Climatism vs. Humanism

Posted by rbroberg 7 years, 6 months ago to Philosophy
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Alex Epstein covers this in detail, but I would like to ask your permission to muse.

Climatism uses humanism as a stolen concept. It advances the idea that we abort our productive activities in order to live a better life. The claim goes like this: the better life climatism envisions is sustainable. In his book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman shows that a natural world devoid of human beings would result in a matter of a few centuries. Irrevocable damage is, says Weisman, nothing beyond mythical. We can imagine a world without us, or a world where human beings cower in the shadows of caves, digging into dirt with bare hands, fighting for scraps of raw meat, or even conducting incestual relations. How is that for sustainable! Of course, when humans become animals fighting for resources rather than producing them, it is indeed a meager existence. The IRS makes this point clear.

Climatism as a principle cannot be justified. The concept relies on humanism but requires sacrificing production and rationality. It brands as human the thought that nature is some god, that our opponent is anti-nature. But if our ultimate value is life and reality is what it is and nothing else, then only altruism can confuse life with sacrificing oneself. Only the end of altruism can enable a proper humanism, and only rational egoism can provide the antidote to climatism.


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  • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 6 months ago
    Here are some of my thoughts on the subject. Jerry Brown just signed a bill that puts cow farts under government control and makes them taxable. Typical liberal thinking.

    Politicians love global warming (or cooling or change or what ever) not because it's good science but because it's a powerful political tool. Jerry Brown is about as well equipped to understand climate dynamics as my dog is to understand how his food gets into cans. Climate dynamics and the detailed mechanisms of the biosphere are extraordinarily complex and can only be understood in terms of multidimensional dynamic models, and these must include such things as the response of vegetation to increases in atmospheric gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane. While NASA analysis of planetary albedo and black body equilibrium temperature has been touted loudly the discoveries of increased forestation growth, which acts as an active carbon sequestration mechanism are ignored because they don't fit the narrative. Politicians may appreciate power and extortion but their understanding of rigorous science is infantile. To the extent that AGW is a real threat, and I am not denying that, are scientifically illiterate politicians equipped to deal with the problem?
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
      The issue is trivially solved. Using vegetable oil in a Diesel or Brayton cycle is almost carbon neutral, available and the most effective means of solar power by orders of magnitude. The issue is that it is inadequately disruptive to the status quo, and the politicians have not finished wringing power from the people using AGW as a tool yet; therefore, a solution is not allowed.

      My interest in this is that is renders the Middle East and its terrorist religulous clowns irrelevant. Eliminating the value of oil and their financial source is the absolute best defense against these people, hands down. Doing so significantly reduces the need for significant investment in weapons, defense and people.
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      • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
        How many barrels of vegetable oil per day do you believe could be produced for that little carbon neutral project of yours?
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        • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
          That's not really the right question is it?
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          • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
            Then, if that was just patter about vegetable oil, why do you think that by harming US citizens by getting rid of fossil fuels without advocating going nuclear? But then you have the problem of decreasing CO2 and killing people with food shortages in the future.
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            • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
              I think people who argue the environmental terror of AWG without also advocating nuclear power are disgusting hypocrites. Nuclear is the only near term solution to power generation.

              My point about vegetable oil is similar though. If again you also support the environmental terrorism arguments, building solar arrays, wind turbines power buoys and investing goobs of money to all around, feel-good inefficient junk is not even reasonable.
              Vegetable oil run through an diesel engine (not that state-endorsed lie of ethanol) is ~10x superior on a kW-h/acre basis to any other solar technology, it is ready today, and the infrastructure is already in place (unlike hydrogen or battery exchange).

              So go nuclear, and until batteries get better, run your cars and portable stuff on vegetable oil. The infrastructure is here right now. It is only ~$3/gallon, not far off the price of oil-derived fuel.
              Why don't we do this? Because it doesn't support the disruption of the status-quo adequately for the environmental fascists and the majority of the enviro-lemmings are technically ignorant.

              I study this because I am partly in the energy field, and my other big toe is in defense. Eliminating dependency on foreign oil is overwhelmingly the most efficient way to defend against islamic terrorists! Unlike AWG, this I do endorse.
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              • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
                Just remember that batteries for electric motors require electric energy produced by power plants which waste nearly 1/2 of the energy of the fuel as heat in generating the electric current,which is one reason that heating by electricity is several times more expensive than by natural gas.
                For the oil, you get into the same problem as with ethanol disrupting the prices and supply of some commodity. I do not see a dependency on foreign oil as the cause of defense problems but rather government intervention in the energy industries and the support by citizens and government for religious intervention in society as a right making it near impossible to argue against it.
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                • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                  Good grief, I am quite aware of where batteries get their energy. Carnot efficiency issues are the same regardless of cycle. Only combined cycle plants are doing 50%. Coal and nuclear are much worse in the twenties. The average in the US is much lower than 50%. More that 50%, not almost 50%, of the heat energy is wasted in power generation. Something like 75% is wasted in transportation.

                  There is no real problem with ethanol disrupting food prices, although it is technically unsound as a fuel source. This is not so with vegetable oil-based diesel.

                  Don't understand your second point, but the Middle East would be as relevant as Uganda if we didn't need their oil. No idea how problems in the Middle East go away now, without taking away their funding.

                  I feel you are still missing the point I made, which is the hypocritical lack of support among greenies for vegetable oil-based diesel as the best solar energy approach. Regardless of the food argument (I disagree, but irrelevant), we spend $400M on Solydra, with a cell efficiency of ~3%; billions on unaffordable wind, gobs of ethanol subsidies, but nothing on an approach far superior to them all and essentially carbon neutral. This is hypocrisy!

