by Judith Curry
How multi-level, non-hierarchical governance poses a threat to constitutional government.
Lucas Bergkamp has a new paper [link]:
The Trojan Horse of the Paris Climate Agreement
Lucas Bergkamp and Scott J. Stone
Abstract. There is little novelty to be found in the Paris Climate Agreement. Nevertheless, it may have serious implications for climate policy-making. It establishes an international framework for decentralized climate policy-making by states, which should aim to achieve an ambitious collective objective of limiting global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C or even 1.5 °C. The agreement does not set any mechanism, methodology or criteria, however, for assigning individual mitigation obligations to party states. Indeed, it does not impose any significant substantive obligations on the parties, and, from a legal, as opposed to political or moral, viewpoint, it seems to be virtually non-binding. This gap is destined to become the Paris Agreement’s Trojan horse, because, under the guise of direct democracy in a system of multi-level, non-hierarchical governance, it grants not only credibility but also de facto authority to climate activists, thus posing a threat to constitutional government and representative democracy.
The Paris Agreement demands that nation states acknowledge explicitly that their efforts are inadequate, while setting them up for failure, thus changing the political environment in which climate policy is made. The ambition-obligation disparity creates a large arena for climate activism at international and national levels, effectuating a transfer of power, or at least of influence, that is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of constitutional government. If the collective efforts appear to fall short of achieving the Paris Agreement’s objectives, the judiciary is likely to be dragged into climate policy-making. Climate action groups or executive governments supporting ambitious action will charge the body politic with impotence, declare “government failure,” and seek the help of the courts to get governments to “do the right thing.” To support their claims, they can invoke the admissions and objectives set out in the Paris Agreement.
Thus, in demanding that the signatories concede that their efforts are inadequate, the Paris Agreement paves the way for the new international climate governance. Its implicit reliance on political activism by the climate movement and the related non-hierarchical governance by courts constitute a threat to constitutional government, the rule of law, and representative democracy. It risks an unconstitutional usurpation of power by activist groups and unelected and unaccountable judges that could undermine legislative power and the role of positive law in deciding legal disputes. This risk of subversion is not well understood by politicians and governments.
Nations should protect themselves against these threats. After all, signing away control over climate policy to unaccountable and unelected actors is not in the public interest. Nor is it, under even the most optimistic of circumstances, a viable path to rational, effective and sustainable climate policies. Indeed, the future of representative democracy may be at stake.
Excerpts from the Introduction:
There is more to the Paris Agreement, however, than meets the eye. Both the EU and the United States were instrumental in brokering the Paris deal, even though their objectives were not aligned. The European Commission has presented the agreement as the “first universal, legally binding” climate agreement, calling it “ambitious and balanced.” But the US government takes the position that the agreement is voluntary and imposes only reporting obligations — and no sanctions. That these two protagonists can give such different interpretations to the agreement is the result of the linguistic massage that was necessary to reconcile their conflicting objectives, but doubtlessly complicated the negotiations. The agreement’s wording and legal force (or lack thereof), however, tell only part of the story.
There are other forces at play that can explain why the agreement is both a failure and a success. For one, a reasonable solution of the climate change problem was not in the interest of all stakeholders that flocked to Paris; support for the nuclear energy option, for instance, has disingenuously been called “climate denialism.” The key to understanding Paris, however, is asking the question why so much time and effort has been spent on non-binding commitments and proclamations; if it is all non-binding and unenforceable any way, why bother? Part of the answer is that the Paris Agreement lays out a nice battlefield for climate activism for decades to come; President Obama, somewhat euphemistically, has called the agreement “politically binding.” But, for many countries, it may also have profound effects on government and climate policy-making.
Most importantly, the Paris Agreement does not close the gap between ambition and obligation and, indeed, have widened it by adopting ambitious temperature targets without the apparent means to reach them. This creates not only internal tension, but has broader implications for the dynamics of climate policy-making. An analysis of the agreement should shed light not only on the nature, scope, and content of the obligations imposed on the parties, but also on the agreement’s wider consequences for international and national climate policy-making. It should zoom in on the unspoken, and, maybe, unspeakable, intentions and consequences.
Excerpts from the Conclusions:
An analysis of the agreement’s relation with science shows ambiguity. On the one hand, at several points, chiefly in relation to designing and implementing climate policies, the agreement refers to the best available science. On the other hand, it also sets forth objectives that focus solely on limiting global temperature increase, even though the scientific debate on the relative importance of such increase is still on-going, and no cost-benefit test applies to the selection of policies from a pool of options. As a result, the Paris Agreement may require measures that are inefficient and ineffective in preventing climate-related damage. Given the agreement’s strong focus on temperature, national policy-making may be distorted, and it remains to be seen to what extent the best available science can be invoked to correct the temperature-bias in designing climate policies. Thus, the agreement, while sending unambiguous signals that climate change will remain a preeminent policy issue for decades to come, serves to allow ambiguity to fester in terms of just what all that attention will produce, politically, policy-wise, and legally.
And then, perhaps most importantly, there is a deeper, hidden level of uncertainty associated with the Paris Agreement. Reflecting strong climate advocacy and sophisticated strategy, the agreement fails to close (or even widens) the gap between what should be done and what has been agreed. It demands that nation states admit that their efforts are inadequate, while setting them up for failure, thus changing the political environment in which climate policy is made. The ambition-obligation disparity creates a large arena for climate activism at international and national levels, effectuating a transfer of power, or at least of influence, that is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of constitutional government. Countries are subject to the forces of regulatory competition, and have incentives to do as little as possible or at least to lag behind. Despite widespread activism, the lack of any mechanism to overcome the ambition-obligation disparity therefore will likely result in a failure to reach the collective targets. While the state parties may think they will have to go back to the negotiation table once that has happened, the reality may be different.
If the collective efforts appear to fall short of achieving the Paris Agreement’s objectives, the judiciary is likely to be dragged into climate policy-making. Climate action groups or executive governments supporting ambitious action will charge the body politic with impotence, declare “government failure,” and seek the help of the courts to get governments to “do the right thing.” To support their claims, they can invoke several features of the Paris Agreement, including its recognition of the need for urgent action to fight dangerous climate change, its high goals, its ambitious substantive provisions, and the parties’ admissions of impotence, all of which can be cited to give content to the parties’ procedural obligations. Thus, climate policy lawsuits against governments to force them to adopt stronger emission reduction policies are not necessarily prevented by the absence of binding emission reduction obligations or targets in the Paris Agreement. Experience thus far has shown that courts concerned about the government’s failure to adequately address climate change, are willing to entertain such law suits and order governments to step up their climate policies, even though such orders are legally doubtful.
At its most fundamental level, this constitutes a threat to constitutional government, the rule of law, and representative democracy. It risks an unconstitutional usurpation of power by activist groups and unelected and unaccountable judges that could undermine legislative power and the role of positive law in deciding legal disputes. This risk of subversion is not well understood by politicians and governments. If this risk materializes, the non-binding parts of the agreement, which were the least haggled over, will turn out to be the most influential “legal” provisions. And, unlike executive governments, judges have no way of ensuring that other nations do their fair share; they can rely only on their colleagues’ enlightened thinking, which may not be as generalized as they might hope.
Irrespective of whether these features are parts of some intentional design, the Paris Agreement thus may turn out to be a Trojan horse.
While it does little to reduce the threats it impresses upon the people, it creates risks of a different kind: although it operates under principles of law, it threatens our constitutional arrangements, including the separation of powers. In deciding on ratification, countries should consider not only the need for international coordination of climate policy, but also the protection of their constitutions, representative democracy, and the rule of law. Specifically, once they agree to Paris’ high collective ambition and ambitious substantive requirements, countries need to be mindful of the risks of activists and the judiciary taking over when it becomes clear that the world will not deliver.
JC reflections
In my presentations on climate change, I have often asked the question regarding CO2 mitigation policy: is the cure worse than the disease? Specifically, I was referring to to the costs of changing our power sources and energy infrastructure, concerns about reliability of the power supply, and damage to the economy.
In this paper, Bergkamp and Stone articulate yet another ‘disease’ potentially caused by the Paris climate ‘cure’ – the issue usurpation of national constitutional arrangements. We are already seeing signs of a hyperactive judiciary in this regard, notably the Urgenda case.
The other issue of concern raised by Bergkamp and Stone that I also think is critical is that the Paris Agreement may require measures that are inefficient and ineffective in preventing climate-related damage. Neither the problem or the solutions for climate change should be regarded as irreducibly global. As is often the challenge with a wicked mess, we may find that we are pointing our arrows at the wrong target, with mess indicating a ‘cure’ that is worse than the disease.
This is clearly an issue that bears watching and further examination; I am of course particularly watching the legal challenges in the U.S. to Obama’s climate plan.
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That is because this is not about climate. It is not now nor ever has been. It’s about control. If it was about climate they would listen to Hansen and go nuclear. Instead, he has outlived his usefulness and has been thrown under the bus.
Well, they did that so it will be easier to send Hansen his Nobel Prize; they can just toss it under a bus.
It is about control and voluntary taxes. If they scare people enough, people will give up control and volunteer to pay more taxes.
Anyone else noticing just how thoroughly creepy this is?
“…an international framework for decentralized climate policy-making by states, which should aim to achieve an ambitious collective objective…”
“Thus, in demanding that the signatories concede that their efforts are inadequate, the Paris Agreement paves the way for the new international climate governance.”
So we must make full confession, go back to our villages and take stern measures…but all of our own free will?
We are committing our destinies into the hands of the lamest and creepiest. And it’s not like we haven’t had a foretaste of what happens when men stop being men and adults can’t be found. Remember the 20th century at all? Even warmies remember back to 1980.
Fight Green Blob!
The increasing oppressive intervention in our lives today,
directing social and economic behavior – laws limiting free
speech – tax office business licences, ‘ no we won’t grant
you the BN to engage in trade,’ extended controls to world
guvuhmint by unelected bureaucrats – Brusselsmen. Case
study, ‘A Machine from Hell: What the Euro Has Wrought.
This essay by Andrew Stuttaford appears in the July-August
2015 edition of Quadrant.
‘As coups go, the manoeuvrings to lead Europe towards
“ever closer union” have been gentle, gradual, deceptive,
and even generous. No tanks have rolled, but the
irreversible transfer of powers, sometimes small,
sometimes large, from the nation-state to an
unaccountable supranational authority has been as
relentless as it has been sly. The trick has been to
slide the devil into the details.’
mosomo,
As usual your ear is pitch perfect. Creepy in the extreme. At the age of 64 I find myself increasingly horrified at what’s going on out there. Especially pernicious are our anti-free speech, children of the corn college students with zero love of country and no appreciation of history or the democratic process.
