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Comments 11601 to 11650:

11601. scaddenp at 19:17 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Actually, have a read of the principles on the ACC site and see how many you agree with and if not could you live with. OPF might be surprised at the possibilities for common ground. 

11602. scaddenp at 18:53 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       OPOF - global leaders in a democracy are constrained by what their voters will let them do. This has to work grass-roots. I hate to think what you might mean by "intervention".

       Nigelj, I have little stomach for reading rabid far right sources (or far left) but I do look for intelligent sites where it is possible to find common ground. (I am not sure my political values are far into the left - I've voted for which ever party seems to have better grasp of current problems).  Try American Conservative or Reason. (and search for Green New Deal).  I also look over Lucia's Blackboard (used to be lukewarmer hangout).

       Loyalty and authority ? Look at American Conservation Coalition (I posted the link before too). Because it speaks to conservative values, it has a much better chance of being listened to. More important is to think about any climate protest action is viewed by the people you are trying to convince, not what give a warm glow to people of your own tribe.

       But if your real aim is to try and convince of right wingers to suddenly own your values, then good luck. You will need it.

11603. peter prewett at 17:08 PM on 19 February 2019
       Studies shed new light on Antarctica’s future contribution to sea level rise
       

       SBS ran a program recently on Glaciers and Antartica, does anyone know name and where I can view it.

       My recorder failed half way through:((

       Peter

11604. nigelj at 16:41 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Regarding the TedTalk by Johan Rockström. This is related: The original world 3 Model on population, resources and growth. You can play with it, just click on Simulate and Settings at the top of the page.

       insightmaker.com/insight/1954/The-World3-Model-A-Detailed-World-Forecaster

11605. One Planet Only Forever at 16:05 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       scadedenp,

       Basically, the right-wing in the USA and many other regions of the planet has developed into Tribalism that is in serious need of correction. Intervention may be required if they will not understand and admit they need correction.

11606. One Planet Only Forever at 16:02 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       scaddenp@7,

       I refer to the past 30 years of resistance to correction of the unsustainable and harmful developments in the "global developed set of systems that clearly needs correction" in ways that also sustainably improve circustances for the less fortunate because of the clear and blunt statement of the problem presented in the UN Report "Our Common Future" in 1987:

       "25. Many present efforts to guard and maintain human progress, to meet human needs, and to realize human ambitions are simply unsustainable - in both the rich and poor nations. They draw too heavily, too quickly, on already overdrawn environmental resource accounts to be affordable far into the future without bankrupting those accounts. They may show profit on the balance sheets of our generation, but our children will inherit the losses. We borrow environmental capital from future generations with no intention or prospect of repaying. They may damn us for our spendthrift ways, but they can never collect on our debt to them. We act as we do because we can get away with it: future generations do not vote; they have no political or financial power; they cannot challenge our decisions.
       26. But the results of the present profligacy are rapidly closing the options for future generations. Most of today's decision makers will be dead before the planet feels; the heavier effects of acid precipitation, global warming, ozone depletion, or widespread desertification and species loss. Most of the young voters of today will still be alive. In the Commission's hearings it was the young, those who have the most to lose, who were the harshest critics of the planet's present management."

       Every leader on the planet has 'no excuse to be unaware of that understanding'.

       The continued successful resistance to the corrections that are clearly required (not just in the USA) is undeniable, and inexcusable. Even teenagers who have never heard of the Report understand that.

11607. nigelj at 15:50 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Scaddenp @13 &14

       I can imagine what right wing websites say about the Green New Deal, and it won't be pretty. I have a vivid imagination. However these websites do represent the extremists.

       With the devils advocates hat still on, I think its more about appealing to moderate Republicans. While they probably hate the social provisions of the GND it's hard to argue with the first few points in the plan because they are general, and they might go with a government financed infrastructure build that is deficit financed in preference to taxes. I think they hate taxes more than deficit financing.

