Thread: climate change and the ETS

A few interesting points have been made in the past (I'll try and find the links) which assess the similarity between godless (agnostic) environmentalism and faith-based religion. The point being that environmentalism can become a form of scientific-deity in order to provide greater purpose to life.

I'm not talking about all environmentalists, lol, but a lot of it is very interesting.

One link that comes to mind was a speech by the late Michael Crichton (The author of Jurassic Park), attached below.

Environmentalism as Religion

Of further interest - and at first it may seem off topic, however I think they are closely aligned - is the following from the same speech;

There is no [environmental] Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? [i.e. that perceived by environmentalists] Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?

And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process. And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly: the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. Generations of hatred, tribal hatreds, constant battles. The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated, or learned to build their villages high in the cliffs to attain some measure of safety.

How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction.

This reminded me a great deal of the Aboriginals, and the fact that despite certain issues with white settlement, I would much rather be in Australia today than, say, 300 years ago. Furthermore, politically correct moralising about cultural beliefs such as the 'Dreamtime' are absurd - people who demand respect for that particular brand of backward nonsense should be lumped in with those who demand respect for the Scientologists and Raelians.

Sorry for what became an off-topic rant!

As for and ETS, in my humble opinion (and with the assistance of a bachelor's degree in economics & master's degree in finance) the scheme is a farce.

Mandating variable taxes (if I may be permitted to use the term) such as this with such an enormous amount of uncertainty is ridiculous, especially when ours is such a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of (potential) harmful material.

Terry McCrann (I hope I got his name right), an economics writer with The Australian, highlighted the absurdity of trying to predict the impact on economic growth for the next 40 years of climate change (and an ETS) when at the time of writing Treasury had altered it's forecast for the 6 months previously by 0.5%.

This is not to bag the economic wonder kids at Treasury, rather accentuate the extraordinary difficulty involved in any economic forecast.

It is not worth our time or money involving ourselves in this issue.

Originally Posted by Dmmos

A few interesting points have been made in the past (I'll try and find the links) which assess the similarity between godless (agnostic) environmentalism and faith-based religion. The point being that environmentalism can become a form of scientific-deity in order to provide greater purpose to life.

I'm not talking about all environmentalists, lol, but a lot of it is very interesting.

One link that comes to mind was a speech by the late Michael Crichton (The author of Jurassic Park), attached below.

Environmentalism as Religion

Of further interest - and at first it may seem off topic, however I think they are closely aligned - is the following from the same speech;



This reminded me a great deal of the Aboriginals, and the fact that despite certain issues with white settlement, I would much rather be in Australia today than, say, 300 years ago. Furthermore, politically correct moralising about cultural beliefs such as the 'Dreamtime' are absurd - people who demand respect for that particular brand of backward nonsense should be lumped in with those who demand respect for the Scientologists and Raelians.

Sorry for what became an off-topic rant!

That quote is talking about human life. Not the health of the planet. I don't think the majority of the worlds population are better off now than 300 years ago, perhaps we are, but even us, with it so easy, do we really have a better quality of life than those busy with surviving. Happiness is a state of mind, if none of us could drive foil fueled cars, do you think we would be any less happy if that was our reality, I don't think so, I think we'd enjoy whatever mode of transport we had more.
Just look with your own eyes, how many record breaking hot days have we had? How weird are the seasons and weather now? I don't need to waste time reading hours of biased opinions based pro or negative climate change. Better value placed on productivity, and material goods would make life more pleasureable,no more second rate perishable products driven by marketing lies, no more futile travel for the sake of it, more appreciation of stuff, due to it not being so easy, more energy put into planing travel and purchases.
There's more benefits to changing our ways than not, even if climate change is a farce.
The whole example of the carbon emissions being made by man is stupid. You can make anything look trivial, what about your individual existence, statisticaly you mean squat, but you think all your actions make a difference don't you? Carbon emissions are rising still, the population is growing faster than we can evolve to deal with the change, on so many levels. Individual rights must be sacrificed if we're going to keep breeding, simple as that.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

What I notice with the climate change debate, is that people will believe what they want to believe, and only trust in data that supports what they want to believe.

