Even the “it’s the oil/coal industry” doesn’t get you past the irrationality. Any sane accountant will tell you that if you control a limited resource you make more money by doling it out slowly, rather than by encouraging people to use it up all at once and then not having any to sell when the price goes up.

I think you’re absolutely right about why this is important: Global warming denialism isn’t a movement whose adherents one can convince, any more than one can peel away die-hard creationists or propertarians by logical argument.

Any sane accountant will tell you that if you control a limited resource you make more money by doling it out slowly, rather than by encouraging people to use it up all at once and then not having any to sell when the price goes up.

Corporate capitalism in the land of stock market speculation does not care about making more money on the long run. It cares about making more money on the short run, i.e. making more money this quarter than last quarter. Some “far thinking” star CEOs might care about making more money during their entire stint as CEO as the last CEO (that would make a good mark on their resume). That is the entire motivation *of industry*.

Look at many corporations. They’re selling the silverware so they can show an increase in profits, even as it handicaps them in the future. Massive layoffs, offshoring (which is actually not resulting in any real savings due to many issues the beancounters didn’t think about, many sane corporations are actually closing off their offshoring and trying to hire back locally). You name it.

I think global warming denialism has a lot to do with a desire to believe in a self-affirming delusion in order to compensate for deep-seated insecurities.  It’s really not any different than creationism (aka ‘evolution denialism’).  Take away the delusion, and suddenly, they have to realize that much of what they believe could be false.  It is willful ignorance.

George Monbiot recently made an interesting argument:

In 1973 the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker proposed that the fear of death drives us to protect ourselves with “vital lies” or “the armour of character”(10). We defend ourselves from the ultimate terror by engaging in immortality projects, which boost our self-esteem and grant us meaning that extends beyond death. Over 300 studies conducted in 15 countries appear to confirm Becker’s thesis(11). When people are confronted with images or words or questions that remind them of death they respond by shoring up their worldview, rejecting people and ideas that threaten it and increasing their striving for self-esteem(12).

...

A recent paper by the biologist Janis L Dickinson, published in the journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about global warming makes it difficult for people to repress thoughts of death, and that they might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival(14). There is already experimental evidence suggesting that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption(15). Dickinson proposes that growing evidence of climate change might boost this tendency, as well as raising antagonism towards scientists and environmentalists. Our message, after all, presents a lethal threat to the central immortality project of Western society: perpetual economic growth, supported by an ideology of entitlement and exceptionalism.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/02/death-denial/

I worked on the North Slope in Alaska most years between 1991 and 2000. Every year, spring came earlier and fall and winter came later. The warming climate was interfering with the ability to build the ice roads and pads that GW touted during his 2000 campaign. Permafrost is melting all over Alaska.

Anyone who lives in Alaska and denies that global warming is occurring is either ignorant or a liar.

“Anyone who lives in Alaska and denies that global warming is occurring is either ignorant or a liar.”

And as proof of that: Sarah Palin…

“If denialists were intellectually honest people arguing in good faith, then the key would be to sit them down and show them the data.”

This blog is written by a “denialist” who seems to both have the data AND argue in good faith.  (http://www.climate-skeptic.com/).  Also, what do you say to someone who doesn’t deny that warming has occurred, but rather disagrees with you about what we should do?  Are they wingnuts as well?

I agree that a big part of the everyday denialists motivation for denying climate change is that they enjoy tweaking those elite liberals, but I also think part of it is that they are really afraid of losing their lifestyle if changes are made.  A typical denialist loves their SUV and their big family and their gated community in the middle of nowhere.  If real changes were made that might actually help slow down climate change they might have to live near dark skinned people or not have ten kids, this would be awful for the average wing-nut.

Well- it all comes back to education and why they fight tooth and nail to keep their children from being educated in public schools.  It isn’t the lack of prayer, it’s that the kids will be exposed to something they aren’t in control of.  And, we all know that on average the more education the more liberal people get.  One biology class by someone who understands evolution, and there’s no going back to creationism for their kids.

If we taught the kids science, and they understood it and enjoyed it, there’d be no controlling them.  Which is pretty funny- all they need to do is channel their kids into engineering and they stand a chance of remaining just as sheltered.  But- they are too ignorant of anything that even mentions science to know that.

