Global warming, the tool of the West

Thanks for the post.  I liked some of the other articles a little moe though.  "Why Amercians can't discipline their Children" made some great points.

The global warming piece lacked, how does one put it...facts?  Data?  It seems he's taken the more radical line of denying global climate change completely, as opposed to arguing whether it's caused by man or to what degree it's caused by man.  

Perhaps global warming isn't true.  Why?  Conservatives are quoting Pravda!  Even Hell is freezing over!  

ChineseDemocracy - 2013-01-06 9:51 PM Even Hell is freezing over!  

Then it's Climate Change, not Global Warming...

What are we really doing though to curb CO2 emissions right now? I thought we froze them in 2008, but that actually could be due to the global economy.

Cue Powerman, but I'll respond ahead of him talking about the coal plants backing down with the natural gas boom and low NG pricing right now. NG has much lower co2 emissions.

I don't see real actions to back down emissions.

I tend to feel that there's so much corruption and politics in the "science" that it's difficult to believe any of it from either side of the discussion.

Not to completely derail my own thread, but did you read his piece on American's not giving up their guns.  It's pretty compelling.  http://www.mat-rodina.blogspot.ru/2012/12/americans-never-give-up-your-guns.html

GomesBolt - 2013-01-06 9:12 PM

ChineseDemocracy - 2013-01-06 9:51 PM Even Hell is freezing over!  

Then it's Climate Change, not Global Warming...

What are we really doing though to curb CO2 emissions right now? I thought we froze them in 2008, but that actually could be due to the global economy.

Cue Powerman, but I'll respond ahead of him talking about the coal plants backing down with the natural gas boom and low NG pricing right now. NG has much lower co2 emissions.

I don't see real actions to back down emissions.

NG has about half the CO2 emissions in combined cycle over coal. The economy reduced emissions the last few years. There is a move to NG right now just due to environmental regulations and utilities choosing to shut down older plants instead of upgrading them. NG is really the only viable choose to move to, but obviously not CO2 free. But NG price has already moved back above coal. It was only below it for a short time and that was at historic lows. It has moved back up and most believe that will continue slowly.

Problem is China now out produces the U.S in coal emissions... and they have no intention of slowing down.

Warmer weather does mean more tri's...

hehe

This depends on your definition of "slowing down".  They are producing at greater and greater capacities (due to growing urbanization), but in the midst of that they are decommissioning old outdated heavy CO2 emitting plants and replacing and expanding that capacity with new low CO2 emitting plants with the most up-to-date technology available.  At least the companies that I deal with are.  China also has an environmental plan laid out in their "Manifesto", for lack of a better term, that addresses CO2 emissions and global warming.  That plan is only what they want to do, not necessarily what they WILL do.

ETA:   They've also told me there is a movement toward Nuclear and Hydropower there too (as far as power plants go).

lol, now that makes a lot of sense.  This could just be a propaganda piece so the West continues to warm the planet. 

I did find interesting that the exceptions they give for "why GW is bologne" fit to the exact predictions of the global warming models.

The Russian economy is based almost exclusively on fossil fuels and that's what allows the ruling class to stay in power.  All of the oil & gas companies are state controlled and the massive incomes allow the rulers like Putin to hand out gifts and bribes to help them stay in power, so any disruption in the use of fossil fuels is a direct threat to their grip on power, so of course the Russian media is going to deny it that climate change is happening.  There hasn't been a big shale gas boom in europe yet, but it's coming, so one of the things to watch will be how this affects russia which exports a lot fo natural gas to europe and uses this as leverage.  Any kind of disruption in fossil fuel income could change the dynamics and allow the opposition there to become more influential - I just saw smething last week that they're already seeing people starting to realign their allegiances in anticipation of this so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Even if the predictions are true that climate change will mean more agricultural land for russia, it doesn't necessarily mean that the benefits will outweigh the negatives, and most likely they won't.  Doesn't matter how much land you have to plant if it's too hot or dry and all you have to do is look at the 2010 heat wave as an example.  It devastated their wheat crop and they actually banned exports and some people claim that this shortage led to the arab spring since they import most of their grain from Russia.

You may feel that there's so much corruption and politics in the science, but there isn't.  There is something totally different: consensus. 

Of all of the entities out there with a stake in this matter, do you really think that climate scientists have the most incentive to alter the truth, fudge the data, and lie?  Or do you think that the petrochemical industry and BRIC countries might have a bit more at stake? 

Who knows what info comes out. They signed onto an agreement years ago... I forget which now, but they were going to close down a lot of their old small plants and trade for new big ones keeping emissions level... they never closed the old ones and built more new ones.

I can't say what they "agreed" to right now, I just know they passed us with coal generation. We can't build anymore, and they average adding 250mw every week.

