Obama years).
As to the “not my problem” point, you’re right. We can agree on that, anyway!
Heh. I’m going to steal that one.
I thought libertarians were better than that! Stealing from another libertarian? Shame on you, Eric. I will let you borrow it, so long as you don’t damage it.
“Although you’ve asked more or less the right question, apparently you didn’t understand it yourself. The correct answer is “let the market sort it out”.”
OK, let me rephrase my question a little less sloppily: What would be a solution acceptable to you, as a free market libertarian (for those of you who actually are such), in the hypothetical event you were persuaded that AGW was a serious enough problem that it needed to be prevented, rather than mitigated?
(And bearing in mind there already exist non-market solutions to problems such as national defence, immigration, etc., that are accceptable to free-market libertarians.)
Not an idle question, given that the right has completely yielded the field to the left on this issue, by refusing to entertain the possibility that it might even be an issue.