I don’t think they will ever be reached, they have deliberately walled themselves off and I don’t even bother trying any more.  It’s much like with kids- “because I said so” isn’t much of a reason, but it’s way faster than 10 reasons and 20 arguments.  Especially if you’ve already had that discussion 100 times before.  Why waste the time.  Either they are lying about not knowing, or they aren’t mentally ready to understand.  Does it really matter which?

Actually, anoNY, using long-debunked “arguments” about manual adjustments to temperature records (false and irrelevant) and “urban warming bias” (also false) is not “arguing in good faith.” Neither is suggesting that the amount of CO2 we’ve put into the atmosphere is “incremental,” and that, because it is not as powerful a greenhouse gas as methane that it is a “weak” greenhouse gas (of course, there is hundreds of times as much of it in the atmosphere as methane). So yeah, I would say lies and/or deliberate ignorance and obfuscation does not constitute “good faith,” argumentation when, in fact, an intellectually honest appraisal of the data leaves no doubt about the reality of climate change. Fucking Exxon gets that. There’s really no space left for denialists to be taken seriously.

Most of the poorer people I have known who don’t believe in AGW aren’t so much unwilling to believe it could be happening, as worried that the cost of fixing it will (a) be more than it would be worth and (b) would be paid largely by them, in terms of lost jobs and shut-down economies. Whether that’s a legitimate fear, I’m not qualified to say, but at least for those people it wasn’t about hating on some libral wimuns as much as being worried that their menial job at the power plant is doomed.

The right wingers got a long time grinded the axe of “the planet isn’t warming” until finally, knowing that this made them sound stupid, settled on, “ok, the planet is warming,” bit humans didn’t cause it. But, given the opportunity, they are willing to completely ignore the latter argument they have been making for several years to claim, “climate scientists are falsifying data to claim the planet is warming.” it is a sign that they will simply latch on to anything to lash out at liberals, Al Gore, and tale pride in their “own side.” They can’t even get their claims straight but simply follow whatever shiny object is thrown at them by the wsj editorial page.

“using long-debunked “arguments” about manual adjustments to temperature records (false and irrelevant) and “urban warming bias” (also false) is not “arguing in good faith.””

Care to show me where this debunking happened?

Alkaloid
“Most of the poorer people I have known who don’t believe in AGW aren’t so much unwilling to believe it could be happening, as worried that the cost of fixing it will (a) be more than it would be worth and (b) would be paid largely by them, in terms of lost jobs and shut-down economies. Whether that’s a legitimate fear, I’m not qualified to say, but at least for those people it wasn’t about hating on some libral wimuns as much as being worried that their menial job at the power plant is doomed. “

The middle class has the exact same fear.  The only people who are gung-ho for carbon cuts are single people who live in the downtowns of large cities with plentiful public transportation, i.e. people who’s lives won’t change.  Other proponents are hardcore environmentalists who believe that preserving nature is worth more than any amount of human suffering.  And then finally you have the perpetually unhappy socialist agitators who will take any alliance of convenience if it means their enemies get torn down - the enemy in this case being, as Amanda charmingly puts it, “the rabble”, or the vast majority of North Americans who drive cars, eat at Abblebys and live in the suburbs. 

The above people worry, quite correctly, that any efforts to fight climate change will be paid off their backs.  Meanwhile, tax breaks, subsidies, and other relief efforts will go mainly to selected “disadvantaged” groups, meaning the carbon consumption of those people continue to rise.  Combined with a reluctance to impose carbon cuts on the developing world out of a guilt over imperialism and colonialism, this will ensure that carbon emissions continue to rise. 

Despite rising emissions, the end result will be that the rabble will be forced out of their McMansions by skyrocketing heating and air conditioning costs, forced to abandon commuting to their jobs in their Ford Explorers due to skyrocketing gasoline prices, and herded into small apartments in massive identical government built housing projects where their selfish, consumption driven lives will end.  They can be given exactly what they need and no more, and contribute to society according their best efforts, and they can be efficiently monitored and regulated for compliance.

That is the end game, isnt it?

”...end result will be that the rabble will be forced out of their McMansions by skyrocketing heating and air conditioning costs, forced to abandon commuting to their jobs in their Ford Explorers due to skyrocketing gasoline prices, and herded into small apartments in massive identical government built housing projects where their selfish, consumption driven lives will end.”

