(cont.)
and as Bugsy seems to have done, with an argument that Dessler’s conclusion is sound even if his premises are factually false; and
• Personally disparaging detractors as “denialists”, i.e. for lack of *belief*.

But this is not the scientific methodology, it’s the *religious* methodology of knowledge.

There are three distinct categories of problem that the warmists must, but are failing to, deal with.

The first issue is whether, as a matter of climate science, we are faced with a significant warming trend; or whether it’s just normal or cooling.

To attempt to know it by the climate science has the problems
a) that the climatology involves enormous complexities, variables and unknowns, even for professional climatologists – hence most people simply take their word for it and thus fall into fallacy.

b) it is made epistemologically problematic because all the professional climatologists have in common that they have a vested interest – THE ONLY ONE 100 PERCENT CORRELATION IN THE ENTIRE AREA!
c) that the climatologists have been involved in facile, unsound, biased, deceptive and dishonest behaviour at the highest levels.

The second category of problem is, even if any warming trend were significant, whether on balance this would be better or worse for man.

We never even hear about the positive aspects of AGW, because “man-made effects* are simply assumed to equal “bad” – climate change as original sin again. Yet why do we not regard as positive that AGW might, for example, make the whole of northern Eurasia and North America arable? Because the anti-human environmental movement regards an *increase* in human carrying capacity as a nightmare, that’s why!

Even disregarding the positive potential of AGW, it is not obvious that warming of a few degrees must spell catastrophe. Where is there more biodiversity and biomass: at the poles, or at the tropics? Cold, not warmth, is the enemy of life. There is a warming of over 20 degrees in my garden every day – why should a warming of a couple of degrees over a century be feared catastrophic?

To state so positively that warming must necessarily be, on balance, bad presupposes knowledge of the distribution and abundance of species, both now and under the changed conditions for the status quo and for any policy action. Climatologists, in their capacity as climatologists, are not competent to pronounce on this.

And ecologists are so far from any such understanding, even of the real world, let alone of the counter-factuals in speculation, that it’s just not funny for the AGW alarmists to pretend to this knowledge with an airy wave of the hand.

Similarly, whether warming would be better or worse is meaningless without knowing whether *humans* would be better off, *as judged by themselves*. The necessary data set to know this must be all human evaluations of everything that involves carbon, now and in the future. This is simply not knowable to any government ever, full stop.

The warmists have walked right into the economic fallacies underlying the disastrous attempts at governmental management of the economy in the 20th century. Only this time around, in wanting to control all use of carbon, they aim to control not just the whole economy, but the whole world’s ecology as well!

The third problem is that, even if we were definitely faced with catastrophic warming that was worse than better, it would by no means follow that government has the knowledge, capacity and selflessness to produce results that are better than worse.

However one thing we do know, and that is that the *demonstrated preference* of all the people in the world is to use carbon as they are using it now, in preference to all the coerced alternatives that government wants to force on them, OTHERWISE NO POLICY WOULD BE NECESSARY.

For this reason, all alternative energy policies, in the deep structure of their economic logic, are *no different* to the policies which have resulted in people shining fossil-fueled electric lights onto solar panels to collect the government subsidy. Such foolery is all that government has to offer. Even in the warmists’ own terms, such economic illiteracy produces *worse* environmental outcomes.

I don’t know whether it is more tragedy or farce to hear of great droves of these parasitic deluded central planners converging on some luxury resort, pretending to fine-tune the weather in 50 years time by a couple of degrees – (by taxation of course: what else?) – and then scurrying home to record-level freezing conditions.

The whole load of circular statist codswallap is simply a re-run of the fatal conceit that cost over 100 million deaths in the 20th century – the idea that officials have, by virtue of being official, a gods-eye view of moral and intellectual superiority over their subjects, and the capacity to manage society better than society. It is now already costing lives again – human sacrifices to the sky-god of the new religion. “Natural phemonena are not innocent my children, they are caused by man’s evil, but don’t worry, for a (large) extorted consideration, I, the Super-Clever High Priest of Power, will fix it for you – chuck another virgin into the volcano!”

Ultimately it’s not about climate, it’s about power, but even if all the climatological concerns of the warmists were true, freedom would still be ethically and pragmatically better as a solution than coercion.

Their claims are false, and their dreams of dominance must be curtailed.

Peter Hume,

I cannot believe you could be as rash as you make out, as though all that matters is whether mankind may be better or worse off in any new or changed order. And, what could be your definition of worse or better for man - an abundance of crops but a dead or dying ecosystem, with capacity for man to breed in abundance to the absolute destruction of all proclaimed non-useful species; or alternatively for mankind to take a small backward step and contain world population for the benefit of maintaining an abundant ecosystem, enabling man to revel in the diversity, the as yet unknown, and the myriad puzzles and potentials yet to be explored and appreciated.

"The second category of problem is, even if any warming trend were significant, whether on balance this would be better or worse for man."

Is Man the apotheosis, in your ideal world, Peter, proud victor over a benign worldscape? What miraculous victory would it be to knowingly and needlessly put at risk what has taken millions of years of evolution and adaptation to come into being, simply for the glorification of Man? How lonely, how bleek.

"And ecologists are so far from any such understanding,.."

But, you would willingly sacrifice any possibility of understanding, or at least risk this, because you have greater insight than anyone else on the planet? Can they have a say, Peter, all those other, possibly lesser mortals?

A mere two degrees over a century, insignificant, hey Peter, compared to a couple of million years of adaptation. Go figure?

I fear in your zeal to oppose the science, to headline any real, possible or imagined deficienies therein so as to dismiss any justification for caution, you present as reckless in the extreme. Can you be so certain that you would willingly risk sacrificing all, just to be proven right?

"Their claims are false, and their dreams of dominance must be curtailed."

We should just leave it up to you then, Peter? Governments? Why, they're all just ignorant stooges, with no real mandate to govern anyway, hey Pete?

saltpetre, thanks, you underline what Peter says .. so stop playing the man and play the ball. You guys are so predictable since you're so stuck in your ways.

rpg,

Did you not watch "Death of the Oceans" hosted by David Attenborough on SBS the other night? Do you not recall the doco "Silent Sentinels"? Or do you consider TV or such programs as these, or books like "Silent Spring" to be part of some sort of conspiracy of mis-information? For what purpose?

Does Man's interference with and despoiling and killing of the world's ecosystems not concern you, and others, like Peter Hume perhaps? Can you not see that it is Not Just CO2, or peak oil, or Palm Oil, or Capitalism, or any other scapegoat. It Is Man! Species are going extinct every single day, the bees and who knows how many other 'pollinators' are disappearing, being decimated, commiting suicide even. But, this is just nature? Nothing to do with 'The Man'? Do we all have to sit around and debate 'The Science' while everything really worthwhile goes down the drain? Why? Because some don't want their apple pie upset?

What I say to you is, Forget the Science! Just use your eyes, your ears, your brain, and take the blinkers off. You don't have to understand the science to know that fire will burn you, or that aspirin will alleviate the symptoms of the common cold. Man will never know all, you will never know all, but that truth does not change reality.

The Earth is experiencing a fantastic extended inter-glacial, a 'Golden Age of the Ascendance of Man', a rare opportunity to enjoy, but not to exploit to the possible extent of hastening a tipping point, or to the detriment of other species, not through arrogance and/or indifference.

It's not about 'playing the man', it's about 'the bigger picture' and 'not taking your eye off the ball'. It Is about being a mensch. It Is about heeding the word of the wisest among us, of having a little faith in the seers, and of hoping that those in authority may have the courage and the wisdom to seek and act upon the best advice available in the common interest. To live and let live.