# Sam Stone - Why do you hate America? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 30, 2010, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037 "2010-08-30T20:07:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/141 "2010-08-31T22:00:07Z")
> [@Page\_Fault](#): > > > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > > > It’s amazing how little economics they teach climatologists these days. > > No, that’s not their job. This is a really, really lame attempt to turn around the phrase. Even someone as blindly partisan as you should be able to see there’s no comparison here. Except that as soon as they move from reporting on the strict science of climate, and start talking about solutions and attempting to forecast economic conditions into the future, and build carbon-use models that necessarily have to factor in the state of the economy, they step far outside their realm of expertise. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/142 "2010-08-31T22:01:45Z")
> [@Page\_Fault](#): > > > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > > > It’s amazing how little economics they teach climatologists these days. > > No, that’s not their job. This is a really, really lame attempt to turn around the phrase. Even someone as blindly partisan as you should be able to see there’s no comparison here. I still wonder, he protests that he \*\*does \*\*understand the science and yet nothing of what the republicans or other conservatives are doing regarding climate change is criticized by people like him. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/143 "2010-08-31T22:04:35Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > > [@GIGObuster](#): > > > > Still waiting for your facts… > > > > I think the reason for the delay is that even you know how sorry the evidence is for your say so’s. > > Yeah, let me model something up for you by completely subjectively choosing inputs until I get the exact results I want. Those are the kinds of “facts” you seem to like the most. Do you even understand what modeling is? You’re so stupid you think that the vast majority of climate scientists on Earth are in a conspiracy… so liberals… can… something? Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s sinister. It doesn’t even mean you’re stupid. It just means you don’t understand it. But you’re such a deluded, hysterical bitch that you assume anything you don’t understand is a liberal conspiracy. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/144 "2010-08-31T22:04:49Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Yeah, let me model something up for you by completely subjectively choosing inputs until I get the exact results I want. Those are the kinds of “facts” you seem to like the most. That is not what I demanded, I still want you to show all that indeed you are smart and can show us evidence or good citations that demonstrate that you are capable of intelligent thought. Or just continue to demonstrate to all the fact that you are indeed a sucker of misleading media. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/145 "2010-08-31T22:40:35Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > > [@Page\_Fault](#): > > > > No, that’s not their job. This is a really, really lame attempt to turn around the phrase. Even someone as blindly partisan as you should be able to see there’s no comparison here. > > I still wonder, he protests that he \*\*does \*\*understand the science and yet nothing of what the republicans or other conservatives are doing regarding climate change is criticized by people like him. Here’s the problem. First, we have the science. Then, we have the activists who want to use the science to justify various programs to solve the problem. Then we have the political ideologues who want to use the activist’s plans to advance a political agenda. The climate debate has been completely muddied by political ideologues and partisans on both sides of the debate, and is no longer strictly about the science. Let me ask you - where are the climate change activists who are proposing a solution that involves smaller government? Where are the activists whose solutions involve a wholesale switch to nuclear power? Where are the activists who are willing to consider that perhaps the best strategy is damage mitigation instead of upfront taxes and larger government? Instead, we have people using climate change science to promote ‘green jobs’, which, when you scratch the surface are nothing more than wealth transfer schemes to their favored constituency. You have people who want to set up global carbon tax schemes where the _real_ goal is to extract as much money from the wealthy countries and the wealthy individuals in those countries, and spread it around. You have climate change activists using their ideology to justify a whole range of interventions in the economy that happen to give power to the people they like. We all gravitate to scientific studies that support the types of policies we already want. I can guarantee you that if a scientific study came out tomorrow that showed conclusively that countries with large governments caused more pollution, and that the solution was to gradually scale back government over 50 years, you’d get a hell of a lot of activists that accept climate change science completely denying the new findings. We see that all the time. Paul Krugman (excuse me, the revered Dr. Krugman) is hailed as the patron saint of economic science whose word carries the weight of a Nobel Prize and therefore must not be questioned. Nobel winners on the other side? Partisan hacks, all. For thirty years, scientists and engineers have been trying to tamp down anti-nuclear hysteria. The same people who tell us to ‘follow the science’ today would hear nothing of it. Instead, they glommed on to every disaster tale, conspiracy theory, and half-baked pseudo-scientific scaremongering they