Greenism in it's death throes

[EternalOptimist]

Yah - it's a ferrago of straw men, numbers plucked out of the air and assumptions. Lewis Page represents just one of the many possible scenarios considered by the IPCC so he can trash it, totally ignoring the point that:


A fair summary of Page's hatchet job would be - the IPCC says n percent of the global energy supply can come from renewables, however this ignores any increase in energy use by the developing world therefore the IPCC wants the developing world to remain in 'grinding, miserable poverty'. The manifest and numerous logical fallacies should be evident to the razor sharp minds around here ....

Anyhoo, the report isn't out yet, so we're arguing over a Press release

lets put it another way then pj.

would you be personally happy, if the use of fossil fuels was pegged right now ? i.e. all of the energy economies of the world marked time whilst renewables caught up to take over the strain ? even if that took a hundred years ?

[TimberWolf]

Man was probably happiest when he (and to a lesser extent she) was green. A few thousand years ago, when he lived sustainably and in harmony with nature in his mud hut before farming arrived on the scene, and working all day for other people, taxes and overpopulation. Blame the farmers.

[OwlHoot]

Man was probably happiest when he (and to a lesser extent she) was green. A few thousand years ago, when he lived sustainably and in harmony with nature in his mud hut before farming arrived on the scene, and working all day for other people, taxes and overpopulation. Blame the farmers.

Happy until they had a toothache or fever, or a raiding party from the next valley suddenly appeared looking for some trophy heads ...

[pjclarke]

would you be personally happy, if the use of fossil fuels was pegged right now

Straw Man. It is not gonna happen, and it is not a simple either/or fossil or renewable (nuclear?). The problem is emissions. According to the best science available, if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, and go above the equivalent of 450 ppm CO2 then the consequent temperature increase will be >2C. In this case the cost of mitigatation, changes in agricultural practices, mass migration, resource wars, sea defences and so forth is far greater than the small fraction of global GDP it would cost to reduce our addiction to fossil fuels now. These future costs were unknown previously and even now are considered as externalities when energy decisions are made. This will cost us dear before very long.

Putting any doubts about your seriousness aside, there exist technological pathways to a world that emits 90% less GHGs than we do now with no reduction in standard of living. What is lacking is political will, and vision. Not helped, it should be said, by the science rejectionists and their faithful echo chamber. You know who you are.

[Spacecadet]

Man was probably happiest when he (and to a lesser extent she) was green. A few thousand years ago, when he lived sustainably and in harmony with nature in his mud hut before farming arrived on the scene, and working all day for other people, taxes and overpopulation. Blame the farmers.

The whole living-in-harmony-with-nature thing is a myth anyway. All native tribes are nomadic for the very fact that they don't live in harmony with nature. Once they've been in an area too long they run out of stuff to kill and/or eat and need to move on to a new area to decimate.

[EternalOptimist]

Straw Man. It is not gonna happen, and it is not a simple either/or fossil or renewable (nuclear?). The problem is emissions. According to the best science available, if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, and go above the equivalent of 450 ppm CO2 then the consequent temperature increase will be >2C. In this case the cost of mitigatation, changes in agricultural practices, mass migration, resource wars, sea defences and so forth is far greater than the small fraction of global GDP it would cost to reduce our addiction to fossil fuels now. These future costs were unknown previously and even now are considered as externalities when energy decisions are made. This will cost us dear before very long.

Putting any doubts about your seriousness aside, there exist technological pathways to a world that emits 90% less GHGs than we do now with no reduction in standard of living. What is lacking is political will, and vision. Not helped, it should be said, by the science rejectionists and their faithful echo chamber. You know who you are.

I dont think you actually know what a staw man argument is. You dont seem too hot on thought experiments either.
but I have to award you 10/10 for answering questions that were never even asked

[pjclarke]

The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:

Person A has position X.
Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y. Thus, Y is a resulting distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:
Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position.
Quoting an opponent's words out of context — i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see contextomy and quote mining).[2]
Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments — thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.[1]
Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.
Person B attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious, because attacking a distorted version of a position fails to constitute an attack on the actual position.

Such as ...

... all of the energy economies of the world marked time whilst renewables caught up to take over the strain ? even if that took a hundred years ?

TTFN

[TimberWolf]

Happy until they had a toothache or fever, or a raiding party from the next valley suddenly appeared looking for some trophy heads ...

Those things happen today too, only more so.

[TimberWolf]

The whole living-in-harmony-with-nature thing is a myth anyway. All native tribes are nomadic for the very fact that they don't live in harmony with nature. Once they've been in an area too long they run out of stuff to kill and/or eat and need to move on to a new area to decimate.

Okay, a bit of farming is okay to enable semi-permanent structures such as mud huts to be built, as well as some hunting, gathering and fishing, and keeping livestock. It's a slippery slope from there to over population though.

[d000hg]

I dont think you actually know what a staw man argument is. You dont seem too hot on thought experiments either.
but I have to award you 10/10 for answering questions that were never even asked

I was just about to say, PJ, throwing these terms like 'strawman' and 'logical fallacy' into your posts to make yourself sound clever doesn't make your underlying argument any stronger. It just sounds like you read a pamphlet on debating.

Also, you're a hypocrite. You used the cynical tactic of trying to make the opponent seem stupid by talking about their satirical playmobil stories when this has no bearing on the discussion. It's about the lowest option you have available.