Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I was downtown at the National Mall yesterday, checking out the new Martin Luther King memorial. What was creepy was that a few trees had cherry blossoms that were starting to bloom. On New Years Day!

My wife's spring flowers are starting to bloom too. It has been relatively warm this winter at our end of the country (so far).

Originally Posted by Earl and Mooch

My wife's spring flowers are starting to bloom too. It has been relatively warm this winter at our end of the country (so far).

Well, any blooms have been cut short. It's pretty cold here -- was in the 20s last night.

Yes, it was really cold this morning. At least there wasn't much wind.

Why libertarians must deny climate change, in one short take.

Over the Christmas break I read what I believe is the most important environmental essay of the past 12 months. Though it begins with a mildly unfair criticism of a column of mine, I won't hold it against the author. In a simple and very short tract, Matt Bruenig presents a devastating challenge to those who call themselves libertarians, and explains why they have no choice but to deny climate change and other environmental problems.

Bruenig explains what is now the core argument used by conservatives and libertarians: the procedural justice account of property rights. In brief, this means that if the process by which property was acquired was just, those who have acquired it should be free to use it as they wish, without social restraints or obligations to other people.

Their property rights are absolute and cannot be intruded upon by the state or by anyone else. Any interference with, or damage to, the value of their property without their consent – even by taxation – is an unwarranted infringement. This, with local variations, is the basic philosophy of the Republican candidates, the Tea Party movement, the lobby groups that call themselves "free market thinktanks" and much of the new right in the UK.

It is a pitiless, one-sided, mechanical view of the world, which elevates the rights of property over everything else, meaning that those who possess the most property end up with great power over others. Dressed up as freedom, it is a formula for oppression and bondage. It does nothing to address inequality, hardship or social exclusion. A transparently self-serving vision, it seeks to justify the greedy and selfish behaviour of those with wealth and power.

But, for the sake of argument, Bruenig says, let us accept it. Let us accept the idea that damage to the value of property without the owner's consent is an unwarranted intrusion upon the owner's freedoms. What this means is that as soon as libertarians encounter environmental issues, they're stuffed.

Climate change, industrial pollution, ozone depletion, damage to the physical beauty of the area surrounding people's homes (and therefore their value) – all these, if libertarians did not possess a shocking set of double standards, would be denounced by them as infringements on other people's property.

The owners of coal-burning power stations in the UK have not obtained the consent of everyone who owns a lake or a forest in Sweden to deposit acid rain there. So their emissions, in the libertarian worldview, should be regarded as a form of trespass on the property of Swedish landowners. Nor have they received the consent of the people of this country to allow mercury and other heavy metals to enter our bloodstreams, which means that they are intruding upon our property in the form of our bodies.

Nor have they – or airports, oil companies or car manufacturers – obtained the consent of all those it will affect to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, altering global temperatures and – through rising sea levels, droughts, storms and other impacts – damaging the property of many people. As Bruenig says:

"Almost all uses of land will entail some infringement on some other piece of land that is owned by someone else. So how can that ever be permitted? No story about freedom and property rights can ever justify the pollution of the air or the burning of fuels, because those things affect the freedom and property rights of others. Those actions ultimately cause damage to surrounding property and people without getting any consent from those affected. They are the ethical equivalent – for honest libertarians – of punching someone in the face or breaking someone else's window."

So here we have a simple and coherent explanation of why libertarianism is so often associated with climate change denial, and the playing down or dismissal of other environmental issues. It would be impossible for the owner of a power station, steel plant, quarry, farm or any large enterprise to obtain consent for all the trespasses he commits against other people's property – including their bodies.

This is the point at which libertarianism smacks into the wall of gritty reality and crumples like a Coke can. Any honest and thorough application of this philosophy would run counter to its aim: which is to allow the owners of capital to expand their interests without taxation, regulation or recognition of the rights of other people.

Libertarianism becomes self-defeating as soon as it recognises the existence of environmental issues. So they must be denied.

Great post by a guy whose understanding of libertarian thought got stalled out back forty or so years ago.