                  Trump could have crushed Hillary with this argument just tonight. Crushed her!
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                  • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
                    My original question was as to where the millions of barrels of vegetable oil per day, just for the USA, could be produced? Ethanol at present is too costly to produce and is just a pipe dream for reducing oil consumption. Maybe algae produced oil could be economically produced in large multi-layer structures to capture more sunlight. However I do not think that US reduction of use of Middle East oil will put a dent in the trouble with those countries. I doubt that oil is the main cause of trouble with the Middle East.
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                    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                      Ethanol from corn oil's problem is not cost. Ethanol's problem is that it takes almost as much energy to produce as it provides. It has only recently gone above 1.0, to a staggering 1.2. It is a subsidized loser.
                      Sugar Cane Ethanol is much better, at about 8, but it is not a solution for the US.
                      Biodiesel is 2.25. Straight vegetable oil is even higher, but interestingly very hard to find in literature.

                      Again, your question is irrelevant to greenie hypocrisy, but the answer:
                      one acre yields about 150 gallons of oil, using rapeseed (canola), which grows pretty much anywhere in the US and Canada.
                      We use about 140B gal of gas a yr.
                      This requires 930M acres of land to produce.
                      The present US cultivated land is about 400M acres.
                      To produce this oil and continue other production for food, the farmland would have to triple.
                      Algae may work someday, but not yet. We designed some portable algae biofuel units for the Army. Very cute. Very useless.

                      Is this a problem? Perhaps so, perhaps not. However, this is a physics-based, steady-state solar operating point. Nuclear and fossil fuels are limited. Therefore, I assert, there are too many people. The land we have can not support the people we have in steady state. With the technology we have today. Fortunately, we will have better technology tomorrow, or we would be SOL.

                      The US need not be the only ones to implement such a steady-state reduction in oil use. However, the US uses the most oil by a factor of almost 2. The US uses 19Bbbls/yr, about the same as the sum of the next three users: China, India and Japan. Saudi Arabia, is #5 at 3.9Bbbls. The US is a very big part of oil consumption.

                      How big of a problem was the Middle East in 1930, when they had little money? They can not continue to cause trouble if they have no money.
                      "I think" and "I doubt" are not arguments. They are just argumentative. Objectivists, use facts, established algorithms to analyze and logically induce information.
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                      • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
                        "Algae may work someday, but not yet. We designed some portable algae biofuel units for the Army. Very cute. Very useless." Yes very objective of you! No better than my qualitative reference to thought without giving reasons for my think and doubt statement.
                        "Straight vegetable oil is even higher, but interestingly very hard to find in literature." So quantify that "even higher" statement! Then there may not be much argument about it and the turbines will pop into existence and the Brayton constant pressure cycle will appear from hill to dale across this great land and all will be well with the Middle East raking in cash selling their oil for making chemicals for plastics, etc., when the West runs low on oil.
                        Sorry about the sarcasm. I do have a BS in chemistry and used to consider whether it was a good idea to burn up the source of petrochemicals. Of course, oil from plants works too for petrochemicals.
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                        • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                          What are you talking about re-Algae. It is not ready for prime time, period. There are not even experiments that show it is ready.

                          Brayton cycles are already slightly more than 50% of the power generation in the US, at least the large prime movers in combined cycle plants, which are just now out producing coal and nuclear.

                          We do not need to establish "higher". The numbers I calculated include the effect, and I am too busy to do any more looking though my files on this. I have already done an order of magnitude more technical work on this here than others. Not accepting more assignments, Somebody else can do some technical work, rather than just poking and asking questions.

                          I have little issue burning all the fossil fuel, as long as we have a solution for when it is gone. My main interest is to crush the Islamist Extremists' funding.
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                          • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
                            I was being sarcastic about your little spanking you gave me for not conforming to some Obectivistic rule about my alleged thinking process about your very objective "Very cute. Very useless" statement.
                            Fine about Brayton cycle power production being more than 50% current production, but that does not make it the panacea for future power production using vegetable oil when the oil runs out, maybe in the next millennium.
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                            • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                              Ahhh, ok. E-mail (or posting) leaves a lot of body language, inflection and inference out to make context.

                              BTW, I was suggesting vegetable oil for transportation in the near term, not so much power production. The math is for transportation only. It would have to roughly double again for power production. Nuclear is the right immediate solution for power production...if one buys AGW.
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                              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                                "Nuclear is the right immediate solution for power production...if one buys AGW."
                                Thanks for the interesting exchange. Nuclear is the right immediate solution and right for the foreseeable future. AGW is a grave threat. Nuclear is the only thing we have to make the energy that runs modern society w/o hastening global warming. I'm confident people will find other solutions. Right now nuclear is what we've got. We should make rules that are allow people to make nuclear power and charge a tax on burning carbon-based fuels equal to estimated environmental costs. People will supply the energy the market demands without any central planning.
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                                • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
                                  Please expand on that "AGW is a grave threat" quip. As far as I know, there is no evidence for anything other than the logarithmic relationship between CO2 percent per volume and temperature. That relationship is close for the increase in CO2 from about 280 parts per million at the start of the industrial revolution and today's of about 400 parts per million, on the order of one degree C or about 1.8 degree F. For it to get another 1.5 degrees C would require CO2 to get to about 800 parts per million. Nothing grave about that other than trying to panic people.
                                  Just hope for lots of volcanoes to spit out CO2 if the concentration gets much below 200 parts per million when the main type of photosynthesis, which evolved when there were many thousands of parts per million of CO2, will begin to shut down. There are not enough plants with later types of photosynthesis, which evolved in much lower CO2 concentrations, to feed the world's population. If the object is to feed people then get the concentration up to about 1000 parts per million,.
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                                  • CircuitGuy replied 7 years, 6 months ago
                                • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                                  I get where you are coming from, you and I have had this discussion. I recall you "believe" AGW is an issue, but have not gotten into the physics yourself.

