Varied attempts have tried to blame things on the Trots, the bourgeois, wreckers, whites, colonialism, The English, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati. But climate change, whatever we might think of how bad it is or isn’t, isn’t something being done to us – certainly not us rich world folk. It’s something we’re doing.
Consumer demand fuels these companies’ decisions, to be sure.
Well, yes. Without the demand to be able to transport ourselves, heat our lives, cook our food – even have food grown that we can eat – there would be no climate change. There also wouldn’t be 8 billion of us either and most human beings do rather like being able to live (that’s a testable proposition, the number who don’t equals the suicide statistics).
The fossil fuel billionaires are only such because we like to transport ourselves, heat, have and cook food and so on. There is no “other” forcing this upon us. It’s also true that there’s no solution to climate change – if one is even needed – without us out here changing our behaviour. Expropriating, eliminating, even topping on Tower Hill, those fossil fuel billionaires won’t change that in the slightest.
The fight against climate change is basically run by people who are wealthy enough to believe that denying heat and light to the masses of dirty proles will be enough, leaving them their V8 autos and ribeyes. Unique class war that is fought from the top down instead of the normal bottom up.
REMEMBER – The carbon they want to reduce is you.
What an idi*t. Does he not know of glacial ages… there always have been climate change and that “climate change” is an Orwellian expression with intent the changing the existing pack of cards?
By coincidence I just watched Konstantin Kisin’s you tube clip on Sowell’s notion that there are no solutions, only trade-offs, and that by “fighting” climate change we are giving something else up.
Me, I’m not fighting. Well, not climate change.
What is the end game for “Fighting climate change”? What exactly are these green taxes buying? I’m more and more convinced that it is a complete scam based on very dubious science. And I believe we should be challenging the notion that renewables are cheap energy. That is pure gaslighting. Just look at what the Germans are paying for their energy. Only Italy and Czechia are paying more. https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/29/energy-crisis-in-europe-which-countries-have-the-cheapest-and-most-expensive-electricity-a#:~:text=Residential%20electricity%20prices%20including%20taxes%20(February%202023)&text=The%20EU%20average%20was%2028.3,kWh)%20than%20the%20EU%20average.
“Without the demand to be able to transport ourselves, heat our lives, cook our food – even have food grown that we can eat – there would be no climate change”
If you believe this, I have a bridge etc etc
I think it’s worth asking just why all the climate ‘solutions’ are regressive. Humanity has conquered a great many seemingly intractable obstacles and more frequently than not come out at a better place, why are the only prescriptions for climate ideas which mandate a 10th century lifestyle, if that.
I also think it’s worth considering plastics. Yes, an unmitigated evil as we are all told on a round the clock basis. That is unless you or anybody you care about is having a baby or chemo therapy or surgery or a serious ER visit. The shear volume of single use plastics in modern medicine is staggering and life giving. I would hope the fertilizer dimension and proven record would be self explanatory.
@Peter MacFarlane: Tim Worstall is one of those ‘I don’t want to get cancelled so I won’t directly attack the green blob, I’ll just attack their policies as misguided’ people. He always allows them the benefit of their basic premise being correct, and only ever pulls them up on their specific policies being not able to achieve their stated aims. As such he’s an enabler of the green blob, because he only ever argues on their terms.
You clearly didn’t understand the point he was making.
To respond in a far less effective way than Tim Worstall would… against strong opposition, that is the stupidest thing I’ve read today (at least so far).
That means that he is wise enough not to stray from his area of expertise.
I myself think that the “science” behind CAGW is shaky to say the least, but would not debate an expert on this — not even Greta Thunberg 🙂
But when i see the German government substitute nuclear with coal, i know that, even if the science was sound, the politics most certainly is not.
The systematic distortion of climate data, temperature data, ice data, ignoring solar cycles, and-so-on is justified on the-end-justifies-the-means grounds.
According to Pragmatist (capital P) philosophy, there are no fixed principles and no objective truth – and everything is justified (or not) by whether (or not) if furthers the political and cultural agenda of the Progressives – Pragmatist philosophy and Progressive politics having going hand-in-hand since the start of the 20th century (if not before). We must be under their absolute control, for our own good, this serfdom is the “New Freedom” (Woodrow Wilson) because it will “free” us from the moral burden of having to choose between good and evil – a choice we are “not capable of” anyway, so the government, hopefully an international government (Woodrow Wilson again), will choose our conduct for us – for our own good.