I don’t know what to make of Donald Trump here in the U.S. Is he just another pol only with a crude demeanor and obviously volatile personality who’s going to polarize the country even more, or someone to get behind? I made the mistake of my political life by voting for Obama. I don’t want to cast another dumb vote. Hard to remember now, but there was a time when Obama was thought of as a moderate. He turned out to be the most dangerous ideologue ever to fool the people sufficiently to win the Presidency…
aka pokerguy
I guess I’d vote for whoever least resembles a Brussels eurocrat. Or maybe whoever most stokes the indignation of the HuffPo perusing classes (the Australian equivalent being Conversation readers and ABC viewers.)
I really couldn’t make it as a right-winger or libertarian. But this Posh Left or New Class or Bohemian Bourgeoisie or whatever is creeping me out so much that I’d rather vote for Pazuzu from the exorcist.
Al, at least Trump’s not the relative of anybody else who’s governed. At the rate you Yanks are going you’ll soon have a Queen Chelsea. So vote for Donald, maybe, but don’t vote for Ivanka in twenty years.
That’s pretty much my thinking, mos….At least he’s not a career politician. But I can’t figure out if it’s a triumph of the American ethos whereby an utter neophyte throws his hat into the ring and makes complete fools of the establishment on his way to what was up until recently considered an impossible victory…(Gary Cooper were he still around would star in the movie.)….or 1923 Germany. I”m not saying Trump is a Nazi by any means. But I can see something scary in all the desperation and anger out there…Who know where this will all lead.
Trumps actually been out in the world earning a living. Ok, so his dad staked him to a million smackers to get him started.. He not only didn’t blow it on strippers and cocaine which I most certainly would have done at that age, he turned it into an impressive fortune. So, there’s that. He also seems to see what so many of us see.
Back in my liberal days….all of 5 years ago now…I used to think of political correctness as a mostly benign impulse…an overly scrupulous politeness say, that however easy to mock couldn’t cause much real harm. Now I see it for what it is, a plague that might destroy us all
(aka pokerguy)
That’s pretty much my thinking, mos….At least he’s not a career politician. But I can’t figure out if it’s a triumph of the American ethos whereby an utter neophyte throws his hat into the ring and makes complete fools of the establishment on his way to what was up until recently considered an impossible victory…(Gary Cooper were he still around would star in the movie.)….or 1923 Germany. I”m not saying Trump is a N**** by any means. But I can see something scary in all the desperation and anger out there…Who know where this will all lead.
Trumps actually been out in the world earning a living. Ok, so his dad staked him to a million smackers to get him started.. He not only didn’t blow it on strippers and cocaine which I most certainly would have done at that age, he turned it into an impressive fortune. So, there’s that. He also seems to see what so many of us see.
Back in my liberal days….all of 5 years ago now…I used to think of political correctness as a mostly benign impulse…an overly scrupulous politeness say, that however easy to mock couldn’t cause much real harm. Now I see it for what it is, a plague that might destroy us all
(aka pokerguy)
He’d arguably have far more money now had he simply invested his inheritance in an index fund.
Come on, Joshua. You’re just triggering Trump’s law: everybody hates a winner who wins all the time
Who but a winner can get a couple of financial bailouts just for himself? More on teh Donald’s winning bailouts:
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/how-does-trump-repeatedly-file-for-bankruptcy-and-still-stay-on-top
.
Why don’t you actually make the argument that Trump could made that kind of fortune in index funds, little dude whose name we can’t mention. If he had done so with passive investment and blind luck, your crowd would call him a parasite. Anyway, he had more fun building an empire. And his resume is far more Presidential. You are talking about the next, POTUS, little envious dude. Eat your heart out.
“He’d arguably have far more money now had he simply invested his inheritance in an index fund.”
Joshua, You make it sounds like that’s easy. How do you suppose that feckless, pointy headed Barak Obama would have done had he been staked to a million bucks ? He’d likely have blown it all on Solyndra.
One argument is Trump has no political experience. Manning the pulleys and levers of democratic governance can certainly be learned in relatively short order. But real life experience which Obama is so sorely lacking is just that….it has to be lived. I see that as Obamas greatest failing…even more damaging than his obviously narcissistic personality…
> Why don’t you actually make the argument that Trump could made that kind of fortune in index funds.
Here you go, Don Don:
http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/
You’re welcome.
You mean you hope he is the next President. His favorable ratings are more negative than Clinton’s. And the latest polls show Hillary winning. So you seem a bit overconfident there, Don.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/donald-trump-favorable-rating
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
They grossly understated the value of the Trump Empire, willito. Can you name one person who had the foresight and the luck to actually make that kind of money in index funds? Are you jokers going to ding The Donald for making money the hard way and creating jobs for tens of thousands of folks? You people are hilarious.
The little due with no name engages in left-loon whistling past the graveyard. The story will be different when The Donald get’s done smashing the also rans and is running in the general election against indicted Hillarity, Bernie, or the V.P. dunce with the toothy grin. If there is one more terrorist attack on U.S. soil like the last one, he won’t even have to campaign.
Just to correct willito’s ignorance and/or dishonesty:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-strip-my-name-from-atlantic-city-casinos/
The Trump casinos did not go bankrupt under The Donald’s management. The corporate entities engaged in the gambling business that were separate from other Trump businesses, because The Donald ain’t stoopid, were reorganized under chapter 11 with the cooperation of creditors, who had put their money at risk in a gambling operation. Call them naive, if you wish.
Trump left the casinos operating and employing a lot of people. Win some, lose some. The lefty anti-business clowns can keep trotting this lame stuff out, but he is still going to be the next POTUS. The folks can do simple math and figure out that The Donald is a winner.
Don
Here’s a short article debating the 3 theories of Trumps rise. It was a decent read esp his mastery of monopolizing the media.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/three-theories-of-donald-trumps-rise/
Enjoy your posts.
Thanks
Isn’t 2.5 (i.e. Clinton’s aggregate poll lead in head to head with trump) within the margin of error?
As in if that’s all Clinton has, she should be worried.
Right now I expect Hilary to be our next President. The only outcome more depressing is to see Obama serve another term.
Al –
==> “Joshua, You make it sounds like that’s easy.”
I haven’t “made it” sound in any way at all. I stated a simple analysis that relates to the logic of your argument..
==> “How do you suppose that feckless, pointy headed Barak Obama would have done had he been staked to a million bucks ? He’d likely have blown it all on Solyndra.”
Lol! I have no idea what he would have done had he inherited between $40-$200 million, but considering what he is likely to have inherited, if you think that someone’s ability to increase their net worth is a measure of their character, intelligence, competence, etc., I’d think that you’d consider Obama’s growth of his net worth to be quite an accomplishment (of course, then there’s that whole first African American to become the president of the strongest country in the world. Twice. But who’s counting, eh?).
But at any rate, what does Obama have to do with the simplistic logic of assessing Trump’s worthiness on the basis of his net worth?
==> “…even more damaging than his obviously narcissistic personality
…”
Lol! redux. As opposed to Trump?
Thanks, Knute. You are one of the dozen people here, who I read with serious interest. The rest are for entertainment purposes only.
Nate Silver is another media D, who is never going to be a Trump fan and it shows. His theories reflect a lot of disdain for Trump and Republican voters. He is going to get a surprise. He either doesn’t get what’s going on, or he doesn’t want to admit it:
“1. Trump’s support reflects a Republican populist revolt
Trump is extremely popular among Republican voters, who are attracted to his combination of populism, nativism and anti-elite resentment.”
Fairly true up to that point, but Silver insinuates it’s a thin and largely emotional appeal. But it’s not the cornball outmoded populism of a chicken in every pot. The middle class is in on this one and even some of the usual guilty white Democrat upper crust are starting to wake up. Also working class Democrats, including African-Americans and Hispanics. The nativism is rolled in with the populism and appeals to everyone concerned about the damage caused by open borders, willful failure to enforce immigration laws, the yuuuge trade deficit and the blase importation of potential terrorists. The political elite has failed to deal with these issues. Won’t even talk about them in realistic terms. Trump is saying what we are going to find out is on the minds of the majority of the people.
“2. Trump’s support reflects a Republican Party power vacuum
Party elites and insiders usually have a tremendous amount of influence on the identity of the nominee, with Republican voters eventually falling in line behind one of their preferred choices. The fact that Trump is leading now reflects a lack of consensus among those party elites.”
Wrong. It reflects Trump’s strengths and the weaknesses of the other candidates. It also reflects perceived competence and courage gaps, between the party elites and Trump.
“Theory 3: Trump’s support reflects a media bubble
Trump’s standing in the polls substantially reflects the disproportionate amount of media coverage he’s receiving; it’s not that remarkable for a candidate to poll at 35 percent when he’s recently been getting 70 percent of the media coverage of the Republican race.
Of the three theories, it seems to do the best job of explaining the movement in the polls to date.”
The wall-to-wall media coverage of Trump has been very negative. How could that be in his favor? Well, the media has about as much credibility with the folks as climate scientists and used car salesmen. And unlike Romney, who was undone by the likes of non-entity Candy Crowley and her D colleagues, Trump doesn’t take any crap from them.
It seems that every time Trump brings attention to big problems with bombast and political incorrectness, he get’s hammered by the media types with the “We got him this time.” attacks. He fights back, is borne out by events and takes a bigger lead in the polls. He’s not afraid of a bunch of alleged journalists and talking heads, who only make a few million bucks a year.
I did detect the tone of negativity in the author’s approach. Your counter perspective is well placed.
Trump does appeal to the baseline frustration of folks who work for a living and slip further from dreams for themselves and their offspring. These folk are mostly known as the silent majority and have traditionally stayed away from voting. Inspiring them to vote will be a tactical requirement.
If he wins he’ll very likely be faced with a deflationary global economy. The ensuing economic phase will do more to reprioritize how we use our resources than any long winded debate surrounding climate.
The country is not prepared for this shift in the economy and it will not be pretty.
Trump’s supporters tend to have a lower education level, supporting my theory that to succeed as a politician you only have to be smarter than the people who support you. They’re not going to say “hey, that’s wrong”, but are more likely to think everything he says must be right because he is shouting it and repeating it all the time.
Yosh
A friend of mine is highly critical of Trump because he names buildings after himself. I pointed out to him that each time Trump names a building after himself, he creates jobs. I also pointed out to my friend that between 1931 and 1939, during the depths of the depression, another building, in New York City and named after a man, employed 40,000 workers. Those 40,000 most likely would not have been able to feed their families. And the businesses that were frequented by those 40,000 benefitted from those jobs as well. When buildings are built, or businesses are started, jobs are created. The name of that building was the Rockefeller Center.
The problem in our society is that too many people have no concept of how capitalism works. Their view is that national wealth is created by the Federal Government, the Tooth Fairy, the Elf on the Shelf and Tinker Bells and the wealth comes down from heaven as fairy dust. This All-Profits-Are Evil congregation sit around like little Mini Plush Lops complaining about capitalism not giving them enough, never grasping how Incentives, Competition, Risk and Profits are instrumental to the whole equation. They don’t bother thinking of the hundreds of thousands of small business owners who use their savings or get loans each year to start businesses and add to national wealth while running the very high risk of losing their a++. A very high percentage, in fact, go under within 3 years.