                                  I accept setting a tax on carbon if the emissions meet the conditions of "involuntary servitude". However, this is where we disagree. I have not seen the physics behind this, and you are willing to accept the word of experts (I paraphrase).

                                  FYI, my recent study has uncovered, unequivocally, that CO2 itself, is not the first order cause. The greenhouse function of CO2 can not cause the warming that was seen. Every single model showing correlation has water vapor as the dominant greenhouse gas, every one. The assertion, which is not communicated to the public, is that CO2 causes some affect that causes additional water vapor which is the culprit. I find it VERY disappointing that the AGW community has not made this clear to the public, and "believe" their motivation is not to weaken the strength of their argument.
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                                  • CircuitGuy replied 7 years, 6 months ago
                                • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 6 months ago
                                  'AGW is a grave threat'

                                  AGW does not exist so there cannot be a threat from it.
                                  AGW is a scam involving fraud and pseudo-science intended to enable governments to take more money to spend on do-good causes that do nothing and to give to cronies. It is supported by billionaires and sheep.
                                  Cronies v. workers. Altruists v. humanity.
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                                • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
                                  I was with you until you decided that the solution to the problem was to give money to the government. Money that would, presumably, be collected from the people who use electricity.

                                  Of course, I don't really believe there is a serious problem -- but it if will get nuclear going again I'll pretend with you. Of course while the CO2 that coal generates is plant food, the particulates are not good to put into the atmosphere.
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                                  • CircuitGuy replied 7 years, 6 months ago
  • Posted by $ blarman 7 years, 6 months ago
    Every philosophy posits some kind of ideal. Climatism simply places as their ideal a world without humans. It's really stupid if you come to think about it.

    But really, that's just the cover for the real agenda. The real agenda is an idyllic world of a few slavish humans supporting the needs and desires of the elites. It's bait-and-switch at its finest.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 6 months ago
    They believe nature is god...the earth is a god...they call it: Giaia...and you thought our biblical ancestors were mystical?..the Giaia's got That beat.
    Can you just imagine a world without human beings...it would be 1000 times more cruel, more chaotic and of no value to anyone...not even the fittest.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 6 months ago
    The earth is an almost unimaginable confluence of coincidence and the improbable. Not impossible, because of the fact that it exists. Yes, it is fragile in the sense that it maintains a habitat for life. But the thing that the eco-freaks refuse to take into account is time. The time scale of the universe, which includes the Earth, is, as its very size, of unimaginable length. Changes are measured not in hundreds, or thousands, but in millions and billions. The fools who babble about climate change cannot accurately predict the weather for next month let alone the next fifty thousand years. It is a device to, once again, provide the "ideal" solution of giving more power to the state in order to regulate productivity.
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    • Posted by Enyway 7 years, 6 months ago
      Isn't that the art of politics? Looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
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      • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 6 months ago
        And, in many cases creating a mythology akin to religion and applying remedies that put more control into the hands of the state. One thing I noticed about the Scream Queen at the so-called debate was that she spoke of the non-existent problems as if they were real and then put forth her soluntions to them.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 7 years, 6 months ago
    Climatism is a sect of anti-humanism. Just like there are those for whom pain is pleasure, there appear to be a loud, obnoxious minority that fervently worship self destruction of the human species. This is but a grotesque variant of Utopianism, that belief in a fantasy form of perfect existence that is usually the product of brutal, extreme efforts. The climatists usually postulate some radical reduction in the Earth's human population (usually to 100 million or even fewer) is the only true sustainable civilization.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
    This issue is the physics of climatism, not how to address it.
    If the purveyors of this fiction are correct, then the outcome described will happen regardless of our action. It will happen voluntarily as the author describes, or involuntarily when the resources are gone. If the purveyors are wrong, an active remedy is just a waste.

    My personal opinion is there are too many people, period. We have way to many non-contributors and wanton consumers wasting everything. We have no natural predators, and no checks on our population, which is out of control. Separate from an argument for climate change, I claim this is an example of Milton Freidman's "Involuntary Servitude". Our existence is diminished by crowds, pollution, crime, costs via socialism, water bans, etc etc. As such, there should be a price assigned to population increase.
    I do not believe that a sustainable system is impossible without reverting to caveman existence. That is nonsense, particularly if it begins with controlling the population in accordance with what the individuals can afford. If we wanted to stop using oil, we could grow canola, and use the oil in a diesel cycle or Brayton cycle (gas turbine) tomorrow. This is the overwhelmingly most efficient solar power source. It is carbon neutral, and we could do it tomorrow. The problem is the greenies are idiots, and shun such simple concepts since they don't disrupt the status quo adequately.
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    • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
      Malthus was wrong! Population is not growing out of control. As early as Rome it was observed that an affluent, educated, population, particularly when women are educated, reproduces at a lower than replacement rate. "Barbarians" had to be enlisted in the legions to keep the numbers up.

      Virtually all advanced nations have lowered fertility rate, some nations rather strikingly. It is generally considered you need 2.1 children per woman to have a stable population. The U.S. is at 1.7, Japan at 1.4 Singpore at .81. Such low rates, without immigration, can result in severe demographic shifts as significantly larger portions of the population become aged.