...and over it all, a maniacal and slavering Al Gore watches in eager anticipation of the carnage to come as freedom and liberty are snuffed out in the one country that is God’s Shining Beacon of Hope™ in a dark world of evil liberofascist collective action…

(or some such overblown Beckian bullshit…)

a better question to ask: what’s in it for the climate scientists, making it worth their time and effort to create a fraudulent “global warming” crisis? is there some group willing to pay them big bucks to do so? is a full professorship at some prestigious college/university, in their field, that well paying? are they all going to write best-selling, non-fiction books on the subject, and make a million dollars, ala al gore? perhaps they’re being secretly funded by the manufacturers of insulation and storm windows? people want to know, dammit!

so far as i can tell, the answer to all of the above is a resounding NO!

of course, the deniers never even address this, which you’d think they would, to provide some motivation for the fraud. and yet….......................................nothing.

That is the end game, isnt it?

It is if we don’t try to change the direction we’re headed.  Doing nothing and just going on like there’s nothing wrong is guaranteed to produce a Mad Max future.  Once the oil runs out (and it will), if we haven’t switched our energy source to something sustainable we’re screwed.  It doesn’t take a genius to see that.  If the scientists are right, and it’s very hard to argue that 90% of the world’s climate scientists are all in a conspiracy to foment communist revolution, we may even be screwed long before that (and may be screwed to some extent even now, due to our obstinate refusal to face reality).

A commenter on Krugman’s column nymed “spit” made a very cogent observation:

It’s one thing to believe in helping your neighbors, and it’s another to recognize that you and your neighbors and the whole rest of the planet all share responsibility for everybody’s survival. Suddenly you’re not so independent anymore.

I think it’s the idea of interdependence that really chafes, honestly. Of course, people couch that in fears about socialism, or about somebody telling them what they can drive, or whatever, and there’s certainly some anti-intellectualism here and there, some poking liberals in the eye, so forth. But I think the depth of the anger comes from cutting into a longstanding American self-image.

That was very insightful, I thought.  It’s hard to be a rugged individual when other people can ruin your lifestyle from afar.  The whole point of being a rugged individual and Going Galt is that you don’t need those other people, you can live your life as an island and not be affected by them.  It’s hard to give that up and accept that you need to worry about what other people are doing that affects you, and what you do that affects them.

Even the “it’s the oil/coal industry” doesn’t get you past the irrationality. Any sane accountant will tell you that if you control a limited resource you make more money by doling it out slowly, rather than by encouraging people to use it up all at once and then not having any to sell when the price goes up.

The corporate lust for short-term profits aside, the fossil fuel industry has a great deal to fear from energy innovations, whether regular conservation or development of new sources of energy.  If people use less oil/coal due to better efficiency or conservation, the price will decline.  If renewables become more feasible and affordable, then the fossil fuel industry will really be up shit creek.  It’s in their interest to oppose any competition to their stranglehold on the economy, and they have the money and political capital to get whatever they want.

AnonNY, you need to update your Trolling 101 handbook. The old “I will innocently ask, over and over, for you to give me citations for every word of your post as a way of derailing the thread, instead of finding the easily available, Google-able, published research within reach.”

We’ve seen it before. And most of us here know exactly what you’re doing. It’s no one’s job to do your thinking for you, or your research, and you’re either being disingenous about your true motives or are completely intellectually lazy.

Don’t feed the troll, people. It never ends well.

“We’ve seen it before. And most of us here know exactly what you’re doing. It’s no one’s job to do your thinking for you, or your research, and you’re either being disingenous about your true motives or are completely intellectually lazy. “

I agree that no one should be thinking for me, but I haven’t seen anything debunking either of the claims that the commenter mentioned.  Maybe I am looking in the wrong spot?  The original post above mentions that the way to deal with skepticism is to show them the data, this is all I am asking.

Dismissing someone as a troll is just as likely to prove your point as derailing a thread by asking for citations over and over, which is to say not very.

It’s a pretty cynical ploy on Sarah Palin’s part, considering that in early 2008, she had a <a >climate change subcabinet</a> grappling with what to do for the people of Shishmaref and other villages who are sinking into the sea because of the erosion of permafrost.

In the same edition of the Washington Post is a story about how climate change is affecting farms in Southern Australia and how, despite the 13 years of drought and the drying up of the river that sustained them, the farmers still don’t believe climate change exists. It would mean the demise of their way of life. That, I think, is the problem in a nutshell.