I want to pick up on what pokerguy said above about college students and the younger generation as a rule. They appear to be not only anti- free speech and oblivious of history, but perhaps to a greater degree they are economic illiterate. To their little self absorbed minds, life should be meeting their expectations. When it doesn’t, then the entire system should be replaced. They never quite get to what should replace it, but if they are not taken care of to their satisfaction then, in their mind, we need a revolution. Good luck with that. How is the Soviet Union during these days anyway?
Also from 538 is this about the Republican diploma divide. The difference for Trump is his appeal among the uneducated.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-key-to-the-gop-race-the-diploma-divide/
I posted this 538 link a while back…
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-media-stop-freaking-out-about-donald-trumps-polls/
Trump’s support has a ceiling. He fits right into the basic demographic problem that the Republicans face…they can’t win if they don’t get black voters and/or Latino voters, and Trump sure ain’t going to solve that problem.
Don’s confidence that he understands voting better than Silver (who identifies as pretty libertarian, btw) reminds me of the amusing GaryM’s confidence before the last election that he knew better than Silver.
The question is whether Don will show greater accountability than GaryM did (after the final voting showed GaryM’s “analsys” of polling to be laughably off the mark) if Trump doesn’t win the election (or even the nomination)…
Trump popular with tradespeople? And with those people we fly over? They vote too?
Pass me the smelling salts then pour me a sherry. When the palpitations stop I’ll alert Ariana and write a stern letter to the Times.
Poor little yimmy dee. Those allegedly under-educated people, who are going for Trump in a big way, are supposed to be Democrat property. He will get them from both parties in the general election. Keep in mind that now he is operating in a primary and kicking buttocks with his strategy. In the general he will broaden his appeal. It’s going to be fun.
Also, I have seen polling indicating that college educated folks (men in particular) are reluctant to admit they are Trump fans. The voting will be different.
You will be shocked at how many votes The Donald gets from AAs and Hispanics. I speak both languages and have talked with a lot of them.
The Donald has got a lot of things going for his bombastic self. Not the least of which, he doesn’t have an indictment for flunking National Security 101 hanging over his head. Have you noticed they aren’t making fun of his hair any more, yimmy?
As well as the uneducated, who he has fooled, he has cornered another market with his anti-PC message, and that is the bigots. Anti-PC is code for go ahead and be prejudiced in all your various uneducated ways. Note in the 538 poll, the uneducated don’t go for Cruz, Carson, or Rubio, all of whom they may not consider truly American for various reasons. So, if you are an uneducated bigot, Trump is your man.
oops:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-big-reason-to-be-less-skeptical-of-trump/
OMG! Little yimmy is going to keel over when the uneducated bigots are running the country, in less than a year from now. Oh, the humanity!
Don’t worry, yimmy. The Canadians will take you in. Little willito will sponsor you. Take the little clown whose name we can’t mention with you. And his stepson.
Come on, Don Don. If you’re to say:
You can’t end a comment with
and expect that there are words missing, dontcha? Teh Donald is a winner, and …?
I hope all this campainin’ you were supposed to do before taking your leave is not too hard on ya.
More on teh Donald’s mystique:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-filed-bankruptcy-times
Teh Donald was just too big to fail.
The video’s worth the watch.
One of the fascinating things about ole Trump is that the more folks try to diss him, the more popular he becomes.
Trump hate is its own political advertising.
You don’t get to see that everday.
> You don’t get to see that everday.
Not since Ford at least.
Because, teh Donald always wins:
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2068227,00.html
Let’s make teh Donald great again.
Don, are you hoping for a Trump-Palin ticket, or should he distance himself from someone associated with a person he considers a loser POW vet?
I won’t bother explaining the basic facts of corporate finance and bankruptcy law to you clowns. You don’t want to know. Just think of a major league baseball team that on average loses 22 games a season. Not too shabby.
Mostly for Don,
Trump has created 34,000 jobs (http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/03/news/economy/donald-trump-jobs-created/)
How to get there? :http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/21/carly-fiorina/trumps-four-bankruptcies/
(and just for further info: http://newsexaminer.net/politics/donald-trump-the-least-charitable-billionaire/)
GM (recipient of a bit of bailout money) 205,000 jobs http://www.gm.com/company/aboutGM/our_company.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-idUSBREA3T0MR20140430
But it’s all about creating jobs, eh? Seriously?
I’ll take the CCC over either: in nine years 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 (about $547 in 2015[2]) a month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
It’s easy to mansplain, Don Don. Too big to fail. Teh Donald doesn’t like the B word, so let’s call it a reconstruction instead, like this:
https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/trump_0425.jpg
Source: http://time.com/3923297/donald-trump-hair-secret/
Whatever happened to the CCC, Danny? Is it on the NYSE?
You forgot about the Soviet Union, Red China, N. Korea, Danny. They created gazillions of jobs. How about Greece, France, Italy where half the freaking people work in gubmint jobs.
Trump knows what it takes to create private sector jobs, Danny. He is the only candidate who has demonstrated that he can do it.
You display your willful ignorance proudly, willito. Oh! Canada.
Sure, Don Don. But jobs, but jobs. Around 34k with the multiplier effect:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/03/news/economy/donald-trump-jobs-created/
Which means teh Donald gets more than thousand bucks a year per job he creates, directly or indirectly.
To see how much of a cut it makes, it would be interesting to have more data on the salaries for these jobs. Glassdoor has not much numbers, and the service sector has not been very generous recently. Would teh Donald redress that by increasing the minimum wage?
Perhaps not.
Oh, and you know that teh Donald’s line of clothing is produced in China, Bangladesh, and Mexico, right?
We don’t expect you to be knowledgeable, or honest, willito.
“A more generous estimate would be to view the Trump Organization as a financial services or management company. Then the employment multiplier would be 3. That would bring jobs attributable to Trump to 67,000.”
Those are current jobs. The fact is that hundreds of thousands of people have had jobs working for Mr. Trump.
How has the hilly & billy financial empire been built? Well, start with hilly’s first big score; the hundred grand commodity futures kickback. Create any jobs? The shady land deal didn’t work out at all. Rose Law Firm over billing; petty cash. When they left the White House they were broke and had to take along property belonging to the people to furnish their little cottages. But it’s been gravy since then. Influence peddling income from speeches for small gatherings of Wall Street big wigs and foreign despot potentates: $125,000,000, that we know about. How many jobs created for the little people? The foundation has raked in the influence peddling income in the gazillion$ and provided well-paying, do-nothing jobs for cronies and flunkies, between election cycles. That’s the tip of the iceberg that we can see.
It’s hillaryious that they are going to be undone by some goofey cheap trick with a homebrew server.
All individuals are biased and the bias becomes amplified in groups because of the human desire to belong (or not be left out). At the end of the day most folk pull the lever for the one who they emotionally connect with because overcoming bias is hard work and rarely achieved on a consistent basis. The backlash has also dominated political choices back at least to Carter/Reagan.
Emotional attachments aside, people can be counted on to vote with their wallet esp if their wallet is empty.
In economic party time people are more apt to vote for fringe issues. 2016 is not likely to be a party year.
Advantage Trump.
CAGW is attempting to move onto phase II. The settled science is attempting to support the class action phase of the movement. Count on an acceleration of this phase if the Dems retain power because it serves it’s constituents and builds a larger voting base.
Fascinating tipping point for the free world and in an unexpected twist (at least to this poster), a large chunk of da peoples kind of sort of see that something is amiss.
The lie spreads like wildfire and consumes many weaker minds while truth takes its time slowly filling the emptiness of the lie.
> Those are current jobs.
Estimates, Don Don, using the most “generous” estimates you could find, a generosity unmatched except by teh Donald’s philanthropic talk, which is unmatched by its public records. Estimates that would put Trump’s enterprise into the financial sector, which makes sense considering the size of his bailouts, but that would make people wonder where has gone Trump Mortgage. Sometimes, you’re just not big enough to fail.
But let’s see what you got: how much of the 70k jobs raise its worker above poverty level, Don Don?
A more reasonable estimate would be the factor that correspond to branding and licensing. Trump sells Trump, first and foremost. He’s his own product. The comeback kid sells his comeback. Just imagine the multiplier effect of a presidential campaign, successful or not?
It’s getting mythical, Don Don. It tops the Red Sea thing.
Danny
I’m not sure going back to wages at CCC levels is a laudable goal, given that inflation adjusted they would be less than half of current minimum wage. That was fine in a depression but the average wage is over 6 times that amount.
However, given the trend of the US Debt held by the public (not total) over the last 20 years we might be headed for major trouble and a depression. By 2018, that Debt is expected to be over $15 Trillion. That amount is triple the FY 2007 level and quadruple the FY 1995 level. Yet, due to record low interest rates the amount of debt service paid out each year is virtually the same as it was in 1995 and 2007. If interest rates normalize, then the current annual deficit of $500+ Billion, could increase to over $800 Billion by 2020.
Lets see how Mr Bernie fashions an increase in the top marginal tax rate to tackle the deficit and all his proposed expanded giveaway programs. If the Vermont Socialist were to return to effective rates on the top 1%, existing in 1963, the last year of the 91% top rate, then that would generate only about $100 Billion per year. That is a far cry from closing the deficit and does nothing for new spending initiatives. No one wants to do the simple arithmetic.
Cerescokid,
The attempt at comparison was not inclusive of the dollars per job as it was not detailed in the article indicating Trump created 34k of them. That’s only 10% of what the CCC did and the earlier comment was that it was only about jobs (quantity) and made no indication of value (quality). Since the initial comment was, let’s say, less than well presented, I went the same route.
However, the point stands that at times when the private sector cannot/will not create employment going against the tide of the economic conditions of the moment then sometimes it’s only a government which can/will.
Don’s follow up question was what happened to the CCC? Good question and I believe the answer was a much larger jobs program, but one which OSHA might have created a bit of paperwork over. (WWII)
As far as the debt, that’s economics and as with climate it’s kinda a dismal discussion, but for comparison:
“We know this works because it happened after World War II with its record 120 percent of GDP debt load that was reduced to as low as 31.7 percent in 1974.
But it has climbed back to 100 percent of GDP today (including $5 trillion owed to the social security trust fund) for a variety of reasons; including spending for the 2 Wars on Terror + an extensive domestic security apparatus that wasn’t paid for, regressive tax policies, the decline in household incomes, and the Great Recession itself.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harlan-green/how-did-we-reduce-world-w_b_4612683.html (Yikes, a HUFFPO article).
So while the numbers are massive (as they have been before) they are not insurmountable. (And did I leave you with the impression that Bernie was my person?)
You are absolutely hillarious, willito. The Donald has employed hundreds of thousands of folks, with undoubtedly millions of folks having applied for those jobs, and you want to talk about some imaginary poverty number. Pathetic. Your cred is going to be as low as yimmy’s, if you keep this up.
I want to modify a previous statement:
It’s hillaryious that they are going to be undone by some goofey cheap trick with a homebrew server and a gentle reminder from The Donald on what they did to Juanita Broadrick et al.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/22/bernie-sanders-rising-because-trumps-annihilating-of-hillary-clinton/
I am rolling right over you, willito. Like what The Donald does to Jeb! You are too easy. Give it up.