      Now there are still some nations with more than 2.1 and with the number of young people, we will continue to grow. Most people think the world's population will max out at 9.5 - 10 billion. I think the trend is changing faster than expected and we may max at 9.4 or lower. After that we will begin decreasing in population.

      Many countries are implementing programs to encourage birth rates to slow the drop in population among natives. High immigration has a risk of cultural dislocation (as we are discussing in our elections).
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    • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
      The number of people is really tiny when viewed as a single mass.

      http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technolo...
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      • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
        Very uncomfortable, and not so tiny when considering the requisite support needed to sustain the mass.
        This lumped picture does doesn't get to the portion of the mass that is non-contributing, or the involuntary servitude issues.
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        • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
          The Earth and available energy are vary large compared by a quarter of a cubic mile of humans. Getting government out of the economics and science businesses along with increasing production of CO2 would go a long way toward supplying that small mass of individuals. The bad part would be a future return to glaciation with possible mass starvation, though that would be true with a fraction of today's population.
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          • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
            You are arguing that if the human population was significantly reduced there would be glaciation?
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            • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
              No, I am arguing that were there future glaciation there would, even with reduced population, be mass starvation. But, of course, as with any global warming and sea rise , humans are not completely stupid. Over decades, they will choose to not build where they will have to drown like the climate change true believers seem to think they will voluntarily do as the seas rise.
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    • Posted by 7 years, 6 months ago
      The number of people can be an issue. But perhaps the central issue is not the number of people, but rather the number of people in poverty. Of course, people might experience poverty for a variety of different reasons, and we might never eliminate some of those reasons (e.g. natural disasters), but we certainly can remove some of the causes our politicians are glad to propel. One example I have in mind is to uphold the right to property, or -- in other words -- abolishing income taxation and also subsidies for non-productive behaviors.
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      • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
        The number of people in poverty will be reduced if the subsidies for poverty are reduced. I think most here would take this as an axiom.
        How many people are really contributing, really creating wealth? The days of even thinking in those terms are long gone, but we need a "Contributors Renaissance". Every time I hear of the need for government subsidy for basic research or the arts, my mind simply goes to the inadequacy of those asking to describe their value in a manner they hold companies accountable to. Where is Sarbanes-Oxley for the arts?

        Separately, I still think there are just too many people, and there are too many because the price to have one is almost zero and the drive to practice having one is so high.
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  • Posted by salta 7 years, 6 months ago
    What exactly do you mean by "climatism"? I have not seen that word before.
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    • Posted by 7 years, 6 months ago
      By climatism I mean the school of thought which posits that climate is the most important issue in our time.
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      • Posted by salta 7 years, 6 months ago
        Climate more important than humans? but then you said climatism uses humanism as a stolen concept. Isn't that a contradiction?
        I was just trying to understand your point. Maybe I need to be familiar with the references you made, to Epstein Weissman and the IRS.
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        • Posted by 7 years, 6 months ago
          Absolute contradiction. I think climatism uses humanism as a concept -- whether humanism is a legitimate concept I leave out for now. Then climatism gives super-humanistic value to the earth, animals, fish, etc. where the rights of people are a sub-category of the earth's "well-being" and where these rights belong not to individuals but to collectives, and collectives that do not even exist. In this manner, climatism undercuts the right of living human beings and forces them to act against their own self-interest. Not only that, in applying human ethics to non-human entities, and then adding a supercharger (irony intended), it steals any potentially legitimate ethics from humanism and crushes it between a couple of big rocks.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    People ask lawyers for free advice, but they are very good at saying things like "state bar guidelines protect consumers against fact-dependent advice without a legal services agreement" or something like that.

    My peeve is not with giving the advice/analysis. If I give it to a friend, though, I want a tacit agreement that they will either try to understand my reasoning or simply follow my suggestion.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    " I recall you "believe" AGW is an issue"
    That's close. I accept the science. It like accepting that the mitochondrion is the site of cellular respiration. I'm not going through biology abstracts with the goal of convincing myself that ATP is produced in other locations of the cell. The nature of science, though, is to look for new evidence. I would not be surprised at all in my lifetime to read about scientists finding evidence that revolutionizes how they view cellular energy storage. I wouldn't say "I believed" in what they taught in undergrad biology, and now "I believe" it's wrong. I accept the evidence as new evidence comes in.

    "I accept setting a tax on carbon if the emissions meet the conditions of "involuntary servitude""
    What does this mean? Who's serving whom? I think I missed something that will suddenly be clear when you explain what you're referencing.

    "my recent study has uncovered, unequivocally, that CO2 itself, is not the first order cause."
    I don't think you're really saying you're a climate scientist. If you were a scientist with a minority view, I'd love to see you overturn current theories. I like new discoveries in general, but I would especially like if the new discovery were something I wish were true, e.g. Taco Bell is good for you or CO2 emissions are not harmful the environment. I don't think you're really saying you're an expert in this field. I think you're saying you started with a claim you wish were true, read some abstracts far outside your field, and concluded, contrary to the opinion of experts in the field, that the truth is exactly what you wished for.
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
      We had this discussion before. Accepting the function of the mitochondria does not suggest we take away anothers rights. AGW actions do. The level of scrutiny for such a case should be higher.

