atreic

1. Is there much money to be made by convincing everyone that climate change is real when it isn't?
2. Is there much money to be made by convincing everyone that climate change isn't real when it is?
3. Who has the money for a big campaign of disinformation, the establishment or the green movement (or whoever their shadowy bankrollers might supposedly be)?
4. Has the fossil fuel industry displayed any evidence of scruples before, ever?

1. Yes, a bit: wind turbines, insulation, etc.
2. Yes, a fsckload.
3. The establishment.
4. No.

robert_jones

The problem with this "debate" is that there is potentially a lot of money to be gained and lost, and so people are able to lay down massive amounts of pharmaceutical-grade bullshit to confuse and deceive. You can try to follow the climatological literature and critically read the writings of the deniers: but ultimately, both sides have accused the other of outright fabrication of data, so if you really want to know you'll have to go to Antarctica and repeat the key experiments yourself. Much as I'd like to go to Antarctica, this would be a bit tricky to fit into my teaching schedule. It's at this point that the kind of simplistic, ad hominem, follow-the-money line of argument that I outlined becomes quite valuable. Is the kind of climate instability we're noticing significant and unprecedented, or is it just part of an ordinary cycle, like the Medieval Warm Period (or whatever)? I'm not qualified to judge. I am, however, qualified to listen to others and guess at their motivations, and thus at whether they're likely to be lying to me or not.

[I'd also dispute your claim that doing things in a carbon-efficient way is going to be more expensive than doing things in a carbon-inefficient way. Most low-carbon technologies require higher up-front investment, but pay for themselves in the long term. One of the major obstacles to the improvement of, say, energy-efficient lightbulbs has been that the patents are held by the same people who hold the patents for incandescent bulbs, who don't want to endanger their revenue.]

• So, Mr Scotland Office Guy, if you'd like us to protest peacefully rather than be terrorists, why did your government pass the Terrorism Acts criminalising protest? Does your lot actually recognise the distinction?
• Why does everyone assume that "suicide bomber" implies "Muslim"? Suicide bombing was invented by Christian militias in Lebanon, and first adopted on a large scale by the predominantly Hindu Tamil Tigers.
• How, exactly, are ID cards meant to help at all with terrorism? Are you planning on asking the guy in the burning Jeep for his driver's license?
• To the people who asked if pulling out of Iraq would reduce the rate of domestic terrorism: ignoring nonsense like the ricin plot that never was, there have been three terrorist attacks in Britain in the last two years, with a total death toll of around 50. How are you meant to even measure a decrease in a rate that low? The important question is whether pulling out would reduce or increase the violence in Iraq, where (according to one of my fellow audients), people are dying at a minimum rate of 1600 a month.
• Most importantly of all: why the hell are we getting so het up over a couple of idiots with some propane, who aren't even bright enough to Google for "high explosive manufacture", and who were foiled by a baggage handler?!

...the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high.
...
Historically, one of the cruelest aspects of unequal income distribution is that poor people not only experience material want all their lives, they also suffer more illness and die younger. But in Canada there is no association between income inequality and mortality rates—none whatsoever... What makes this study so interesting is that Canada used to have statistics that mirrored those in the United States. In 1970, U.S. and Canadian mortality rates calculated along income lines were virtually identical. But 1970 also marked the introduction of Medicare in Canada -- universal, singlepayer coverage. The simple explanation for how Canadians have all become equally healthy, regardless of income, most likely lies in the fact that they have a publicly funded, single-payer health system and the control group, the United States, does not.
...
In the United States, infant mortality rates are 7.1 per 1,000, the highest in the industrialized world -- much higher than some of the poorer states in India, for example [emphasis added], which have public health systems in place, at least for mothers and infants. Among the inner-city poor in the United States, more than 8 percent of mothers receive no prenatal care at all before giving birth.

One recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal compares mortality rates in private forprofit and nonprofit hospitals in the United States. Research on 38 million adult patients in 26,000 U.S. hospitals revealed that death rates in for-profit hospitals are signifi cantly higher than in nonprofit hospitals: for-profit patients have a 2 percent higher chance of dying in the hospital or within 30 days of discharge. The increased death rates were clearly linked to "the corners that for-profit hospitals must cut in order to achieve a profit margin for investors, as well as to pay high salaries for administrators."

yourhermione

( Herewith an executive summary )

He's also summarised his plan here, with timings.

I'm currently reading The Utility of Force by General Sir Rupert Smith, which, while not quite so well-written, is also fascinating. Yay for the Blackwell's sale! :-)

bruce_schneier

if (person = terrorist) {
            punish_severely();
} else {
            exit(-1);
}

rjw1

I have painted myself into a corner: big government doesn't work, and though the free market is the perfect solution to problems of supply and demand, there are certain areas of human aspiration which are best served by commons, common interests, common actions. Therefore, there are certain zones in which the free market is just as inept as big government. All of which is another way of saying that humans are inept at managing their destiny--a proposition for which I see significant evidence every time I read a newspaper, take a subway, or have a conversation.

So, should we give up? No; we can, motivated by the foolish but sustaining optimism that has always kept us alive, realistically work for the best accomodation of bad systems--hoping that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts, as it is with the best of human endeavors. Let's use the free market where possible, and government where necessary.

When I paddle my kayak in Hither Hills State Park in Montauk, I'm glad it belongs to all of us.

zompist

bronxelf_ag001

michiexile

jwz

rogerd

Sure they can. When they give up getting their power from power lines erected via power of eminent domain, drawing power from generators set up via ED and subsidised by the taxpayer. When their businesses don't employ staff educated in the public system. When they don't rely on road or rail links built with the help of taxpayer money. When they don't use the courts to enforce contracts, or the police to arrest shoplifters. When, in short, they opt out of all the bits of the social contract, not just the ones they find inconvenient.

That is to say, when hell freezes over.

zompist