Although that's not really fair. Rothbard put a lot of work into the questions of environmental damages and other torts back in those days even. And it's not like it would have posed the guy who wrote that little screed any great difficulty to find that out -- these being the Days of the Inter Nets and all..

Lazy, and misleading because of that. What else would one expect, though? Ossification of critical thinking skills is a major problem* of statist though.


----
*"problem" -- that is, from the standpoint of wanting full human flourishing. From the standpoint of the ruling class, ossification of critical thinking among their subjects is a feature, not a bug.

Interesting analysis of NOAA ice core data from Greenland. Famous hockey stick doesn't look like much on millennial scale.

In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history. But the broader lesson is, climate doesn’t stand still. It doesn’t even stay on the relatively constrained range of the last 10,000 years for more than about 10,000 years at a time.

Does this mean that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas? No.

Does it mean that it isn’t warming? No.

Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons

For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the only thing that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

Interesting analysis of NOAA ice core data from Greenland. Famous hockey stick doesn't look like much on millennial scale.



James50

By golly, the very fact that I can see Russia from my house, means theirs no gosh darn global warming. Further more, there's no such thing as animal extinction. Now where did I put my pretty pink rifle? Those wolves love to be chased by my helicopter while I shoot at them.

Originally Posted by Deb C

By golly, the very fact that I can see Russia from my house, means theirs no gosh darn global warming. Further more, there's no such thing as animal extinction. Now where did I put my pretty pink rifle? Those wolves love to be chased by my helicopter while I shoot at them.

huh?

James50

Originally Posted by Deb C

By golly, the very fact that I can see Russia from my house, means theirs no gosh darn global warming. Further more, there's no such thing as animal extinction. Now where did I put my pretty pink rifle? Those wolves love to be chased by my helicopter while I shoot at them.

Did you even read the link? It was analyzing ice core temperatures from Greenland & Antartica for thousands of years. We haven't even reached the peak temperature of the Medieval Warm Period (warm enough for England to have vineyards that rivaled France's), and that by no means compares to how much warmer the Earth was when humans are theorized to have begun farming in the Holocene.

~Chas'88

The problem is with the global warming debate, is that there is so much conflicting evidence out there. And both sides have convincing arguments from well respected scientists and agencies. For example, this link that James posted was from NOAA. But I've seen articles from NOAA saying global warming is real and a threat to our planet. It appears NOAA seems pretty conflicted on this issue.

I do think it's fair to say that we have had a lot of extreme weather events lately and these are followed up by "the largest death toll from tornadoes or midslides in (pick a number of years) to date. Or Flooding, hurricanes and earthquakes of late seem to fall under the umbrella of the (2nd, 3rd or whatever) most expensive cost of damage to date. But I think what is really going on here is that it isn't that these storms are necessarily stronger than ones we seen, but there are more people on the planet and places on the earth with denser populations than ever before in history. If a F4 tornado hits a small town in the middle of farmland where the population is around 400 (like what was common 100 years ago) naturally you are going to have less causalities and property damage than if an F4 tornado hits that same area but now the town has 25,000 or more people living there. And this is why we are seeing such high numbers of people effected or the high cost of property damage from storms or earthquakes like we hadn't in the past.

As one meteorologist put it, the next century will be the century of great disasters, but not because the storms are going to be unusually strong, but because they will effect more people and more property because of our higher population. It's not that storms are stronger or the flooding is worse than we seen before, we just have more people on the planet.

Originally Posted by ASB65

The problem is with the global warming debate, is that there is so much conflicting evidence out there. And both sides have convincing arguments from well respected scientists and agencies. For example, this link that James posted was from NOAA. But I've seen articles from NOAA saying global warming is real and a threat to our planet. It appears NOAA seems pretty conflicted on this issue.