> [Teh] Donald has employed hundreds of thousands of folks
Of course he did, Don Don. And when he fails, it’s not him, it’s different corporate entities, under different management, “reorganized” because teh Donald “ain’t stoopid.” Three “reorganisations” in a row, that’s quite a feat. Or is it four? It’s hard to follow all the successes paved teh Donald’s comebacks
Besides, you still haven’t told me how many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs teh Donald created that was under the poverty line.
Perhaps he’s more responsible for hiring top executives, and leaves the gritty details some call “actual work” to lower lives than him. Like when he hire E.J. Ridings as a top executive at a prestigious investment tank when he was a registered broker. For six days. When has he said he’ll hire you, Don Don?
But yeah, teh Donald’s doing a killing branding himself as the savior of America’s heart and soul. Brace yourselves, teh Donald’s got a mouth, and he’ll use it. Breitbart’s spirit overwatches Him.
knutesea | January 22, 2016 at 12:18 pm |
CAGW is attempting to move onto phase II. The settled science is attempting to support the class action phase of the movement. Count on an acceleration of this phase if the Dems retain power because it serves it’s constituents and builds a larger voting base.
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
Well, the solution is to start laying out the legal case for “conspiracy to commit (future) genocide” against the global warming community. Their own words provide a lot of ammunition:
Quote by Christopher Manes, a writer for Earth First! journal: “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
Quote by Ingrid Newkirk, a former PETA President: “The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth – social and environmental.”
Some push back has to be made against global warmers who are hostile to the interests of the average citizen and have a negative and unproductive agenda. It does not appear random that many or all of their “solutions” reduce the food supply.
Yes, there is an undercurrent of pushback. If one can step back and look at the situation it’s all rather intriguing.
CAGW stole the early lead because it relied upon the initial credibility given to scientists and among the community of scientists. It’s a classic example of use and abuse of the marketing ploy that if a scientist says it then it must be true. Similar dynamics have preoccupied the cholesterol and heart disease fields of research and treatment.
At the same time, science has witnessed an explosion of influence resulting in extreme pressure on the peer review process to maintain its integrity. A breakdown of what is basically an honor system has occurred.
The ruse would have accelerated if ole mother nature had made it obviously warmer, but it did not. The ruse would have also been tolerated if the global economy was chugging along with excess wealth for increasingly nanny state values. That shoe appears to be dropping.
All in all, CAGW is running out of time in a world that will be forced to choose more basic needs. The economic necessities of life will be the ultimate test for the CAGW movement.
Science will regroup and reassert itself in the long run but it will endure a black eye over CAGW. The silver lining that I see is far greater skills on the part of often narrowly trained areas of expertise. Science will do well to elevate their ability to clearly articulate risk management choices.
The people can handle it.
All of the jobs created by The Donald, Walmart, McD and all other profit making enterprises are by your Canuckistan definition poverty jobs, willito. Nobody wants those jobs. Millions of people have to be kidnapped or otherwise coerced through hostage taking, torture, threats of violence etc. to take those jobs. Those millions are doomed to lives of servitude and poverty. They never advance or escape to something better. Happy, willito?
Now I got to put you down there with little yimmy, yoey, yoshy et al. in the category of jokers not to be taken at all seriously. You used to sometimes say something half-way intelligent and somewhat interesting. Always too wordy and gratuitously obscure, but somewhat interesting.
We are just a little bit saddened by your deterioration. I bet you have it in you to rehabilitate yourself. Give it a shot.
> Nobody wants those jobs.
Of course some do, Don Don:
http://fortune.com/2015/08/03/donald-trump-foreign-workers-visas/
With the Walls, it might get a bit tougher, but I’m sure teh Donald will overcomb that one too.
So, Don Don. Got any data on these zillions of job teh Donald has created? I just want a guestimate of his pimp cut.
Please, do continue to pat yourself on the back or give yourself high fives.
You are still sinking, willito. Not a worthy opponent. That’s all the time I have to waste with you. Try to shape up and we’ll talk.
It is clear that no one has been a bigger boon to the firearms industry than Obama (though he gets an assist from Schumer, Pelosi and a host of other Dem’s). An estimate 100 million firearms have been sold since he took office. What is not sure at this time is how successful his latest, back door efforts to circumvent Congress and the Constitution will be.
At some point the progressive ilk, who believe they are more capable of deciding for people what is in their best interest, may go a bridge too far and learn why the right to bear arms was placed second in the Amendments to the Constitution.
I just hope for America’s sake that these matters aren’t in the hands of Queen Chelsea, Crown Prince George (future George III), Lord Kennedy or – heaven help you! – Archduchess Michelle.
C’mon, Yanks! Either get a constitutional monarchy or go the full republic. (If you do go the CM route, you might be unlucky and end up with a Charles…but you might get lucky with a Harry!)
No, seriously, the USA is the world’s only non-dreary republic. So lose those bloody dynasties.
“… may go a bridge too far and learn why the right to bear arms was placed second in the Amendments to the Constitution.”
Hooooo aaahhhh! To protect all the others.
Too funny!
four legs good, two legs better…
It definitely creeps.
The idea that ‘taxes are for behavior modification’ seems to be fully accepted now…
Taxes as a ‘free market solution’ is not an idea that raises guffaws…
Nobody, but nobody is defending his own right to his own property (the only argument that matters) – they are all negotiating the ‘appropriate degree of submission’
Linking a limit of avg. world surface air temperature excursion in 2100 to controllable societal parameters (like CO2 emission) necessitates that technical parameters like ECS are well understood.
Peer-reviewed science appears to indicate they are not:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-015-0339-z/fulltext.html
So on what basis should we limit CO2 emission? — or, put another way, what should we assume for ECS in order to implement Paris?
What if different countries assume different ECS’s ?
What does IPCC AR5 assume for ECS?
You have hit on the problem that confounds the debates around here:
1. No well defined ECS.
2. Poor understanding of forcing attribution.
3. Little understanding of clouds.
4. Little understanding of environmental absorption (the cries in vain that it is going to saturate have been going on for a while.)
5. No clear warming threshold where the cost/benefit goes negative.
6. No clear evidence of some of the “harms” like increasing sea level rise.
There might be a problem… But there isn’t any evidence or rather there is a lot of conflicting studies..
Further the warmers have munged up the economies and infrastructure of the civilized world to the point we might never have a problem if there might have been one originally. By making power more expensive power consumption has been cut. Now that nuclear (because of China) is back in fashion we might never have a problem.
It is odd that the temperature rise this century was muted in the face of a 50 % increase in emissions, the largest 15 year increase in history.
Don’t know. Clearly the number of bad predictions indicates we don’t know what is going on. For all we know after 2050 the sea level and temperature could drop like a rock.
It would be helpful to know if we should be increasing CO2, decreasing CO2, or just figuratively “let nature take its course”.
I’m wait and see mode until we have some definite answers. We are close enough to the ice age insolation threshold that I am a little nervous.
An additional (fudge) factor is the insistence on counting all GHG emissions – when much of these obviously cannot be counted. In fact, the only emissions we know about for sure are CO2 from fossil fuel use, as you can look up consumption of oil, gas and coal, as well as cement production. (Though even for these are doubts, as seen recently with the Chinese coal data). An honest strategy would focus on emissions that can be VERIFIED. What kind of person would bet the planet on unverifiable emissions?
Methane? No idea how much is being emitted at the GLOBAL level, so how are you going to calculate/enforce national emissions?
CO2 from land use? Same.
About N2O I haven’t read enough, but I doubt there is a proxy of emissions as good as fossil fuel consumption.
The irony is that, if a country wants to ‘comply’ with whatever emissions reduction proposal, all it has to do is overestimate emissions from land use and methane. This can even be done retroactively: ‘oh, it turns out emissions in 1990 were higher than we thought – we’ve already cut them 20%!’
On the contrary, a government eager to pursue an aggressive GHG reduction strategy can simply overstate current emissions from non-fossil-fuel sources, and declare that on top of phasing out fossil fuels we need to go vegan, stop using nitrogen fertilizers, etc.
To get an idea of the level of confusion regarding current emissions check this out:
http://climateaudit.org/2015/12/23/cop21-emission-projections/
As well as this chart. Notice that even though ozone is apparently excluded, and even though the contribution from F-gases is minimal (there is apparently some disagreement, other sources ascribe them significant forcing), still ‘total’ GHG emissions differ a lot from fossil fuel emissions alone. Not that this could ever lead to accounting gimmicky and fraud, mind you.
https://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/ts_fig1_annotated.png
I’m also fascinated by how many people claim to know what the ‘carbon budget’ for a given temperature rise is, considering that neither past emissions, nor present emissions, nor airborne fraction, nor climate sensitivity are known. Garbage in = garbage out.
https://i.imgur.com/jsK4YA3.png
This is just the weekly ESRL (Mauna Loa) weekly data plotted as a 10 year average. The weekly includes the 10 years earlier value and I plotted 1/10 of the difference (the 10 year average). The 10 year earlier data isn’t consistently included until about 1986.
This doesn’t look like the emissions growth curve in any way shape form or manner.
I actually suspect that the COP21 agreement will be used as a mechanism to get climate policy out of the way. ‘It’s solved!’
In that it will resemble the results of polls of the world’s citizens who are happy to acknowledge the science–majorities almost everywhere are willing to say that the climate has warmed and that we have contributed–and at the same time put addressing climate change far down on their list of priorities.
We’ll see when the first set of report cards are issued. Will it be ‘Johnny and Joan must do better’ or ‘This is a legal basis for draconian action today?’
Well, tommy has stumbled onto the reality of the thing. The Paris agreement to not bind anybody to do anything substantive is lip service. A Cop-out. What jurisdiction or incentive will the courts in the various nations have to enforce a non-binding international agreement on their own folks, while the other countries ignore it.
If you want to have any influence over what happens with this climate crap, get involved in the political process, where you live. Fegget about Paris.
It’s fuhget Don, at least in Brooklyn..
I finally got around to reading the Paris agreement recently, and came to the same conclusion. Talk about kicking a problem into the long grass…
The only definite agreements are that everyone will write their self-determined climate actions down neatly on a piece of paper, and hold it up for the others to see – and then get together every 5 years to discuss the situation while grazing the hotel buffet.
If Greenpeace et al actually gave a damn about CO2 and the climate, they would have publicly condemned Paris. Of course, they have just become one more political player, staffed with more self-righteous buffet-grazers.
The goal of these people is clearly summarized in the following link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/17/who-unleashed-climatism/
George Devries Klein, PhD, PG, FGSA
They are following the same script as Obamacare. It was never about health care. It is about stripping control from private drug companies to government.
It was designed to fail so the government could step in and take control:
UnitedHealth says Obamacare is costing it billions
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/unitedhealth-says-obamacare-is-costing-it-billions/ar-BBou9kc?ocid=spartanntp
Taking control of Big oil is an ominous task. The framework is now in place to bankrupt big oil and take government control
I meant private insurance companies, but the drug companies will suffer the same fate.