       I just dont see how one frames the climate issue in a way related to authority and loyalty. The EPA in America is supposed to be an "authority" and its hated by Republicans. I think they only respect authority if its their kind of authority. Perhaps a moderately authoritarian style of  Democrat President would gain their respect? Obama didn't fit that category, he was quite laid back.

       I agree its true that if community leaders drive electric cars or use solar panels others will come to copy them particularly among Republicans who value authoritarianism, but I don't see much of that happening yet in Republican communities, and it seems unlikely to happen, because such leaders could be labelled liberal sympathisers. I mean I would like to be wrong obviously.

       I think the whole thing is more likely to be driven by economics: Carbon taxes, cheaper electric cars (which are likely within just a few years), cheaper wind energy etcetera. I think The GOP is perhaps sympathetic to this and helping give it a push, but its all been derailed by Donald Trump, and he has them under his thumb. That's authoritarianism for you!

        

11608. BaerbelW at 14:58 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       I recently happened upon a TedTalk by Johan Rockström, the new co-director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research which seems to fit into this discussion - it at least provides some more food for thought:

       5 transformational policies for a prosperous and sustainable world

       The general thrust is about how to work towards the UN's 17 Sustainability Goals within the Planetary Boundaries.

11609. scaddenp at 13:05 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       "I notice Nikki also talks about framing things in moral terms and in reference about harm to others. Is that not what OPOF is doing?"

       As OPOF has pointed out though, that speaks well to the left but loyalty and authority are also important to right. For many conservatives, they will only hear the argument if it is coming from someone in their tribe. If protest actions suggest disrespect for authority or breach of loyalty, then they will alienate rather than convince.

       On the other hand, if people see that "this is what folks do" (traces), then they will tend to do likewise (whatever your leanings) which could work for you or against it. If running a petrol car causes looks of disdain from within your tribe, then you buy electric. If churches and prominant individuals put solar panels on their buildings then it becomes ok to put them on yours without worrying about "ugly".

11610. scaddenp at 12:50 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       " Now playing "devils advocate", its actually The Green New Deal is what is getting peoples attention, despite all the social baggage, imho probably because it's an actual "plan" not just some single tax that's supposed to solve everything."

       Spend some time on a few US rightwing blogs and see what is discussed.

11611. scaddenp at 12:48 PM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       jef - I am not disagreeing that systems are unfair and need improvement. I am strongly disagreeing with calls to revolution under guise of climate action. I do not accept that effective actions within the current system (eg tax and dividend) are impossible. I am not much interested in solutions that do not have a political path to fufillment or require human nature to change. I agree that human nature is also social and cooperative - the anti-plastic movement is successfully channelling that at least here in NZ. I believe that similar processes could ( and hopefully will) solve the climate problem.

11612. nigelj at 11:56 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Scaddenp

       "Those pushing for climate change action have to figure out how to reach out to other side instead of pushing an ideological barrow. Other countries can manage this."

       I agree, but I think America is really stuck in a very bad space and its very hard going there. Obama was a pragmatist to an extent ( and I am pretty much). His considerable ideals transcended the usual liberal / conservative ideological ideals. He reached out many times in a spirit of bipartisan pragmatism, and tried to frame things in ways that conservatives might relate to (as did Bill Clinton a bit) but as one commentator put it each time his hand came back as a bloody stump. America are going to need something pretty special to break this level of tribalism.

       I agree about tax and dividend in theory (I've promoted it all over the place) and is seems like the most workable thing in America. It's pretty politically neutral, doesn't increase size of government, but so far it still hasn't got any real traction. Now playing "devils advocate", its actually The Green New Deal is what is getting peoples attention, despite all the social baggage, imho probably because it's an actual "plan" not just some single tax that's supposed to solve everything.

       Nikki Harri is interesting. Happiness and positivity = change. Setting good examples and copying other peoples behavious = change. Now doesn't Jacinda Adern understand this so perfectly?

