April 27, 2008...12:09 am
Can we replace hypocrisy by selfishness?
Michelle Malkin has a great article about what refers to as hypocrisy from the Sting family:
Call it a case of Gulfstream liberal guilt. The environmental activist wife of musician Sting is ‘fessing up to her Green hypocrisy. Via the Daily Mail, she was “forced” to acknowledge the family’s massive carbon footprint…
I agree that it’s hypocrisy when it reaches this (assuming it’s true):
She [Sting's wife] was also accused in a recent tribunal of forcing her chef to travel 100 miles to prepare a bowl of pasta.
The part I find sad is that Michelle stops at the hypocrisy argument. I agree with her that this is hypocrisy. But can’t we make the next leap and say how selfish it is to waste resources like this? Of course, you can predict where I am going with this. Green or not green, people that waste resources like that are really selfish. I don’t care that you have amassed the greatest fortune in the world. I don’t think any amount of money should allow you to have your chef drive 100 miles to prepare a bowl of pasta. Instead of just shooting the hypocritical messenger, Michelle should also criticize the ongoing pure waste of resources, and not just the one from green activists.
20 Comments
April 27, 2008 at 12:42 am
And who will force people to stop being wasteful? A spechul kommison headed by Al Gore and Keith Olbermann?
And it isn’t really “wasteful” if you don’t believe that carbon dioxide is going to kill the planet. And what ‘resources” are getting “wasted” anyways?
The pilot gets paid. The chef gets paid. It a good little business to cater to obscenely rich people. The only problem is when they start to mouth off and tell the “little people” how to live.
And, per your apparent belief in Global Warming, have you noticed that temperatures have been declining over the past decade? How do you square that?
April 27, 2008 at 9:51 am
My post is not about global warming. It’s simply about wasting the precious resources we have. A ton of gas is wasted for getting the chef from 100 miles away. On my scale of wasteful spending, that one is way out there.
Money is no licence to ruin the Earth.
If I have tons of money, I don’t think it allows me to, for example, go buy tons of paper and burn it. Or ask someone to fly a plane in the air for hours simply because it amuses me to watch a plane fly. Or take old clothes that somebody else could use and simply dump them in the trashcan.
And I will cowardly sidestep the global warming question for now.
April 27, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Hmm, please forward your cooling data to NASA, as it conflicts with their findings:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/
April 27, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Sure BB…
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/global_warming_ice_age/2008/04/24/90591.html
http://en.rian.ru/science/20080122/97519953.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/24/spaceexploration.theobserver
There are literally dozens of other articles I could link to. Go check out planet Gore at NRO. (www.nationalreview.com)
I did say cooling over the last decade; that is not correct. Temperatures paked in 1998, stayed stable through 2005 and have recently begun to dip.
Why can’t you Global Warmingacs think beyond the eeevil of man-made CO2. I mean, really, you don’t think the big, bright orb in the sky (the Sun) has anything to do with the temps here on Earth? Really?
Also, NASA is not infalliable:
http://www.geotimes.org/aug07/article.html?id=WebExtra081607_2.html
Don’t be a sheep. Look for information outside of “An Inconvient Truth” and the Sierra Club. Please.
April 27, 2008 at 2:57 pm
And, even if that data is correct, they have “recorded” a rise of global temp of 0.7 degrees C? Over 120 years!?!
Good golly!
And, as a funny side note, what is the average color of the Earth? If you think that’s a funny question, you might understand why some of us “deniers” think the idea of an average global temp is equally laughable.
April 27, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Hmmm, sorry its not going up fast enough for you. The concern in the science community is summed in their observation “The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990. ” Don’t worry, NYC will
As for
stay above water in your lifetime.
“And, even if that data is correct, ” you will understandably doubt going to the moon as well.
(its OK to understand science and still be a conservative….)
April 27, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Well, I have a comment that explains my position with various links, but it’s waiting on moderation.
Check back when it’s up and all will be made clear
(I know it’s hard to find out Al Gore is a liar and still be a liberal)
And, just fyi, the temperature on Earth is constantly in flux from, wait for it, natural causes!
As for the 14 hottest years on record all being after 1990, this is simply false. The Hottest year ever on record was 1934. But don’t let little things like facts and history ruin your narrative
April 27, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Hmmm,
Of course the earth’s mean temperature is in flux: just like the stock market.
Don’t know about Al Gore, haven’t seen his movie.
Am not a fan of his. Just a retired scientist. So,
please bring data.
Ignore the flux, watch the long term trend.
April 27, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Read my post @ 2:54
What do you make of that?
April 28, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Sorry to hijack your thread here, but I thought this amusing 7 min video would be edifying. What does a reduction of 80% CO2 emissions by 2050 mean? Have a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seGyLIrH1-4
April 29, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I will watch it tomorrow, and try to respond to the thread!
May 1, 2008 at 3:28 pm
When it rains, it pours:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/30/eaclimate130.xml
Just how many times will the story have to change, BB, before you realize that scientists have only the most tenuous grasp on what makes, drives, and changes our climate?