I presume you mean those on both sides of the debate do that ?

It's as though there's something else, more basic human psychology stuff, underlying all this. With the "believer" side it's as though the "protection" gene comes out - like we can never really conclusively prove this is going to happen but we should take all these measures anyway - just in case. On the "sceptic" side it's like there's a gene that gets activated whenever there's a threat that may reduce the freedom to do whatever you like, whenever you like.

A crystal ball is the only thing that will prove one side right or wrong.

Very interesting debate.

Originally Posted by 3 Sisters

That quote is talking about human life. Not the health of the planet. I don't think the majority of the worlds population are better off now than 300 years ago, perhaps we are, but even us, with it so easy, do we really have a better quality of life than those busy with surviving. Happiness is a state of mind, if none of us could drive foil fueled cars, do you think we would be any less happy if that was our reality, I don't think so, I think we'd enjoy whatever mode of transport we had more.
Just look with your own eyes, how many record breaking hot days have we had? How weird are the seasons and weather now? I don't need to waste time reading hours of biased opinions based pro or negative climate change. Better value placed on productivity, and material goods would make life more pleasureable,no more second rate perishable products driven by marketing lies, no more futile travel for the sake of it, more appreciation of stuff, due to it not being so easy, more energy put into planing travel and purchases.
There's more benefits to changing our ways than not, even if climate change is a farce.

With respect I think that both your argument's are totally wrong.

First of all, to say that the majority of the world's population is not better off than it was 300 years ago is a totally absurd argument. I'm not sure that you have thought properly about what you are saying. It feels nonsensical to try and provide a counter-argument, suffice to say that I assume you don't use any of the clearly silly products or techniques that have been developed over the last few hundred years.

Secondly, weather is not climate - different regions across the globe have had slightly higher temperatures, and slightly lower temperatures, constantly since around the dawn of time.

Cheers, Dave.

The fact that we can do better in the way we treat resources both finite and renewable quite frankly is apalling we can do much better BUT dont try to ram smelly brown sutff down my throat as gospal as the reason why we have to do better.

I am a sceptic, but a bloody well educated one, considering I teach global warming as part of what I teach to apprentices. The premis is faulty, one part opinion, one part self serving, one part limited scientific data, and one part wanting to do better.

Yay for doing better but please let go of my nether regions when stating opinion as fact in this debate.

We have hot days and we have cold days. I like to check the average temps for each day in the paper and they're all over the place so how they can state so forcefully that the climate is definitely warming I don't know.
It appears to me from reading a book published by "The Lavoisier Group" that most of the scientists on the IPCC have a very good reason for pushing the theory and that's that they rely on government funding to stay in employment.
They need idiot pollies like KRUDD and Gore with a massive entourages to keep flying around the World to conferences where nothing is agreed upon except where they'll have the next conference!
Don't forget that apart from the employment of the scientists, there's a huge conference industry, hotels, taxis, airlines, catering companies and probably many more who need this rubbish to continue.
I believe as ordinary people we all need to pollute as little as possible, industry needs to do the same, and Government could do it's bit by not flying around the World attending jollies or allowing it's vast hordes of bureaucraps to use the any reason to jet off on fact finding missions for things which could be researched on the internet.
If global warming/climate change is real, the reason can probably be found in the Earth wobbling on it's axis, something which has been going on since time began, not on the arthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Alan.

Global warming as far i can tell was first noticed by NASA using their weather sats but over the last 5/6 years those same sats have shown no rising in the global air or sea temp average that is the main reason why we hear about climate change but not global warming. Notice you very rarely hear that term from the pollys and the supporters of climate change seems that they changed the argument when the figures didnt support them. Strange a couple years ago if an industrialist suggested trying to manipulate the global/planetary weather he would have been hung drawn and quartered by the enviromental groups but now its ok