The same philosophical position justifies election rigging (“to help the poor we have to be in power – and to be in power we have to….”) and the persecution of political opponents – “he is a reactionary, he has to be destroyed – it does not matter if he is actually done something wrong”.
This is the attitude we face – not just in the United Stats, but all over the Western World, the “International Community”.
As for ESG (environmental and social governance) it is just the latest manifestation of the desire for technocrats to control every aspect of human life – in the name of “the science” (which has nothing with actual science – which rests on open debate and freedom of enquiry).
This desire for technocratic control of all aspects of human life was not invented by Dr Klaus Schwab – it is there in Henri Saint-Simon two centuries ago, and even in Francis Bacon four centuries ago.
And Dr Karl Marx?
Dr Marx was indeed in this tradition (which is as old as Plato) – but he covered it up with a lot of blather about the “Working Class” who he pretended to love, but really despised.
By the way….
The post assumes that the case of the Collectivists is correct – that we are to blame for damaging the climate.
But the post produces no evidence to support that position.
It is “us” that are destroying the environment, our wicked desire to have heat and light and transport, it is “our behaviour” that is at fault.
Yes the international establishment would nod in agreement to the post – it is just what they are already teaching, as an excuse for what they have long wanted to do anyway. Take away choices from ordinary people and assume all power themselves.
From pro liberty point of view, the post is a massive own goal.
Nope, it merely points out that *EVEN* if they are correct, it people will still want their homes heated & food cooked. So even if you accept the premise, it doesn’t matter if people still want those things.
“I myself think that the “science” behind CAGW is shaky to say the least, but would not debate an expert on this…”
I don’t know, on this particular issue you would be debating experts who have been consistently wrong for nearly forty years now. Real scientists drop or seriously modify their hypothesis if it turns out not to be in agreement with the available data. Climate change experts have stopped using data and instead base their pronouncements on computer models which can be relied upon to come up with the desired results.
Climate variation has always been with us, and no doubt always will be. CO2 has never been a dominant force in climate variation in the past, nor does it display dominance today. It is a minor player, so much so that generally the variations in CO2 are ‘effects’ more than ’causes’. For example, on geological timescales, CO2 variations follow temperature variations, and seem linked to the prevalence of plant life and ocean temperatures. We have seen a beneficial and gentle warming trend over the last 40 years or so, but it is not universal, nor is it sustained – there are spells of no warming overall. ‘Despite’ the steady rise in estimated CO2 levels! There seems little doubt that we humans have various impacts on climate, but on a global scale they are so slight that it has been hard to confirm them. No need to panic.
@PdH: If someone knocks on your door and declares that your house is on fire, and the only solution to this problem is to soak the entire building with thousands of gallons of water, do you a) start arguing about the best way to put out the fire or b) tell them to f*ck off because your house isn’t on fire?
TW never takes on the issue of whether man made climate change is happening, he lets the other side win that argument by default. Once they’ve won the underlying argument it really doesn’t matter what they do next, its not going to be good for us, the public, because the entire thing is promoted by people with bad intentions. Trying to argue on policy with these people assumes they have good intentions and are open to rational argument, which we all know they are not.
Nope. You are making the same irritating fallacy Paul is prone to, thinking that there is only one way to fight a battle, only one line of argument to pursue. That is incorrect. LOTS of people are making the argument that anthropogenic global warming is bad science, ie. the premise is bollox. That’s great. But it isn’t the only argument to make & if Tim Worstall has other arguments to make, that is fine by me.
I know people who are actually ‘lukewarm-ers’ who argue AGW might actually be true, we are indeed changing the climate, but it isn’t a crisis, and thus…so what? It doesn’t really matter that much.
Others argue it kind of is a big deal, but it can’t be stopped short of planetary genocide & the best way forward is to mitigate the effects. And this is best dealt with not by via a social credit system and Big Government making people poorer, but by enabling growth that makes people rich enough to adapt.
These are different arguments to yours, and perfectly good ones.