All things being equal, more CO2 in the atmosphere = higher temperatures. The unfortunate thing about the Earth and our climate is that All things are never equal.
May 2, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Hmmm,
More here: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=3223473&page=1
Paleoclimatologists find CO2 varied from 180-270 ppm over the last 800,000 years. The modern excursion has resulted in the current 378ppm.
While the overall level in the atmosphere is less than other radiant absorbers, such as H2O vapor,
the concern is the increasing evidence of feedback, which some think is close to the tipping point
(think nuclear reactor, but there they can simply
move in more high neutron-capture Hafnium control rods to counter the rising neutron flux)
At that ‘point’, less reflective polar ice, darker global surface and increasing water vapor excacerbate the effect. But, yes, Hmmm, climate science is still a long ways from full understanding…remember that
the waywardness of early algorithms led to the
‘Chaos Theory’
May 2, 2008 at 5:58 pm
“remember that the waywardness of early algorithms led to the ‘Chaos Theory’”
Sure, and I also remember that the algorithms still are imperfect, and you cannot base science on computer models.
“the concern is the increasing evidence of feedback, which some think is close to the tipping point”
I’ve also heard the “tipping point” argument. The perma frost will melt releasing methane in untold amounts. The oceans, huge carbon sinks, will expand due to higher temperatures. If we don’t watch out, we’ll end up like Venus!
“While the overall level in the atmosphere is less than other radiant absorbers, such as H2O vapor,”
This is something I don’t think you give enough credit to. As I understand it, cloud formation is one of the least understood, and perhaps most important, variables in regulating energy capture/reflection on Earth. If the earth gets hotter, there is more water vapor in the atmoshpere, which yields more clouds, which reflect more solar radiation. Again, I agree that all things being equal, more co2=higher temperatures. I am familiar with basic concepts such as this. It just that the climatologists can’t decide if the climate forcing capability of clouds would cancel out/reduce warming from higher GHG concentrations in the atmosphere.
For every article you post claiming “dire straights ahead” I can post one that claims otherwise. You’re a retired scientist, right? What is the scientific method? Doesn’t testing come in there somewhere? How can the pro-AGW group test their hypothesis? If they can’t, doesn’t that mean they are still on step one in the process?
I would also be much more open the the AGW crowd if they didn’t insist that “the debate is over” (when did it start, I wonder) and if their “solutions” didn’t involve an exponential increase in government power. I would also be more open to them if they truly took a global approach to the issue, instead of just saying “The U.S. needs to do x,y, and z, but don’t worry about China (which recently passed us as the greatest emmitor of GHGs btw) or India or pretty much any of the developing world.”
I notice you also either didn’t take the time to follow the links I posted, or declined to comment on them. If we are near the “tipping point” why are we about to enter a 15 year cooling period? Why did it snow in Baghdad for the first time in a century? Why did China just go through the worst winter in decades (cold wise)? Or are you of the opinion that any kind of deviant weather is ipso facto proof of AGW?
I’m all for science and the scientific process, I just think that is not what we are dealing with when the AGW crowds open their mouths.
Just take a glimpse at what the past of Climate Change Alarmism has brought us:
http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759
You, I would guess, are not a big fan of the War on Terror. Well, I feel the same way about AGW. It is scare-mongering designed to make citizens give up their liberty to government so they can “face the dire threat.”
This turned into quite a spiel. If you want to respond, BB, please take the time to visit the links I posted. (I do believe we went to the moon, but I also beleive that NASA had a problem with their temperature calculation, which I documented above.)
Thanks.
May 2, 2008 at 6:52 pm
“I notice you also either didn’t take the time to follow the links I posted, or declined to comment on them. If we are near the “tipping point” why are we about to enter a 15 year cooling period? ”
Of course I took the time. Recall my mention of
fluctuation during the general trend..like the stock market? I don’t insist ‘the debate is over”, just ponder the phenomena of anti-rationalism on the
far right..creationism as science, etc. It’s sort of like “it is a liberal concept, I am compelled to take the opposite side” Computer models require two things: accurate input data and realistic algorithms. I used the NASA Free Energy Minimization Equilibrium Thermochemistry
programs, modified for initiating explosives, in
my research work. This requires accurate heat
of formation and deltaH vs time data, and one needs understand not only input but output in depth. But, climate change science, your guess is as good as mine. Snow in Baghdad, tornados in Virginia, whatever weather phenomenon, we cannot grab an instant in time and draw a conclusion..we need attempt to look at increments longer than a human generational span and we need be objective. I have argued elsewhere that
political agendas from both sides are not helpful.
It seems common sense that a bipedal hominid
population of 10 million just prior to the beginnings of agriculture (say 10,000BCE) had
an environmental footprint considerably smaller than the current high tech 6.5 billion. Now, the scientific method does not always rely on ‘tests’, sometimes just evaluating existing information.
Isaac Newton didn’t conduct a series of experiments to arrive at his fundamental physics of gravity. Hmmm, you are indeed correct, we could exchange negative and positive articles, references and information, citing this and that
without convincing either of us. (As well as further deviate from the thread that began on
Sting’s wife!) I will continue to lean with the
preponderance of scientific thought, but not jump on the costly carbon credit politics or political scare tactics. The scientific debate has been brought into the concommitant political debate,
and that is most unfortunate.
