Bonmot expresses total belief in the Markowitz & Shariff paper, even though its opening statement is misleading: “The climate science community has arrived at a consensus regarding both the reality of rapid, anthropogenic climate change and the necessity of urgent and sustained action to avoid its worst environmental, economic and social consequences…”. Sure there is a climate change community, or cabal, but it does not comprise all scientists, of whom there are thousands including most physicists and geologists deeply sceptical of the cabal’s core beliefs including the reality of CC and that urgent action is needed.

M&S claim that “individuals who do consider the ethical implications of climate change report greater support for a variety of mitigation policies” is itself unethical, because there are valid ethical concerns at the harm CC mitigation policies will do to standards of living of all of us and especially the poor in 3rd world countries most of whom already lack access to cheap electricity and whose food prices are soaring because of the biofuels scam – the latest example is the NZ aid project in Tokelau which in effect requires its people to give up their dependence on coconuts to feed themselves and their pigs and instead use their coconut oil to replace diesel (h/t to w. today at WUWT).

Similarly their claim “Moral judgement is … strongly driven by emotional responses to objects in the environment” is utter nonsense. M&S mention the “what car would Jesus drive” campaign of their fellow travellers, but if they read the Gospels they would find that the moral judgments there bear no relation to “objects in the environment”. They go on: “Climate change possesses few features that generate rapid, emotional visceral reactions” – there they have a point, as none of us anywhere on this planet has experienced any uni-directional climate change. The climate has always been variable, and we have always had regularly alternating hot and cool summers and cold and mild winters, but with zero statistically significant trend in warming anywhere (see my ACE2011 paper at www.timcurtin.com).

M&S also say that “understanding climate change…” requires “cold, cognitively demanding” reasoning, but that is manifestly beyond their capability.

Instead M&S further display their own lack of ethics when they cynically see their role as being equivalent to that of sales agents or advertisers: “Thus, it seems that focusing messaging on the burdens that unmitigated climate change will leave on future generations (for example, higher adaptation costs, greater human suffering from dis¬ease) … may be a simple and easily administrated way to bolster the moral concern of individuals over the impacts of climate change”.

The truth is that adaptation costs when and if required will be both less costly than across the board mitigation imposts like the carbon (sick) tax and more equitable because more likely to be levied on beneficiaries of the adaptation (eg sea walls).

Not only that, there is no evidence that whatever very minimal warming may arise will cause “greater human suffering from disease”, when all the evidence is that mortality continues to be higher in NH winters than summers. As for malaria, see Hay et al in Nature 2002 (2 papers: “The IPCC has concluded that there is likely to be a net extension in the distribution of malaria and an increase in incidence within this range.We investigated long-term meteorological trends in four high-altitude sites in East Africa, where increases in malaria have been reported in the past two decades. Here we show that temperature, rainfall, vapour pressure and the number of months suitable for P. falciparum transmission have not changed significantly during the past century or during the period of reported malaria resurgence.”
See also Stern et al Nature 2010/11.

“Does not "life" depend on the earth and its systems for sustenance. You're the one who's deluded and can't see beyond the taming of nature that is human urbanisation. Beneath the facade of mastery over nature lies that reality.”

I don’t disagree with that Poirot [except the part about being deluded]; how could any reasonable person? But there is a world of difference between appreciating that we, currently, are limited for our resources to what is on this Earth, and saying that we should limit our ability to use those resources. AGW says the latter under a number of guises such as sustainability, peak oil, and general despoliation of nature; that last criteria, which includes pollution, does so NOT from the vantage of what is good or not for humans but on the basis that pristine nature should not be disturbed at all; that is misanthropy.

There are some existential, even epistemological issues here to do with humanity’s battle with nature; the civilizations today, which are nonpareil in the history of human society, are there because natural limitation has been exceeded, so how do you define sustainability?

At the end of the day people like bonmot are luddites who want to keep a lid on the kettle of human development, both technologically and environmentally.

To be free of the tyranny of nature is a worthwhile vision. The AGW believers invoke a delusional and [im]moral perspective of nature in the form of “Denialism” to constrain humanity into a diminished conformity with ideologically derived notions of sustainability. Personally I think AGW belief is due to a morbid fear of personal mortality and worthlessness which is vitiated by seeking to enslave others [excluding you of course Poirot, you just misguided]; basically AGW is a form of Münchausen syndrome by proxy.

Or perhaps we could label your AGW theory as "Munchausen Syndrome by Coxy"

You're quite a clever fellow, I see - shame you're on the wrong side. : )

Dear Poirot,

Although I find some of your comments irrelevant, side-tracking and offensive, I would unreservedly defend your right to make them. We are mostly adults here, we can take it. Slag away [insert smiley-face here]

To get back to the sub-text:

Here are some simple questions, Poirot:

* average world temperature has risen by 0.9 degrees in the past century - yes ? no ?

* sea-levels have risen by around two inches in the last century - yes ? no ?

* average world temperatures haven't risen by anything much in the last fourteen years. yes ? no ?

* there are a range of remedies that might mitigate the awful effects of Global Luke-Warming and CO2 poisoning, from nuclear power to tree-planting to switching of the kitchem light, etc. Yes ? No ?

Am I on the right track or not ? What is the rate of change of increase in temperature and sea-level ? Provided no government does anything, will the changes over the next century be double those of the past century ? Five times as much ? Ten times as much ? A hundred times as much, as we are persuaded by the hystericals to believe ?

And if governments do do something ?

I'm just asking. I hope that's all right.

No rush, AGLW is not such a big deal, at least compared to freedom of expression ....

:)

Loudmouth,

You find some of my comments offensive and irrelevant.

You tell me to "Shove my elitism" because I prefer to consult scientists for answers on scientific questions.

Discussion over