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Posted

The AGW zealots who make up every climate scientist not employed by the Koch Foundation apparently.

Except you clearly have no clue what the science says or does not say. Nor do you have any clue what "scientists" think. You form your opinion by listening to AGW fanatics in media who claim that all scientists support their view when such claims are demonstrably false. To see that you just need to read the IPCC WG1 report which is much more nuanced on the topic of climate sensitivity than the typical AGW lunatic.

IOW: you can repeat your falsehoods as much as you want. I personally will go back to the original sources and see what the sources say instead of relying on claims made by people with ulterior motives.

Posted

TimG believes in AGW, I think... he just... doesn't... I don't know what his concerns are anymore actually...

My concerns are politicians that will destroy the economy by increasing energy prices in a futile attempt to reduce CO2 emissions. We are seeing that happen in Ontario so this is not a hypothetical concern.
Posted

to advance implausible theories of low atmospheric sensitivity to carbon that are advanced by a small (less than 3%) contingent of climate researchers

Please define what you mean by implausibly low atmospheric sensitivity to carbon. What values of equilibrium climate sensitivity does this correspond to?

may only be acting from political and obvious financial motivations.

So disagree with climate change alarmism and you are probably funded by the oil industry, is that what you are suggesting?

Economics is as much of a science as psychoanalytic theory is a science! In both fields there are particular theories that explain absolutely everything...even when results don't match their predictions! As many physicists who are critics of new T.O.E.'s like String Theory point out, if a theory explains every result, then it actually explains nothing!

All you do here is restate your claim and go on to state that bad theories exist. Nothing here contradicts what I wrote.

Where do you get the idea that he thinks he's God?

I said he thinks he represents god on Earth. Why are you misrepresenting me?

your libertarian beliefs on economics and climate change are on the fringes of reality and fail any sort of real scientific testing

What are these 'libertarian beliefs on economics and climate change' that you claim I have? Please state some of them and explain how they are libertarian.

So, why isn't he fixing everything? If that's the question, it seems obvious that any reformist leader at the helm of a large, conservative organization with a deeply entrenched bureaucracy is going to have be pragmatic about making changes and not over-reaching.

Or he believes in a bunch of fairy tales, which he interprets to mean that birth control is immoral.

Posted

My first principle when dealing with technical issues that I do not and won't have the time to develop expert opinion on myself, is to go with the consensus of expert opinion....which doesn't look good for your side.

If my memory serves me correctly, the whole '97% consensus' thing is based upon a Cook et al 2013 study where the question asked some something along the lines of 'are you at least 95% certain that more than 50% of warming observed since 1950 is anthropogenic'. I won't even get into details over how not all of the people surveyed where climate scientists, and most did not have the scientific background to evaluate the question, because according to that criteria, I am also in the 97%.

What the alarmists do is spin this 97% 'consensus' for 1 aspect of climate change to mean that there is a 97% consensus by climate scientists that climate alarmism is correct. There are many questions regarding climate change and individual climate scientists may take different positions in each of them. Not only that, but the scientific method can't tell you what to do. So any climate alarmist that says 'the science tells us that we have to greatly reduce CO2 emissions or we are all doomed' doesn't understand the scientific method.

Posted
Not only that, but the scientific method can't tell you what to do

Of course it can. How many times do I have to experiment with gravity using an anvil, a ladder and someone's head to know what to do if I want to keep my subjects alive?

A government without public oversight is like a nuclear plant without lead shielding.

Posted

Of course it can. How many times do I have to experiment with gravity using an anvil, a ladder and someone's head to know what to do if I want to keep my subjects alive?

But that depends on you wanting to keep the subjects alive. The scientific method doesn't tell you that you should want your subjects alive. It's a tool that can help you determine what to do, but by itself it can't tell you want to do.

Posted

"Syndicalism" is capitalism where corporations are run to maximize profit for the owners which in this case are the workers. There is no material difference between a syndicate and a company where the workers own shares in the company.

From Wikipedia:

Syndicalism is a type of proposed economic system, a form of socialism, considered a replacement for capitalism. It suggests that industries be organized into confederations or syndicates. It is "a system of economic organization in which industries are owned and managed by the workers."