I do think it's fair to say that we have had a lot of extreme weather events lately and these are followed up by "the largest death toll from tornadoes or midslides in (pick a number of years) to date. Or Flooding, hurricanes and earthquakes of late seem to fall under the umbrella of the (2nd, 3rd or whatever) most expensive cost of damage to date. But I think what is really going on here is that it isn't that these storms are necessarily stronger than ones we seen, but there are more people on the planet and places on the earth with denser populations than ever before in history. If a F4 tornado hits a small town in the middle of farmland where the population is around 400 (like what was common 100 years ago) naturally you are going to have less causalities and property damage than if an F4 tornado hits that same area but now the town has 25,000 or more people living there. And this is why we are seeing such high numbers of people effected or the high cost of property damage from storms or earthquakes like we hadn't in the past.

As one meteorologist put it, the next century will be the century of great disasters, but not because the storms are going to be unusually strong, but because they will effect more people and more property because of our higher population. It's not that storms are stronger or the flooding is worse than we seen before, we just have more people on the planet.

One small quibble - this was not a NOAA analysis. It was NOAA data from the ice cores, but someone else doing the analysis. The thing I liked about the data is that it was pretty clean and did not need any reconstructions or modeling. All you had to do was graph the thing out. Not surprisingly it shows the famous hockey stick of the last 100 years. However, it also puts that hockey stick into perspective. I was surprised by that part.

James50

Originally Posted by Chas'88

Did you even read the link? It was analyzing ice core temperatures from Greenland & Antartica for thousands of years. We haven't even reached the peak temperature of the Medieval Warm Period (warm enough for England to have vineyards that rivaled France's), and that by no means compares to how much warmer the Earth was when humans are theorized to have begun farming in the Holocene.

~Chas'88

I did read it. Appears that it is discounting the global warming signs. There are a lot of other indicators that we are in the midst of a major climate change.

Originally Posted by James50

One small quibble - this was not a NOAA analysis. It was NOAA data from the ice cores, but someone else doing the analysis. The thing I liked about the data is that it was pretty clean and did not need any reconstructions or modeling. All you had to do was graph the thing out. Not surprisingly it shows the famous hockey stick of the last 100 years. However, it also puts that hockey stick into perspective. I was surprised by that part.

James50

Very well. I don't know enough about geology to dispute it nor do I have any motivation to do so, but I'm sure there will be some scientist who will find a way to dispute the findings. I do think it's a well established fact that within the past 1000 years of so, our planet has gone through cooling and warming periods. There have been many historians who attributed the dark ages at least in part, due to the cool cycle of the earth during that time. So the cooling and warming of the earth is just a natural part of a cycle.

Still, whether or not global warming is natural or caused by man, I can't help but feeling the green gases we are releasing in the air are not helpful. The pollution and green gases plus the over-population of our planet is the variable which didn't exist during these prior warming periods. So those are our wild cards this time around. We just don't know if what the human race is contributing now to the warming (or cooling) this time around is enough to cause major catastrophes to the planet which didn't happen in prior cycles.

Originally Posted by ASB65

Still, whether or not global warming is natural or caused by man, I can't help but feeling the green gases we are releasing in the air are not helpful. The pollution and green gases plus the over-population of our planet is the variable which didn't exist during these prior warming periods. So those are our wild cards this time around. We just don't know if what the human race is contributing now to the warming (or cooling) this time around is enough to cause major catastrophes to the planet which didn't happen in prior cycles.

Agreed, I don't think it helps any to be contributing to the overall trend.

Human population levels were high during the last warm period as well. The Medieval Warm period was a time of plenty of food and recovery of culture after the cooler "Dark Ages". Populations increased and such northernly places as England could grow wine (which today is too far north to do so) and have it compete with the French wine in taste.

Then we went into the Little Ice Age, a lot of the population died from starvation & famine, then they huddled closer together in cities--which was just in time for the rats to bring a little disease called the Black Plague not too long thereafter... if anything be worried about "little ice ages".

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Deb C

By golly, the very fact that I can see Russia from my house, means theirs no gosh darn global warming. Further more, there's no such thing as animal extinction. Now where did I put my pretty pink rifle? Those wolves love to be chased by my helicopter while I shoot at them.

Well said Sarah. I think James has been talking to you.