Too many people here are as reliant on conspiracy ideation as they are on breathing. If Dr curry is not embarrassed by her supporters then GT should be.
Correction: Dr Curry
It’s not a conspiracy it’s in your face. Read ‘The Devils’ written by Dostoyevsky. The carnage they reap is their reward.
1. If United Health Care is losing money it should withdraw from the ACA.
2. If the federal gov influences drug prices it may end up like ..I dunno.. Australia (my country) or (god help you) Canada. NNNOOOOOOoooooo!
Use your head rebvds. United Healthcare is threatening to withdraw to get the gubmint to fork over money to make up for their losses That’s what they were promised to pretend to go along with ACA. If the U.S government screws the U.S. pharmas like the secondary market nations do, who is going to spend billions to develop new drugs?
Donnie Baby there is no alternative to Romneycare / ACA. It will not be repealed and replaced because to do so would be suicide for the ’18 mid terms..
It will politicise the lazy millions who have never previously bothered to queue on a Tuesday for hours in their own interests. Think Kentucky.
As for making Big Pharma pack its bags fogetaboutit.
Australia forces drug makers to a price point if they wish to be subsidised under our spectacular Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and they are all happy to do it. When a wonder drug is invented (Hep C) it will allow the market to decide the price for many years before it is adopted under the PBS. The same would apply in the US I am sure.
Donnie If all goes to plan, 2018 will deliver a Yuuuge majority to Democrats in the House and the Senate. Take it as read that a legislated
Public Option will stop United Health from winging about its so called “losses”
Don
Appears that redbbs is shooting from the hips, his bullets intended to wound the free market system and capitalism, a soldier for socialism!
Richard
Yes Richard, little red bvds is a naive utopian dreamer. The enlightened socialist gubmints can just mandate that the big corporations charge fair prices to consumers, pay all the little deadwood unionist drones living wages with long vacations & other uneconomic perks, submit to confiscatory taxation and everybody will be equal, well-cared for and as happy as little socialist clams can ever be, until the inevitable collapse.
The socialist compulsion to manage markets and the necessity to fund pandering social spending with high taxes, borrowing, QE, low interest rates will be coming home to roost. Chronic and massive inter-temporal smoothing is not sound economic policy. Money spent on current consumption can’t be spent in the future.
The world has a yuuuge debt overhang. The debt from the last financial crisis has only increased. Competitive devaluation is underway. I been telling you all to short China. The brakes are on the world economy. This could be the big one. Can Hillarity or Bernie Sanders help us?
Don Monfort,
“If the U.S government screws the U.S. pharmas like the secondary market nations do, who is going to spend billions to develop new drugs?”
Exactly…takes mucho dinero to develop new drugs. When my lefty friends, and I do love them anyway, whine about big pharma I tell them to buy their stock. I’m sure the government employee union pension funds own lots of pharma stock. OTOH, they could boycott big pharma products and save us all some tax money that would have funded their rich health benefits.
What is missed is that groups who challenge their country for moving too slowly have to put up a credible plan for a faster transition to demonstrate some tangible area of negligence. Urgenda has a plan for 100% sustainable energy for the Netherlands by 2030. When you have alternative plans that you can compare and combine, you are making progress. If you want less litigation, you need to see what the fossil fuel companies are doing when they put their own profit margins up against the global good. The background presence of a global agreement now provides a way to counter those by giving governments more credibility as they progress towards effective decarbonization, and takes away the commonly used pre-Paris argument that it is just an ineffective national policy that won’t amount to much in global terms.
Yes government control is on the assent. They will eventually take over big oil or shut it down like big coal. Big government people don’t care how much people suffer under their designed fail programs. All they care about ultimately is control. Ignorance of this fact is how they will control people.
Some of your people think it is a grassroots movement and some think it is big government. These are contradictory. You need to figure out how you want to classify a scientifically recommended action on behalf of the least well off nations.
Who is “your people”?
The ones who distrust scientists.
The grass roots movement was just a tool used by government. Ala Hansen under the bus. The ignorance comes in believing government cares about least well off nations.
It is not about government. It is about climate change and what to do about it. Most have moved on to that question instead of the, let’s just say, “stuff” we see here.
Ignorance is bliss!
Hey JimmyD, when you say “The ones who distrust scientists”, you do realize you are making that comment on a blog published by an actual climate scientist, yes? You know, someone who’s done decades of work in the field and holds a position of actual authority and is recognized as an expert? Just checking.
You also make a truly daft statement about “oil company profits” being pursued at the expense of some mythological goal you set. You see, Jim, we live in what’s called a “free” society. People are free to own themselves and property – I know, this is a shock to you. And people tend to pursue their best interests and returns for their efforts and capital.
In this free society, we have a govt that is elected by the people, and they get to make the decisions about policy via the representatives they elect. And in this country, we have decide to not pass laws based on the fervid mania of catastrophic AGW hysterics. Too bad – you lose. That’s democracy – if you don’t like it, nobody cares.
It’s not going to get better for you. As the models just become less and less predictive of anything, your cronies in the AGW biz are pulling their last gasp gambits – actually faking and juking the data. Already, the perfidy at work is being uncovered via FOIA requests and other oversight. It will take time but just as in the emails of “ClimateGate”, we will figure out just how badly we are being lied to. The ridiculous, “Where in the world is Waldo hiding the warming – ah, it’s over here” game is another short run gambit that will not last for long either.
Within 3 years, there will be nothing left to hide behind. You maniacs have already lost all your credibilty due to lying and bullying and hysteria and ugly politics. We don’t believe you or them anymore, and will not play along anymore. You seem to think climate activists are the only ones who can play hardball. Did you miss that under Obama, the right has swept into power in the majority of statehouses in the nation? And in congress? We are very likely to elect a right wing POTUS – what, do you think this madness will continue.
Enjoy your final days of denial and LARPing on the web, believing you are a warrior for “climate justice” – just know the rest of us think you are a joke. We aren’t going to argue with you anymore, we are just going to take power away from you. What – do you think Merkel is going to last much longer? She’s about to be run out of town on a rail. Wake up, it’s over. You’d better get used to it. Maybe Black Lives Matter needs some help…
There is alot of backlash anger out there politically Scribble. The backlash phenom has dominated American politics for quite some time. bush was a backlash to Clinton, BO a backlash to Bush. I’m not convinced the GOP can provide the leadership to point the ship in the right direction. They have control of congress and still managed to allow a 5 year extension on rebates for alternative energy. They are in on the ruse.
I trust more in the high probability of a significant economic downturn reprioritizing what works in first world nations than I do bad political choices.
What a juvenile analysis. Yes, politics are dynamic and cause has an effect. Yawn. Populism and nationalism are on the rise on the right due to overreach by incompetent and power-mad Progressive-Marxists who are also dishonest about their agendas. The rise of the right is in part a reaction to this. And of course they won’t make all good decisions, nor do I support them wholeheartedly. But they won’t go along with things like the Paris COP. As for your economic commentary, ah downturns don’t stop politics but yes they effect them. We’ve been an economic downturn for some time actually.
Why thank you. I’d love for my juvenile thoughts to erase a few decades. I’d get to apply the obvious at a far younger age.
> She’s about to be run out of town on a rail.
Join the bandwagon!
***
> Maybe Black Lives Matter needs some help…
A fascinating concatenation.
scribblerg, I think that there are many people here who distrust the science on climate change, and instead take a position of not understanding why it is warming at all. They are very puzzled by Paris and why the rest of the world has moved on to attacking climate change instead of denying that it is important. It’s an odd view, but I think you will find that people here have that when you question them as I have. Try it. So, bottom line, they distrust the scientists. I don’t know why, but there it is. Most other scientific societies, industries, the military, and the public have moved on to solving problems, but you do still find a few shouting at them for trying to do anything on climate instead.
Knutes, the Republican powers-that-be in Congress allowed the extension of the subsidies, the Planned Parenthood, Obamacare funding and just about everything else that Obama et al. wanted to avoid a veto of the spending bill, which would have resulted in them being blamed for another so-called government shutdown. The theory is it’s better to keep the decks clear for a Republican winning the Presidency. They can undo all of it next year, with The Donald leading the way. Of course, they were hoping for one of their own boys to win. But that ain’t happening. They’ll get over it.
> another so-called government shutdown.
When was the other so-called government shutdown?
Speaking of so-calling, there’s no mention of da paws on the thread.
The GWPF seems to take that one back too:
http://www.thegwpf.com/nasa-noaa-and-uk-met-office-show-el-nino-boosted-2015-temp/
ordvic quite reasonably asks Jim D….”who is “your people”‘
JIm D. answers “The people who distrust scientists?”
I’ve missed this place..
(aka pg)
Why can a government shut down be “so-called”?
During the 2013 shutdown less than 1/3 of employees were furloughed and they got payed, although 2-3 weeks late. And the effects to GDP were negligible. Previous so called shutdowns had similar or less effect
Richard
@JimD
An awful lot of us ‘your people’ are scientists. It’s specifically climate scientists that most of us have and issue with, as most of them do not appear to understand how science itself should practiced. Our wonderful hostess excluded of course. Also most of us do not work for big oil, many of us are not right wing and quite a few of us are quite green. It’s your own ideation that’s at fault here. Not that of the notional group about which you complain.
I’ve come up with the new democratic ad campaign.
So, here’s the campaign ad: Dodd-Frank leaves little place left for lending other than to oil production channeling QE to US oil production, formation of ISIS concentrates radicals in one region giving Iraq the breathing room it needs to get production up, Iran nuke deal boost supply and brings stored reserves online. Obama oil boom.
Just need to figure out how he caused the China slow down.
Urgenda is using Santa Claus as their energy consultant.
Assisted by the Energizer Bunny.
> … a credible plan for a faster transition to demonstrate some tangible area of negligence. Urgenda has a plan for 100% sustainable energy for the Netherlands by 2030
There we are again, Jiminy Doodlebug. Please demonstrate exactly how the Urgenda hyperbole is a “credible” plan … remember that actual power supply is not some silly hypothesis; it is applied science, aka engineering
[I have quite a large bet that the Doodlebug will give no substantial answer here]
Urgenda didn’t get their 100% because the court ruled for 25% which was still above what the Dutch were on course for. So they had an effect, but I wouldn’t call it a win.
Most of the economic growth going forward will not be in the developed world, but rather the undeveloped world which is reticent to change. Now, with economic development, they too will have declining CO2 emissions ( and falling populations ), so the situation is not dire by any means.
But imagine that the world really thought that CO2 was a problem. If some nations didn’t comply, would there, could there be a first CO2 war?
If CO2 is really a problem, shouldn’t one invade those countries and confiscate their coal mines? and cars? and big screen TVs?
Would make a good movie.