      I mean that if AGW is real, the actions of one person compel another to servitude. This is like air or noise pollution. If one plays loud music at 2 am, this is not just an individual freedom in many cases. Other people are affected and compelled to deal with it. Milton Friedman called this involuntary servitude. This is a powerful, insightful means of dealing with issues resulting from high population density and significant affects on the environment. A cost can be assigned and the capitalist system does it's job.
      However, the burden of proof of affect is on the compelled, since they seek to limit the rights of the affector.

      "My most recent study" - really means "My most recent studies of the subject". I did not say AGW was false. I did say, and I stand by what I said. ALL models that correlate with the climate, ALL, include water vapor as the primary greenhouse gas. ALL. Go look for yourself. ALL.

      CO2 is modeled variously as a precursor, in various ways causing the water vapor. However, I am an engineer, and a very good technical one. I learned a long time ago, that if someone says I something is too complicated to explain, either they are lazy, lying or don't really know the subject. There is nothing I've experienced to date that I can't understand if I want to, and I can understand this basic effect. There is a set of calculations to establish the steady-state temperature of a planet from the atmospheric constituents using their absorption and emission coefficients versus frequency against the incident radiation. This tested calculation will show you that CO2 is nowhere near a strong enough affect to cause the warming we have had.
      AGW may be real. I doubt it. You believe it. However, when someone as smart as you doesn't understand the basic fact that CO2 itself cannot be the first order cause, I know (not believe) that at least 90% of the believers are similarly uninformed, and are making decisions like lemmings. The other fact, that this is so obscured in media and papers is damning to the entire group of objective "scientists".

      Go try to find what I just told you. If you are very good on the web, or you enroll in a senior climate elective or a first-level graduate course, you will find this equation. I found it at the University of Arizona, and after my hard drive crashed, it took me two months (at night while drinking) to find another equivalent source. The common case shown is to calculate the temperature of Mars (your favorite), and the first-order calculation under predicts the temperature slightly.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
        "Milton Friedman called this involuntary servitude. "
        I knew this was a common reference that I just hadn't heard before.

        Does this mean if chemicals from my property leak to someone else's property, I should pay for the costs they incur on her and the burden of proof is on her not me since we're talking about the court taking my money by force to make her whole?

        Regarding the science, which one are you saying:
        a) The science actually does not show even a preponderance of the evidence that CO2 is a significant cause (among all other causes) of global warming, but the media focus on the CO2, instead of things like procession of the earth or solar output, because CO2 emissions are a key part of modern life. As a result people outside the field completely misunderstand the science.
        b) The science does show human-emitted CO2 being a predominate cause of global warming, but funding colors the whole field of study. Even a technical person outside the field can read the research and work out that an unbiased inquiry would show little effect of human emissions.

        Or is it some C I'm not understanding.
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        • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
          Second item. No, the burden of proof is on her. Just like the noise pollution example. Sorry for the awkward wording.

          I'm saying:
          "Science suggests that water vapor is causing AGW (not sure the physics is completely done here). Many scientists think the water vapor is being caused by CO2 somehow (physics not established), due to the correlation. Science rejects CO2 is the direct cause of AGW through its greenhouse contribution. However, most people believe that is what science and scientists say.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
            " Science rejects CO2 is the direct cause of AGW through its greenhouse contribution."
            This is bizarre. You're saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, i.e. it does not absorb a significant amount of heat (itself, not interacting with other gasses) that would otherwise radiate into space. That would be be amazing. It doesn't make sense that every mainstream publication, though, would conspire to mislead all non-experts on this basic and highly inconvenient fact.
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            • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
              No, I did not say CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. I said it is an order of magnitude or more too weak in even concentrations many times higher than we have now, to have affected the changes we've seen in recorded history.
              Any well-informed climatologist would tell you this, after rolling his/her eyes, if you pin them down directly. It is true, and it is simple. The same well-informed climatologist could be pinned down to say water vapor is the only greenhouse gas a simulation has demonstrated strong enough to cause what we have seen.

              The question is "Is the water vapor linked to the CO2?"

              Surprise! It is true. You didn't know, and 99% of people don't know this. I believe (don't know) it is not discussed to the lay people, because it doesn't play with the simple strength of: CO2 is the greenhouse gas = AWG. The people who want power and provide funding do not want this known, until the water vapor can be inextricably linked to water vapor in a manner irrelevant to the layperson.

              Go dig for yourself. You are a smart guy, and were convinced of this incorrect fact too. I knew nothing about this detail a year ago, when we argued last, but then dug in. If I can find where I put the basic calculation on this Mac, I'll send it to you as a starting point. When someone reaches for the steering wheel and wants to take power and your rights, be very skeptical.
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                "order of magnitude or more too weak in even concentrations many times higher than we have now"
                Does this mean water vapor at its average current concentrations absorbs at least 10 times the heat as CO2? If true, that does not mean doubling CO2 concentrations won't move the needle. We'd have to know the "gain", i.e. how steep the increased heat retention vs CO2 concentration curve is. Once we know that we'd have to know how a change in this component that's 10% of the effect of CO2 would affects the climate. With no atmosphere, we'd be like the moon, with extremes of hot and cold. With a thick atmosphere we'd be Venus. A small change in surface albedo or atmosphere could have large consequences. I'm really hand-waving here without knowledge of the science, along the lines of your typical global warming denier. So, as you say, I have to listen to people who actually work in the field. I won't figure it out by hand-waving analogies to electronics.

                "When someone reaches for the steering wheel and wants to take power and your rights, be very skeptical."
                This is appeal to consequences and poisoning the well. It's poisoning the well because Naomi Klein using global warming to promote socialism has zero impact on the reality to of the science. It's appeal to consequences because even if we know the truth will be successfully abused by people to take away peoples rights (hypothetically, I say we don't know that), it doesn't affect the truth.