could get their hands on to justify their positions. So tell me - where does that leave someone who believes the science is fundamentally correct, but who believes that the debate is so poisoned by political ideology that accepting the science gives weight to those people who are ready to use it in nonscientific ways to push an agenda that is destructive economically and destructive to human freedom? I can tell you where it leaves you - it leaves you somewhat apathetic. You may accept the science, but you don’t think the science is the real issue. So you attempt to debate what you think are the flaws in the implementation, and you get labeled a ‘denier’. If you accept the science but don’t argue the flaws in the implementation, you give your tacit approval to measures that you think are horribly wrong. So, you learn to tap-dance a little. You concede the science only in the context of also warning that the proposed solutions are flawed. This was the position Bjorn Lomborg was in. He was _never_ a climate change denier. He accepted the science, and agreed that it was a big problem. His issues were that the proposed solutions were too expensive and weren’t going to work. He felt that when you consider the net-present value of future warming, the cost of real mitigation was perhaps too high, and the money could be better spent fixing the planet here and now. For instance, by helping Africa get on its feet so it would be economically stronger and better able to withstand the effects of climate change when it happened. For that, he was savaged by the movement, mischaracterized, misquoted, and dismissed. In addition, and getting back to the hard science, we have the problem that some of the leading scientists have behaved in an unscientific manner and have poisoned the well. It make it hard to trust them. And when they make statements like ‘the science is settled’, which is a profoundly anti-scientific thing to say, it makes you question their objectivity. So, like Maeglin’s admission of being more willing to take opponents to task for false statements rather than political fellow travelers, I think it’s natural for people to be more willing to focus on the errors of the side that is trying to do things they disagree with more so than those who fundamentally want to take the same course of action, even if their starting premise is false. All that said, if you go back and look at the climate debates, you’ll find more than once when I have criticized people on ‘my’ side whose statements went too far. And I have on several occasions tried to start threads that _concede the science_ as a condition of the thread, and have tried to limit it to the range of possible responses. Those threads generally ended badly, because on the right of me there are people not willing to concede the science, and on the left there are people who like keeping the argument on the science, because that’s where they are strongest. They know that once we move away from the core science and into the fuzzier world of politics, economics, forecasting, discount rates, foreign relations, and all the other issues that crop up, a lot of their arguments are just hot air. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/146 "2010-08-31T22:46:26Z")
I’ll sure be glad when they finish fumigating Great Debates. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/147 "2010-08-31T22:50:48Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Let me ask you - where are the climate change activists who are proposing a solution that involves smaller government? Smaller government won’t get people to use less carbon. You understand economics well enough to know that. It’s government’s role to convert those externalities into something that stings. > [@](#): > > Where are the activists whose solutions involve a wholesale switch to nuclear power? Exactly. Conservative idiots have hung their hat on the idea that AGW just isn’t happening. They’d rather lie than offer a realistic solution. People on the left are against nuclear power. Obviously, if no one on the right is for mitigating carbon there is no one to argue for the nuclear possibilities. It’s the stupidity and craven lies told by the right that has erased the possibility of an expansion of nuclear power. So look around, your comrades are at fault. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/148 "2010-08-31T22:54:51Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > People on the left are against nuclear power. Obviously, if no one on the right is for mitigating carbon there is no one to argue for the nuclear possibilities. > > It’s the stupidity and craven lies told by the right that has erased the possibility of an expansion of nuclear power. So look around, your comrades are at fault. This makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly other things motivate the conversion to nuclear power aside from carbon mitigation or no one would have build nuclear plants decades ago when no one was worried about AGW. Get real. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/149 "2010-08-31T22:59:43Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > > [@Lobohan](#): > > > > People on the left are against nuclear power. Obviously, if no one on the right is for mitigating carbon there is no one to argue for the nuclear possibilities. > > > > It’s the stupidity and craven lies told by the right that has erased the possibility of an expansion of nuclear power. So look around, your comrades are at fault. > > This makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly other things motivate the conversion to nuclear power aside from carbon mitigation or no one would have build nuclear plants decades ago when no one was worried about AGW. Get real. We’re talking about using nuclear to combat AGW. Right now only one side is interested in combating AGW. The left. The left also is against nuclear energy. For bad reasons, in my opinion. The right is typically pro-nuclear energy. But they are pretending that AGW isn’t happening. So there is no political will to push nuclear as a solution. Does that make more sense? I’m not saying nuclear isn’t worth it in general, but there is inertia now, and a realistic assessment of AGW dangers would combat that inertia. Too bad the right are a bunch of hysterical whining pussies. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/150 "2010-08-31T23:05:50Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > Right now only one side is interested in combating AGW. The left. The left also is against nuclear energy. For bad reasons, in my opinion. I don’t think either side is really all that committed to mitigating AGW to be perfectly honest. It’s a long-term problem whose solutions are costly. The people who pay aren’t necessarily even going to reap the benefits. > [@](#): > > The right is typically pro-nuclear energy. But they are pretending that AGW isn’t happening. So there is no political will to push nuclear as a solution. There’s no political will to push for nuclear because no one wants to build any plants in his/her district. It’s the same deal: very expensive, very long-term, with the added disadvantage of appearing to be very risky. I think the right is as dishonest in its support for nuclear power as the left is in its enthusiasm to end AGW. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/151 "2010-08-31T23:13:30Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > > [@Lobohan](#): > > > > Right now only one side is interested in combating AGW. The left. The left also is against nuclear energy. For bad reasons, in my opinion. > > I don’t think either side is really all that committed to mitigating AGW to be perfectly honest. It’s a long-term problem whose solutions are costly. The people who pay aren’t necessarily even going to reap the benefits. I do think there is a real desire for some sort of climate change legislation on the left. What can actually get enacted, I don’t know. But many on the left genuinely want to do something. Somebody is recycling and buying those Priuses. > [@](#): > > The right is typically pro-nuclear energy. But they are pretending that AGW isn’t happening. So there is no political will to push nuclear as a solution. > [@](#): > > There’s no political will to push for nuclear because no one wants to build any plants in his/her district. It’s the same deal: very expensive, very long-term, with the added disadvantage of appearing to be very risky. I think the right is as dishonest in its support for nuclear power as the left is in its enthusiasm to end AGW. Well yeah, but I think the best shot we have for an expansion of nuclear is getting it to be seen as a solution for AGW. I think that would overturn a lot of moderates who are reflexively against it. If America actually believed that AGW is happening, which is the state of the science right now, then we would be motivated to find solutions. Instead there is falling belief because of conservative lies and misinformation. They are actually trying to make people believe things that are not true, it’s scary. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/152 "2010-08-31T23:24:57Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > …They know that once we move away from the core science and into the fuzzier world of politics, economics, forecasting, discount rates, foreign relations, and all the other issues that crop up, a lot of their arguments are just hot air. They do? So, then, they realize their arguments are void, but continue to make them anyway? Malice, **Sam**? A vast consipiracy by people eager to doom their grandchildren, real and prospective, to misery and early death? Not me, and not the people I agree with. What we realize, to our sorrow and dismay, is that the whole global warming thing makes our goals a lot tougher to realize. A _whole_ lot tougher. Instead of trying to persuade people to more generously share a sufficiency, we must now persuade them to share a more miserly portion. The first prospect calls for far less self-sacrifice, and was hard enough even as it was. The rapacious, destructive, greedy consumer economy he have built already was stupid. We hoped to educate and convince people towards a more sustainable economy, one not bent on grinding our planet into dust in order to produce more and better loud, shiny crap. That was tough enough, its taking a lot longer than we thought. Now we have to do the same thing but immediately! At once, _aaarrrooooga aarrroooga_, all hands on deck, full emergency mode. This is bad news for conservatives, its far worse news for us. Its bad enough when people are squabbling over a surplus, its much worse when they start to squabble for the basics of survival. Much, much worse. Green energy, **Sam**. That’s the key to our future, and, very likely, our survival. We have to have it, we have to figure it out, and we have to do it yesterday. With a sufficient source, an abundant source, of renewable, non-destructive energy, we can do damn near anything. The subsistance farmers of Bangladesh will be well fed, their children can go to school, they can have light in their homes to read after dark. Cheap, green energy. With it, we might well be on the verge of a golden age for our species. Without it, only darkness awaits. Your implication that we progressives know we are lying and are doing it anyway out of deranged idealism is insulting, demeaning, and un-Canadian. Stop that. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/153 "2010-08-31T23:50:48Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Let me ask you - where are the climate change activists who are proposing a solution that involves smaller government? There is a reason why I mentioned Lomborg. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Where are the activists whose solutions involve a wholesale switch to nuclear power? Once again Lomborg is in favor. And so am I. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Where are the activists who are willing to consider that perhaps the best strategy is damage mitigation instead of upfront taxes and larger government? You see that is the problem, Lomborg was one of **the most notorious proponents that we could mitigate and that we did not need to throw money at the issue.** His recent about face is indeed a disaster for the points you are trying to defend. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So tell me - where does that leave someone who believes the science is fundamentally correct, but who believes that the debate is so poisoned by political ideology that accepting the science gives weight to those people who are ready to use it in nonscientific ways to push an agenda that is destructive economically and destructive to human freedom? I think people like that are in reality deceiving temselves, in the end they prefer to follow ideology and ignore what science is telling us we must do to protect the future, yes, **even to protect a future were free enterprise is still accepted.** The reason is that after reading on the subject I see much worse economical destruction and loss of freedom that will happen **in the future** if no serious mitigation is done now. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I can tell you where it leaves you - it leaves you somewhat apathetic. You may accept the science, but you don’t think the science is the real issue. So you attempt to debate what you think are the flaws in the implementation, and you get labeled a ‘denier’. If you accept the science but don’t argue the flaws in the implementation, you give your tacit approval to measures that you think are horribly wrong. There would be nothing wrong with that.. except that time after time I see you pull back to a “hit parade” of already discredited denier points. If you are correct on the discussion being poisoned you have no excuse to ignore that the poisoning is much worse coming from the right wing side, many trains of thought are bound to be derailed when you ignore that the basis for them were flawed or based on misleading information to begin with. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So, you learn to tap-dance a little. You concede the science only in the context of also warning that the proposed solutions are flawed. > > This was the position Bjorn Lomborg was in. He was _never_ a climate change denier. I’m on record on pointing that out hundreds of times already, deniers just ignore it. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > He accepted the science, and agreed that it was a big problem. His issues were that the proposed solutions were too expensive and weren’t going to work. He felt that when you consider the net-present value of future warming, the cost of real mitigation was perhaps too high, and the money could be better spent fixing the planet here and now. For instance, by helping Africa get on its feet so it would be economically stronger and better able to withstand the effects of climate change when it happened. > > For that, he was savaged by the movement, mischaracterized, misquoted, and dismissed. So what do you think now? Will we see Republicans/deniers \*\*not \*\*savaging, miscategorizing, misquoting, and dismissing him now? Because what I see is that you are indeed dismissing now that he has checked the numbers and realized that many critics were right and it is indeed more economical to think about mitigation with taxation. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In addition, and getting back to the hard science, we have the problem that some of the leading scientists have behaved in an unscientific manner and have poisoned the well. This is false anyhow, no matter how many times you repeat it. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It make it hard to trust them. And here once again you bring evidence that my suspicions were correct, even though you can say it in your own words, in the end you are just copying what the denier media is telling you. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And when they make statements like ‘the science is settled’, which is a profoundly anti-scientific thing to say, it makes you question their objectivity. More of the copy pasta from the denier media. It is not as simple as that. [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/) > [@](#): > > The phrase “the science is settled” is associated almost 100% with contrarian comments on climate and is usually a paraphrase of what ’some scientists’ are supposed to have said. The reality is that it depends very much on what you are talking about and I have never heard any scientist say this in any general context – at a recent meeting I was at, someone claimed that this had been said by the participants and he was roundly shouted down by the assembled experts. > > The reason why no scientist has said this is because they know full well that knowledge about science is not binary – science isn’t either settled or not settled. This is a false and misleading dichotomy. Instead, we know things with varying degrees of confidence – for instance, conservation of energy is pretty well accepted, as is the theory of gravity (despite continuing interest in what happens at very small scales or very high energies) , while the exact nature of dark matter is still unclear. The forced binary distinction implicit in the phrase is designed to misleadingly relegate anything about which there is still uncertainty to the category of completely unknown. i.e. that since we don’t know everything, we know nothing. > > In the climate field, there are a number of issues which are no longer subject to fundamental debate in the community. The existence of the greenhouse