To my worthy interlocutor Curmudgeon (and others who aren't brassed off by side-squabbles): First, I was questioning the pointless abuse of others and asked whether they had an agenda. I despair at the way they are bringing down OLO.

Secondly, I was commenting on the continual derogatory remarks that you make to "the left", not to authors- unless you identify them with the left.

In the limited space of one message, I commended the author, added more (highly verified) data, provided a brief analysis of the dilemma and proposed a solution, based on Nobel Prize winning economics (Robert Solow). Not bad for 250 words.

Then in came "the gang".

There is a strategy in marketing called "shelf crowding", which is like "shell-game" or "needle in the haystack"- the idea is to generate so much "noise" that the signal is obscured. In this case, the effect of the "gang" (intentional or otherwise) is to dilute the debate to the extent that sincere partipants turn away.

Back to my point, Curmudgeon- the economy doesn't have to be destroyed- but we have to look harder at how we are getting an increased s.o.l- we do it by having more "energy slaves" (more energy), smarter energy slaves (better technology), smarter instructions to the slaves (learning) or slaves that come from another planet (or sun).

Off-shoring, taxing or protecting won't solve anything as these strategies just shift the slaves around (off-shoring, taxing), or make them lazy (protecting). That leaves us with smarter, fewer and alien slaves. At present, the latter are either still too dumb (solar), or tend to glow in the dark (nuclear).

'As Keynes said: "I change my mind when the facts change- what do you do?"

Exactly Jedimaster. When the alarmist could come up with some facts we would not be having this discussion. Thank God for the scientist who insist on a few facts unlike the pseudo 'scientist' who insist everyone accept their religous dogma.

Jedimaster
It is not lowering OLO to criticize and lampoon as unreasonable the pretensions of statists to micro-manage the world for a baseless non-problem arising entirely out of government funding of activities that shouldn’t be government-funded in the first place.

“will protectionism help mitigate carbon use?”
It is not legitimate to ASSUME, as you do, that carbon presents any kind of problem which policy can improve, without proving it, which no-one has done.

undidly
“I am offended by the corrupt religious lunatics who insist on
increasing the world population.”

The world population isn’t increasing because of government policy favouring corrupt religious lunatics, it’s increasing because people make love and love their families.

Obviously the warmists think human beings are a problem and yet have the gall to resent being called anti-human!

“I am offended by the politicians in the democratic countries who subsidize religions to get the votes.”

Me too; but that’s no argument in favour of this baseless fret-fest and state-worship.

“It is too late to stop global warming ,even if it is man made”

Prove it. Make sure you don’t rely on any vested interests as your authority.

“ but
to consume ALL our fossil fuels before other energy supplies are
ready is stupid.”

No it’s not, for two reasons. “We” ie the whole world’s population including everyone who disagrees with you – is not a decision-making entity. The relevant decisions are not, and cannot be made at the collective level. People are not a monolithic lump, or herds of cattle owned by government. Governments do NOT know what’s better for the people, than the people know for themselves; and the pretensions of government to stand for some kind of higher knowledge or morality are utterly false, being based on nothing but a monopoly of aggressive force.

Governments confiscate all their revenue from private producers. They have little or no incentive to avoid waste, nor to allocate scarce resources to satisfy the most urgent or important human needs. They are therefore COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED to achieve the explicit purpose of AGW policy.

By contrast, the actual productive class who pay involuntarily for all government action have to take care to economise their resources to as to minimise waste. It makes sense to use the resources first which are most economical to use. If you’re camping, you get your firewood from the nearest source; you don’t deliberately waste hours walking 20 km past the best firewood to gather worse wood from somewhere more distant and carry it back. There is no sense in developing less economical sources of fuel now, BECAUSE they’re less economical.

What the entire argument for AGW policy asserts is this: “We, the elite minority who comprise the state, who live at other people’s expense, know better how to allocate scarce resources to satisfy the most urgent and important needs, than everyone else in the world put together; even though we have been completely unable to show any reason why anyone would think we have the knowledge, the capacity, or the virtue, to centrally direcdt the economy and the ecology of the world.”

“Carbon tax will reduce consumption of carbon.”

You and Jedimaster still haven’t proved
a) that carbon is causing global warming
b) if it is, that this will cause greater negative than positive consequences
c) if it is, that government would be capable of improving the situation, considering the negative consequences of governmental action.

“How will we power the air conditioners that we will need if we burn all the carbon fuel?.”
Thankfully that is a problem that does not have to be solved by you deciding on behalf of everyone else in the world against their will.

Jedimaster - after reading your first post, I went back and read your second. All I could see was abuse. I could not see any solution or additional evidence you mention. However, you are probably right about it being 250 words.

But never mind, you make suggestions in the second post which sound good on the surface and in fact are being done, just not on the scale you would hope for.

You seem certain that greater efficiencies ect can be done on the scale required to result in noticeable cuts in emissions. So where does this certainty come from? Considering that no-one else has been able to do it, how do you know we can?

Now in saying before you had to switch to gas or destroy the economy to get noticeable cuts, I forgot about Denmark. That country may be a partial exception, although I'm not aware of the Danes boasting of overall cuts. The reason is that they can store the immense amounts of wind energy they generate by exporting it to Sweden and Norway where it is used to pump water up into the many scandanivan dams. The hydro power can then be reimported when they need it.

This has been achieved at immense cost and, as an energy strategy, is diffiuclt for Australia to adopt. We don't have much in the way of dams - the snowy scheme barely counts, nor do the dams in Tasmania.

Substantial cuts in emsissions (aside from switching to gas), without real economic pain, are just an activist fantasy. It just isn't going to happen.

JM, if you want an example of what you call "shelf crowding" read the comment thread on the bottom of this article http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45670.html. I've checked the comments thread here and I think it is fairly civil. There just happen to be more people who disagree with the carbon tax and the need for it than agree. Nothing wrong with that. I come across threads on this issue on this site where the opposite is true.