                Even if we accept special interests widely manipulate how the science is reported, there's trillions of dollars (10^13 magnitude) of economic activity that in some way increases CO2 and every few people who stand to benefit from the problem.

                I say when someone tells you exactly what you want to hear, be very skeptical. It reminds me of these cases where 95% of doctors say you need a painful treatment that likely will only slow the disease, but a minority say there is an easy cure that big pharma has suppressed; it's easy to get sucked into accepting the desired claim. You certainly don't want to start the painful medicine without researching it, but you also have to be mindful of how motivated you are to believe what you wish were true.
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                • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                  Think we found your version of religion.
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                  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                    I think you may have replied to me by accident.
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                    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                      No, I was asserting (in a cheeky way), you have already decided what the answer is.

                      WRT your first paragraph, the effect of concentrations is non-linear, and it diminishes significantly. Higher contributions retain little additional energy.

                      I disagree that I have engaged in a fallacy of logical argument. I was asserting the need for scrutiny when the stakes are high. It is quite impossible to get to F=ma on everything, as you pointed out WRT the mitochondria. However, I would point out that you have offered no argument at all, no logic and no physics. Your entire case is an appeal to the expert. Do think you want to take issue with fallacies here.

                      Before you paint me with the brush of a Bush republican that has his money in oil. I began this quest with a very open mind, and even argued for some time that the reduction in CO2 is good, even if it is wrong, because the result will be reducing dependence on foreign oil, which is an excellent means of defending against terrorism.
                      I'll give you a specific medical example. I had a bicuspid aortic valve in my heart, diagnosed at age 33/34. I was given the option of a pig valve (good for 15-20 years) or a mechanical valve (coumadin for life). I didn't like either, I did research and found a procedure called the Ross Procedure, which my cardiologist was unfamiliar with. I looked over all options, picked the Ross, and have a surgery that should be good for life with no drugs at all. Back to playing soccer after 8 weeks, and I have a picture of my heart to show people that I'm not a heartless bastard.
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                      • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                        "you have already decided what the answer is. "
                        On the contrary, I said I love it when new evidence overturns existing theory.

                        " you have offered no argument at all, no logic and no physics."
                        This is true. I do not try to get into too much detail outside my area. It is an appeal to experts, which I don't think is a logical fallacy. I do not think I can come into a field, read the literature with my general scientific knowledge, and then make some discovery like disproving dark matter or something. It looks silly to make a hand-waving argument way outside my field. I can only offer superficial explanations on these politicized questions like why vaccines works, why GMOs are safe, and why greenhouse gasses change the environment in costly ways.

                        I'm glad you found a good medical treatment. There have been times when I dug in a went against the first medical recommendations I heard after doing my own research. When it came time to vaccinate my two kids, we followed the recommended schedule. The anti-vax people can show me some facts about T-cells and the properties of the preservatives. I can't tell them how T-cells works. I did some research and found scientific evidence supports the current vaccination schedule. By the time I'm a grandparent, we'll know more. Maybe it will turn out to have been a mistake to give them all those vaccines. But I have to go with what we know now. That's infinitely better than starting with an answer and then looking for any anomalies that lead to the desired answer.
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                        • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                          I'm with you on vaccinations, although I didn't have to deal with the insanity in CA now. Why? The mainstream argument against them for autism, is statistically invalid. I think most of the naysayers are people who don't believe we landed on the moon.

                          You know well an Argument from Authority (AKS Appeal to the Expert) is a fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumen.... You are using a better version: an appeal to a large statistical body of experts, but this is no different than the position Copernicus was in.

                          You are obviously welcome to you opinion, and should act in accordance with your opinions (e.g. vaccinating your kids), but it is irresponsible for you to vote to take rights from others at gun point based on such a position. You can, and many do (e.g. abortion activists) Without real study, would you force ably require others to have vaccinations?

                          Then I go back to my hypocrite argument (not you necessarily, but the mainstream greenies). Where is the funding and pressure for widespread nuclear power to offset the catastrophe they predict? Where are the real solutions? Just tied-eye, druid festival imanineering of solutions, and a scratchy grasping at the steering wheel of power to disrupt the status quo.
                          The middle of the road people supporting this are a quandary to me. On one hand, dire consequences are predicted (e.g. you will go to hell); therefore, drastic action is required. On the other hand, maybe it is overstated or simply wrong science, chasing correlation over physics-based causation. Saying "do nothing" (At least for AGW. Security is another matter). The middle is just a large group of herd animals providing damping to the extremes. There is some value in the damping, but I don't get that community engaging in the big argument.
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                          • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                            Regarding your appeal to the expert argument, do you think there's a continuum between people who believe an authority makes something true and people who won't use something like an authoritative table of molecular weights without proof that they can personally digest in detail?

                            " Where is the funding and pressure for widespread nuclear power"
                            I know you're talking about environmentalists and not me. My thought is no gov't funding for nuclear but rather to ease regulations on it so that it's profitable. I want to put revenue-neutral taxes on carbon emissions commensurate with their costs, which would make nuclear even more desirable. I think we must go to nuclear, but I don't want to force it. I want all the minds out there thinking of creative ways to get energy to figure it out.