effect, the increase in CO2 (and other GHGs) over the last hundred years and its human cause, and the fact the planet warmed significantly over the 20th Century are not much in doubt. IPCC described these factors as ‘virtually certain’ or ‘unequivocal’. The attribution of the warming over the last 50 years to human activity is also pretty well established – that is ‘highly likely’ and the anticipation that further warming will continue as CO2 levels continue to rise is a well supported conclusion. To the extent that anyone has said that the scientific debate is over, this is what they are referring to. In answer to colloquial questions like “Is anthropogenic warming real?”, the answer is yes with high confidence. > > But no scientists would be scientists if they thought there was nothing left to find out. Think of the science as a large building, with foundations reaching back to the 19th Century and a whole edifice of knowledge built upon them. The community spends most of its time trying to add a brick here or a brick there and slowly adding to the construction. The idea that the ’science is settled’ is equivalent to stating that the building is complete and that nothing further can be added. Obviously that is false – new bricks (and windows and decoration and interior designs) are being added and argued about all the time. However, while the science may not be settled, we can still tell what kind of building we have and what the overall picture looks like. Arguments over whether a single brick should be blue or yellow don’t change the building from a skyscraper to a mud hut. > > The IPCC reports should be required reading for anyone who thinks that scientists think that the ’science is settled’ – the vast array of uncertainties that are discussed and dissected puts that notion to bed immediately. But what we do have are reasons for concern. As Mike Hulme recently wrote: > > ``` > [S]cience has clearly revealed that humans are influencing global climate and will continue to do so, but we don’t know the full scale of the risks involved, nor how rapidly they will evolve, nor indeed—with clear insight—the relative roles of all the forcing agents involved at different scales. > … > The central battlegrounds on which we need to fight out the policy implications of climate change concern matters of risk management, of valuation, and political ideology. We must move the locus of public argumentation here not because the science has somehow been “done” or “is settled”; science will never be either of these things, although it can offer powerful forms of knowledge not available in other ways. It is a false hope to expect science to dispel the fog of uncertainty so that it finally becomes clear exactly what the future holds and what role humans have in causing it. > > ``` > > Dealing with the future always involves dealing with uncertainty – and this is as true with climate as it is with the economy. Science has led to a great deal of well-supported concern that increasing emissions of CO2 (in particular) are posing a substantial risk to human society. Playing rhetorical games in the face of this, while momentarily satisfying for blog commenters, is no answer at all to the real issues we face. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So, like Maeglin’s admission of being more willing to take opponents to task for false statements rather than political fellow travelers, I think it’s natural for people to be more willing to focus on the errors of the side that is trying to do things they disagree with more so than those who fundamentally want to take the same course of action, even if their starting premise is false. > > All that said, if you go back and look at the climate debates, you’ll find more than once when I have criticized people on ‘my’ side whose statements went too far. And I have on several occasions tried to start threads that _concede the science_ as a condition of the thread, and have tried to limit it to the range of possible responses. > > Those threads generally ended badly, because on the right of me there are people not willing to concede the science, and on the left there are people who like keeping the argument on the science, because that’s where they are strongest. They know that once we move away from the core science and into the fuzzier world of politics, economics, forecasting, discount rates, foreign relations, and all the other issues that crop up, a lot of their arguments are just hot air. I will have to say that I do think that the reason why the left is closer to the science is just a historical coincidence. Nevertheless this is one item where the joke that “reality has a liberal bias” can be applied. On the right the reality is that we have now powerful merchants of doubt that are preventing any serious effort from being considered thanks to misleading and manufactured information designed to confuse the issue. What is notorious is that this is not hidden at all, virtually the same merchants of doubt that were behind the efforts to discredit worries about tobacco, worries about acid rain, worries about CFCs are continuing to manufacture the same kinds of doubt it does not matter how strong is the science or the evidence their misleading efforts are profitable. Heck, even Mark Morano had a go with making people doubt about John Kerry and now he pops up as Climate Change denier “expert” in many right wing media outlets. Why this does not give you any pause or tell you that there is indeed a huge difference between the hot hair of the right and the left? (I’m also on the record of busting alarmists like James Lovelock that do not have any support for his doomsday scenarios, and many of the climate researchers do see him like they see the deniers) Why is it that guys like Mark Morano, Lord (not of parliament) Monckton and others that are lying about their credentials are being given any support in the Republican party? Why then the Republicans used the many times discredited Lord Monckton as their star witness in the most recent congressional hearing on the issue? No, clearly the climate researchers and people like me do see the hot air and do not appreciate the one coming from the left, on the other side I see Republicans more willing to turn the empty hot air rhetoric from the deniers into legislation or even prosecution of the scientists. We are headed for very dark political times thanks to the pandering of the Republicans to the deniers and you are worried about very weak hot air coming from the left. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/154 "2010-08-31T23:52:50Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] Green energy, Sam. That’s the key to our future, and, very likely, our survival. We have to have it, we have to figure it out, and we have to do it yesterday. With a sufficient source, an abundant source, of renewable, non-destructive energy, we can do damn near anything. The subsistance farmers of Bangladesh will be well fed, their children can go to school, they can have light in their homes to read after dark. [/QUOTE] Absolutely!! Bring on those fucking nuclear reactors! When do we start? -XT ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/155 "2010-08-31T23:54:58Z")
I don’t mean you’re lying. I mean you don’t have easy, pat answers to the more difficult questions of what to do about it. It’s in your best interest to frame the argument this way: If you don’t believe in global warming, you’re a denier and you are unscientific. If you are scientific, you will accept that global warming is happening, and therefore should do what we say needs to be done. That’s your best argument. If you can frame the entire debate as pro vs anti science, you win. On the other hand, if the argument is, “Okay, accepting that global warming is happening, just how does a carbon tax in the U.S. lower CO2 emissions, if the net result is simply to give a comparative advantage to other countries who don’t impose the tax? How does it help global warming to take actions that will result in the migration of manufacturing from the U.S., where it is relatively energy efficient, to China and India, where it’s much less efficient?” That’s a very hard argument for you to win. And when you look at the actual numbers for how much carbon taxes will cost, and how much they will actually mitigate warming, the economic argument doesn’t look very good for you either. Another problem you have, once you get past the basic science, is that the UN’s own projections for future warming range from, “Little to no net economic damage” to, “We’re going to cause trillions of dollars in destruction.” That’s a hard range of numbers to work from. The uncertainty in the U.N. prediction comes from the fact that it’s very hard to predict carbon consumption 100 years into the future. Hell, it’s hard to predict it five years into the future. Go back and see what the U.N’s projections for carbon emissions in 2010 were five years ago, and compare them to what they actually are today. And when you apply standard discounting rules to future costs of warming damage, it becomes very hard to justify the kind of spending you want to do today to avoid it. Green energy is great, but there’s no evidence that we’re not investing enough in it. On the contrary, there are billions and billions of dollars flowing into green energy research. It’s just a very hard problem. There’s no evidence that we can spend our way to a solution. I can also argue that picking energy winners and losers today and subsidizing them will simply distort the market and ultimately make it harder to get to a real ‘green’ future. For an example of that, have a look at what’s happened to Spain’s heavily subsidized solar industry. They put all their green eggs in one basket, and then crushed it. I can go on. Once you get past “Global Warming is real”, the problem becomes very, very difficult. So difficult that there may not actually be a good path forward other than to wait, collect more data, and wait for the economy to recover before throwing more taxes at it. Maybe in ten years we’ll be able to reduce the forecasting error bars enough that we’ll be able to make good decisions. That is, if we haven’t shot our wad already by making rash, stupid decisions that wreck our economy. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/156 "2010-09-01T00:07:47Z")
The point still stands, Lomborg was really the closest that I saw that could be a match for your positions. As his background is in Business, his change of heart tells me that serious doubters of the proposed solutions are considering them now and a consensus of sorts on how to deal with the issue is emerging. You are losing any serious footing that you had before. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/157 "2010-09-01T00:10:53Z")
**Gigobuster** : I know you and I aren’t actually that far apart when it comes to acknowledging the false statements on the right and the hysteria on the left. Somewhere in the middle is a rational response. We differ on what that response should be. From my point of view, there are a host of market-based alternatives that have not even been considered in this debate. For example, traffic congestion is a huge source of inefficiency in the vehicle fleet. We could end congestion tomorrow by implementing congestion pricing for roads, then letting the market sort it out. It would change everything from suburban planning to telecommuting. It can be done technologically with security and an assurance of privacy. Most economists support congestion pricing. You could even consider it a form of carbon tax, and I’d be okay with that so long as it was revenue neutral and the money was redistributed back into the population that paid it out. But there’s no support for that on the right OR the left. I also think upgrading to a ‘smart’ grid is a good idea, and putting rules in place that universally allow people to sell power back to the grid. That would be another big market enabler and would spur all kinds of innovation as small startups and researchers would have a path to monetization of small energy generators. There are a lot of innovative ideas out there that don’t require federal taxation and huge international agreements, but rather set up market conditions that incentivize the right behavior. A straight-up carbon tax would be a good example, but the left was way too willing to settle for cap and trade, an inferior mechanism that has as its only ‘advantage’ the fact that it puts the government right in the center, allowing it to micro-manage industry and pay off favored constituents. I can’t support that. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/158 "2010-09-01T00:12:44Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The point still stands, Lomborg was really the closest that I saw that could be a match for your positions. > > As his background is in Business, his change of heart tells me that serious doubters of the proposed solutions are considering them now and a consensus of sorts on how to deal with the issue is emerging. > > You are losing any serious footing that you had before. I will read his new book with an open mind. I haven’t seen his latest stuff. ---
**Author:** ![montag01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/51bf81/32.png) [@montag01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/montag01)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/159 "2010-09-01T00:38:25Z")
Be careful of Lomborg, Mr. Stone. He’ll make you work the weekend. Hell, Lomborg fucked my girlfriend and then got on my case about my TPS reports. Don’t let my fate be your own! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037/160 "2010-09-01T00:39:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > **Gigobuster** : I know you and I aren’t actually that far apart when it comes to acknowledging the false statements on the right and the hysteria on the left. Somewhere in the middle is a rational response. We differ on what that response should be. As the point of this thread is closely related to American politics I have to press this point. There was a false statement in your recent post. The reality is that I see guys like Mark Morano making those same false points. > **[Marc Morano](https://www.desmog.com/marc-morano/)** > > Marc Morano Credentials Background Marc Morano is the executive director and chief correspondent of ClimateDepot.com, a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Morano is also the Communications Director at CFACT, a... So once again, seeding doubts on Kerrys past was not enough, doubt is his product and with no climate research experience under him you do not ever wonder if the sources that you rely on are misleading you? > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > A straight-up carbon tax would be a good example, but the left was way too willing to settle for cap and trade, an inferior mechanism that has as its only ‘advantage’ the fact that it puts the government right in the center, allowing it to micro-manage industry and pay off favored constituents. I can’t support that. What I see is that it is ridiculous to ignore that both a carbon tax and a well designed cap and trade can be used at the same time. And no, it is not just the left that is looking at cap and trade. [http://www.ucsusa.org/global\_warming/solutions/big\_picture\_solutions/cap-and-trade.html](http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/big_picture_solutions/cap-and-trade.html) > [@](#): > > Cap and Trade Alone is not Sufficient > > A cap-and-trade program alone would not be sufficient to meet the challenge of climate change. While a cap-and-trade policy would address the failure of the market to account for harm to the climate, it cannot by itself provide sufficient incentives for the technologies and other measures that will be needed to establish a true low-carbon economy. The government must implement parallel policies alongside a cap-and-trade regime to ensure development and deployment of the full range of clean technologies. These policies include requiring utilities to generate a higher percentage of their electricity from renewable energy sources, requiring automakers to increase vehicle fuel economy standards, stronger energy efficiency policies, incentives for investments in low-carbon technologies, and policies encouraging smart growth. Studies have shown that a comprehensive approach including these parallel policies would lower the price for allowances, cut emissions, and save consumers money by lowering their electric and gasoline bills. > > What about a Carbon Tax? > > A well-designed cap-and-trade program has an important advantage over a carbon tax. The former would require the specific emissions reductions necessary to avoid dangerous climate change, while a carbon tax by itself cannot guarantee any particular level of emissions reductions. Moreover, a cap-and-trade program would more easily dovetail with similar existing and proposed regimes in other countries and regions.In addition, allowing developing countries to sell carbon credits from avoided tropical deforestation emissions reductions would provide a powerful incentive to address the source of some 20 percent of global warming pollution emissions. > \*\* > Nevertheless, a carbon tax, like a cap-and-trade program, would use the power of the market to achieve cost-effective emissions reductions, and both would generate revenues that could be used for the public benefit. It may be possible for the two policies to co-exist and complement one another.\*\* [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-stone-why-do-you-hate-america/552037.md?page=9)