Saturday, March 21, 2015

Arguing From Both Sides of Their Wallets


Bleating about the poors from the receiving end of one percenter funding is a sure marker that the debate is going badly for them.  They only pretend to care when they profit from the pretend.

Consider the response when bunnies point out that the first big losers from climate change are going to be the South Asians and the Africans:  Ain't happening, not our problem is what Eli hears from the Willard Tony crowd. The good Bishop blesses the happening. The Luckwarmers snipe from the sidelines, more into the game than the reality.  But reactionaries know that those seeking to limit damage from climate change and environmental degradation have a concern for others and the Earth which is why they try it on in an attempt to slow down progress

Allow Eli to step back to yesteryear, in some sense to yesterdays, or the days before, when Rabett Run pointed out the amoral use of the "hurting the poors" argument in the Spectator, which he found in a jeremiad by Fred Singer.  Singer, of course, is quite the amoral contortionist, but he outdoes himself, when on one page he berates those concerned with the ozone depletion for harming the poors

The bitter irony, not mentioned in the article is that even if the CFC-ozone theory were correct in all respects, darker skinned people living in the tropics would get none of the alleged benefits of "protecting" the ozone layer.  The depletion of ozone is calculated to occur mainly at middle and high latitudes, and skin cancers are confined almost exclusively to fair-skinned people.  What then is the incentive for tropical nations to phase out CFCs?  And if they don't go along, will it be worthwhile for the developed countries to impose high costs on their citizens for a negligible return, in the absence of full international participation
forgetting (even then Fred was very old and very deviously delusional and very well paid to write such stuff) that a page back he had accused the developing countries of extorting the developed world
Of course, the key to the CFC content of the atmosphere is eventually in the hands of the developing countries that make up the bulk of the world's population.  These countries have asked for side payments, properly referred to as bribes, in order to accede to the Protocol. . . . 
To the developing countries the Protocol is simply a means to advance their concept of "international equity" which began nearly 25 years ago with the New International Economic Order.  "China and India threatened to increase their uses of CFCs, thereby breaking the Montreal Protocol if the fund were not approved.  Harris then recounts how the United States finally gave in to blackmail by "the major international donors joined with the developing states and the World Bank"
Substitute Agenda 21 for the New International Economic Order, coal for CFCs and the same nonsense can be found in every James Inhofe wanna be speak.  It really gets quite old.  Fred, of course, is not one to miss a trick, and after accusing the developing world of extorting payments, goes on to moan about how loss of CFC's would hurt the people of the developing nations, which, of course, assumes no benefit from those "bribes".

This is really quite spectacular, first S. Fred argues that the developing nations want financial help for adopting the Montreal Protocols and phasing out CFCs, and this is greedy of them.  Then he argues that the developing nations and their people would not be hurt by ozone depletion so they should not adopt the Montreal Protocols.  A new high for convenient cognitive dissonance.

Eli inquires:  Has Bjorn Lomborg hired Fred Singer as chief ghost writer?

7 comments:

Victor Venema said...

Sounds like Fred Singer thinks in terms of conflict between ethnic groups and has trouble imagining that they could collaborate.

When liberals say that people in South Asia and Africa will be hit hardest by climate change, such people may well think: wonderful and we do even have to spend extra money on it? That is not a nice thing to say, so they say: I do not believe in the greenhouse effect.

If you want to convince these people, you will have to show how how climate change will hit the USA, Australia and Canada. It looks like we at least have a case that Europe will have much less problems than these three countries. Europe has a very moderate climate, if severe weather doubles that does not make much difference, in the 3 problem countries a doubling means substantial economic damage.

The USA is not for nothing leading when it comes to research on severe weather; I have never seen a tornado shelter in Europe, no tropic cyclones either. The gulf stream slowing down will also mean less warming for Europe than otherwise. Maybe soon Europe will rule the waves again.

Fernando Leanme said...

Africans need to get their act together. This includes basic education and much less civil war. I tend to think it's up to them to get the basics right.

Anonymous said...

Fernando,
Were you simply trying to illustrate Eli's point, or were you being serious?

FWIW, one day you should read the Poisonwood Bible.

Tom said...

Do you have any citations for the statement 'it ain't my problem?' attitude you ascribe to your opponents? (I'm Tom Fuller, in case my identity doesn't show on my sign-in here.)

I happen to know many skeptics who actually do work on behalf of the poor in the developing world.

I am writing this from Taiwan after living a couple of years in China. I don't think you have any idea of what you are talking about.

I'm not a skeptic--but in attacking strawman behaviors and attitudes you do nothing to advance either political resolution or scientific understanding of this issue.

That's not new for you--but really, in 2015? Throwing red meat to your regulars instead of talking about real issues is passe.

You actually do have some very good posts on this blog. Why not do more of them and less of this crap?

Anonymous said...

@-Tom
"Do you have any citations for the statement 'it ain't my problem?' attitude you ascribe to your opponents?"

The attitude mentioned was
"Ain't happening, not our problem is what Eli hears from the Willard Tony crowd." to be accurate, after all you would not want to misrepresent or make a strawman.
For citations of such an approach... Well just about any article by Bob Tisdale at WUWT. Rather more influential examples of the attitude would be the Curry and Christy congressional testimony.

This is part of the multiple, and contradictory, positions held rejectionists.
1) It aint happening - Curry and the rest of the 'low sensitivity-high natural variation' crowd.
2) Aint my problem - any and all that argue that unilateral emissions reductions by a nation or individual are insignificant in the global total and therefore not worth doing. Perhaps the most obvious example of that position would be the present Australian government.
3) Anything we do will affect the poor in Africa/Asia - Lomborg is the exemplar, but there are plenty of other examples of the claim that the cure of reducing emissions is worse than the disease of AGW, and not a few that claim that the effort to reduce emissions is a conspiracy to impose a global cure to a global problem for ideological reasons as anyone who frequents blog discussions at WUWT, Climate.etc, Bishop Hill would be aware of.

@-"I'm not a skeptic--but in attacking strawman behaviors and attitudes you do nothing to advance either political resolution or scientific understanding of this issue."

Pots and kettles, motes and beams....

izen

Anonymous said...

This is another area where the parallels between climate denial and the tobacco wars is illustrative. The tobacco industry has fought every tobacco tax increase with the "it'll hurt the poor" argument. Does that convince anyone? And climate deniers, do you see the club you've joined? Does it make you proud?

Bryson said...

Speaking of straw men, they seem pretty loud and proud to me these days-- cf. for example Eric Reguly at the Globe and Mail, suggesting that renewable energy is a big waste of money and that, after all, it's possible that current climate change is really just a natural cycle (see "Sadly, the time isn't right for clean energy").