From Encyclopedia Britannica:

Syndicalism, also called Anarcho-syndicalism, or Revolutionary Syndicalism, a movement that advocates direct action by the working class to abolish the capitalist order, including the state, and to establish in its place a social order based on workers organized in production units.

Capitalism is where the means of production is owned by private individuals, the majority of whom are almost always not the workers of the company. Syndicalism is where the means of production is owned/controlled by the workers. Marxist-Leninism and its offshoots is where the means of production is owned/controlled by the state. All 3 are very different systems with very different economic, political, and social outcomes for the population.

"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain

Partisanship is a disease of the intellect.

Posted (edited)

Capitalism is where the means of production is owned by private individuals, the majority of whom are almost always not the workers of the company.

There is no material difference between "private individuals" and "workers of the company". In both cases you have a clearly defined set of people with exclusive ownership of an asset. In both cases, the owners seek to use the asset to maximum benefit for themselves. Quoting stuff from Wikipedia does not make the obvious similarities go away. If you really think there is a material difference between the two then explain why.

All 3 are very different systems with very different economic, political, and social outcomes for the population.

Marxism is quite different because of the centralized decision making. Syndicalism appears to be capitalism white washed with Marxist rhetoric.

Edit: Syndicalism is a completely implausible construct as written. The only way the gaping holes in the framework could be closed is if it reverted to either Marxism or full Capitalism with non-worker owners. So calling it a 'non-capitalist distributed decision making' model is a red herring.

Edited by TimG
Posted

There is no material difference between "private individuals" and "workers of the company".

Are you kidding? The distribution of profits and/or control within a business is completely different. Workers and unions rule all, private business owners (which would no longer exist) no longer have a monopoly on the distribution of profits and revenue within a business. There are no wages. Workers have democratic control over the economy and themselves decide how to distribute wealth to each other.

In a way, sounds like Marxist-Leninism turned on its head. Instead of the state owning and controlling everything via a dictatorship, workers own, control, and possibly even distribute everything via democracy (either direct democracy or elected worker representatives).

"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain

Partisanship is a disease of the intellect.

Posted (edited)

Are you kidding? The distribution of profits and/or control within a business is completely different.

Not at all. In both examples the owners get the profits. There is absolutely no difference between the two.

Workers have democratic control over the economy and themselves decide how to distribute wealth to each other.

Which means workers are owners of companies that will have to compete with other companies in order to maximum their personal benefit. Workers for companies producing critical goods will set the prices and collect relatively greater benefits for themselves while workers in non-critical industries will have to take the prices set for them and collect relatively smaller benefits. Sounds a lot like capitalism to me.

Instead of the state owning and controlling everything via a dictatorship, workers own, control, and possibly even distribute everything via democracy (either direct democracy or elected worker representatives).

The problem is you create a false dichotomy between "worker" and "private citizen". They are one in the same. The main difference between Syndicalism and what we have now is the naive assumption that companies magically appear from nothing. They don't. Someone has to invest money and take a risk and if that is the workers then then the initial set of workers that took the risks will want a greater benefit than those that came later which will recreate the management/worker divide. If the wages of workers are taken by a central authority that then invests in "new businesses" that are then given away to another set of workers then you are back to the Marxism model. Edited by TimG
Posted

But that depends on you wanting to keep the subjects alive. The scientific method doesn't tell you that you should want your subjects alive. It's a tool that can help you determine what to do, but by itself it can't tell you want to do.

I didn't ask it to tell me what I should want. You learn what to do if you want a certain outcome. I could use it the same way to help determine a range of different outcomes and what to do should I want a different outcome.

Of course the scientific method can tell me what to do. What I want is obviously a completely different matter.

A government without public oversight is like a nuclear plant without lead shielding.

Posted (edited)

Not at all. In both examples the owners get the profits. There is absolutely no difference between the two.

That's false and you know it. The difference is who the owners are.

Edited by Moonlight Graham

"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain

Partisanship is a disease of the intellect.

Posted (edited)

That's false and you know it. The difference is who the owners are.

In capitalism it does not matter who the "owners" are. Just that there are owners and the owners seek to maximize personal benefit from the asset. That is why I say there is no material difference. Syndicalism is just capitalism with a very specific framework for property ownership. Why do you think that non-worker owners is a fundamental aspect of capitalism? It makes no sense. Edited by TimG
Posted

TimG believes in AGW, I think... he just... doesn't... I don't know what his concerns are anymore actually...