                            I do not understand your last paragraph about middle-of-the-road herd animals damping the extremes and going to hell. I think there's something interesting there, but I don't get it.
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                            • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                              Yes, I think there is a sort of continuum. I suspect it is more like strong groupings:
                              1) experts,
                              2) informed, inquisitive people digging in,
                              3) the largest group, who accept experts (I am in this group for a majority of things (but not this one), as I expect we all are). However, I suspect the Gulchers often find them selves in group #2.
                              4) people who work on faith/belief/party lines.
                              The middle group is the largest by far. You could call it a continuum, but a Prado would be very lumpy.
                              I was also asserting that people in categories 1 and 4 typically take the limiting positions, and that the people in 3 have some diversity, which "damps" out the limiting (all/nothing) action.

                              I agree with your point. I would only push for nuclear funding, because everything else is subsidized, and it should be taken on an equal cost basis. If we could get rid of other subsidies, then get rid of them all.
                              The C02 tax is a fine method to deal with it, as long as it falls into the involuntary servitude pool, but the science has not shown this yet. Cap and trade is a good approach too.

                              Sorry about my weird analogy. With "herd" I was describing group #3 above, people that just don't know, but believe the experts. These people "damp" extreme opinions. However, I was also suggesting that people in category #3 should not be asserting influence to affect the rights of others (irresponsible). They are inadequately informed. The people in category #4 are uncontrollable, zealots.
                              With the "hell" comment, I was equating this argument to religion, which I think it is, for many people. They know nothing really, but believe the leaders of the faith.
                              BTW I am not lumping you in this category, with other stronger zealots with bumper stickers like "Jesus would drive a Prius" are, but I am pointing out that religious faith which we agree on, is not too far from this same zealotry.
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                              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                                This continuum is an interesting thought that maybe merits its own book or article. My wife talks about medical vs engineer clients. Doctors will tell her what they want and completely turn it over to her. Engineers dig in and need more explanation. The doctors are more likely to be frustrated in the future if something goes wrong. The engineers ask an hour or two of questions, but then when they decide they have buy-in and feel responsible for the outcome.

                                I also think about in terms of medical treatment. My family has many times dug in and realized the first approach recommended wasn't the best. Relatives outside my nuclear family ask me to do this for them, but I generally don't do it because getting my mind around it it doesn't help them. They need to understand it they way they see the world. Otherwise I'm just another person, along side their doctors, saying technical words and making a recommendation. If I had questions about treatment, I would dig into the science. My wife might dig in by going to experts and checking their track record of successes and any complains filed with the medical board. Everyone has to dig in in their own way that makes sense to them.

                                I sort of have a rule that I won't dig into the science or finance issues on something for another person unless they're paying me or will do what I say. I don't like it if a friend or family member has me dig into something they can't dig into, and then they go and ask a few other eggheads as if to find the consensus among their egghead acquaintances or just to get a feeling that I care because I wrote down calculations on a piece of paper. This is a personal peeve of mine.
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                                • Posted by $ Thoritsu 7 years, 6 months ago
                                  I trade expertise, but get ripped off. Lawyers and doctor acquaintances have you come to their office and get paid. Me, the engineer, give car and computer advice for free. Not very equitable. I may need to institute your process.
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                                  • CircuitGuy replied 7 years, 6 months ago
            • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
              There is a large gap between saying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and absorbs a significant amount of heat and saying it is going to change the overall climate in specific ways.

              Just one aspect is that CO2 absorbs specific frequencies of the electromagnetic system. There is now enough CO2 in the atmosphere to make it opaque at those frequencies. So any increase in CO2 will not change the AMOUNT of heat absorbed, just where in the atmosphere this will happen.
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                "There is a large gap between saying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and absorbs a significant amount of heat and saying it is going to change the overall climate in specific ways"
                Yes. There are not the same claims.

                "So any increase in CO2 will not change the AMOUNT of heat absorbed, just where in the atmosphere this will happen."
                I'm on the edge of my area of expertise, but I believe this claim is false. Radio waves are similarly affected by the absorption spectra of water in the clouds and tree leaves. This does not mean that none of the energy finds its way to the antenna on a satellite, just less than the free-space path loss equation would predict. The more objects in the way, the more absorption, and therefore the less signal received at the antenna.
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                • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
                  Think about the absorption spectra from stars where you have black lines in the spectrum indicating that the gases absorbed all the radiation at that point.
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                  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                    "where you have black lines in the spectrum"
                    I see what you're saying. If most of the energy is absorbed nearly 100% at discrete wavelengths and nearly 0% across the rest of the spectrum, then once you reach a level where black line absorption is near 100%, further increases in the amt of material (or concentration of gas) will have no further effect.

                    I do not know how it works with black-line spectra for IR and light, but it does not work this way for RF communications. Instead of discrete black lines, we see the attenuation coming in various poorly-defined peaks. We don't see any deep nulls due to attenuation. When those crop up, they're due to multipath, i.e. nodes/antinodes of an interference pattern.

                    Your idea of black-line spectra, though, makes me suspect the function that relates CO2 concentration to greenhouse effect is not linear. I'm really guessing, though-- way outside my area.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "to give money to the government."
    I think it should be revenue neutral. Ideally there would be some legal framework to send the money from the activity doing the harm to the people who will pay the costs, as in the simple case of someone using chemicals that run off into the adjacent properties and cost their owners money.
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    • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
      We have tort law for that. Giving billions to the government to "fix" an imaginary problem on the premise that if you make electricity and gas too expensive for poor people to use is something I find repugnant.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
        How would the tort work? Many of the costs will occur many decades after the people who got the benefit died. I like creative solutions.

        BTW, I said it should be revenue neutral, so the the part about giving the gov't money is a response to someone else.
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        • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
          "Someone using chemical that run off into adjacent properties"

          Taxing pollution does not keep people from suffering from pollution, it does not compensate those damaged, it enriches and empowers government -- and gives it a vested interest in the pollution continuing!
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
            I keep saying revenue-neutral, and you keep addressing revenue-increasing taxes.