There may not be a lot of corruption with scientists, but if you can't see the topic has been politicized a long time ago, I don't know what to say. The data is just data. And I don't have a problem with scientific observation and research. But how that data is interpreted, presented, and twisted to tell a story you want told is most certainly politicized and it is difficult to find a source that can be trusted on the subject anymore.

The argument they like to throw in our face is a per-capita emissions.  Yes, China produces more CO2 than us now, but on a per-capita basis, we're way ahead.  Which means China probably plans to produce 3x more carbon with that same argument intact.  

^^^This is kind of my point.

They may not have closed down what they said they would or have agreed to or something along those lines.  But I do know they have closed down old plants.  Remember, coal does not just power Power Plants, it powers steel mills and cement plants also.

Maybe I'm being too optimistic but I don't see China's use of dirty coal to continue to increase unabated like some people predict.  I think that forces associated with economic development will start to slow down the rate of growth.  China's middle class is growing at a huge rate and one of the things that happens with that is that people start to demand things that weren't as important to them when all they cared about was day to day survival.  One of those things is a healthy environment to live in.  The main threat to an authoritarian gov't like China's is instability, so as the middle class grows, there will be increasing pressure on the gov't to keep them happy and we already see movement in this direction in the fact that China is the #1 investor in the development of solar technology in the world.  The problem is that this isn't something that will happen overnight and we're at a point now where stopping the increasing rate of emissions and eventually reversing the trend in becoming more and more critical, we don't have decades to wait for this trend to play out.

They have the largest hydro dam in the world.  I know 3 different companies that build nuke plants that have guys out there all the time, they are building wind farms in the middle of nowhere connected to no line in-anticipation of building a line to another plant later.  

So they're not just relying on coal. 

The National Academy of Sciences

NASA

Real Science

Even the "consensus" word has been misused by many to imply that it's a done deal, just shut up and pay your carbon tax. (I know you're not saying that, just generally speaking).

So where did that famous “consensus” claim that “98% of all scientists believe in global warming” come from? It originated from an endlessly reported 2009 American Geophysical Union (AGU) survey consisting of an intentionally brief two-minute, two question online survey sent to 10,257 earth scientists by two researchers at the University of Illinois. Of the about 3.000 who responded, 82% answered “yes” to the second question, which like the first, most people I know would also have agreed with.

Then of those, only a small subset, just 77 who had been successful in getting more than half of their papers recently accepted by peer-reviewed climate science journals, were considered in their survey statistic. That “98% all scientists” referred to a laughably puny number of 75 of those 77 who answered “yes”.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not/

I pretty much agree with you on every point.  But Powerman is right that China uses more coal than we do and has greater emissions.  Aggregate numbers bear that out.  However, as I stated above they have a plan that leads them in the exact direction that you are referring.  Hard to say if all of that will happen, I suspect they won't have a 100%  effective rate.  Now there have been about 12 of these plans: China's national economic and social development plan, (and I haven't read ANY of them cover-to-cover because frankly it's a torturous read) but I've read tidbits here and there, and conversations with business associates over there and here that support their dedication to the direction the plans take them.  If you read them they are quite capitalist friendly all things considered.  And they really do appear to be headed in the right direction.

They still have some MAJOR bugs to work out though like labor laws and what not.

There may be sites, but at the end of the day, I am left taking their word for it. My point is that looking at data I'm good with. All the data points to a a change in the climate. I have no problem with that.

But the end result is policy to address where trillions of dollars are going to go. either in dealing with it, mitigating it, or correcting it. We are talking about changing entire economies built around carbon, taxing it, and funneling those enormous amounts of money "somewhere". That's where it get's derailed. And that is why I am skeptical about anything on the subject that wants a piece of that pie.

We can study the big bang, and fund particle accelerators and find the Higgs particle... all that is science and totally cool... yet the big bang does not effect my life one single solitary bit. Nobody is trying to change global economies based on the Higgs Bosom particle. Climate change... not even the same.

It isn't the data I have a problem with, it is saying that we need to do "this" based on "that" and we have no reasonable guarantee what we get from it. All that money looking to be funneled is based on models fed with predictions and assumptions and it is impossible to keep "end results" from biasing the input. Sorry if I am so pessimistic, but money tends to corrupt everything it touches.... and we are talking a boat load of money here.

The fact is that the consensus within the scientific community IS overwhelming and this article is highly biased and misleading.  He criticizes one study for using a small sample set, then misleadingly (if you look at the actual responses in the survey he likes they actually confirm that there is a consensus) cites another approvingly which has that same issue.  He ignores several other studies which have found a consensus using other methodologies and then uses several examples of non-experts disagreeing as 'proof' that there is no consensus.