Discussion on:

Studies prove link between human activity and extreme weather events

John, #49

There is absolutely no "consensus" on if our current "warming" is reversible. What consensus that does exist suggests that we will be spending trillions to make but a couple hundredths of a percent difference; hardly worth the trouble.

Care to back that up? Some of the things that have happened/are happening because of global warming are irreversible on time scales that make sense to most humans, others are not. Why not at least work on not making the problem worse?

Just because something is run by the government doesn't automatically mean it will be poorly run. Why not look at each individual program to determine its effecatiousness.

#50

LOL, the paper was largely retracted because of errors but not because it's prediction of SLR was in any way excessive. Here is the retraction:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n3/full/ngeo780.html

See anything in there that says they overestimated the rise?

Just because something is run by the government doesn't
automatically mean it will be poorly run. Why not look at each
individual program to determine its effecatiousness.

Congress currently has countless duplicate and zombie programs
that will run forever.

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?
a=Files.Serve&File_id=73039811-667b-4620-811a-
69f7690e2360

Can YOU cite any example of where the government has shown
any ability to kill any program that is either wasteful, inefficient, or
just plain harmful?

And again on sea levels: When the exaggerations are retracted,
we're back to the 3-foot rise, which would be consistent with the
average over the last 10,000 years.

John, #52

Nice change of subject there. I asked you to cite examples of your statement:

There is absolutely no "consensus" on if our current "warming" is reversible. What consensus that does exist suggests that we will be spending trillions to make but a couple hundredths of a percent difference; hardly worth the trouble.

And you come back asking me to cite examples of well run government programs. Ok, both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid operate on a fraction of the overhead that any comparable private system does and generally have better consumer satisfaction. The Veterans Health Administration is probably the most cost effective health care system in the country. The EPA has saved the country far more in costs than the expenditures necessary to comply with their regulations.

Who said anything about killing programs? You originally asked "Why do you think that any other government mandated/ run policy would be any different or better?". I'll admit that there are tons of government programs that are redundant and probably useless but they often have strong political support. I can't find any reason to distinguish between R's and D's on that score.

The retracted paper on SLR predicted a maximum rise of 82 cm by 2100. It put a hard cap on maximum rise that was later found to be unwarranted. The more generally accepted value now is 80-200 cm. SLR in the 20th Century was about 7 inches. There probably hasn't been 3 feet of SLR in a single century since the height of the last deglaciation over 8,000 years ago.

...as examples of successful government?

Um, you do realize that they are fundamentally bankrupt, don't
you? You do realize that for people under 60, that the money
taken into Social Security will actually have a negative rate of
return? To argue that they are "successful" is as to say that
Bernie Madoff's scheme was "successful" because his early
investors got their money out before it all came crumbling down.

I honestly hope that if you're under the age of 60, you've got
retirement plans that do not rely upon Social Security in any
meaningful way. Otherwise, you're going to be even more
disappointed then when the Maldives fail to disappear.

Now I understand where you're coming from. Charlie Sheen has
a better grip of reality!

The only way that Social Security is bankrupt is if the Federal Government fails to pay back the money it has borrowed from the Social Security Trust fund. That would destroy "the full faith and credit of the United States of America". If that happens then we'll have lots more to worry about than SS as Treasury Bills will essentially become junk bonds.

Medicare suffers from the same problems that most other health care systems in this country do due to the inflation of medical costs but if you ask their "customers" they profess better satisfaction with it than customers of most other systems. The only reason that Medicare appears costly is that it covers the cohort of people who generally have the highest medical costs. If we had Medicare for all the evidence from other countries that have a single payer system is that we would reduce our medical expenditures per person by nearly 1/2. Most other countries spend about 10% of their GDP on medical care, the US spends about 18% of its GDP and the overall results generally aren't better than the ones spending 10%.

I'll be 60 in a bit over 1 year. I've been paying double into SS since the 1980's to build up the trust fund in order to cover me and the rest of the baby boom generation. Are you planning on stealing that money from us? Since Social Security is not an investment in the way you look at it saying it has a negative rate of return makes no sense.

I doubt I'll live long enough to see the Maldives completely disappear or other effects from SLR to reach truly dramatic levels. But if you pay attention for long enough, like they do in scientific studies, it's obvious that things are changing in unusual ways that have largely been predicted by climate scientists.

I think I understand where you are coming from too. Your economic ideology trumps any concession to physical reality. But Mother Nature always bats last and there's not a damn thing you can do about it when she comes to the plate.

...is by inflating the currency, which, by the way, is what they are
starting to do.

But even that will not work, as intentionally inflating the currency
is just another form of tax that ironically hurts those on fixed
incomes more than anyone else. (But fortunately for the political
establishment, most of them are too ignorant to realize that)

Either way, even my the most optimistic standards there isn't
enough taxing authority of the federal government to make good
on those notes. At some point, the tax rates will be so high that
people will simply choose to no longer work withing the legal
economy and we'll become Greece. (California is already 2/3rds
of the way there with their pension situation)

Then consider the actuarial imbalance of it all; when first
conceived, relatively few people even lived long enough to collect
from it. Today, longer lifespans see to it that not only most
people live long enough to collect, but as many as half will live 20
or more years collecting. For 50 years, politicians have been
unable to touch the "third rail" to correct this. This is perhaps the
finest example of how government is unable to make hard
decisions that must be made. It's no different for any other
program.

No matter. Either way, Social Security is an unsustainable Ponzi
scheme that only continues to function as long as there are
enough new players to pay to the old even when they realize that
they themselves will never get to collect. Suggesting that it will all
work out is at best head-in-the-sand, at suggesting that it's an
example of "successful government" is simply absurd.

Inflating our way out of debt is a time honored technique. That's what we did after the Vietnam War. We're doing it now to pay for GWB's unpaid for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (the first time in this countries history that we had a major war without raising taxes to help pay for it).

As I said, if the US fails to make good on those notes that SS holds it destroys our credit and we're well on our way to being a 2nd rate country.

But (to get back on subject) the effects of global warming will place severe strains on the global civilization and may well break it many ways. That would make our argument over SS moot.

...are hardly a blip compared to the unfunded Social Security,
Medicare and public worker pension liabilities, and, of course
BO's spending spree.

And our credit is already on its way to being destroyed. Just this
week the markets are signalling that they will not be buying
treasury bills at the low rates they have been. Yesterday, one
major firm announced that they are actually going to divest
themselves because of stability concerns.

And as for inflation being "a time honored technique": Inflation is
a tax that hits the poor the hardest; it's the progressives strategy
for socking it to people whom they've fooled into believing that it's
only "the rich" that will be made to pay; another benefit to
progressives of our failed educational system that keeps the poor
poor and ignorant.

But this actually is relevant, perhaps not so much to "global
warming", but to "environmentalism" at large; people who are
poor, or getting more so over time will care less and less about
their impact upon the environment.

And it's still truly amusing that the best example you can give for
"successful government" is Social Security, with it's obviously
flawed mathematical model. It explains why you are so willing to
believe the mathematical models based on little more than
hypothesis for CO2-based warming.

Wait, the past two winters were the worst in your recent memory? Did you live on the East Coast during the blizzard of '96?!? I was only in school then but I got two straight weeks off plus another two of delayed openings in the DC area. Every other winter since then was a disappointment (as a schoolkid hoping for days of sledding) until last year and this (despite not getting days off).

Other than that and the overzealous title, interesting article.