Thermo-Nuclear War, the game is a tie, would you like to play a different game? How about Monopoly? Alright, After starting off evenly, all pieces are owned by one person now and the rest pay rent and taxes to that one person. The game continues indefinitely and the other people are enslaved until….enlightenment! The players decide to stop moving by stop working, time goes by and the richest player starts going bankrupt. The non rollers/players start to Smile as they realize that they can be self-sustaining by staying on one tile and by not moving forward…The richest player starts becoming Angry, and decides that if he can not control the board then he might as well destroy it…the board trembles, gradually killing off (by Angry’s “natural” disaster) a Smiling Retired Young Piece who has been trying to move over and over again to avoid environmental Catastrophe! Eventually the Smiles realize that Angry is the cause of the destruction of the world/climate/environment/board and was the same ruler/enslaver in the beginning of the game. To prevent further destruction the only choice is to enslave Angry or kill it off and restore the environment, then continue to be self-sustaining with just the needs, and to continue Smiling in happiness. The Game then begins to evolve into something wonderful that no Smile thought was ever possible!!!

Back to global warming. People need to ask themselves what motives the scientists would have to concoct this crazy idea. Perhaps because I’ve spent much of my adult life around scientists, I recognize that they get details wrong and can be as stubborn as anyone in defending a mistake but generally they don’t like public controversy and would rather not invent something to put themselves in a controversial spotlight.

But what motives do the deniers have? Follow the money. who stands to loose if we accept global warming and climate change and do something about it? I think you’ll find those are often the people denying its reality.

Very interesting post. Thanks so much.

I think we should stop referring to it as climate change, and instead as a Carbon Bubble

Joking aside, I would be interested in hearing thoughts on how to invest or preserve value through such a future. A lot of ERE is predicated on the ability to derive returns from the markets, and this seems like it would/will become increasingly difficult (especially once Wall Street is underwater).

A related question is: How many Katrinas will it take? Or more accurately, what’s the trigger frequency for major problems like wildfires, harvest failures, and hurricanes before people put two and two together and cry uncle? Humans can get used to a lot of bad situations as long as the change is slow enough.

That said, the concept can sill be useful for understanding issues like air pollution from factories, and the need to restrict harmful emissions either through legislation or privatising the costs back to the polluter e.g. through pollution permits.

The problem for the global warming/climate change lobby is that there is no clear signs of ‘overgrazing’ The alledged costs of CO2 emissions are not obviously attributable to CO2, and meet with inevitable skepticism. CO2 surposedly causes more storms and flooding ? Well, maybe, but storms and flooding have always existed. Contrast that to the smog of the 1950s, which was clearly attributable to factory smoke and was clearly have a negative effect on people’s health. This led to the passing of legislation to prevent it.

Unless our planet ever starts to obviously hit the doomesday scenario which the environmental lobby have been predicting (wrongly) for decades, action to prevent so-called climate change is doomed to failure. And quite rightly too.

Who/what will be the judge?

If there were clear moral choices and impeccable judges we wouldn’t be in this situation. All we would have to do a follow orders and wait for judgement.

Since the universal judge is not likely to appear soon our moral choices will have be made on our own.

This always reminds me of arguments about religion. You don’t have to convince a person to believe in God or Jesus to convince them to…
“Do onto others as you would have them do onto you”
“Neither a borrower or a lender be”
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”
Those are principles generally accepted by believers and atheists alike. They don’t have to agree on the WHY. They just have to agree on the action to be taken.

Why try to preserve what is unsustainable? Overpopulation will self correct one way or another. It will be harsh and people will die.

I watched the video a few years ago; just another smarmy jackass trying to scare people into buying his book.

Having, and following our own moral compass, being prepared, and considerate is the best any of us can really do, well, most of us….

It’s clear we need to spend a few trillion dollars RIGHT NOW constructing our planetary defenses against asteroid strikes. It could happen tomorrow and we face extinction of the human race (hey, probably all mammals too!). Do you really want that to happen because you didn’t act NOW?

So step up to the challenge. Turn over your treasure to the UN space command and save the species!

P.S. Frankly, we know there will be another asteroid strike. They’ve happened many times in the past. The science is much more solid for this than human caused catastrophic global warning. Seriously.

P.P.S. Time to google “logical fallacies” so you aren’t suckered in my this guy.

We will need alternative energy at some point no matter what, so why not do it now and potentially prevent everyone from moving in with Phil in the process.

Alternative energy = national security, better economy, and saving the world….how many wins do you want?

Even thought the facts strongly suggest global warming is real, that is unimportant. Why? Because the main cause of global warming is the production of energy, which is a national security issue.

The largest single source of energy, at this time, is oil. Where is this oil? It is mostly in countries with oppressive governments, which would be more than happy to see western countries fail. Thus, it is in our best interest to find an alternative source of energy. Not only would we be less beholden to these despots, but we would not be funding the very people we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finding a viable alternative energy source is win-win for the enviromentalists, neocons, capitalists, patriots, rednecks, intellectuals, “real” Americans (Chris knows who they are), etc., but none can see how it is in all of their interests.

If we had spent the resources wasted on the Iraq War on researching a new energy source we would probably be on our way right now to significantly reducing the majority of Middle Eastern (mostly despotic governments) influence on world events and neutering the terrorist organizations by destroying a large portion of their funding.

And, we would have the added benefit of possibly doing something about the pesky ice caps melting which might destroy the Atlantic conveyor, potentially stave off a food shortage, and have another $300 odd billion per year kept in the U.S. economy instead of sending it to the Saudis, etc…it’s just a thought.

You, Maus, AlexK, and Dan have hit on
the many flaws inherent in the reasoning
of Pascal’s wager which I hit at tongue-
in-cheek in my earlier reply.

So while I agree with you about climate
issues, I can not see why you posted
the video with someone using such logic.

I believe in God, and
I recognize climate change as a serious
issue… but I can not support using Pascal’s
wager as a defense for either.

I can’t believe the video got 2 million hits.
Sorry, but that was 9 minutes of my life
I’d like to have back. (The rest of YOUR
post made up for it, though)

-FF