Anthony I had a look at your web site and find it is full of the same naive and mis directed comment on the subject of Climate Change as you have exhibited here, but I did find the little stories you use to tie your prose together amusing on your other comments.

Your logic is we insure houses on the one in a zillion chances that they burn down, but we will not insure ourselves against Climate Change by implementing a tax, brilliant argument, where can you go from there, killer logic.

Explain to me how a Carbon Tax on the first world who right now only manufacture 23% of the globes products is going to stop China and India’s expansive growth and consumption of energy, how will it make a measureable difference? It won’t. So why do we have first world lefty governments fleecing their constituents of cash and sending it to the U.N. to then send to some African despot who happens to have Carbon sink forests, he makes money the SX makes money (the banks and brokers), but the environment has nil gain. How does that stop pollution? It doesn’t, it simply sends money from the middle to the top and with no result.

Have you considered why the original green movement focused on the polluter and fifty years later the modern green movement focuses on the consumer, it is because the “MONEY” infiltrated the Green movement and moved the focus to user pay rather than polluter clean up, it was a planned outcome and free thinkers such as yourself are marching to the polluters tune not the environments.

Hi SonofGloin,
Do I detect a fellow Lord of the Rings fan?
Thanks for taking a look at my blog.
You may be right, and I guess time will tell.
But it seems to me that so many of the anti global warming arguments boil down to one of three things.
Either all these climate scientists are hopelessly incompetent; that there is some kind of conspiracy going on to defraud the free world; or some combination of the two.
All are possible, I suppose. But to me they just seem a tad unlikely.
Something I learned in the military is that when confronted with the choice between a snafu and a conspiracy, bet on a snafu everytime.
Oddly enough, I find myself arguing a case that I desperately hope is wrong. Nothing would make me happier than to know that there is nothing in global warming to worry about. it would be a giant wipe of the brows and a Whew!!
My fear though is that by the time we know for sure one way or the other, it might be too late.
Anyway, have a great weekend.
Cheers,
Anthony
www.observationpoint.com.au

Anthony

Thank you for openly confirming that the whole belief system supporting a carbon tax not only has no basis in science, but no basis in logic.

The idea that “the science” justifies your conclusion has got so many holes in it, it’s not funny.

Even if there were no issue as to the climatology, you are at least four complete and fatal refutations away from beginning to rationally justify your belieft.

There is no need to assume a “conspiracy”, nor even necessarily incompetence as a matter of climate science, for a number of reasons. Governments have paid billions and billions and billions of dollars to find evidence of global warming, and have actively marginalised non-conforming views; and all of the science in favour coincides with a massive vested interest. The “science” concerns statistical operations of enormous variability, complexity and contention. But even at best, all your case would amount to is a series of temperature measurements. They are incapable of making the conclusion that you are contending for. But you take no cognizance of that and your only way of dealing with it is to reiterate open-ended credulity, and pretend that the refutations of your beliefs aren’t happening.

Scientists are not objective in their capacity as policy advisors. But you pretend that their policy advice is objective as science.

The problems in the climate science are as nothing compared to the fatal defects as a matter of social science. Your theory of value does not even begin to cope with the problem you blithely skip over, as if the whole thing were a mere technical problem to be solved by vesting more and more power in government.

Governments do not and cannot have the relevant knowledge of human values that they would need in order to know whether the upsides of global warming outweighed the downsides; all their pretensions otherwise are demonstrably false.

And even if they did, they do not and cannot know whether the upsides of any given policy action outweigh the downsides.

That’s why you can’t answer my questions which entirely disprove your argument.

(cont.)

“I can see that you're really comitted to your beliefs.”

Personal argument, mind-reading, irrelevance.

Since you haven’t been able to provide a rational justification of a carbon tax, you are not in a position to judge whether I would be against it if you could.

First fallacy in your latest post.

“You accuse me of appealing to absent authority, and then proceed to tell me about a guy who knows a guy...”

I did not refer to those absent persons as authority for the proposition I’m contending for – that the carbon tax is unjustified – and expect you just to rely on their word, and for that to settle the issue, did I?

But that’s what you’re doing.

And even if I had made the same error as you, your rejoinder could only amount to saying that two wrongs must make a right - that my alleged fallacy had justified you using what you yourself identified as a fallacy.

So just in your last response you are three fallacies deep, all of which I had identified and asked you to avoid before you made that response.

“And then you go ahead and make some extraordinary, highly generalised, and impossible to prove assertions about all climate scientists.”

You don’t say what those assertions are, but I presume you mean my saying that “climate scientists are people too and *might be using the same intellectual technique that you are*! … assuming what is in issue, reposing faith in authority, and seeking to prove rather than disprove it”

*Do you deny* that they are people too and might be using the same intellectual technique that you are?

If so, you need to prove it, because that’s what’s in issue. The fact that you haven’t, but just assumed what is yours to prove, begs the question so… fourth fallacy in the one short post.

So what’s happening is, I’m saying all the arguments for a carbon tax are based on fallacies, and all you’re saying to defend them is based on fallacies.

“I can afford to smile and be patient and watch as the argument and history come to me.”

Assumes what’s in issue – fifth fallacy.

“Occam and I wish you well.”

Assumes what’s in issue - seventh.

And *why* do you assume that yours in the most parsimonious explanation?

Because you believe what the establishment is saying – appeal to absent authority – eighth count, even though the climate science does not establish normative propositions – ninth.

Your entire argument boils down to “It must be true, because the government says it’s true. I can’t even begin to imagine any other possibility.”

But
a) you have not taken into account my argument showing why “conspiracy” theory is not necessary
b) it is for you to prove that your argument makes logical sense in the first place, not for others to prove a negative
c) there is in any event abundant evidence of high-level, well-funded, long-term international political commitment to use alleged catastrophic global warming as the basis of a thoroughgoing push for increasing political take-over of more and more aspects of individual liberty and private property, replacing them with governmental planning and bureaucratic action, and the socialization of the means of production; so those decrying a blank warrant for big government are not paranoidally imagining things.
d) you have not cited a peer-reviewed paper proving the alleged tropospheric hot-spot by *temperature* measurements, on which the whole greenhouse belief system depends, thus you are not in a position to assert even the climatological basis for your entire argument
e) you simply ignore that the climate science is riddled with the epistemological problems of vested interests; the destruction, suppression and facile re-writing of data sets; corruption and blatant fraud; to which your only response is open-ended credulity
f) but even if there were no issue as to climatology – and it is absurd or dishonest to suggest that is the case - you haven’t begun to cognise, let alone deal with the problems of value theory which provide at least two COMPLETE AND TOTAL refutations of your argument.

Both Tom Tiddler and Anthony have demonstrated what I said in my first post. The warmists have nothing but fallacy upon fallacy upon fallacy upon fallacy. When challenged to rationally defend their belief, they either go silent, or come back with another welter and tangle of the same fallacies.

Note that Tom did not explicitly concede what he was unable to explicitly defend.

And Anthony’s own method is a resilient *commitment* to credulity and fallacious methodology.

And this is what we always get *every single time* we chase the warmists’ assumptions down to evidence and reason.

Then when I ask how they justify shutting down food production and smashing people’s livelihoods, all the reply I get is a gnostic smirk of self-righteousness.