What we really have to recognize and fight are the powerful control freaks. Politicians and bureaucrats, the rich and powerful leaders of companies who find the more they know about us, the more money they can make. In the not too distant future, even without a “device,” we will be tracked like never before. From the article:
…
As the technology becomes ever more penetrating and intrusive, it becomes possible to gather information with laser-like specificity and with sponge-like absorbency. If we think about the information gathering net as being parallel to a fishing net, then the mesh of the net has become finer and the net wider.
It is easy to get carried away with science fiction fantasies about things that might happen. But looking just to the next decade we will likely see technical developments with implications for personal privacy such as the following:
DNA screening and monitoring. Beyond identifying persons likely to develop serious illnesses or to have children at risk of illness, this may lead to claims to identify tendencies to alcoholism, homosexuality, and poor work habits
Vehicle tracking devices as part of “intelligent” highway systems
Personal tracking devices via chips implanted under the skin (this is now available for pets)
Pressure to use “smart cards” which could contain all of an individual’s health, financial and legal records
The expanded commercial use of spy satellites, capable of producing photographic images of a square meter or less
Smart image-recognition systems which could permit computer matching of faces in large crowds in an effort to locate persons of interest
Wireless portable personal communication devices in which persons might be assigned a phone number at birth which they would be expected to also have with them and ever smarter telephones that deliver video images and information about the person (or the number a call comes from)
Paperless electronic safety deposit boxes
Ever more intense work monitoring
Smart homes in which data (electricity, communications, temperature) flows into and out of the home are all part of an integrated system
The increased use of the internet and of various locator devices (e.g., one called “cookies” that keep a record of what sites are visited and what information is accessed)
The head of a computer database company providing reports on potential tenants to landlords says, “the more you know about somebody else, the better off everybody is.” The assertion, typical of a view held by many persons in the United States ignores the strategic, aesthetic, diplomatic and self-definitional aspects of personal information. It is increasingly easy to know “more” about others without their knowledge or consent. Technology creates new possibilities for the invasion of privacy and other problems which our laws, policy, manners and culture have not kept pace with.
…
http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/privantt.html
And then there’s this which has already happened:
…
Navigation-and-emergency-services company OnStar is notifying its six million account holders that it will keep a complete accounting of the speed and location of OnStar-equipped vehicles, even for drivers who discontinue monthly service.
OnStar began e-mailing customers Monday about its update to the privacy policy, which grants OnStar the right to sell that GPS-derived data in an anonymized format.
…
http://www.wired.com/2011/09/onstar-tracks-you/
What we have to recognize and fight are the politicians, bureaucrats, and the rich and powerful leaders of high tech. They all gain control of our lives by techniques that rob us of our privacy. From the article:
…
s the technology becomes ever more penetrating and intrusive, it becomes possible to gather information with laser-like specificity and with sponge-like absorbency. If we think about the information gathering net as being parallel to a fishing net, then the mesh of the net has become finer and the net wider.
It is easy to get carried away with science fiction fantasies about things that might happen. But looking just to the next decade we will likely see technical developments with implications for personal privacy such as the following:
DNA screening and monitoring. Beyond identifying persons likely to develop serious illnesses or to have children at risk of illness, this may lead to claims to identify tendencies to alcoholism, homosexuality, and poor work habits
Vehicle tracking devices as part of “intelligent” highway systems
Personal tracking devices via chips implanted under the skin (this is now available for pets)
Pressure to use “smart cards” which could contain all of an individual’s health, financial and legal records
The expanded commercial use of spy satellites, capable of producing photographic images of a square meter or less
Smart image-recognition systems which could permit computer matching of faces in large crowds in an effort to locate persons of interest
Wireless portable personal communication devices in which persons might be assigned a phone number at birth which they would be expected to also have with them and ever smarter telephones that deliver video images and information about the person (or the number a call comes from)
Paperless electronic safety deposit boxes
Ever more intense work monitoring
Smart homes in which data (electricity, communications, temperature) flows into and out of the home are all part of an integrated system
The increased use of the internet and of various locator devices (e.g., one called “cookies” that keep a record of what sites are visited and what information is accessed)
The head of a computer database company providing reports on potential tenants to landlords says, “the more you know about somebody else, the better off everybody is.” The assertion, typical of a view held by many persons in the United States ignores the strategic, aesthetic, diplomatic and self-definitional aspects of personal information. It is increasingly easy to know “more” about others without their knowledge or consent. Technology creates new possibilities for the invasion of privacy and other problems which our laws, policy, manners and culture have not kept pace with.
The increased availability of personal information (whether in audio, visual, telemetric), bio-chemical, or data base forms is a tiny strand in the constant expansion of knowledge witnessed in the last two centuries and of the centrality of information to the working of contemporary society.
As a sociologist, my research interest is in the new technologies and questions and themes these raise about the individual and society. Beyond any given technology, this reflects a more general interest in the discovery/revelation and concealment/protection of personal information. Under what conditions is it appropriate to gather personal information and what are the social correlates and consequences of revealing or concealing it? A morality for the collection of personal data ought not to depend on how weak or powerful a means is, but on more transcendent ideas about what is right and wrong and the social consequences.
…
http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/privantt.html
Test …
We also need to fight politicians, bureaucrats, and “captains of industry” who continually snoop on us for their own gain and good.
Here’s a good writeup on that:
http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/privantt.html
Who represented the Islamic State in Paris, and is the Paris agreement really a pledge of allegiance to them?
I think that was Monckton.
Can’t reply to your tedious sermonizing upthread so I’ll do so here. You actually have no idea who is commenting here and what their qualifications are as “scientists” may be. Often the commentary leaves me with the impression that more than a few scientists comment here. Second, in classic sophist fashion, you move the goalposts on my comment – you are claiming that this blog contains many people who oppose “scientists” when it’s the blog of a real, notable climate scientist. It’s quite an arrogant thing for you to say. You want to do that on some other sites run by amateurs? Go right ahead, but here you don’t get to dismiss this site as anti-science, bunky. I actually don’t comment here much because I’m not a scientist. I have been trying deeply to understand climate science since maybe 2001 and frankly, I’ve come to distrust the IPCC (based on lots of data), Hansen. Mann and others.
One of the big moments for me came around 2007. I had seen Gore’s climate movie debunked thoroughly and him not even attempt to defend it publicly, yet ran into a Sierra Club or GreenPeace or some other NGO activist at a party in NYC where he told me that he traveled around giving a presentation on climate change, using An Inconvenient Truth. We had been having a nice convo about climate change, I was sharing careful skeptical thoughts, but since he was a scientist, I was deferring to him and actually trying to learn. Contrary to what guys like you think, Jim, skeptics like me are not morally defective. If catastrophic AGW were true, I’d be voting for very extreme measure, as would many of us. I actually was kind of psyched be talking to this guy.
But when he mentioned Gore’s propaganda movie, I replied by asking, “You do let the audience know that there are at least 12 major falsehoods/mispresentations in the movie, right?” Now listen closely Jim – this is what’s called intellectual corruption. He replied, “Of course, the movie is mostly a joke. But we have to get people motivated and hey, they don’t understand any of this stuff anyway.” I nearly punched him in the face. Our conversation ended quickly as he could tell I was stunned and outraged by his elitist acquiescence to using propaganda, overtly, even though he knows it’s inaccurate.
I found this view more and more common as I continued to press in on AGW hysteric blogs etc. Many of them claimed that the issue was so important, that getting public support was so crucial, that lying along the way was permitted.
My guess is that you’d agree with such a statement. This was also capped off by the CRU and other emails revealed and the ongoing scandals, one of which is nicely summarized here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11367272/Climategate-the-sequel-How-we-are-STILL-being-tricked-with-flawed-data-on-global-warming.html
I’m under no intellectual or moral obligation to trust any AGW hysteric after these and many other incidents of perfidy. And the masses have kind of figured this out too, hence why public policy simply will not follow the path AGW hysterics hector us to hew to nonstop. Your “side” has lost it’s public credibility. I know, it’s confusing for you because in the echo chamber of some parts of academia and our current Marxist govt (and if you don’t know Obama is a Marxist all that means is that you don’t understand what Marxism is or Obama’s well documented adherence to Marxist ideals – ex: Why did he insist as condition of his guest lecturer slot at Univ of Chicago that he teach Critical Legal Theory, an overt Marxist deconstruction of the law?).
You see, Jim, what’s really going on is that you are not as smart as you think. We are not all defective dummies who have been duped. I’d bet half the commenters here have close to or over genius IQs. So, move along now, you preening babbler You and your ilk have been weighed, counted and measured, and found wanting.
scribblerg, what you have said is just the common pablum based on Gore’s AIT movie and Climategate. Gore is not a scientist, but did his best and others have produced documentaries since with barely a peep from the “skeptics”, but they still want to talk about AIT. The excerpts of emails in Climategate were about very little that was central to AGW anyway. People suspected Jones’s temperature record, but in the end duplicated his work. People suspected Mann’s reconstruction, but later paleo efforts still show a hockey stick now extending even further back. Go to AR5 WG1 and question what is in there. You won’t concede that even just maybe the century-old science that says increased GHGs easily account for all the warming (most probably not even realizing that this was the a priori assumption of Lewis and Curry), and that is despite the lack of any rival ideas to cling to. It’s just all shouting with no substance, and it shows.
Malthusians always sow the seeds of their own failure. (Or fail to sow, lol?) They need for things to “collapse” as proof that they are right. So they engineer failure.
Who really believes that the motives of the AGW crowd is the prosperity of the many?
Thankfully, there are billions of Chinese, Indians and Africans who are tired of failure, and want want something better for their children.
The West is becoming irrelevant in the world.
Thanks Judy for posting such a provoking article. It is esp exciting to peer into the cognitive dissonance of some of your posters such as JimD. His pov reflects much of the 18 to 35 mindset who have bought into the social justice measure of the society they envision.
In his book, True Believers written decades ago, Hoffer pointed out that much of the masses are fearful of the life they see in front of them and indeed the more fearful are those ones who have tasted the good life only to have had it slip thru their fingers. The other most susceptible group to mass movements are once prominent professionals who fell out of favor and sought new relevance. The truly poor have no time for meanderings concerning the fear of the future as their day to day struggle preoccupies their meager lives.
Far too many of our educated young adults are willing to blindly subjugate the current system for the social justice utopia they envision. Perhaps living thru the trials and tribulations of their choices will morph the current vision that possesses the thinkspeak.
Or, perhaps the end of the greatest economic boom in history will correct it for them.
The once prominent middle-class blue collar workers probably view Donald Trump as an Abraham Lincoln figure. From the article:
…
About 20 percent of likely Democratic voters say they would buck the party and vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in a general election, according to a new poll.
…
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/265330-some-dems-would-defect-for-trump-poll-shows
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZN0CKWXEAE1QVt.jpg
How ironic, in an era of global warming, a snowstorm. Whatever will Hollywood do? They aren’t even pretending to be politically correct. Was there some other criteria they used?
Please look up the meaning of ironic and the meaning of climate change.
Huh? I thought it was called global warming. Have you recently changed the name?
What’s climate change? Is that anything like global warming?
