Thursday, January 01, 2009

Oy, more proof global warming is a socialist plot!

Dan Collins of Protein Wisdom links to a Newsbuster post that selectively highlights words and phrases from a letter James Hansen of NASA sent to Obama. As most economists have suggested, Hansen also suggests a carbon tax would be the most effective way to fix this. He also suggests that giving the money back to people per capita would avoid hurting the poor near the end of the letter.

Needless to say, Dan Collins and Newsbusters regard this as evidence that real goal of alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his followers is to use the fear of man-made global warming to redistribute wealth.

Click through. Protein Wisdom is fun to comment on, you just need a name and e-mail address, and half the time some conservative will actually click back to read your blog if you leave a url as well.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is really really strange

dicentra63 said...

David:

Please be referred to these posts of mine on AGW and its proponents:

http://proteinwisdom.com/pub/?p=2576
http://proteinwisdom.com/pub/?p=2604

Then please explain why Al Gore and James Hansen et al. are more eager to FIX THINGS NOW than to follow the scientific method to the letter and make damn good and sure that their scientific proposals are exactly right.

While you're at it, please explain why those of us on the starboard side should NOT be suspicious of the motives of people whose solutions to Yet Another Doomsday Scenario (I'm old enough to remember several others that have failed to materialize) fall in line so nicely with the Leftist agenda (centralized, global control of economies through the carbon tax — hello! that would be the result).

"Hansen also suggests a carbon tax would be the most effective way to fix this. He also suggests that giving the money back to people per capita would avoid hurting the poor near the end of the letter."

David: The wording that you've supplied is expressly redistributionist. Had Hansen proposed market solutions — or, here's a thought, if he had proposed that his data and methodologies be reviewed by qualified third parties — then he would NOT be proposing redistribution.

(Hint: Hansen refused for years to allow other scientists to see his raw data and methodologies; when asked if he would debate his critics, he replied, "I don't joust with jesters."

That is not now a truth-seeking scientist behaves. So I am forced to look for other motives.)

David said...

It will take me a few days to pull together the diverse bits of information required to reply to the two posts you refer me to. After I've done so, the result may not be the sort of thing you feel like posting about at Protein Wisdom.

For now I will concentrate only on the parts of your comments that apply to this particular post.

First, I hope you and I never see real redistributionist activity, where armed men attempt to confiscate the wealth of the rich and distribute it to the poor. Ask any economist - a tax on carbon use is a market solution, enabling each individual to decide how much each marginal unit is worth to them personally. If redistributionism ever comes, you will claim you were right, but the boy who cried wolf was not right. The USA already gives money to the poor under certain conditions, taken from the taxes of those who have more. If that's redistributionism it's already here.

Second, even if James Hansen proposed redistributionism, even if you proved he only pretended to be concerned about global warming because of his secret agenda, that would certainly prove nothing about all the other scientists who have published papers about global warming.

Third, if you read the original letter, you can see the main reason he suggests this use of the tax money is because he thinks that if the money isn't given out, conservatives will claim the whole tax was only an excuse for the government to take more money, and attempt to use resentment of government to rally people against it. Any idea where he got that thought from?

dicentra63 said...

David:

Ask any economist — a tax on carbon use is a market solution, enabling each individual to decide how much each marginal unit is worth to them personally.

Given that our current crop of economists failed to see the raging herd of rhinos that came our way (the credit collapse), I'll pass on asking any economist anything.

Who would administer that carbon tax, BTW? The U.S. government or a global entity? If the latter, would they apply it equally to all nations, or would they hit the West the hardest?

Taxes are by definition confiscatory, even if you can exercise a bit of control over how much you pay, because you can never opt out of them entirely, the way you can opt out of, say, electricity, cigarettes, or red meat.

I hope you and I never see real redistributionist activity, where armed men attempt to confiscate the wealth of the rich and distribute it to the poor.

It can be by the armed horde, or it can be by degrees, as determined by Our Betters In Washington.

For our own good, of course, and who can argue against that? Certainly not I, lowly citizen.

Any idea where he got that thought from?

I don't give a tinker's dam what James Hansen says one way or another. He has proven to be a dishonest man — a liar and a charlatan along with his pal Al Gore.

that would certainly prove nothing about all the other scientists who have published papers about global warming.

This link, which I cite in one of the posts I referenced, explains where a lot of those papers come from.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf

Remember, Hansen is the custodian of the surface-temp data, so any scientist who bases his work on Hansen will start out wrong.

Also remember that DOOMSDAY SELLS, and that scientists can travel in a nasty, backbiting herd as well as any other group, especially when promoting one idea and suppressing challenges to it keeps that sweet grant money flowing in.

Also, scientists' credentials mean nothing if they don't value the Truth (or at least valid methods of data collection, archiving, and analysis) over politics, personal position, or peer acceptance.

This kind of thing — a big, popular yet WRONG idea that sweeps through the scientific community to the detriment of actual science — has happened before and it will happen again. Everyone would be well advised to ALWAYS be skeptical of popular scientific claims. They're usually wrong.

After I've done so, the result may not be the sort of thing you feel like posting about at Protein Wisdom

Bring it on. I can defend myself against any honest argument. But if you descend into argumentum ad hominem or any other logical fallacy, I will hand you your head.