            Taxing pollution (in a revenue-neutral way) does not get rid of the costs of pollution, but it does cause people to factor in the cost to others. This is much better than setting hard limits. Market participants can make their own decisions. Maybe they're working on something that will create more value than will be lost due to the climate change they will cause. We don't want taxes that discourage that activity. By the way, we currently tax work and investment, which would have to be decreased if we had a revenue neutral tax on carbon. The point is to avoid rewarding activities that seem profitable but are actually just theft from others.

            I completely agree, though, that it's better to do some kind of tort where the money goes directly to those harmed. I don't know how to do it with global warming. This is an unpleasant reality that's easy to want to ignore. You can only ignore reality for so long though, maybe a lifetime in this case; maybe that's long enough for some people.
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            • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
              I'm assuming by revenue-neutral you are implying that when you raise the cost of energy by taxing it's production you lower taxes elsewhere to match (good luck getting that done!)

              That still doesn't help the person who needs the energy pay the higher prices. And evaluating the cost of the pollution is impossibly difficult. It becomes a matter of how much cash you can get away with -- pretty much the same calculation any robber makes.
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                "That still doesn't help the person who needs the energy pay the higher prices."
                If the taxes are shifted from work and investment to carbon, it certainly does him to the extent he does work and invests. But it does increase energy costs. It makes it unprofitable to burn energy for reasons that would not be profitable if you had to pay the people in the future who will bear the costs.

                "And evaluating the cost of the pollution is impossibly difficult."
                That's the whole key that makes this problem so tricky. It's very hard to calculate the costs. Even if you can, you have to do a time-value of money calculation to convert them to present value, which is easy, but knowing what rate to use is very hard. It's not as simple saying something will cost $1 in cleanup in 50 years, so we'll charge a $1 today. Maybe the economy will return a 5% real rate of return on that $1, resulting in $11 of wealth in 50 years. So an activity that produces $1 of wealth today but will cost $5 (in today's dollars) to clean up the mess 50 years from now might still be profitable.
                (Note: Cleanup could mean the costs of efforts to mold the climate to human needs or the costs of people moving themselves and their stuff due to climate change.)
                I agree this is extraordinarily difficult to calculate. There are billions of us wanting an affluent life, though, which with our current technology means burning lots of fuel, so we need to figure this out.

                "It becomes a matter of how much cash you can get away with"
                If I understand this argument, you're saying efforts to price in the effects of human activities on the climate will invariably become corrupt. That corruption will be above and beyond the corruption that would exist if we ignored global warming. When you add in the costs of that corruption, it becomes worse than simply ignoring the problem and fixing the repercussions of AGW as they present.
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                • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 6 months ago
                  Keep in mind that many of the repercussions of AGW (if they actually happen) will be positive. Little is said about that. One of things that bothered me about the "warmers" was that they focus on negative change -- historically warmer times have been much better for humans.

                  See what Matt Ridley has to say:

                  http://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/10/ca...
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                  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 6 months ago
                    "bothered me about the "warmers" "
                    Who are the warmers? It sounds like a political thing. Maybe Naomi Klein is a "warmer". I read a first few chapters of This Changes Everything and I could not finish it. It's the only time I can think of where I could not finish a book because it's offensive. She starts saying how global warming used to scare her. But then she had this revelation where she learned to like it because she realized it was key to selling socialism. Not only is that annoying because I socialism is a big a problem as global warming, but I can't stand intentional politicization of science.

                    I stopped reading her book, and I should probably should avoid any discussion of science that has political hints. That goes for evolution, GMOs, global warming, vaccination, ESP, and all the issues that inspire motivated reasoning by people outside their fields. I'm glad I don't work in a field that gets the attention of the media and politically-motivated dilettantes.

                    I think the case for AWG is so strong we should working out how to mitigate the effects. The claim that the net cost might be negative is more of the same wishful thinking, not backed by science. It's like grasping at straws for anything that says we don't have to deal with this. I find this wrong because it's denying reality but it also opens the door for politically motivated parties: people who want to get away with pushing the costs on people in the future and people waiting for the problem to get bad for their chance to sell socialism or whatever other bad ideas they couldn't sell without a crisis.
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                    • Posted by 7 years, 6 months ago
                      The only response to Naomi Klein goes as follows:
                      I read your book. It is quite revolutionary. Are you worried that others will plagiarize the ideas presented there? Have you obtained a copyright? If so, do you believe it is your right to keep that which you have produced? If so, how can you claim to be a proponent of socialism? PS Charity and taxation are not equal.
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  • -1
    Posted by LazarusLong 7 years, 6 months ago
    If you believe the Bible or not it tells us that man was created after the earth and he was told to till and take care of the earth. The earth was made for man not man for the earth.
    Now if you own a piece of the earth you will want to take care of it because it is yours not because the earth demands it for allowing you to live on it. Again one one the principle rights of man is property. and the ownership of said property.
    Just research what happened in the former "Soviet Union" when the government finally gave in and allowed the people to own a small patch of property to plant a garden in. Those small family gardens out produced the collective farms by many times yet were many times smaller. Why? Because there was ownership and pride in what one owned himself.
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    • Posted by lrshultis 7 years, 6 months ago
      Just remember that that right is to act to gain and keep property and not to have it given to you by society or to steal it by right. Branden once related an old Spanish saying of 'take what you want and pay for it' and added that the hard part was in really knowing what you want.
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