According to Naomi Oreskes's history of climate change denial movements, the libertarian right was the first to note that dealing with rising man-made carbon emissions would require an effective, organized international effort.

So they began attacking the existence of global warming early. And as the AGW signal become clearer and clearer, the old excuses: conflicting satellite temp readings, solar activity, changes to Earth's axis, have fallen by the wayside, and the only excuse left standing is one offered up by the boys in Huntsville (Spencer & John Christie) advance an argument first proposed by Richard Lindzen - that as the lower atmosphere (troposphere) warms, cirrus clouds disappear and heat is vented into space....eventually....with all of their reams of math and charts, they're a little short on explanations for why this heat-venting effect cannot be determined yet, let alone how they can assure us that all of the heat trapped in the troposphere by rising GHG's will vent off into space!

The deniers have taken advantage of the fact that the planetary biosphere and oceans and atmosphere are complex interacting systems that are difficult to connect and predict results. One that they've seized upon is the intersection where natural forces and rising atmospheric carbon levels meet together. A major one being the last strong El Nino event in the Pacific and Indian oceans in 1997/98, which vented so much heat into the atmosphere that peak atmospheric temperatures were reached that led to slight declines in atmospheric temps in the succeeding years when the Pacific went back into a cycle of absorbing more heat than giving off. And that's where followers of UAH's contrarian climate research lab have been running around ever since telling us that "global warming peaked in 1998 and the Earth is cooling ever since," ....assuming that it will continue to cool off into the future.

Problem: late last year, ocean temperature monitoring stations in the western Pacific Ocean started noticing a rise in temperatures that were extending across the Pacific (for a couple of years there were false El Nino's as the heat was reabsorbed into lower ocean depths) to the east coast by winter. And, the ocean experts monitoring the Pacific are increasingly convinced that the clear El Nino that we are in right now, will continue on through next year and likely be much stronger than that 97-98 El Nino event. What does that mean for us on dry land? We are likely to see a whole lot more record temperatures this year and next, and we can say goodbye to the "global warming peaked in 1998" flim flam.

Problem is that the highly motivated rightwingers who want no international controls (except to guarantee copyrights and trade in products and services) are deadenders who will accept no evidence regardless of how conclusive! If they have concerns for the future, it's just some faint hope that it will all go away by itself, so they can go back to worrying about their money and investments.

Halfway to 2 C — According to NASA, We Just Blew Past an Ominous Milestone

2 C.

It’s the amount of warming past pre-industrial times that the IPCC says we should try to avoid this Century in order to prevent the worst consequences of human-caused climate change. It’s the so-called safe limit, even though there’s nothing really safe about it and we should probably be aiming more for a below 1.5 C target.

1 C.

It’s the amount of warming between pre-industrial times and, according to the latest data from NASA, the first half of 2015. In other words, temperatures during the first six months of 2015 are now at least halfway toward freeing some of the nastiest climate monsters in the closet.

* * * * *

According to NASA GISS, June of 2015 was tied with 1998 as the hottest of any June in the entire 135 year global climate record. Coming in at +0.76 C above NASA’s 20th Century average, June follows May at +0.73 C (4th hottest), April at +0.71 C (tied for 3rd hottest), March at +0.91 C (second hottest), February at + 0.89 C (hottest), and January at +0.81 C (2nd hottest).

Combined, these average out for a +0.80 C departure from the 20th Century in the NASA measure. That’s an extraordinary amount of heat — +0.18 C above 1998 levels and +0.05 C above 2014, which was the previous hottest year on record.

But, perhaps most importantly, this reading is the first consistent break at 1 C above 1880s levels. An ominous benchmark and halfway to the catastrophic 2 C warming we really, really want to avoid.

..........................................

Building El Nino Likely Means More Heat to Come

With the first six months of 2015 finished and with El Nino still strengthening in the Pacific, it appears that a record hot year may already be a lock. In addition, further warming may be in store.

The current El Nino appears to be roughly on a similar development track, as far as timing and possible intensity, to the 1997-1998 El Nino. Given this rough allegory, we are approximately at the same place, climatologically speaking, as July of 1997. During that event, global temperatures didn’t really start taking off into severe record high ranges until Fall of 1997 through Summer of 1998. If the ocean to atmosphere heat loading for the current event proceeds in similar fashion, we could expect to see even more extreme temperatures than we are currently experiencing by Fall and running on through at least the first season or two of 2016.