“It definitely is, and it’s a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy—when they think about it at all—in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ‘cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot ...”

Whenever I’ve gotten into debates with global warming denialists, they typically go through three stages of arguments, in this order:

1. Global warming is a hoax created by Al Gore and a cabal of high-rolling scientists.
2. Okay, global warming is real, but it’s not caused by human activity.
3. Okay, it’s real, and humans are causing it, but there’s nothing we can do about it and we’re all doomed, so why should I change my lifestyle?

I think the third argument is closest to the truth.  The anger is just a cover for fear.

Conservatism attracts people who are fearful—people who feel surrounded by powerful exterior threats they can’t control or understand.  Conservative leaders assure them that their fears are real, and that they have easy solutions: all-powerful leaders who can protect them, fundamentalist religions with glib answers to all of life’s questions, an idealized past where problems were simpler and more manageable.  (A lot of populist conservative rhetoric plays on the desire for things to be
“simpler.”)  Dissenters are accused of being part of the vast army of alien threats.  And if conservative leaders run up against a problem that can’t be fought with soothing words or a quick fix, they claim it doesn’t exist, it’s just part of the conspiracy.

Global warming is exactly the type of threat that terrifies conservative follower types.  It’s huge, spanning the entire planet.  It’s new, something that can’t be fixed by replaying the past.  It’s hard to understand—hell, even scientists who study the phenomenon don’t pretend to know everything about it.  It’s not simple.  And, frankly, conservatives are right when they say global warming can’t be fixed by biking to work or planting a tree.  Global warming can be slowed and even stopped, but it requires organized effort on a global scale.  That’s the point where conservative followers get dismayed, give up, and retreat into fantasies where the problem just doesn’t exist.

A while back on Slacktivist there was a big argument with one of the conservative regulars about global warming.  He started with the usual “global warming is a lie”/“how dare liberals tell me what to do” lines, but by the end of the discussion he was stating his position as something like, “I know it’s real, but if I admit I believe in it, I’ll have to give up my car, and I really need to drive to work.”

(The idea that there’s no point to reducing your carbon footprint unless you can give up absolutely everything and live naked off the land is a whole side issue, one Peter has helpfully illustrated with his panic about people being forced to live in—horrors!—APARTMENTS!!!  Because there’s no middle ground between living in a giant unsustainable McMansion and living in a bleak gubmint housing project.)

It’s mostly about fear.  Picking on liberals is just false bravado.  And environmentalism ought to be a conservative value.  It used to be.  American conservatism is really ass-backward these days.

A typical denialist loves their SUV and their big family and their gated community in the middle of nowhere.  If real changes were made that might actually help slow down climate change they might have to live near dark skinned people or not have ten kids, this would be awful for the average wing-nut.

yeah, I keep wondering what would have happened had gas actually gone up to $7-8/gallon.  It’s already nearly at $3/gal, which is our “summer blend” gas rate.

I’m in Chicago, so I’m okay.  I live by a giant source of fresh water and have public transit available.  But people who live in McMansions an hour commute away from their office jobs?  In Arizona or other water poor areas?  What are they going to do if gas is $7/gal and it becomes too expensive to bring in all the water they need?

It’s tough enough in the current jobless economy with pressures from healthcare and stagnant wages.  Thinking about how the environment is changing irrevocably is just stress most people can’t even begin to deal with.  It’s like a tornado…you hope it misses you, b/c if it hits, you’re wiped out.  There’s nothing you can really do about it, either, except pray it doesn’t hit you.

Seriously, there’s little any single person/family can do to change things, and when people feel like they have no control, they start pretending that they—or someone who likes them—does.

My favorite global warming stories are the scientists who hypothesize that once we hit X ppm carbon in the atmosphere, it’ll be too late to stop it…and then they discover we blew by that firewall years ago.

I think the polar bears are doomed.  There’s nothing we can do now to save them.  There’s plenty we can do to save ourselves and our societies, but not so much for Fiji or polar bears.