May 2, 2008 at 7:21 pm
“Of course I took the time. Recall my mention of
fluctuation during the general trend..like the stock market?”
I was fishing for an apology on the “we didn’t land on the moon” remark
“just ponder the phenomena of anti-rationalism on the
far right..creationism as science, etc”
I have no truck with that, but I would say that it is not an inherintly “far-right” viewpoint. It is a religious belief, something that is not unknown on the Left (recall how many times you may have seen the “Jesus was a liberal” argument).
“Computer models require two things: accurate input data and realistic algorithms”
Fine. Computer models are well and dandy in some fields. You strike me as an emminently reasonable person, and I have no reason to doubt that computer modeling was important or vital to your work on initiating explosions. But I feel that when it comes to Climate change, the computer modles are like that equation for figuring out how many worlds have life on them, all variables which vary wildly depending on what values you assign to them.
“It seems common sense that a bipedal hominid
population of 10 million just prior to the beginnings of agriculture (say 10,000BCE) had
an environmental footprint considerably smaller than the current high tech 6.5 billion.”
true, but the same logic applies as to the computer modeling. You would need some valid measure of the differential change for that argument to mean anything. If we had an enviromental impact scale from 0-100, o being no impact and 100 being the destruction of the Earth, if the change is from 1 to 70, yeah thats a big deal. If the change is from 1 to 2, not so much.
“Isaac Newton didn’t conduct a series of experiments to arrive at his fundamental physics of gravity”
Tricky tricky. No, he made observations, but they were observations that were testable, no? We can observe that apples fall to the ground, but we must conduct tests to find the gravitational constant, yes? And AGW is not a testable theory.
” I will continue to lean with the
preponderance of scientific thought, but not jump on the costly carbon credit politics or political scare tactics. The scientific debate has been brought into the concommitant political debate,
and that is most unfortunate.”
I know this is old hat, but the perponderance of scientific thought has given us some very wacky ideas over the ages. Unfortunately, when a group of people claim apocalypse is just around the corner and drastic measures must be taken, it is impossible to seperate the science from the economic and social. Take, for instance, The Population Bomb, circa 1970, that claimed population control was necessary or we would all starve. That was “scientifically” justified, and yet here we are. Or how about Silent Spring? DDT is now banned because some lady was bitter she got cancer, and now tens of millions of people are dead of malaria that was almost wiped out by controlling the misqueto population.
I am open to being convinced that AGW is real, I simply have yet to see irrefutable proof of it. And since it is a vehicle for massive political and social change, my conservative nature compells me to resist it until it is bonafide fact.
May 4, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Hmmm,
I watched the video. Clearly, the author has a point to make, but I think it asks good questions. Of course, the author wants us to believe that those questions have no answers (like how to meet the the 80 50 target), but in reality that is our challenge. Maybe we cannot meet that goal and should just sit around or do nothing. Or maybe we should at least try, which the video seems to not consider as an option.
May 5, 2008 at 4:28 pm
“Of course, the author wants us to believe that those questions have no answers (like how to meet the the 80 50 target), but in reality that is our challenge.”
Yes, it is. But the only answer coming from the Left seems to be Kyoto or some other top-down, authoritarian government regime to cap/reduce emmissions. That does not work.
http://www.upi.com/International_Intelligence/Analysis/2005/12/28/10_eu_nations_to_miss_kyoto_emissions_goal/1435/
Look, if the AGW crowd is right, or if for other reasons the American public wants to move to lower emissions, the free market (yeah!) will supply the vehicle for this change. As soon as Hydrogen, solar, or some other source of energy is economically feasible, fossil fuels will no longer be in demand.
Solar looks like it is almost maxed out in efficiency:
http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=MmQzN2U4ZDRmNzRhYWRiZGRiNTM3MTE1ZGUyOWVlY2Y=
But there will come a time when it is cheaper and easier to use a source other than oil/coal. This time will come about sooner if the free market is given reign without government interference. A knowledgable person’s take on alternative energy:
http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=M2FiYWQ1NzY2MzZhOWI5MWU4MWY1NTYyZjQ1YjQ2NDY=
Govt. subsidies end up giving advantage to alternative engery sources that have the most advocates on Capitol Hill. Thus we are stuck in a stupid ethanol boondoggle.
Let the market have a say, and the inventive powers of America’s inventors, chemists, and engineers will be unleashed. And you will be surprised what they come up with, as will I.
May 5, 2008 at 9:53 pm
It’s not just about market forces. Market forces often ignore long term environmental problems.
May 6, 2008 at 12:28 am
Externalities are the reason the EPA exists. Thats fine and good, and as soon as there is irrefutable proof of AGW, the EPA can go to work to mitigate the externalities of co2 emitting industries. Before then, all you got is the free market. And, if the free market calls for more hybrid and electric cars, then it does benefit the environment in the long term. Someone’s gotta figure out how to make them less expensive and more efficient though.
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