Looking toward July’s forecast, there is a bit of a caveat. That month is typically cooler globally due to a lessed impact of the greenhouse gas heat forcing. This is due to the fact that greenhouse gasses are concentrated most heavily in the Northern Hemisphere and such greenhouse gasses are most efficient at heat trapping during night time and winter. As such, we may see a bit of a dip in the July readings below June. But if this current El Nino gets involved as the models predict, it’s likely to be record-breaking heat that pushes some very ominous global temperature thresholds all the way through from August 2015 to at least early 2016.

Let’s just hope we don’t close too much more of the gap to 2 C. It’s really starting to get scary out there.

Links:

NASA GISS

GISTEMP

NOAA CPC

Anybody who believers exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

-- Kenneth Boulding,

1973

Posted (edited)

Marxism is quite different because of the centralized decision making. Syndicalism appears to be capitalism white washed with Marxist rhetoric.

No, you're conflating Stalinism with Marxism! Because Karl Marx's point was that the workers hired by a capitalist have to provide surplus value to the owner to maintain their jobs. Instead of handing off that surplus value (imagine the surplus value of the typical Walmart employee) the workers collectively own the enterprise and control all surplus value among themselves. The Marxist economist - Richard D Wolff has written and lectured on the subject of worker cooperatives, and favours the Mondragon system of worker co-ops that began in Spain in the 1930's, as the model for a Marxist workplace.

Links:

http://www.democracyatwork.info/articles/2014/02/hearing-on-worker-cooperatives-is-this-a-model-that-can-lift-families-out-of-poverty/

http://www.democracyatwork.info/articles/2012/12/the-work-experience-wsdes-vs-capitalism/

Edited by WIP

Anybody who believers exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

-- Kenneth Boulding,

1973

Posted (edited)

If my memory serves me correctly, the whole '97% consensus' thing is based upon a Cook et al 2013 study where the question asked some something along the lines of 'are you at least 95% certain that more than 50% of warming observed since 1950 is anthropogenic'. I won't even get into details over how not all of the people surveyed where climate scientists, and most did not have the scientific background to evaluate the question, because according to that criteria, I am also in the 97%.

What the alarmists do is spin this 97% 'consensus' for 1 aspect of climate change to mean that there is a 97% consensus by climate scientists that climate alarmism is correct. There are many questions regarding climate change and individual climate scientists may take different positions in each of them. Not only that, but the scientific method can't tell you what to do. So any climate alarmist that says 'the science tells us that we have to greatly reduce CO2 emissions or we are all doomed' doesn't understand the scientific method.

I'm looking over Cook's followup dealing with the AGW denying critics, and the consensus still looks accurate, while the counter-claims amount to little more than hairsplitting because the 97% don't agree on absolutely everything themselves.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-advanced.htm

Edited by WIP

Anybody who believers exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

-- Kenneth Boulding,

1973

Posted (edited)

No it's not. Read up on it.

I did read up on it and everything I found supports my view and I explained why I think the way I do. I think your problem is you don't really understand what distinguishes capitalism from other economic systems. I will give you a hint: it is not related to who owns a company although I realize that people who internalize Marxist rhetoric may falsely believe this to be the case. The core of capitalism is private ownership and prices determined by negotiation between buyers and sellers.

With Syndicalism the owners are the employees and, as owners, would change their behavior and would no longer act like traditional labour unions. For example, owner/employees would not be so quick to hire new employees because that would dilute their share of the profits. I also touched on the question is who provides the capital to create a business in the first place and you would likely find that owner/employees that put up more capital would soon demand a larger share of the profits to reflect their greater contribution but heavy indoctrination in Marxist rhetoric might delay that demand for a while.

Edited by TimG
Posted (edited)

Because Karl Marx's point was that the workers hired by a capitalist have to provide surplus value to the owner to maintain their jobs. Instead of handing off that surplus value (imagine the surplus value of the typical Walmart employee) the workers collectively own the enterprise and control all surplus value among themselves.