Other very useful arguments can also be made that even if you think AGW is utter bollox, the Greens arguments fail even on their own merits for the following reasons… (insert here)
Just because these are not the arguments you want to make, that does not make alternative arguments like the ones above bad arguments to use against the greens.
I am one of the ones who makes the argument that the scale of human contribution to the climate is small in comparison to the scale of natural systems – such as volcanoes, or sunspots.
But even still, it’s probably a bad idea to monkey around with systems we don’t fully understand. That means, when it is possible and economically reasonable to avoid polluting, we should do so. If we can be carbon-neutral without committing hari-kari, it’s probably a pretty good idea – just because we don’t know how much emitted carbon might unbalance the system.
That doesn’t mean, let’s have 3 billion people starve to death and another 3 billion live in perpetual poverty so that we can scratch our enviro-loony itches.
The CAGW cult is radically different from Wokeness in that you need a minimal understanding of the empirical evidence to even begin to (rationally) doubt the former.
By contrast, to dismiss Wokeness, all what you need is the confidence that you can think straight, the confidence needed to resist gaslighting.
(Having said that: we all need to be aware that, just maybe, we cannot think straight. Not all the time.)
” just because we don’t know how much emitted carbon might unbalance the system.”
We have a very good idea how much CO2 there has been in the atmosphere in the past, and massively higher amounts than today did not result in the earth entering a death spiral. Judging by the history of the planet there are obviously strong stabilising forces that prevent a self perpetuating spiral of heating occurring.
If someone wishes to propose that the planet now has an entirely different response to CO2 than what the ice core records show, then its up to them to prove that contention, not just rely on ‘Well it could happen so we better change everything in case it does’. Thats like demanding all buildings in the UK be rebuilt to withstand an 8.0 Richter scale earthquake. It ‘could’ happen, so why don’t we do it?
I agree with all of that. And I still say that when it’s practical to do so, without punishing ourselves overmuch, we should avoid polluting our environment.
Because we do not have perfect knowledge of how all those systems interrelate.
Does that make me a Greenie extremist?
“And I still say that when it’s practical to do so, without punishing ourselves overmuch, we should avoid polluting our environment.”
So we should all be ‘punished’ a bit, just in case? Perhaps we should make all houses in the UK only strong enough to survive a 6.5 intensity earthquake. That would be a bit cheaper. After all the largest earthquake ever recorded in or around the UK was 6.1, so just to be safe…..
My argument is that those who propose any ‘punishment’ at all need to clear a pretty high hurdle of proof, something that the proponents of ‘man made climate change’ are nowhere near achieving.
Nope, just makes you someone who realises that technology will eventually solve all these problems anyway.
I used to work for an adjunct of the EU, and the public sector European Investment Bank loans I arranged for construction projects in UK actually had (not particularly egregious to be fair) earthquake resistance spec requirements, even for projects not in earthquake zones.
No Perry – if it is the decisions of ordinary people that are the problem, then the international establishment will take that as a justification to take such decisions away from ordinary people.
Indeed that is exactly what the international establishment claim (and have done since at least the “Club of Rome” in the 1960s – which predates the World Economic Forum) and it is exactly what they are doing – via their “Green” taxes and regulations.
Of course, philosophically the international establishment do not believe that humans are capable of making real choices (decisions) anyway, they deny that humans are beings and hold that what seem to be our decisions are really predetermined.
Why this does not apply to them personally the international establishment do not explain. But then neither did the philosophers they revere – these philosophers believed that only other people were mindless (the “explaining of the human mind” really being the explaining-away of the human mind – the “I”) flesh robots, not themselves.
Seems the problem is even worse that i thought for some here…
So for you CO2 is pollution, something that plants need to live.
What are these problems?
So what? The truth is the decisions of ordinary people are what will make Net Zero impossible, not the machinations of Big Business (boo hiss). Indeed Big Business is making a fortune from the Net Zero bollox. I suspect THAT is the point being made.
If you follow the thread, the problem is pollution.
We also need water to live. Doesn’t mean you can’t drown.
Anything is pollution in extreme quantities. If you want to read my statement as some apologia for NetZero stupidity, you are welcome to do so. I don’t think that’s a very honest reading if what I wrote, but whatever. You do you.