Economic Development and Fossil Fuels are Making the Planet Greener

Global Warming Policy Foundation. Deniers dream, lol.


"Ridley’s arguments aren’t even sophisticated. He repeats the crudest pieces of denialist propaganda, which anyone with a genuine interest or understanding of science knows are factually incorrect:

Polar bear populations are rising

That Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” is broken

The hoary old “scientists in the 1970s used to believe an ice age was imminent” myth

Average temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period were higher globally than today

His text is so bad it makes me want to get on a plane, fly to England, track down Ridley and shake him by the collar and say “For ****’s sake man, have you actually read the science?”

http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress...dley’s-regurgitation-of-denialist-propaganda/

 

More catastrophism - young-earth creationist?

 

Putting aside the fact that Ridley cites a "semiretired successful financier" and an unnamed scientist to support his claims, his arguments are not well-founded. Or, as John Abraham, an IPCC reviewer and the director of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, put it to Media Matters: the column "has such elementary errors in it that [it] casts doubt on the author's understanding of any aspects of climate change."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/12/20/wsjs-climate-dynamite-is-a-dud/191923

Unsurprisingly, right wing financing the Geoff.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/15/secret-funding-climate-sceptics-not-restricted-us

 

A marketing fluff piece with an english dude to make sound more intelligent.

 

Climate change science is threatening to libertarian and market fundamentalists

Impossible to square how to solve the problem by just deregulating corporations to maximize their profits with no government regulation.

Hence the strong drive to be climate change deniers

 

The ice-age myth? There is no myth, we are in an ice-age.

Wrong. If fuel efficienies were worse than they are now, the price of oil would exceed the consumers' demand - there would be less burnt oil and less atmospheric CO2. Instead, we have a laissez-faire government which intervenes, requiring fuel efficiencies, and attempts to subsidize the price of oil through war.

So, are you kidding me?

 

Lol, disingenuous at best. We aren't entering an ice age (we're exiting the one started 30 million years ago), or in an accelerating cycle, which was the scare of cooling in the 70s referred to in the quote. We are NOT cooling which is the point.

Uh, what? No, we subsidize through war exactly enough to maintain an acceptable at the pump price for oil. Fuel efficiency standards are conclusively empirically proven to reduce oil consumption, so you are off base there. in addition, not sure if you know what laissez faire means, but it isn't a highly regulatory government.

 

I am in the business of this. Two of my main clients are Kimberly-Clark and Georgia Pacific. They pay us $500k/yr to advise them on their own internal strategies regarding this.

Do y'all know who they are?

To say burning fossil fuels (oil and LNG) has led to "massive reforestation" is telling the Koch brothers they don't know what they are doing.

I'm not saying we should burn wood. I'm saying this video is hogwash propaganda.

next

 

I do not know what you meant but according to wikipedia we are in an ice age that began 2.6 million years ago, not 30 million.

With less fuel-efficient vehicles, the price of oil would be higher. As demand increases price increases. If people drove less fuel-efficient cars then the price of oil would be higher than it currently is.

What exactly are you debating?

 

http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/are-we-living-ice-age

Yes, using a child's interpretation of having ice sheets is very cute. That is not the argument being made when referring to the cooling myth. That refers to the widely publicized belief in the 70s by some scientists that we were cooling (which is a direction -> cooling). So when you say "it's not a myth," you are wrong. You're just setting up a straw man to knock down.

Dude, to be honest, your fuel efficiency point so didnt refute glynchs point that all i can say is you are wrong in a vacuum. Your argument is historically disproven as oil prices have been low with both fuel efficient cars and not, mainly because there are many other variables that go into oil prices. I am pointing out that your assertion is nonsensical (we aren't both laisse faire and overly regulated), and your conclusion, such as it was, needs some work.

 

This is the challenge. To balance government regulation with preserving the economy. It is very possible to regulate so heavily that it stagnates the economy. Preserving the environment will be of little comfort to people put out of work by massive government regulation. We cannot take government action in a vacuum.

 

I said we are in an ice age; I said nothing about whether anything is "cooling" or "warming". How can an ice age be imminent when we are currently in an ice age? It is a myth to believe we are headed toward an ice age, because we are in an ice age.

The most important factor in the price of oil is its use as a motor fuel. If the price of oil remains high (or rises), as it has the past 10 years, it causes demand destruction.

Fuel efficiency, as far as I know, has not caused demand destruction. The reduction in consumption of oil in the US is based on the high price of oil.

 

The challenge is really to get the market to act responsibly, whether it concerns the environment or any other issue. The market has not traditionally worked that way but schools of thought are emerging that long term growth and profits can be achieved BY being a responsible part of the system. Until that happens, we need regulation, and a lot of it.

 

Which would still discredit the 70s cooling theorists...so not sure what you've gained even if your baseline is correct (we already have two varying numbers). It is a myth because we aren't cooling either way.

And? The government and/or market can react in many ways to artificially depress oil prices if they need to, so regardless of fuel efficiency people can still afford the cars. You are missing the link between poor fuel efficiency and cost because you look at the two in a vacuum. They aren't in a vacuum.

 

Regulating in such a manner so as to hamper the operation of business will cause jobs to disappear. I am not saying that we should not regulate, but to do so without regard to the effect on the economy (especially when so many are already out of work), is not smart.

 

Depends on what you mean by hamper. The creation of a regulation in and of itself does not eliminate jobs. I don't think we'd disagree that it's always a test of impact (is the regulation necessary more than x potential impact).

 

I think we may be in agreement here. If the government issues a zillion regulations, the net impact of which would result business not being profitable, it will result in a rollback in operations. Such a rollback would, by necessity, mean a slashing of the workforce. When regulating, government officials must evaluate the immediate economic impact. To not undergo such an evaluation is irresponsible.

 

This is one possible outcome, and one possible scenario to get there - I would agree to that. None of that linkage is necessarily true. Nor is it true that high regulation necessarily has a worse impact than unregulated or under regulated markets.

Yes, of course.

 

Here is my example:

The price of oil is rising, and with cars that get bad fuel-efficiency, everyone quits driving because the price of oil keeps going up. The government then mandates better fuel-efficiencies for cars.

What is the result of mandating higher fuel-efficiencies: a higher price of oil that leads toward demand destruction or a lower price of oil that leads toward greater consumption?

Under the non-interventionist (non-laisezz-faire) scenario, the price of oil is prohibitively expensive - prohibiting people from driving.