@Sam_Stone, notwithstanding my previous snarky post, I think you’re a smart guy and actually a valuable poster when outside of politics. But for anything that is even remotely political or capable of being politicized, you go totally off the rails and become an idiot.
I don’t have any real inclination to join the pile-on against you other than to make that point, and I’ll just use the above preposterous quote as an example of that.
You and I have had a number of discussions about climate change in which you’ve made lengthy posts into which you’ve obviously put considerable effort. And you’re not one of those comically absurd climate change deniers who claim (like most Republicans do, most particularly the Orange Imbecile) that the science is all a hoax. But what you do is constantly try to undermine and cast doubts on sound science, incorrectly stress the costs of mitigation while ignoring the catastrophic long-term costs and consequences of the lack of such mitigation, and make other grossly misleading claims like the one above about nuclear power and “the left”.
We have a number of posters here, myself included, who are deeply concerned about the environment and have argued extensively in support of the scientific consensus on climate change. None of us, AFAIK, have argued against nuclear power. I am quite proud of the fact that more than half of the electric power generation here in liberal “leftist” Ontario is nuclear. Can you say the same for “scientific” conservative Alberta? Ontario also demolished the very last of its coal-fired power plants some years ago.
Some time ago I and others cited an open letter from leading climate scientists urging accelerated development of nuclear power as one of the essential strategies for mitigating climate change and moving to a zero-emissions economy. How on earth can anyone see this as “the left” being opposed to nuclear power, except by their conservative opponents being so delusional that they see a small number of crackpots as being representative of all liberals and all liberal ideology in general?
You want to talk about “unscientific”? Virtually all Republican members of Congress are climate change deniers, not to mention many being religious nutjobs who are also evolution deniers. Mitt Romney, who is at least bright enough to have once said that he believed anthropogenic climate change was real, had to desperately backtrack when he actually ran for the presidency. One of the few accurate things that Rush Limbaugh ever said was in reference to Romney’s earlier statement in support of climate science: “say goodbye to your political career”.
Want to rethink your nonsensical claims now?
But that’s not all. Despite your professed concern now for the importance of climate change mitigation, all of your posts on the subject so far have been not-so-subtle attempts to deceptively and incorrectly poke away at various aspects of climate science and try to undermine it. This post would be a good example. I’m not going to rehash our arguments there all over again, but anyone reading this can see the undercurrent of deep skepticism about the science. I stand by all the points I made which you incorrectly and deceptively tried to refute. I would particularly point out your constant reference (that post is just one example) to the climate being a “complex adaptive system” in an attempt to stress the denialist talking point that climate models are inherently useless, so why bother trying and who the hell knows what’s going to happen if we continue unprecedented levels of GHG accumulation in the atmosphere. All we know for sure, say you and the denialists, is that mitigation is going to hurt the economy, so let’s not go there.
That’s not all, by any means. There’s much, much more. Take a look at this post you made. Not only do you denigrate the IPCC, but when I point to “the summary statements on the urgency of climate change mitigation issued by the US National Academy of Sciences, the national science academies of the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa, along with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and virtually every major science body on the planet”, what is your response? Why, it’s because all these scientific academies and scientific associations are a bunch of goddam leftists! No kidding, that’s what you said, specifically “My point was that when 90% of your members are liberals, you are likely to discount or even deny the cost of higher taxes, giving up national sovereignty to international organizations, etc. It’s bias, not conspiracy.”
You also said “I happen to believe that political leaning is a big factor in the climate debate. The fact is, the proposed solutions to climate change are all policies that tend to align with what the left prefers anyway. Or do you think it’s a coincidence that the global warming debate seems to have polarized people down political lines and not scientific ones?”
No, Sam, it’s not a coincidence. As pointed out in many, many scientific publications and insightful op-eds, it’s because Republicans are a bunch of unscientific lunatics, or at the very least are pretending to be in order to cater to their base – but most of them appear to be genuine scientific illiterates. A couple of years ago New Scientist ran several cover stories specifically on the psychology of how to deal with Republican politicians’ utter unscientific intransigence and willful ignorance on this subject. And it’s not just American conservatives, either. Your pal and fellow Albertan Stephen Harper once wrote a fundraising letter to fellow conservatives quoting some of the most egregious denialist talking points from the American right, including comically embarrassing statement like the one from the Competitive Enterprise Institute claiming that CO2 is not a pollutant, but rather, the basis of life (the CEI TV ads stated: “They call it pollution. We call it life.”).
I could go on and on. Here’s another post of yours where you list “prominent scientists” who take a contrarian view on global warming, I suppose to prove how there’s really no consensus on this subject. And who are these admirable prominent scientists? Let’s have a look.
The first one is Roy Spencer. To anyone who has even remotely followed this subject, nothing more need be said. Spencer is an outright fraud who runs a denialist website filled with falsehoods, who has falsified satellite climate data, and who above all is a self-described libertarian who freely admits to pushing climate change denialism for political ends.
The second one is Richard Lindzen, now retired, but once a well-known atmospheric physicist at MIT. Lindzen is a strange bird. He’s a sort of Jekyll and Hyde type. By day, actually a respected scientist with (mostly) reasonable papers that have nothing to do with denialism, but a natural-born contrarian who at night (on his own time), when addressing the general public, gives speeches and writes op-eds in right-wing rags filled with blatant falsehoods, in many cases falsehoods so obvious that even reasonably informed lay persons would laugh at them.
And the third is John Christy, somewhat less well known to most people than the first two, but you can read all about him at the link. Briefly, another loon who works closely with Roy Spencer to spread falsehoods about climate; who has given Congressional testimony casting doubts on the science; who has participated in fraudulent broadcasts like the UK Channel Four’s “Great Global Warming Hoax” film and Glenn Beck’s climate-denial special; who is a paid shill for lying denialist organizations like the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, and the above-mentioned Competitive Enterprise Institute.
OK, I’m out of time and patience, but I trust I’ve made my point.