“...and over it all, a maniacal and slavering Al Gore watches in eager anticipation of the carnage to come as freedom and liberty are snuffed out in the one country that is God’s Shining Beacon of Hope™ in a dark world of evil liberofascist collective action…

(or some such overblown Beckian bullshit…) “

Let me draw an analogy.  Remember the 9/11 conspiracy theories, which are still kicking around?  It seemed a bit too convenient for everybody that several months after a Republican administration came into office in a disputed election, that there is an attack against American soil and that there is a causus belli, and the fervor (if not excuse) needed to invade Iraq.  Naturally, the 9/11 conspiracy theorists believed that the attacks had to have been orchestrated, faked, or at least known about and not prevented in order to allow the Republicans to expand military spending and start new wars.  It was simply too much of a coincidence.  This is especially true of Muslim 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who cannot believe that it was their fellow Arabs and Muslims who brought calamity upon themselves.

In a similar way, you have the Global Warming Conspiracy theorists.  Because only the Left is talking about the issue, they propose to solve it in the only way they know how - top down regulation, quota systems, wealth transfers, etc.  “How convenient!”, say the conspiracy theorists - the people who hate capitalism, the middle class and the suburbs have found a problem that can only be solved by ending all of the above.  Or something like that. 

“The idea that there’s no point to reducing your carbon footprint unless you can give up absolutely everything and live naked off the land is a whole side issue, one Peter has helpfully illustrated with his panic about people being forced to live in—horrors!—APARTMENTS!!!  Because there’s no middle ground between living in a giant unsustainable McMansion and living in a bleak gubmint housing project.”

For most people who live in stand alone houses on the edge of affordability, there really isn’t.  Anyway, visit Europe sometime.

For most people who live in stand alone houses on the edge of affordability, there really isn’t.

Really? You mean no one lived in anything but tiny government own apartments before the modern mcmansion era? Fascinating!

Anyway, visit Europe sometime.

I’ve been! The city dwellers live in apartments or townhomes. Suburbanites have single family homes.

I am one of those people who have known for more than 50 years that GW is occurring. It was explained to me, waaaay back in my school days that the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles. In the cooling portion of those cycles, so I was told, there were Ice Ages. In the warming part the temperatures got hot enough to melt the polar ice caps.

I was told that we are, at present, in a warming part of the present cycle. What was known was that we were in the early to pre-mid part of the warming portion of our present cycle and the earth was slowly warming up. It was explained to me that this “warming up” did not proceed at a fixed, steady rate, but instead proceeded by fits and starts and sometimes even produced short and/or long cooling off periods.

Until recently I paid little attention to the fuss about GW because I expected it to be occurring and found nothing unusual in the idea that it is happening. Then someone I knew began to go on and on about mankind being the cause of our present period of GW. This was my introduction to AGW. When I asked how much of the warming was thought to be mankind’s fault, I was told “all of it!”

Now that didn’t seem to square with my understanding of GW being a natural process that the earth goes through on a regular basis. So I began to seek out those who are advocates of AGW so as to find out just how fast we are moving into GW and just what part of it is mankind’s fault.

That questioning earned me the sobriquet “denier”. I was stunned. Heck, I was asking atheists not religionists. I expected a reasoned explanation and links to supportive research and documentation provided by reputable researchers employed at, or for, recognized educational and/or research institutions. What I got was a snarly command to “go do the search” myself, and “it’s not up to me to do your research for you; there are “lots of places” you can google to find the information you want”.

If anybody pointed me in any direction at all it was always to an AGW ‘believers’ site or to a “deniers” site. Never to an unbiased research site. I have come to realize that such an “unbiased” site does not seem to exist. There are “believers” sites and there are “unbelievers” sites. Each “side” has its own “scientific” gurus who offer apparently solid proof of that side’s position.

Each side has taken to personal attacks on anyone who is not of their belief. Each side seems willing to subvert, change, or omit any information that does not support its own position. Honesty, integrity, principle, and honour seem to be casualties in this war of opinions. And “opinions” it surely is. I say this because when I dig deeply into either sides “hard” information, I soon discover them both saying, “well, we don’t have all the research finished yet, and we can’t prove we’re right in a scientific manner; but we’re sure the evidence will prove us right as soon as the research is completed”.

“In the meantime we must force the world to do our bidding just in case we are right.” 

Well, folks, I’m not impressed by this attitude. Not one little friggin’ bit. This is not science. This is religion. This is putting “beliefs” ahead of research. This is not doing the research first, then forming an opinion based on that research. So as far as I am concerned you’re all the same. None of you truly knows what you are talking about yet.

I will await the outcome of the research that IS being done without forming an alliance with either side. If either side cares to label me either a “believer” or a “denier” I’ll accept those labels with as good a grace as I can muster.