So who provides the money to build the business in the first place? Do you think that Walmart stores build themselves? Don't you think that whoever provides the money should be entitled to some of that surplus? How will you divide the 'surplus' given that not employees are equally important? Edited by TimG
Posted (edited)

Because Karl Marx's point was that the workers hired by a capitalist have to provide surplus value to the owner to maintain their jobs. Instead of handing off that surplus value (imagine the surplus value of the typical Walmart employee) the workers collectively own the enterprise and control all surplus value among themselves.

If an individual's surplus is going to the owner or another worker, the individual's surplus is not going to the individual.

Also, it doesn't make sense to look at the production to be entirely due to the workers since physical capital contributes to production.

Edited by -1=e^ipi
Posted

So who provides the money to build the business in the first place? Do you think that Walmart stores build themselves? Don't you think that whoever provides the money should be entitled to some of that surplus?

Wow! If I was an advocate for capitalism, Walmart would have been the last example I would have offered up as a corporate citizen.

Let's unpack that "some of the surplus" statement. Aside that..in the US...an estimated 40% of Walmart's stores have been built almost free of charge through grants and tax deferments from local and state governments; as well as providing underpaid employees forms and assistance to apply for government benefits while working for Walmart; providing free consultation and logistics for American suppliers to outsource their production to foreign locations to reduce production costs; and especially aside from the fact that the six heirs of Sam Walton's fortune own more wealth than the poorest half of the American population....take a guess at how much of a surplus I would be willing to give them!

How will you divide the 'surplus' given that not employees are equally important?

The Mondragon Corporation of worker-owned cooperatives that began in Spain in 1941 and still has over 74,000 workers (in spite of Spain's disastrous austerity) certainly provides a good model for worker-owned and directed business models. There are many other cooperative ventures, but it should be pointed out that our government and banking systems vary from uninterested to openly hostile to workers trying to establish new coops. In spite of that fact, the coop movement is growing even in the US, and seen as a way out of economic malaise where banks and large corporations show little willingness to invest profits and prefer to just drive up their stock values.

The problem for the cooperatives movement is that they are applying a Marxist solution of sharing "surplus value from labour" in a capitalist business world where cheap imports drive down the value of local production.

Anybody who believers exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

-- Kenneth Boulding,

1973

Posted (edited)

Wow! If I was an advocate for capitalism, Walmart would have been the last example I would have offered up as a corporate citizen.

I used the example you gave. But even if you subtract the subsidies or use one of millions of businesses that don't get subsidies you would still find it takes a lot of capital to build the business and who ever provides this capital is entitled to a share of whatever 'surplus' exists. It is quite ridiculous to suggest that workers deserve all or even a majority of that surplus because workers are not risking their savings building a business that could fail.

There are many other cooperative ventures, but it should be pointed out that our government and banking systems vary from uninterested to openly hostile to workers trying to establish new coops.

I suspect it is because banks want people to put up their own money to fund a business and these co-ops expect the banks or government to just give them the money. There are no barriers to prevent anyone from setting up a worker owned business if the workers are willing to fund the business. The only problem is when these workers expect other people to give them a business for free. Edited by TimG
Posted

Back to the Pope again, I can't say I'm surprised that new polling data coming from the US shows the Pope's popularity in decline since his encyclicals condemning greed and taking action on climate change.

This news blurb notes that some liberals may be falling away because he's not likely to make institutional changes, like ordaining women priests. But, what's being missed in this poll analysis is that Pope would be making radical changes by sanctioning married, gay and women priests after centuries of an all male (supposedly straight) celibate priesthood. Whereas it is not being radical in the longer history of the Catholic Church to criticize greed and materialism. Many Americans may be offended because they created their own version of Christianity in the 20th century that turned the traditional creed upside down. By attacking neoliberal economic policies and exhorting Catholics to focus on the needs of the poor...especially large numbers of people in the third world who are being marginalized by the globalization trend, Pope Francis is telling his followers to focus on this part of traditional Catholic doctrine, instead of keeping their attention on sexual issues.

This is a message that is winning back large numbers of Catholics in Latin America who have been leaving since JPII started the trend of condemning leftwing priests and supporting US-backed regimes, but by taking shots at America's true religion, he's likely to lose followers and influence in the US.

Anybody who believers exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

-- Kenneth Boulding,

1973

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