Hi Ludwig, sorry, I thought I’d addressed your specific questions although I did frame them as part of your problem in an earlier post. I’ll restate my case.

<< What do you suggest we do? Just keep up rapid population growth, keep up our addiction to oil, make no efforts to develop renewable energy sources, and just deal with the consequences when they hit us like a ton of bricks, with no forward planning? >>

I think these are the questions you meant?

These are all questions related to an “assumption close”, which is “that CAGW is happening” so here are your options and your sins against Gaia.

In fact, your issues of population, addiction to oil, failure to go renewables and of course the implied threat of “just deal with the consequences when they hit us like a ton of bricks” are just another slant on the tired Peak anything mantra. I’ve already made the case as to where these fit in the CAGW phenomenon.

Ludwig, these are the very same fabrications I drew your attention to as part of the Peak, this, Peak that and Peak everything. These are the fabrications without which the UN IPCC’s “imperative to act” flounders.

I’ll say again.

Sustainable Development = Degrowth + Managed Recession + Steady State Economy + Rationing (of all physical resources based upon artificial limits or PEAKS)
See UNEP - Agenda 21.

What is it about references to artificial resource peaks or limits do you not understand?

So when you ask what would I suggest we do? My answer is bugger all. These are your fabrications, you deal with them. Skeptics do not need excuses because we do not have the problem of justifying anything, we are the skeptics, get it?

As I said earlier, most of the warmers can quietly get on with something else but those with high public profiles have left it far too late to jump ship, lucky you.

Alternatively you can keep playing pseudo-science, hurling your favorite pseudo-scientific links at the opposition and generally trying to get that poor dead cat to bounce

G'day SP...
thanks for an interesting link; although I note it's a little dated.
Mate, I consider myself a genuine sceptic; not a denialist, like Plimer or our local Spindoc, and not a 'warmist'. In my experience, predicting the weather has always been dodgy... Although I admit, they are getting better.
Bottom line: I think the chances of my house burning down are vanishingly small... but I still carry insurance.
May I once again state my position. Oil has proven to be the 'miracle resource' of the 20th and 21st centuries. We make everything from surfboards and safety helmets to fertlisers, panty hose, toilet seats and cortizone.
What's the absolute dumbest thing we could do with such a valuable resource?
Well, we could always burn it...
We are literally in the position of some some smartarse proving how rich he is by lighting Cuban cigars with $20. bills.
That might be the image that you want your grandchildren to remember you by, but it sure ain't mine.

This must be attack Ludwig day, so just to show it's not personal, I'll add Grim in mine.

Ludwig please get off the peak oil rubbish. We can use coal, & gas for all those "other" applications of oil, if we actually needed to, & we now have about 400 years supply of them, without trying too hard. Yes we should be controlling population growth, but not for any lack of energy.

Back when I was in the plastics raw materials industry, we were getting quite worried about the advances in using cellulose to produce a material very similar to our ABS. The technology to do this is sitting in the wings, ready to step in to mass markets if our existing plastics become too expensive.

All we need is a long chain molecule, in which we can control the cross linking, & we have our synthetics, & cellulose will do nicely.

Then our fuel. Sure coal will do nicely, as will the hundreds of years of gas, but there is another back up being explored. A US/Japan consortium has recently started proving a method of harvesting some of the massive reserve of methane clathrate. They are only working in just one deep trench off Japan, which alone could supply all our energy requirements for a century at least.

So mate stay with your main point, or you will sound like one of these global warmers, who are trying another con with ocean acidification, now their first fraud attempt is collapsing.

Hi Grim,

I probably stand close to you with regard to management of resources and pollution (and conservation of the natural environment for that matter ).
But little progress on those fronts is likely to come from/through the IPCC.

<<Bottom line: I think the chances of my house burning down are vanishingly small... but I still carry insurance.>>
However, I would NOT characterize the CARBON TAX as "insurance"!
It might be better characterized as charging your kids for food and board but allowing the neighborhood kids to eat free.

Cheers

Here’s a deal for anyone on this blog. I’ll make some statements about the CAGW phenomenon and you all get the chance to take me down.

Yep, you get to gang up on me, hit me with your best shots and publicly humiliate me.

A few basic rules outside the normal blog rules.

1. No science
Two reasons, one, it is the ownership and application of the two main scientific perspectives that are vexatious and two, most of us are not scientists and cannot therefore claim science as a valid currency.

2. No IPCC rhetoric.
If cases are made based upon the IPCC’s “rhetoric engine’, it is because you have no response of your own. I have to identify it specifically and post it as evidence of rebuttal along with the equivalent “Cult Indoctrination” attribute, In which case I win, If not you win.

3. If you do not participate you lose by default.

If you cannot demonstrate the capacity for original thoughts rather than adopting those of someone else you cannot claim a win based on borrowing someone else’s opinion.

(Example, This from Grim Saturday, 26 May 2012 10:57:55 AM “I love this quote concerning some of Plimer's claims, by Michael Ashley:”
Grim if you want some cred. for your intellectual capacity, take it up directly with Ian Plimer, don’t abuse professional scientists by proxy through the borrowed opinion of Michael Ashley, this is utterly gutless and brainless).

My assertions for your rebuttal are:

• The only official orthodoxy in the world is CO2 based CAGW.
• The UN has exclusive authority and governance.
• The application of only the science that supports the UN’s single orthodoxy is permitted.

The main players in this public alarm phenomenon are; political sponsors, advocacy scientists, progressive media, sociological academics (Arts and Humanities), industrial opportunists, NGO advocates and public advocates.

Responses may need to be grouped due to posting limits but it should be manageable.

So, any takers?

Alright spindoc,

1. No science
No science? Ok, you may think that this gets around the 'you're not a climate scientist' cliche that gets bandied around, but it also gets around the fact that the scientists themselves have come to the conclusion that AGW exists by looking at the data.

2. No IPCC rhetoric.
Of course the communication of scientific conclusions are 'rhetoric' in your world. If one comes to the same conclusions as the IPCC, you can be disqualified from this 'debate'.

3. If you do not participate you lose by default.

If you have a life, you lose. That almost guarantees 'victory' doesn't it?

What you have done here (you and pretty much everyone who doesn't like the 'science') is assumed how policy based on science is determined. You assume that the top down approach of policy---->science (policy/government leading) is what is happening and that all the gravy train riders fall into line behind. Take out the science because it is only used to support the party line.

Except that policy is made in a variety of ways, many in dialogue with science and scientists. The conclusions may seem like 'orthodoxy' to you because it is what the data is telling us, and the great majority of scientists agree. You can argue the science of course, but it does tend to make one look a bit of an idiot, especially when one quotes some of the unsupported things people like Plimer say. Maybe this is why you don't want it in the dialogue.

What scientists do not agree upon, is the policy response. That is understandable, as it isn't science. So, no discussing science, which means that we are left discussing policy. That is s discussion that I decline to enter, as I find that exceedingly dull and would not add anything that hasn't already been discussed.

Therefore, you 'win' by rule 3.

Well done you.