Good luck to both sides and may the best science win….

Oh NOEZ! Not apartments! There you might have to see a neighbor once or twice. (Or not really. I can’t remember the last time I saw my neighbors.)

But it’s funny. Once upon a time, I was driving through an old suburb, and there were these ... things. They *looked* kind of like houses, but they were close together, and made of brick instead of fiberglass siding. And they had doors and windows just like McMansions, but not quite so many.

They were nice. I wonder what on earth they could be. No decent human being could ever live in a ...SMALL… home….

Also, Peter, 9/11 conspiracy theorists were rightly regarded as a fringe believe from
weirdos. By contrast, believing that there is a global warming hoax is mainstream republican thought espoused on the senate floor on a regular basis. The question is why mainstream republicans as delusional and dishonest as *fringe* members of the left.  That is what we are wondering about.

SezMe, there are “unbiased” sites—thetvare called climate scientists who do research on the issue abd realized there that this was human-caused.

It is kind of like asking why doctors don’t use “alternative medicines.” they actually do: the “natural remedies” that work get called “medicine.” the “unbiased research” turned out to be the research that realized that human-caused climate change was occurring. Those who couldn’t accept the research findings went on to become denialists and were no longer interested in research.

To call attention to a separate debate raging over the Copenhagen summit, wealthier countries like the USA, UK and Denmark had been plotting to use the summit to force higher emissions cuts on poorer, developing countries; weaken UN oversight; and backtrack on Kyoto:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

Well, there still seems something hinky to me about WTC 7 imploding so neatly.  I just don’t think Cheney et. al. were competent enough to pull a giant conspiracy like that off…and if they had managed to plan everything Just. So. why was W left reading the goat book?  They would have had him prepped or at least had a speech prepared for him to read.  The best of the Truthers’ conspiracies still have those giant holes in them.

Either they’re that competent or they’re not.

As for global warming being cyclical…SezMe, people have injected a hell of a lot of carbon into the atmosphere.  Enough to affect the weather.  We’ve rather passed the point of no return…the ice caps will melt and we will lose the polar bear. 

Earth, of course, doesn’t give a shit, being a planet.  Things were much hotter when the dinosaurs were around, not to mention the first few billion years of the planet’s existence when it was just a big ball of fire.

Yeah, yeah…. same old - same old. Nothing for me here…

I agree that no one should be thinking for me, but I haven’t seen anything debunking either of the claims that the commenter mentioned.  Maybe I am looking in the wrong spot?  The original post above mentions that the way to deal with skepticism is to show them the data, this is all I am asking.

Bullshit. The claims on the blog that you linked to are so old worn-out that you could play a fucking game of bingo with them. “Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place,” is a vacuous, impuissant kind of weaseling out from under any possible weight of intellectual responsibility, given that the information that you need has been at your fingertips for at least two years. And that’s being awful charitable. If you don’t know where to look, it’s because you haven’t looked at all. You’re not fooling me with your false intellectual piety. It’s self-evident you see no need to expose yourself to information that contradicts your prejudices.

I don’t have the to actually hold your hand and indulge your intellectual laziness, but luckily I don’t have to. Most of the information that you need can be found here: http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/.

Your blogger is operating in poor faith because his arguments were convincingly debunked years ago, but they are continually repeated, as though saying it enough times will make it true.

There never was any substance to those objections to begin with, largely because the scientists doing the research thought of them first, and designed their studies to account for sources. This is because the people doing this work are, as a matter of course, than the denialist jackasses who think they are playing such an oh-so-clever game of “gotcha!”

SezMe is the kind of self-righteous asshole who thinks that scientists aren’t supposed to defend their ideas, and that “unbiased” means pretending that dishonest charlatanism deserves intellectual respect.

Argh! I meant to say: “There never was any substance to these objections to begin with, largely because the scientists doing the research thought of them first, and designed their studies to account for sources of bias. This is because the people doing this work are, as a matter of course, smarter than denialist jackasses who think that they are playing a clever game with all of their “gotcha!” jackassery.

For most people who live in stand alone houses on the edge of affordability, there really isn’t.  Anyway, visit Europe sometime.

I have.  I saw people living in houses or apartments, about the same as here.

