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WalksOnDirt wrote:

Nobody^8^ wrote:

I'm ok with that too, I was in fact accepting Len's argument above I hope I was clear enough.

But can you see that it is still wrong with anyone else?

I could be missing something but I don’t see a direct or implied link to the holocaust issue, others may be more sensitive in this regard and if this in fact the case then I definitely sympathise and this alone is good enough reason to not use the term so long as this is their genuine reason for concern. I don’t have as much sympathy for those who object to being tagged as deniers in the sense that I have used it as meaning simply someone who denies any possible anthropogenic link to warming, but again if it helps keep the heat out of the debate then that’s ok too.

WalksOnDirt wrote:

Nobody^8^ wrote:

I don't see how a fee (ie tax) and dividend is any better. The disadvantage of a fee is that this does not put a fixed limit on emissions directly.

How's the European experiment with cap and trade working out? Are carbon allowances still nearly worthless? I think we'd do a lot worse with our whole "corporations are people, too" stance.

I’m not at all up to date with the European carbon scheme, however if the price is low then surely this would mean that business are able to operate within the current cap without having to pay high prices for permits. I suspect there have been some reductions in industrial emissions coupled with a good deal of permits purchased from SE Asia. Despite the stories of some early issues there has been a big reduction in the increase of logging in Asia that would suggest that the cap has in fact reduced emissions that would otherwise have occurred.

WalksOnDirt wrote:

What limit on emissions do you want? We need something very close to zero, and we will need decades to get us there. Can you not see the difference between a simple accounting function (you mined 100 tons of carbon, here's your bill) and what we'll likely get under cap and trade (you mined 100 tones of carbon, but since you produce power with it you are charged for 50 tones. Minus the 30 ton credit you purchased at bankruptcy, and the credit you get from your Malaysian palm oil plantation, means you get this much back).

Cap and trade does require more rigorous enforcement, however the example of palm oil can be used to show how cap and trade can provide a net reduction in emissions where a decrease in emissions in one area can be used to offset emissions in another. This is not possible in the same way with a simple tax, where if there are no reductions that can be made within an industry there is no other alternative than to pay the tax which raises revenue buy does not have the same benefit in reducing emissions.

What limit on emissions do you want?

A cap and trade if implemented correctly could be adjusted by lowering the cap to reduce emissions as fast as the economy can cope Can this get us to zero quick enough? If the cap is reduced to zero over a period of time (decades) then obviously it will however wether the economy can do this without a lot of pain depends on the available technology. Of course this will then depend on the perceived need vs economic cost. Again I think a cap and trade is a better method as a tax does not by itself guarantee any particular reduction.
This is of coarse all dependant on having a relatively honest process, the problem will be when there is any instance of any fraud no matter how minor (which is inevitable in any financial system) this will be used by those such as the heartland institute in a misinformation campaign. The current environment in the US would suggest that this type of scheme is just not possible due to these reasons.
In any case if a Tax is more workable then there is no reason why a tax could not have a big impact, just my understanding is that a Cap and Trade would be more efficient.

Another think tank, more lies. The IPA is another organisation that hides the source of its funding to confuse the public about the independence of its views.
They have been responsible for a great deal of misinformation in Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3849006.html

None of the following is in any way less credible even one of the heartland documents was faked.

There is a direct Australian link in the Heartland Institute files. Bob Carter, an adjunct research professor at James Cook University, has a long-standing record of denying climate science. Now it is revealed that he is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute, to the tune of $1,667 per month for unspecified work. On his personal webpage, Carter declares that "he receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments," a claim that on the scale of truth matches his reporting of climate science.

The IPA is also dedicated to stealing the resources of the Australian people for their billionaire masters.

The government should put in place a Special Economic Zone in Northern Australia. A low tax, low regulation zone would drive continued long term investment in the Australian resource industry.

This is one example of why I choose to believe the the scientists over the the paid mouth pieces that these organisations fund.

Lens:

Don't depend on Wiki for everything.

"The message then includes a sample of cherry-picked quotes selected from a small handful of the emails focusing on apparent disagreements between the scientists, the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and attempts to block climate sceptics from securing documents from the scientists via freedom of information requests. Many of the same issues were highlighted in the 2009 release."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/...

This was called the "context file" in the release.

