Interesting Argument about Climate Change
 

http://www.break.com/index/tough-to-argue.html

Interesting. I certainly can't find any holes in his agrument. So what do YOU think?

Takes a bit long to get to his point (I had to fast forward to get through it), and while I generally agree with his conclusion, I do vaguely recall that there's an inheriant problem with the methodology he's using. I think I picked it up in my Philosophy course "Introduction to Logic", but for the life of me, I can't remember what the problem was.

Then again, I might have learned about the problem with this method elsewhere, or one might not exist & I'm remembering something else.

And I think the guy discounted one problematic tier in the whole Global Warmign discussion. The selfish belief that it won't happen (or at least the worst of it won't happen) in the person's lifetime. That, if nothing else, seems to be the one thing that is the most detrimental to the Global Warming discussion, as many just don't care enough, thinking they'll be able to ride it out till the day they die.

SWB

That's human nature for you.

His logic is seriously flawed. His entire argument is "there MIGHT be a problem, so lets spend SOMEONE'S (he doesn't say whose) money to fix it."

Nations should not work on "ifs." The principle reason why so many people are against the Iraq war is because it was started on the principle of an if. "What IF Saddam has WMD? And what IF he gives them to terrorists?" Well these hypotheticals ended up being proven wrong and we have billions of dollars of war debt and hundreds of thousands of dead people because of a war fought on a what if.

Second, you can't simply spend money and get a result. Money will not save this planet. There are things we can do to reduce our impact on environments, but the forces driving global climate change are bigger than humanity. The global warming hysteria is another example of humans asserting that they are more important than they really are.

Third, about 2 billion people are on the verge of starvation right now. If we can live happily in a world where 1 out of 3 people are already economicly and politically handicapped to the point where they die like flies and no one gives a shit, we will be just fine for the future. Also, what he neglects to mention is that the solution to global warming would be to tell Africa and Asia to not industrialize. Basically, world leaders have told the starving illiterate masses that they must remain starving and illiterate in order to save the planet. It's a bunch of bullshit.

It's not a logical fallacy. In fact, that part is rock solid. What y'all are picking up on is the problem with his emotional argument. His worst case scenarios fall on the parts that assume we screwed up. To demonstrate:

No warming, yes fix: We waste a lot of money, possible economic crash.
Safer than sorry approach doctored to fit with the other extreme screw-up.

No warming, no fix: We luck out.
Raises the question, "do we want to chance it?"

Yes warming, yes fix: We spend lots of money.
Notice no economic crash. This is the selling point.

Yes warming, no fix: BOOM!
This is the worst that could happen, in stark contrast to the lesser issues of the others.



His argument is a great one. All of the basics hold true. His only problem was trying to make the "safer than sorry" approach end badly, when, in fact, it would likely do more good than harm anyway. The worst likely outcome is elevated taxes, but we'd get cleaner air, purer water, and safer products. Essentially, a win-win.


Edit: Oh, and Adamark. Nobody is trying to legislate keeping developing nations in their current state. Most of the focus is on America as *THE* biggest polluter on Earth, keeping the stone rolling in Europe, and figuring out what to do about China and India, since Kyoto has them classified as developing, when they're really further along the path than accounted for.

What he showed us was the Game Theory based off of the Prisoners Dilema. Its an economic principle for how companies secretly create "trusts" between eachother and if one cheats, it screws the other company over at great profits to the cheating company. But if Both companies cheat, their both screwed over, while cooperation ends up with the greatest gain for BOTH companies combined as if they were one as opposed to the other options.

It works something like this. 2 guys got caught in a robbery. Their both charged for 2 years. However, the prosecuter suspects they were involved in a chain of robberies so he seperates them. If one of the guys confesses he offers them a deal that he only goes to jail for a year, but in return he has to turn on his buddy in who will get 10 years in jail. If both of them turn themselves in, they put them both in for 4 years instead of the maximum 10 years they can put them in for. If they stay silent, they both only get 2 years in prison.

Combined Totals

Both stay shut - 4 years total prison time.
One guy confesses, the other stays quiet - 11 years total in prison.
Both confess - 8 years total prison time.

This is a different situation, but the principle is still roughly the same.

Actually, they are. They want Africa to use only solar and wind generated power. They believe that it will be easier to build green economies from the ground up rather than building them up and then spending money to convert them. The problem is that it is more expensive to skip that intermediary stage and takes a lot longer. Thus there are pathetic hospital clinics in Africa that have electricity for 2 hours a day, not even enough to keep blood packets cool for transfusion. Basically, the West is royally screwing over under developed countries by forcing environmental policies on them.

I wasn't aware of that. But then again, I live in America, and am ashamed to say that my country's probably the one screwing them the worst of all, and certainly shows no sign of cleaning up the environment anytime soon.

In case you want to see the evidence, watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0c9K4QGIMY

If you are really interested, go back and watch the entire documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" from the start....

You know if we put aside global warming, and possibly dwindling oil supplies we still need to stop burning it and carbon in general for oil. For several reasons actually:

1. Its inefficient as all hell. Internal combustion engines top out in the mid 20% for efficiency. Even the specially designed coal gas plants and things still top out below 50%, that is without special waste heat recovery methods. Physically you just can't get 50% efficiency by burning things.
   
   1a. Fuel cells can generally reach up to 60-70% efficiency without the need for and special waste heat recovery. With waste heat recovery they can get upwards of 80% possibly into the lower 90%. A feat impossible for any process that requires burning.
   
   
2. When you burn complex carbon chains you release very bad things. Not just CO2 but the various hydrocarbons associated with gasoline. Things that aren't supposed to be floating around in nature. Things that don't have a mechanism by which they can naturally be cleansed from nature. Things that are just going to keep building up until they start causing serious health problems.
   
   2a. While this can be mostly eliminated by burning simpler carbon chains you still run into problem number one. In fact, some solutions involve burning more complex ones and using filters and such which do nothing but increase cost of a horribly inefficient process.
   
   
3. There are better ways to produce power and they are in fact cheaper, or will be cheaper within the decade. Geothermal, which can be produced anywhere if you dig down a few hundred feet, wind power, solar power, wave power, ect. Currently they are actually semi-competitive with oil. Basically if a third world country can't find the money to build a power infrastructure with these new technologies they aren't going to find the money to do it with older ones. Its seductive logic to think the burning oil is some necessary intermediate step but its not, at least not when someone else has already done it and figured out a better way.
   
   The problem is not that they are being forced to build green, which is often better because the power generation can be modular and does not require thousands of miles of power lines. The problem is that no one wants to invest money because there is no potential gain. Fix that and they'll have no problem building green because it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper then stringing thousands of miles of metal cable all over the place to support a more traditional power infrastructure.