Seriously, where do you live that the neighborhoods are full of either giant prefab estates or those nightmare apartments from “Brazil”?  Why would people in “stand alone houses on the edge of affordability” be affected by the anti-mansion shock troops you imagine being activated the moment you agree to switch to those curly light bulbs?

Not that it matters, since there are no global warming initiatives that involve kicking people out of their homes.  Most proposed global warming legislation is aimed at curbing corporate waste and investing in alternative energy and energy-efficient technologies.  (It’d be great if we could also expand and renovate our nation’s public transit systems, but I’m not holding my breath for that one.)  Reducing one’s individual environmental footprint is helpful, but it doesn’t actually do much for the specific problem of global warming.

When I asked how much of the warming was thought to be mankind’s fault, I was told “all of it!”

I don’t know who is telling you “All of it”, but I will assume it is not a reputable source. This is not an all or none problem. There certainly are other effects at play besides increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. To state unequivocally that humans are the sole influence on climate change should not pass the smell test. 

That being said, to claim there is little to no effect from human activity on the climate seems to fly directly in the face of a mountain of evidence. You don’t get the evidence from “believers”, you get the evidence from hard numbers. These numbers tell us that we have significantly different atmospheric partial pressures of many different greenhouse gases as compared to historical baselines. These numbers conicide with increases in releases of these gases by humans. Thus we conclude the increases in partial pressures are due to human activity and not due to some unknown source.

Now that we have established the fact that humans are directly responsible for the release of these gases, and these gases have increased in atmospheric concentration dramatically compared to historical norms, it seems the only thing left to prove is that greenhouse gases have the potential to effect atmospheric temperature. If you examine relative surface temperatures of Venus vs. Mercury, one can clearly see that greenhouse gases drive atmospheric temperatures higher. None of these facts are in dispute by anyone but the most cynical of AGW deniers.

The old suburban homes from the ‘50s and ‘60s are plenty comfortable, close to the city, and sustainable as one kind of living.

Anyway I don’t get the love for McMansions, if I had a wife 2.5 kids and a dog I’d much rather live in the kind of 1800 sq. Foot, brick, three bed one bathroom home with hardwood flooring than a ugly ass McMansion with 6 bedrooms. A “great” room nobody uses, big formal dining room nobody uses, and made with cheap chinese plastic and wall-to-wall carpet. There are some things about the ‘50s tat weren’t so bad, and their suburbs was one of them. Also, most families had ONE car, and got along just fine.

Also, if every household had just one car, hey! You could have that big-ass SUV. Its probably better to have one Ford Expedition than five Honda Civics.

Slacktivist ... by the end of the discussion he was stating his position as something like, “I know it’s real, but if I admit I believe in it, I’ll have to give up my car, and I really need to drive to work.”

Oh, god, no matter what you do, do not EVER even vaguely imply to any of the Slacktivist commentariat that people exist who do not drive cars for any journey further than the front lawn.  Part of the reason I never comment there any more was that I got sick of the flamewars that would ensue over something like:

Commenter A: I really love living in a place where I can rely on public transit, my bike, and my legs to get me where I need to go.

Commenter B:  You know, SOME OF US actually NEED our cars, because we have CHILDREN!  Also, some people with disabilities exist!  If you take away cars, a lot of people will be immobilized!

Commenter A:  I wasn’t making a prescriptive statement at all and don’t think people should be forced to get rid of their cars.  But you’d be surprised at how rewarding it can be to drive less.

Commenter B: YOU WILL PRY MY VEHICLE OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS, ELITIST URBANITE!

Damn, a shout-out in one 24-hour period from PZ Meyers AND Krugman - that’s gotta be sweet.

Right wingers and those with mystified ways of thinking want to deny the idea that global warming is caused by humans because they are wrapped up in a category error, thinking, “no liberal is going to accuse me of committing a sin!”  Apparently, “feeling guilty” is the right wingers’s worst fear, worst than ‘feeling dead’ or ‘feeling starving’.  It is the state of being that marks the far limits of negative human experience for those on the right.  But, instead of realising that global warming doesn’t even touch on the issue of sin, and is is unconcerned with it, right wingers fight back against what they perceive as an attribution of personal evil:

“There is no global warming!” they spout forth.

What they are really trying to say:  “Mere liberals have no right to convict me of sin!”

I was told that we are, at present, in a warming part of the present cycle.