If you're going release a few thousand, then all 220,000 messages should have been released. Let the public decide which "quotes" are relevant. Why not let the public do the searches? It was an electronic file. I don't want to have to depend on some secret, unknown group with undeclared interests filtering my information.

You should know by now that I can cite my sources.

Yazzur wrote:

Lens:

Don't depend on Wiki for everything.

I sure as heck do find Wikipedia more reliable than any article in a newspaper or an Internet news site. My personal experience with newspaper articles is that every single one of them has errors in them. Sometimes just minor errors; sometimes they're almost completely devoid of the actual facts.

Newspaper and Internet news site articles don't have to be correct, they just have to be done quickly.

Other news sources, such as news magazines and, yes, many or most of those who edit Wikipedia articles, have time to do proper research, check their sources, and make corrections as necessary.

Furthermore, Yazzur, if you know as much about the Climategate e-mails as you claim, then you know that the original source of the info dumps has never been revealed. What we have are a set of files from secondary sources which have passed along what the hacker sent them; or perhaps they only passed along part of it.

In any event, if one of the uploads did contain a "quotes taken out of context" file, it seems to me that we couldn't possibly know if the person who attached that was the original hacker(s), or someone the file dump was passed along to.

Anyway, Yazzur, I hope that's not your only source for your claim that the Climategate and Climategate 2.0 e-mails were "cherry-picked", because the facts, or at least the facts which I have seen, do not appear to support your claim.

Yazzur wrote:

I don't want to have to depend on some secret, unknown group with undeclared interests filtering my information.

I don't, either. That's why I think that the raw climate data should be available to all researchers, not to just a few people working at, what is it, only three worldwide climate data centers? And everybody else gets so-called "corrected" data.

I'll disagree with you on the "undeclared", though. I think they have declared their Cause very clearly and repeatedly. To quote Michael Mann, author of the infamous "hockey stick" paper:

<3115> Mann: By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

<3940> Mann: They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a bit.

<0810> Mann: I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s doing, but its not helping the cause

I don't regard people who use loaded terms like "denier" and "the cause" to be the mark of scientists talking about their own field of study. I regard those as indications they are people who have prostituted science for a political or personal agenda.

---

Of course they have a cause. The only relevant question is what is the motivation for their belief in the " cause". If the belief is that the work they are doing is based on good science and that there is a danger to the future of civilization then why wouldn't it be justified to use the term?

The real question is are the scientists motivated by self interest, career fame etc or by a genuine belief in what they are doing is accurate. When there are threatening the most influential and powerful corporations on the planet and there is amble evidence that these organizations are funding their own lobbyists (especially after seeing what has been done in the past in relation to tobacco) it is then very difficult to believe the skeptics over the scientists.
Especially after there has been an effort to deny that
a) CO2 levels have increased due to man activities - have we forgotton these earlier arguments?
b) CO2 is not a GHG, now this is no longer argued however I would not be surprised if a good number of people still believe this to be the case
c) Recent temperatures have not increased - this has been argued relentlessly and only now
seems to be accepted
d) humans are not responsible - the last stand

While position d could possibly be true, I find the balance to be in favor of the climate scientists

Come on Lens, your grasping at straws. Wiki is only fair to good for accuracy, and doesn't get into very many details on lots of issues.

Yes, the original thieves that stole the files have not been identified - that's why I said it was an unknown, secret group with unknown interests.

Everybody knows who the climatologists are, they publish all the time. They receive lots of hate mail, so they can't be hidden.

Regarding the use of Denier:

“Denial” is the term preferred even by many deniers. “I actually like ‘denier.’ That’s closer than skeptic,” says MIT's Richard Lindzen, one of the most prominent deniers. Minnesotans for Global Warming and other major denier groups go so far as to sing, “I’m a Denier!”.

http://ncse.com/climate/denial/why-is-it-called...

So why is it so prejudicial to call somebody something they prefer to be called?

Here is a link to the Climategate II files:

http://globalwarming.org/wp-content/uploads/201...

I've read several hundred of them, go ahead and have fun. It includes the context file.

What are your sources that show the selected 6000 emails out of 230,000 were not cherrypicked? What was the criteria for selection? It's ridiculous to believe that this secret group didn't cherrypick - you think they just selected these files at random?

Whoever your sources are that say they were not cherrypicked must have access to all of the files to claim that. Why don't you call on them to release all of the files?