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Is the response to "climate change" dangerous?


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Posted
  • Location: Chevening Kent
  • Location: Chevening Kent

There are several points on here directed at my earlier posts and I will try to answer them, I say again there is nothing wrong with sensible environmental policy. The curbing of emissions would seem to be a prudent thing to do, but not in an attempt to change or reverse GW, that is a flawed argument for many reasons, and as I tried to point our earlier a very dangerous road to travel down even if it could be done. Sensible environmentalism includes at its heart the acceptance of economical and social boundaries along with political will and the expectations of human's as a spices, it cannot ignore them. We find ourselves in a situation where rhetoric is far stronger than action and completely at odds peoples expectations and in many cases their needs. Global politics is not setup to deal with long term issues, it deals with the here and now and spends most of its time keeping the wolf from its own door and thinking about re-election next year not in 20yrs time. Gordon Brown would be quite happy to triple the size of UK airports, triple the traffic and take £10 from all them passengers and put a few windmills up for the next 50yrs if we let him. Wealthy governments will be quite happy to buy CO2 credits from poorer nations only too happy to take it and then nip off round the corner and burn a bit of fossil fuel while no one is looking. Still everyone will be happy because CO2 output on paper would have dropped and we would of met our targets.

My only crime on here is to try and bring a bit of honesty to the debate not to be deny man has a responsibility to the environment because we do. We also have a responsibility to ourselves and involves honesty a difficult thing for humans to deliver, and looking at the talk and policies on the table and some of the claims made ("we can reverse climate change" UN Sec Gen 2007) are just amazing from people in such high office.

These comments lead me to think either you are talking a load of cobblers or you really think you can reverse climate change, and both scenarios scare me. We will either end up with the climate completely shot or no action what so ever apart from us all spending out a fortune in pretend green taxes.

I got myself all wound up now, I could go on all night but simply nothing on the AGW agenda adds up, someone is telling porkies?

As for the Montreal Protocol, a good policy well implimented, but there are 2 reasons: 1 there was an alternative and 2 the goods themselves were banned. No one is talking about banning little plastic toys made in China from energy created by fossil fuel burning are they, so the fact they are cheap means we buy em, and we start this whole circle over again.

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Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
There are several points on here directed at my earlier posts and I will try to answer them, I say again there is nothing wrong with sensible environmental policy. The curbing of emissions would seem to be a prudent thing to do, but not in an attempt to change or reverse GW, that is a flawed argument for many reasons, and as I tried to point our earlier a very dangerous road to travel down even if it could be done.

I already addressed that one in the previous post. Curbing emissions is not a means of trying to control the climate, it's a means of reducing the extent to which humans may be affecting the climate.

As for the other points, I covered them in another thread. Magpie posted a link to Jevon's Paradox, which gave a pretty accurate summing-up of the situation- i.e. there is a strong economic theory that if we improve efficiency, prices will come down, and less conservation-minded people will abuse the situation and increase their consumption. But there is no guarantee that this will always happen in all cases, nor that if/when it does happen, the increased consumption will at least offset the emissions cuts caused by the greater efficiency. I.e. it has a lot of truth in it, but it isn't a hard and fast rule.

Rather, what it shows is that improving efficiency alone is unlikely to be effective. But that's the main reason why we hear about "carrot and stick" policies- the point of the sticks is to add disincentives to put off those who would otherwise abuse the system and consume more because the products were cheaper. I agree that authorities' policies at present leave a lot to be desired, with few, far-between and haphazard "carrot" policies, taxes that serve mainly to annoy the public (esp. the poor), but that shows that incoherent, short-termist planning is ineffective, not that the whole idea won't work.

I agree that we've got to see the situation as it is, and not delude ourselves as some climate change organisations seem to be doing. But there's a difference between accepting that things are the way they are, and accepting that they can't be helped because they're the way they are. In my experience many problems are made unavoidable primarily because most people are closed to the possibility that they can be helped- assuming too many limits is at least as dangerous as deluding ourselves that we can do the impossible.

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