I think we need sommore of that hopey-changey stuff. You betcha.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Well said Sarah. I think James has been talking to you.

I think we need sommore of that hopey-changey stuff. You betcha.

I'll start believing presidential candidates when they start sounding like Winston Churchill.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

Agreed, I don't think it helps any to be contributing to the overall trend.

Human population levels were high during the last warm period as well. The Medieval Warm period was a time of plenty of food and recovery of culture after the cooler "Dark Ages". Populations increased and such northernly places as England could grow wine (which today is too far north to do so) and have it compete with the French wine in taste.

I beg to disagree since I know England currently has a small but thriving wine industry, indeed their sparking wines competed well against French champagne in competitions.

Even during the little ice ages wine production did not disappear in the Champagne region of France (which has a climate and soils not much different to South-Eastern England).

*Me comes from a major wine producing region and personally known some wine producers, so I know a thing or two about wine production

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Well said Sarah. I think James has been talking to you.

I think we need sommore of that hopey-changey stuff. You betcha.

Well, at least someone understood my lame attempt to talk like Sarah Palin.

Originally Posted by James50

Interesting analysis of NOAA ice core data from Greenland. Famous hockey stick doesn't look like much on millennial scale.



James50

That's strange, Everything I've read has said that in recent years it's become clear that earlier (pre-90s) research exaggerated how warm the Medieval Warm Period actually was. All the charts I have seen say we passed MWP temps in the 90s.

Interestingly enough, I have read that the Black Death and then the wipe-out of Native American populations by disease contributed to the Little Ice Age by decreasing the amount of land in cultivation, and thus decreasing GHG emissions from plowed fields and from livestock. Apparently n the 1700s it got so cold that permanent ice fields, the precursors of ice sheets, started developing in NE Canada.

Originally Posted by Tristan

I beg to disagree since I know England currently has a small but thriving wine industry, indeed their sparking wines competed well against French champagne in competitions.

Even during the little ice ages wine production did not disappear in the Champagne region of France (which has a climate and soils not much different to South-Eastern England).

*Me comes from a major wine producing region and personally known some wine producers, so I know a thing or two about wine production

Exactly, I get annoyed when Denialists and ininformed people pull out the "They had vineyards in England!!!" argument, to which I say, "there still ARE vineyards in England". In fact there is a palm tree in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland that was planted 200 years ago. Britain's climate is extraordinarily mild.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Well, at least someone understood my lame attempt to talk like Sarah Palin.

I understood it just fine, but could not understand how you thought that was responsive to my post about some interesting data.

James50

This is good news if you live in one of the big cities in China. It may even be good news for the rest of us. China set to launch first caps on CO₂ emissions

Seven provinces and cities in China are to set caps on their greenhouse gas emissions, following a directive from central government. It's the first time the Chinese government has called for any absolute caps on emissions, having so far preferred softer "carbon intensity" targets.

The move is a first step towards establishing carbon trading markets in China and further evidence of the country's commitment to tackling climate change, says Felix Preston of Chatham House, a foreign-policy think tank based in London.

On 13 January China's National Development and Reform Commission asked the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing and Shenzhen, and the provinces of Hubei and Guangdong, to set "overall emissions control targets".

James50

Originally Posted by Odin

That's strange, Everything I've read has said that in recent years it's become clear that earlier (pre-90s) research exaggerated how warm the Medieval Warm Period actually was. All the charts I have seen say we passed MWP temps in the 90s.

Interestingly enough, I have read that the Black Death and then the wipe-out of Native American populations by disease contributed to the Little Ice Age by decreasing the amount of land in cultivation, and thus decreasing GHG emissions from plowed fields and from livestock. Apparently n the 1700s it got so cold that permanent ice fields, the precursors of ice sheets, started developing in NE Canada.

I remember reading a book which discussed all this, however I cant remember the title of it.

Originally Posted by Tristan

I remember reading a book which discussed all this, however I cant remember the title of it.

Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum. It's a great book.

Originally Posted by Odin

Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum. It's a great book.

Thank You, I will see if I can grab a ebook copy of it for my ebook reader.