Then you were misinformed. The long-term Milankovich forcing is currently slightly negative, so we should be cooling. [J Imbrie, J Z Imbrie (1980). “Modeling the Climatic Response to Orbital Variations”. Science 207 (1980/02/29): 943–953: “Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.”]

Dunc, explaining those scientific facts to a denier who thinks mankind rode on dinosaurs is like explaining quantum physics to a chimpanzee

Also, if every household had just one car, hey! You could have that big-ass SUV. Its probably better to have one Ford Expedition than five Honda Civics.

Yep.  I have a 20mpg vehicle that seats 7 and takes full sheets of plywood or drywall flat.  I make no apologies for it, as it very rarely leaves the driveway unloaded or with a solo occupant.  We also use it sparingly enough that, even though it is our only vehicle, we drive it less than 10K a year.

Most of those miles are with 4 to 7 people and/or a lot of stuff.

keshimeshi (20):

The corporate lust for short-term profits aside, the fossil fuel industry has a great deal to fear from energy innovations, whether regular conservation or development of new sources of energy.

But one would think in the latter case the individual companies that make up the fossil fuel industry can branch out. Why can’t Exxon build wind turbines or BP boil switchgrass or whatever?

“Why can’t Exxon build wind turbines or BP boil switchgrass or whatever?”

They can if they want, but they have unsold inventory of the old product (oil) and lots of infrastructure that probably can’t be repurposed.  Plus they would have to do research and develop factories/production facilities.  All very costly in the short term, even if it pays off well in the long term.

In contrast, they can keep bleeding us (as long as the price of gas is kept within some reasonable bounds - high enough to earn a good profit, but low enough to keep competition from alternate energy to a minimum) and the profits will continue to roll in without issue until oil prices get so bad that the oil products market more or less collapses.  By that time the people in charge now will be long gone with their obscene profits and changing corporate strategy will be some other bastard’s problem.

So there is the dilemma of modern American Capitalism…

by the end of the discussion he was stating his position as something like, “I know it’s real, but if I admit I believe in it, I’ll have to give up my car, and I really need to drive to work.”

Among the many problems in dealing with this issue is how hard to get across to people that there are 1. social, systemic problems which 2. aren’t specifically their personal fault but 3. something needs to be done about.

I think it comes down less to fear or anger than having a fundamentally stupid, self-centered way of thinking about the world. You just can’t get heard by some people over the constant chorus in their head screaming “MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (what about ME?!?!?!?!?!)”

“Why can’t Exxon build wind turbines or BP boil switchgrass or whatever?”

They can if they want, but they have unsold inventory of the old product (oil) and lots of infrastructure that probably can’t be repurposed.  Plus they would have to do research and develop factories/production facilities.  All very costly in the short term, even if it pays off well in the long term.

Some/many of the energy companies have been doing that for 20/30 years already. But it’s like the CDO bubble: if everyone else is making huge temporary returns being insanely stupid, your managers and shareholders are oing to ask why you’re not doing it too.

I doubt anyone is monitoring this thread anymore, but for what it’s worth, here is a column by political pundit and economist Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s Magazine (the Canadian version of Time/Newsweek).

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/12/11/the-shrimp-and-the-damage-done/

Highlights:
“The most comprehensive attempt to date to estimate the costs to the world economy, both of global warming and of the measures needed to prevent it, is the Stern Review, prepared by the economist Sir Nicholas Stern for the British government in 2006. On Stern’s reckoning, a warming of up to three degrees Celsius over the next few decades—Copenhagen aims to hold it to two degrees—would cost between zero and three per cent of GDP annually.”

furthermore,
“Only in more severe warming scenarios, about five degrees or more, does the projected cost rise above five per cent of GDP per year. That’s not five per cent out of today’s economy, or tomorrow’s, mind you. That’s five per cent over the next century. A century from now, that is, annual output would be five per cent less due to the effects of global warming than it would otherwise be.”

So, annualizing that, a global warming crisis of 5 degrees over the next 100 years should cost the global economy 5%/100 years or 0.05% per year.  Well holy shit!  It’s a fucking crisis!

As I pointed out, only the enviro-hippies to whom keeping the environment at the exact pristine conditions it is now, at any cost to human life and development, have any interest in cutting out carbon emissions altogether.  Couple that with the very real possibility that we’ve hit peak oil already and we’ll see the end of cheap oil in the next century anyway, and you have a formula for carbon emissions naturally dropping in any case.