[LINK] Propaganda, manipulation and the abuse of media [Was: IPA, astroturfing and fantsy themes/Science under attack]

[Frank O'Connor]

On 21/02/2012, at 4:22 PM, TKoltai wrote:

> Is pollution bad?  - Hell yes. (IMHO)
> Is it changing our climate ? - Empirically ? I have no idea and neither
> does anyone else on Link.

Nah ... we just go on the evidence supported by thousands of climate scientists. Funny thing about that evidence ... it all says it's warming up rather quickly compared to past climate change cycles. In a hundred years it's done what would normally take a couple of thousand ... if that ice core data you mention can be relied on.

> 
> You may all have an opinion. It may even be an informed opinion, (in
> your opinion), however as to it's veracity, or percentage probability of
> accuracy... Hell, we won't know for about another 400,000 years at which
> time we will be finally able to compare two lots of 400k y.o. Ice cores
> and get real empirical data... 

Given that industrial civilisation wasn't around until about 250 years ago ... the ice cores aren't gonna tell us much about our current experience. That said, it is true that Earth's climate has changed radically over the last 500 million years. We went from an Ice Age where the ice was an average of a kilometre thick ALL OVER THE PLANET (the great freeze), to a hot and steamy water planet (Cambrian explosion), to a relatively cool Carboniferous period (where the CO2 and greenhouse gases got taken up by the ever so abundant plants that ironically died to form the great coal deposits we have today) to a hot moist Jurassic (10-12 degrees on average hotter than now), to a cooler Cretaceous (complicated by vulcanism and continental break up).

Of late (the last ten million years) we have naturally switched between Ice Age and cooler Med type climates ... which has suited us and our biology admirably. Leaving aside meteorological disruptions caused by the additional energy retained, if you increase the average temperature by say another 10 degrees .. and that biologically benign environment would not be the case. You may enjoy the odd yeast whole-of-body infection and crop blight ... but I'd rather pass.

> 
> adding one further bamboo sliver... 
> Empirically, vegetative composition and the ensuing methane has been the
> single largest cause of atmospheric heating over the last 400,000 years.
> Volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes have been the single largest cause
> of temperature reduction, especially when occurring simultaneously with
> our 26,000 year elliptical and perambulating epoch cycles.

And your point is? A whole 26000 years! Wow! And I guess the fact that those same volcanoes pulled us out of the great ice age (by dramatically reducing the ice's albedo and causing more sunlight absorption) hangs in there with your vulcanism cooling theory as well. The point is you can't be bloody simplistic, and pick and choose your facts with regard to something like climate change ... under some circumstances vulcanism will cool an environment, in others it will dramatically increase solar energy absorption and have a heating effect.

> 
> If human assisted climate change does exist, then it is doubtless a
> result of our eating habits.... In that we have now managed to surpass
> that output volume of vegetative decomposition with the farming of dairy
> cattle.
> 
No 'if' about it, Old Son ... the data says that the average temperature of the planet is increasing at about 20-30 times observed rate previously (in those ice core samples you mention and in many other historic indicators as well) the norm for other climate change events that have been observed through history. With the exception of extinction events (asteroids etc) the temperature is changing far faster now than at any other time in the Earth's history.

> The problem with climate change experts, is that for the most part, they
> are not simultaneously practising economists, anthropologists or
> capitalists and fail to actually do the sums leading to a sustainably
> beneficial outcome for all.

Right ... so practising economists, anthropologists or capitalists have better data ... on climate change ... than the science fraternity. Good to know ... I was unaware they were as experienced in meteorological and other climate based research as you seem to intimate. 

> Instead their laziness and lack of understanding bolstered by the crowd
> sourced guilt complex, forces them to emulate a cartoon character
> bleating the oft worn phrase "The Planet, The planet, we are killing the
> planet.... Usually via SMS or email" thereby making themselves feel as
> if they have contributed; (whilst driving down the freeway doing 110 in
> their 8 Cyl GMH air-conditioned truck). 

Laziness and lack of understanding? Now there's the pot calling the kettle black. If you're too stupid to understand what you owe to science (That sparky stuff that comes down the wired and makes your electrical thingies go, the fertiliser that feeds the plants that feed you, the medical advances 
> 
> These parrots of Climate change continually fail to produce workable
> solutions.
> Unfortunately there is no quick fix for the problem whether it is real
> or imagined.

There are a number of fixes that don't involve downgrading your standard of life, Tom. Many simply involve making better more efficient use of inputs to the manufacturing/production process, and in the final analysis isn't that what capitalism is supposed to do so well. Many involve giving up on fossil fuels and using alternatives (using initially high capital costs but low ongoing cost solar to create hydrogen and oxygen, hydrogen to fuel cars and expel water rather than poisonous hydrocarbon residues etc), using better battery technology to power said cars and other vehicles (amongst other vehicles I have an electric assisted bike which gives me 60 km on a single battery charge, and is as easy as pie to ride around), building infrastructure to support these new transport technologies .. which could provide a bit of a boom for the industries tasked with building same.

My point is that sunset industries (which by the way we subsidise to the tune of billions) have fooled you into believing that nothing can be done. The internal combustion engine was invented in the 19th century ... but it hasn't moved on much since then. We have been lumbered with an annual bill for trillions to support it, and have to support regimes who fuel it that we probably would not rather to do in other circumstances ... but because of stick in the mud thinking like yours we don't question these industries. The coal industry says soothing words like 'carbon sequestration' and get grants of billions of dollars from government to pursue same ... but everyone knows that it will never be economically viable ... it's another dirty secret that we can attribute to the 

Sure fossil fuels are absolutely required for a number of applications (planes, ships and trains for example) but even these could benefit from efficiencies in design and resource input, the use of supplemental technologies to facilitate these efficiencies

Making technology cheaper and more convenient to use ... as well as more efficient, less polluting and less obstrusive ... that should be a goal of capitalist societies. But obviously not in Koltai Capitalism.

> 
> However growing waves of FUD will allow for America to enforce the
> Carbon Tax Currency swap solution to their decreasing dollar value.

You're channeling Rush Limbaugh or Andrew Bolt, right? The 'pay to say' brigade. Morons 'r us?

> 
> The financial alternatives available to us to stop "climate change" and
> our continuing evolution as a species is a return to the socialist
> co-operative society banning fossil fuel based mechanisation and killing
> all the cows.

In the good old days capitalists were driven by the need to make their processes more efficient, the inputs less and maximise their output. Nowadays, unless they can feed at the trough of the government
> 
> Unless we reduce the planets population dramatically and immediately,
> that solution is a fiscal impossibility leading to probable mass
> starvation and a feudal existence.

So the Koltai solution is the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War, Famine, Disease, Death ... Good to know
> 
> P.S. : They don't have Internet or Wireless phones in socialist Amish
> style non-mechanised farming co-operatives.

'Socialist' Amish? You think about twenty minutes after you've typed ... right?

> 
> P.P.S. : Luddites traditionally go for the man in an attempt to use
> ridicule to discount their opponents pearls of wisdom.

Luddites are people who stand in the way of progress, who can't see any way of doing things other than the way it's been done in the past. They act to secure their position and protect it from any encroachments by more efficient, effective and viable technological alternatives.

Who's the Luddite here, Tom?