If bloggers are troubled by the profits that capitalism or free enterprise produce, they should elaborate their worries.
There is a misconception, a myth, that such profits go mainly into the pockets of rich people. In real life, profits are mainly directed to expansion of the business (that creates new jobs). Sure, some of the profit is sent off to shareholders. These days much shareholding is by institutions such as banks, insurers, pension funds. In turn these institutions invest their profits into expansion and to shareholders.
The feature to note is that corporations with shareholders are a large part of the financial system; and the directors and managers make the main decisions.
People tend to be enriched rather than made poorer by such decisions, as history shows over and over.
One theme of Paris was an attempt to reduce this power to make decisions and to place the power with unelected people who will generally have much less experience in the creation of wealth for the general good. Climate change is little more than a vehicle being used to destroy the capitalism for reasons that are unclear given communistic failures all through history.
Geoff.
Oh Schumpeter! Innovation rules. )
I’m not troubled by capitalism, but I am troubled by corporate welfare. I am troubled by the Digital Millennium Act and how it prevents people from repairing devices and equipment they bought and (should) own. I am troubled by the continual expansion of copyright laws, now spanning a century or more. I am troubled by US jobs being taken by various foreign worker programs. 11% of us have given up finding a job. Wages for the middle class are stagnant. Economies around the world are sagging, and this after trillions spent by government attempting to prop up the economy. And finally, I am troubled that our individual liberty is being usurped by government and intrusive technology, some of which is forced upon us by government.
**********
Think about that. The largest, wealthiest, most powerful organizations in the world are on the public dole. Where is the outrage? Back when I was young, people went into a frenzy at the thought of some unemployed person using food stamps to buy liquor or cigarettes. Ronald Reagan famously campaigned against welfare queens. The right has always been obsessed with moochers. But Boeing receives $13 billion in government handouts and everyone yawns, when conservatives should be grabbing their pitchforks.
**************
http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/03/14/where-is-the-outrage-over-corporate-welfare/#2715e4857a0b1cda6ccf6881
You might want to look at the recent Pew Center report on the splintering of the middle class. I’ve summarized it here (http://www.resilientus.org/crisis-of-the-middle-class-solutions/).
Nice piece John.
FYI – McCrystal graduated from the same HS as my brothers and I.
Interesting article, John. The mandatory year in the military is interesting. But the call for more emphasis on education follows how many similar calls over a large number of years for the same?
The global elite fear Trump. They say they are afraid that Trump will squash trade. But really, they are afraid he will make them use US workers and throttle back their trampling of our privacy.
But he also might simplify the tax system and lower the corporate tax. From the article:
…
If Donald Trump as president of the United States is the ghost that’s stalking Davos, many among the global elite hope he’ll be banished by spring. Others see that as wishful thinking.
…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/trump-fear-stalks-davos-as-elite-pray-for-spring-reality-check
Note how the linked-to paper has the wrong date on it – a January classic.
This paper seems real important in what it warns against. I have already elevated Investigative Science Journalism, ISJ, as its proper counter-power, and a bit scary, found this profession is fledgling still (in its mainstream existence). It hasn’t organized for example. SJ and IJ have, and they seem to take care of mere dissemination and outright fraud, two extreme-points on a broad spectrum, with broad in-between ISJ in lack of support somehow.
This is not strictly related to the issue of this post (national sovereignty) but I think it has some relevance, as it’s all about GHG policy.
One of the most striking things when reading the ‘warmer’ side, at least those on the science end (meaning those that blog about sea levels, forcings and so on), is that they almost never propose anything specific. The usual tactic is to show a graph of rising temperatures and solemnly declare that something must be done. Gee, thanks for the info – now WHAT must be done by whom?
On the one hand it is understandable that a person covering the science side of things may be reluctant to get involved in policy. But then a lot of those on the science end people DO get involved in politics/policy, e.g. this guy declares that the first step to solving climate change is not voting for any Republican candidate.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/hottest-year-on-record/
(Conveniently avoids mentioning that none of the Republicans have vowed to phase out CO2-free nuclear, unlike Sanders).
So they’re not really politics-phobic, are they? More likely, these people know that, even if the target is a reduction of CO2 emissions, the policies proposed/adopted by most countries so far (usually by governments ‘on their side’ politically speaking) are nonsense. Their reluctance to discuss the nuts and bolts of policy is really a reluctance to criticize people on their side.
This post could get very long if I discussed everything that’s wrong with GHG-reduction policies so let me give just one example. Here in EU about fourteen million regulations related to emissions from electricity use have been passed. Efficiency standards for appliances, for lightbulbs, net metering, feed-in tariffs, mandates about how much electricity must come from CO2-free sources, or how much must be renewable, or how much storage we must have, or how much non-pumped-hydro storage, etc. (Every time someone says ‘if we continue to do nothing…’ I feel like punching the screen).
And it’s all completely pointless because emissions from electricity generation are ALREADY CAPPED!
Yes dudes, there is this thing called the European Emissions Trading Scheme – it’s only been around for, um, eleven years! Oh, and it includes manufacturing as well as power generation, plus airlines if I remember correctly. And while in theory regulations could independently drive emissions below this cap, then the question arises: why don’t you just lower the cap?! In fact, if emissions become significantly lower than the EETS cap then the latter is useless.
If the EETS is an epic fail then the solutions is to abolish it, reform it, improve it or something. Not to throw another fourteen million regulations on the pile.
So as this post argues, even if one wants to reduce GHG emissions, there is a lot wrong with current policies.
There is another ‘Trojan Horse’ in the Paris Agreement. The threshold for dangerous warming has now been set at 1,5 ᵒC. This opens the door for loss/damage claims from developing countries for any weather related event, irrespective its cause (e.g. flooding due to poor local water management).
Oh how the mighty have fallen:
The Coal Miner ‘On Everybody’s List’ as Next Bankruptcy Victim
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-coal-miner-%e2%80%98on-everybody%e2%80%99s-list%e2%80%99-as-next-bankruptcy-victim/ar-BBouzhz?ocid=spartanntp
Om my God. What have our politicians let us in for? This is scary!
This raise a huge risk, much bigger than climate change, it is the North Korea risk.
When young like most french I believed that problems were caused by bad engineering, and individual bad decision that should be made better by centralized goodwilling ethical decision… maybe not political, but good engineering by experts.
then with age i have seen how groupthink can develop corporate stupidity to unbelievable level. And recently, not only with climate (with nuclear physics and cosmology), I have seen how academic system is victim of the same deliria as politicians, economists, and corporate executives.
the solution is very simpl, it is LOCAL FAILURE, and GLOBAL DIVERSITY.
I have also seen the good side of businesses who whan facin a problems battle to death to offer the best solution to make money.
Some tried to block history, like the Tobacco industry, but this failed miserably, and now they follow the new model, like oil industry, like computer dustry, like finance industry, like politicians : they follow the wind , embrace, adjust and exploit the trends.
If companies compete to make the most for the cheapest, thay however LOVE to make things MORE EXPENSIVE, if their competitors cannot do else. this is why they love any regulation that for whatever good or bad reason, INCREASE COST.
House builder love energy saving standards, comfort minimum, surface standards, mandatory certification, ubarnization control, provided no competitor can do else.
Even if that make more homeless people, provided less houses are build but for bigger total budget.
Light Bulb makers love when the regulation forbid the cheaper filament bulb to push more expensive fluocompact or LED lighting, provided nobody can break the law and they can compete on same level as others.
REACH regulation, regulation of hoover power, are also loved by industrialists… Climate Change regulation, provided oil company can sell windmills, solar panel, carbon storage, biofuel, are also a way to increase the cost of everything. Who cares what you do, provided you can do it for more money.
Now this have limits, the scope of the regulation, because if we forbid anything cheap in US or EU, Chinese may compete on cheaper industry than us.
This is why most green, and even social-liberal like Jacques Atalli, promote a “World Government”.
When i was younger I would have applauded this genial idea to have the best of all people enforce the best of all regulation.
But today I know from experience that any organisation, especially one isolated from competition or alternative, can go totally crazy like North Korea.
I don’t want Planet earth to become a global North Korea.
I don’t want it to be France, or USA, or Russia either.
I want a planet where Putin can give lesson to Obama, and Obama to Hollande, and Hollande to Putin.
I want people free to choose between living in North Koreas, Russia, US, Syria, Indonesia, France, UK… free to make business respecting local laws, to enjoy local definition of human right, to marry who agree with.
This dream is dying.
Alain,
Putin has already given Obama a lesson. Showed to the world he is a pussy cat.
President Daffodil 44.
… decentralized climate policy-making by states, which should aim to achieve an ambitious collective objective of limiting global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C or even 1.5 °C.
Measured how?
HadCRU is the standard temperature measure. If you mean how is the impact of the proposed measures measured, they must have a standard model but I do not know which one it is. That is an interesting question.
The B&S piece is hyperbolic. The Paris Ageeement certainly provides a framework for activism, but there is nothing anti-democratic or unconstitutional (or new) about that, quite the contrary. Note too that the US has already set the precedent of filing absurdly wishful mitigation aspirations. No doubt this will become the norm. The real fight will continue to be at the National level.
The nation-state became obsolete in 1787.
Guess I missed it. Seems like everyone missed it as the world is full of them.
Full of entities calling themselves “nations”.
Agree. Hyperbolic article. Nothing legally binding here. Move along people.
Also if you don’t know what ECS is you don’t know how to get 1.5 or 2C cap in 2100.
I thought the glass bead game wasn’t supposed to come about until the 25th century. Now that it’s here we all should practice swimming for our lives.
“Non- hierarchal” until the next Antichrist discovers how easy it is to control the masses using co2 fears and regulations and enrich himself at the same time.
Recent conversation in hell:
“Hey Adolph.”
“Yes Joseph.”
“Do you see what’s going on up there?”
“Yeah, I know. We were born at the wrong time. We wasted so many bullets. We could’ve had it all handed to us on a silver platter!”
The Agreement has given all governments the social license to tax and regulate anything as long as it can be said to be climate change positive. The temperature goal will soon be the “fault” of the developing world, China and India in particular. The social license self-granted will allow economic actions under the guise of planetary necessity.
Climate activism has always been first world capitalist in ideology. There has never been a drive to reduce lifestyle quality by the leadership. This will not change. The “others” have to do the heavy lifting. If CO2 reduction by consumption cannot be effected, there is only one solution: shutting down the petro-states. Think about geopolitics without oil.
The COP21 agreement does little per se for the environment. But it does give 192 governments the social – and quasi-legal – license to brush pass domestic and international law akin to war measures acts.
Not an end in itself, but a multitool for making almost anything you might want. It will take a strong, almost revolutionary carpenter to change the output of this sorry workshop.
Douglas, you say “Climate activism has always been first world capitalist in ideology.” I do not see that. The UNEP and UNFCCC rhetoric always includes the need to curb “overconsumption and overproduction” in developed countries. Not my idea of capitalism.
The real thing to keep an eye on is the TPP, the potential enforcement mechanism, not necessarily the Paris agreement. Hopefully those in congress keep their eye on that ball that is the true Trojan Horse!
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/obama_will_use_tpp_to_enforce_his_climate_agreement.html
Whoa there, creepy TPP!
http://www.cfact.org/2015/12/31/trans-pacific-partnership-a-trojan-horse-for-obamas-climate-change-agenda/
Bomber Barry is an example of balance in nature: really thick people are given lots of self-belief and rat-cunning as compensation.
I find the Urgenda decision an aberation that is being appealed. And think the fears expressed by B and S, while legitimate from a purely legal perspective, are low probability. Green NGO’s have the legal,problemsmof standing and jurisdiction. That is why San Fransisco’s activist Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuits against the EPA (sue and settle strategy) concerning ocean acidification got nowhere. Judges also follow the law, and in constitutional democracies laws can be changed if needs be. In the US, a simple modification to the circular definition of an air pollutant solves the Mass. v. EPA problem permanently. 26 states are in court arguing the EPA’s CPP is unconstitutional over reach. A judge just rejected green activists necessity defense against criminal trespass blocking oil trains.
And so on.
Thanks for speaking some sense here.
Oh my – England is slated to fulfill the entire “pledge” for ALL the EU?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2016/1/20/fifty-shades-of-green.html
A law firm writes a paper that speculates, and it appears worried that groups (other than the US conservative groups) will use the courts to attempt to advance their agenda.
Does this law firm also write papers about the attack on the Constitution when, for example, states without standing in enforcement of Immigration Law file suit against the US Executive branch? Face it, courts are where battles for power are sometimes fought. This is part of the process laid out in the Constitution.
And Dr. Curry, you write “the Paris Agreement may require measures that are inefficient and ineffective in preventing climate-related damage. Neither the problem or the solutions for climate change should be regarded as irreducibly global.”
When each nation has filed its own INDC showing how they plan to reduce their own emissions, the UN clearly isn’t look at solutions as “irreducibly global”.
Most measures taken by governments, or by corporations or people for that matter, tend towards the inefficient and ineffective. For example, the US Congress over the last decade has been as ineffective as it possibly can, by failing to address (or for many to even admit) that climate change caused by greenhouse emissions is a genuine problem. Sen. McConnell tells other governments that Congress intends to do nothing about climate change, so don’t trust the US in its dealings on a treaty we signed on to? That’s a purposefully inefficient and ineffective approach to dealing with climate change. I hope he’s as successful in that as he was with limiting Pres. Obama to one term.
Climate change is a messy problem. There aren’t easy solutions once you go beyond the “emit less GHG”, but pre-worrying about carrying out our commitments to an international treaty being an assault on constitutions is slightly alarmist. If you admit climate change must be addressed, the bigger risk here at home is the number of state and national officials who deny it is a problem.
Except that climate change is not a problem that needs to be addressed, so Congress has been very efficient in not addressing it. Obama not so much. Killing coal is not efficient, quite the opposite.
How did you come to that conclusion and why are you so certain it’s not a problem?
I have been tracking the scientific debate since 1992. There is no evidence of GHG warming in the satellite record, beginning in 1978. None. It is not there. AGW is models all the way down.
David, you claim to have been tracking climate science. Regarding the satellite data – SOMEthing’s leading to a TLT warming of +1.23C per century trend globally. If you look at North Polar TLT trend, it’s +3.14C per century.
Add in the cooling trend also clear in the lower stratosphere ( -2.61C per century globally) and you have a pretty clear fingerprint of an increasing greenhouse effect.
All those measurements are here – just select appropriate channel and/or region: http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
And the greenhouse effect warms air, surface, ocean. They all show clear warming trends over the entire length of the respective records. For example, here’s what the science on ocean heat content is showing: https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
So David, what other change would cool the stratosphere while warming everything below it? Your answer will have to include the warming from greenhouse gases, you can’t just throw them away. Because even the changes in warming from CO2 increase has been measured.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
How did you come to that conclusion and why are you so certain it’s not a problem?
I’ve got some show and tell on this soon.
b fagan: states without standing in enforcement of Immigration Law file suit against the US Executive branch?
Has it been established that the states lack standing in the law suit that is before the Supreme Court now?
No. That is an issue the US has raised, on which it will likely fail. Cause states are incurring ‘real’ current economic harm. Issuing unentitled drivers licenses, welfare…
b fagan, repeated here is a comment I made on Climate Etc. in October 2015 concerning the EPA’s refusal to invoke Section 108 of the Clean Air Act to set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon dioxide.
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Here in the United States, the US Supreme Court has already ruled that mainstream climate science as embodied in IPCC 2007 AR4 is valid for purposes of implementing regulatory limits on US carbon emissions. The court did so in 2010 by upholding the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon pollution against the lawsuits which had been brought against the EPA after it had initially published the Endangerment Finding.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the EPA had properly followed its standard procedures for examining the scientific questions concerning the potential dangers to public health, to public safety, and to the environment posed by excessive concentrations of a pollutant, in this case CO2, in the atmosphere.
The court determined that under existing environmental law, the EPA is the agency of government which is assigned primary responsibility for determining if a threat to human health and the environment exists from the presence of a pollutant in the atmosphere, and for then devising a reasonably fair and reasonably effective regulatory framework for mitigating that threat once an Endangerment Finding has been published.
For purposes of regulating carbon emissions in the United States, IPCC 2007 AR4 is now the regulatory law of the land.
But despite this major victory in the courts, one which occurred five years ago, the EPA has not followed its normal practice for developing a fair and effective regulatory framework for regulating what the agency has identified as being a dangerous pollutant, carbon dioxide when present in excessive atmospheric concentrations.
If it had followed past practice, the EPA should have decided upon a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for atmospheric CO2 concentrations and should have then published a comprehensive plan for achieving that NAAQS. Such a plan would distribute the economic and social burdens of the necessary CO2 emission reductions fairly and equitably among all classes of CO2 emitters, and would appropriately recognize that CO2 is a well-mixed GHG on a worldwide scale and that America’s own contribution to worldwide reductions in CO2 emissions must be determined by an explicit policy decision which recognizes the realities of CO2 emission control on a worldwide basis.
What the EPA has done instead is to publish the Clean Power Plan, a plan which unfairly assigns primary action for mitigating America’s CO2 emissions to just one class of CO2 emitter, coal-fired power plants. It is a plan which falls well short of meeting the Obama Administration’s own stated goal of achieving a 28% reduction in US carbon emissions by 2025, a 32% reduction by 2030, and an 80% reduction by 2050.
The question naturally arises, why haven’t environmental activist organizations sued the EPA demanding that it follow past practice and set an NAAQS for carbon dioxide concentrations? Why haven’t Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders made a commitment to use the full legal authority of the EPA in forcing a dramatic reduction in America’s CO2 emissions, a goal which the EPA has unquestioned legal authority to pursue by virtue of the fact that an Endangerment Finding for carbon pollution has been published and has been successfully defended in the courts?
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b fagan, may I ask you address the final question posed in my October 2015 comment; i.e., why hasn’t the EPA used its full legal authority under the Clean Air Act to impose tight regulatory standards on all classes of America’s GHG emission sources, not just against a narrowly selected subset of those emission sources?
I would be very concerned special interests would be seeking ways around the Constitution to get their way. Very concerned.
Mr. Wojick, should the US stop fracking to prop up the coal industry? Or should we remove the expensive anti-pollution requirements that make coal burning more expensive here than in China, where their government admits the pollution is killing over a million a year?
Even without carbon emission limits, which are needed, coal was losing here in the US. Short of allowing it to be burned with no emissions control or management of the megatons of ash residue, coal is economically becoming a thing of the past – and it’s time. I’m not dismissing the benefits of coal historically, just as I don’t deny that horses and oxen were useful until they were superseded by mechanized transportation.
Yes, we should remove the bogus so-called anti-pollution (war on coal) regs that are killing the industry, especially the unjustified mercury, ozone transport and PM2.5 rules. Cheap gas did not kill coal. The anti-coal government push was already obvious in 2000, when the last wave of new power plants (200 Gigs worth) was built, all gas burners. Cheap gas had nothing to do with it. This is reckless green government power pure and simple.
Even without carbon emission limits, which are needed, coal was losing here in the US
That is a gross simplification. Declining percentage of coal fired generation has been due to several factors.
1) Age of existing plant – a significant number of coal fired generators are old (I believe 40+ years). Their ability to operate efficiently, particularly under new regulatory criteria, is declining.
2) Impact of low cost NG – as with older nuclear plants, the cost to switch has been facilitated by unexpectedly abundant and low cost NG.
3) New regulatory burden – not only CPP, but EPA limits on Mercury and particulates, have created at a minimum great uncertainty among generators over investing in new coal fired generation. Who is going to build a coal plant when you have no idea how much operating could cost in the future. That’s what helped stop nuclear in the US. Operators were looking at ever increasing regulatory burden, with no idea where it would end.
Coal would have likely lost generation share due to the first two points. However the last is proving to be the shot to the back of the head. I designed and purposeful action to kill coal generation.
Good Gaia,
As I sit here waiting for Snowbama, 15 years after the “End of Snow,” the ulterior motive of this scam is obvious up here in the cheap seats.
It stuns me how our social superiors are unable or unwilling to recognize the corruption of their own peers before it’s too late
It’s too late now.
I’ll put on my tin foil hat and pray.
Just like yesterday.
We are all fooled again.
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I languish in the halls of capitalism where there is a belief that one can predict the future; hence, optimism that one can step ahead of everyone else and better one’s self.
I do not believe I am alone. Nor, do I believe, there are any safe decisions. I am warier, but , nevertheless, not more cautious. Such is the risk taker: keeping my retirement funds in stocks and hoping that I have made the right decision. There are no “sure bets.”
Thus the signatures to Paris agreements believe their view is certain:
” in demanding that the signatories concede that their efforts are inadequate, the Paris Agreement paves the way for the new international climate governance.”
Failures on the part of others, guarantees their own success. Missing in such calculations is: serendipity; the unexpected, the out-of-the-blue result.
This is my bet: the warmists, who expect the world’s countries to fail to meet their obligations, will themselves fail as their leverage, guilt, will fail to move the dial towards economic suicide. The more people know of the consequences of say, renewable energy, the more they move away from such enterprises, which in turn, fail financially.
The great economic reckoning.
My bet, with all my resources says, the future is uncertain and that in such cacophony, a better world will emerge.
This is what we’ve been saying all along. But this is specific, well researched and utterly condemning.
Bravo!
This approach is currently being used in the US by the Sierra Club filing “friendly” or “sue and settle” lawsuits against the EPA – which the EPA is only too anxious to settle.
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2014/05/24/sierra-club-sues-epa/
Their target now is coal plants and their method is working.
These are indeed scary times. The green mobblob is metastaising while the general population sleeps, and too many simply will believe pretty much anything Obama, Al Gore, or Hillary says.
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Big, big deal this paper…. We need to keep a close eye on what plays out.
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