       I notice Nikki also talks about framing things in moral terms and in reference about harm to others. Is that not what OPOF is doing?

11613. jef12506 at 11:26 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Scadd - You condemn all of humanity based on the actions of 1% of the population. Human nature is inclined to mutual interest and cooperation, !% who rule disallow this.

11614. scaddenp at 10:46 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       A more positive example of change is that around plastic bag use. While government regulations obviously are helping, I hear people using plastic bags in a supermarket apologizing to those around them. There is a social pariah developing about plastic use and our human nature is then working to make to things better. I would heartily plug again Niki Harre "Psychology for a better world" as ways of using human nature to effect change instead of demand that it change.

11615. scaddenp at 10:39 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Nigelj - a "google tax" makes a modest suppliment to our government income without creating any noticable difference to corporates wealth (isnt tax paid overseas deductable anyway) and certainly doesnt change the disproportiate power of wealth. A measure was capable of making that level of structural change (who knows what that would be) would have a major struggle to be enacted.

11616. scaddenp at 10:32 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

        I would also say that strong scientific consensus was not fully evident till TAR in 2001, but I fully admit that to be opinion since it isnt measured.

11617. scaddenp at 10:29 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       The "current system" is what we have got and its not going anywhere. The "current system" is also making significant progress in countries outside the US but the polarized state of US politics is probably the major drag on global progress. Those pushing for climate change action have to figure out how to reach out to other side instead of pushing an ideological barrow. Other countries can manage this.

       Actions that result in eliminating FF use will solve the climate problem whether they further impoverish the poor or not. Objecting to effective solutions because they dont fit your ideals for fairness etc is as blind climate change denial. To me, tax and dividend, despite relying on our selfishness and existing systems, is best way to make progress. It looks to be the best chance of reaching across the aisle to get the political capital required. Eg see here. US climate activists need to work with these people, not alienate them.

       A vital component of any proposed solution is "politically feasible". Anything else is a waste of time.

11618. nigelj at 10:28 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       I don't think it's about getting rid of rich people and capitalism. We have seen enough failed experiments on this. I think its about reducing the undue, disproportionate influence of the mega rich and of corporations. I think that is an achieveable goal but it wont be without a big fight.

       Scaddenp, note how google has just been taxed in NZ! See it's not impossible.

11619. One Planet Only Forever at 09:46 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       scaddenp@3,

       My simple response, which is also unpopular, is that the past 30 years have proven that the current system is not motivated to fix the problem. And actions to fix it that keep the richer, richer (do not socially coprrect the system) will lead to harmful consequences without actually solving the problem.

11620. scaddenp at 08:30 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Well I am going to post an unpopular opinion. While there have been opinions posted about the need for solutions that are socially just, move away from selfishness, etc (eg https://skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=4383#130376 ), I am more interested in pragmatic approaches. Yes, it would wonderful to solve climate and a dozen other world problems in ways that are just, sustainable, and apple pie. However, the critical thing is to actually solve them and that means you might need to swallow some rats:

       
       The wealthy have always had unequal power and while revolutions briefly change that, long term that is still probably a given.

       
       To create change in a democracy, you need a majority of your representatives support the change.

       
       Demanding an end to capitalism or eating the rich is not going to get you there. It is just ammunition for those who think AGW is a manufactured leftist conspiracy. GND is alienating people you need to support its substance. Maybe it changes the Overton window and is a pathway to something better, but as it stands, no way.

       
       Human nature is what it is, and I have no faith in “solutions” that depend on changing it. Better to accept what we are and go with solutions that work with human nature (exploiting our aversion to taxes and tendencies to selfishness) and for which you can build broad support among your democratic representatives.

        

11621. jef12506 at 07:03 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       All "solutions" proposed such as the GND are focused on how to keep the wealthy, wasteful, 20% of the world who are responsable for more than half the damage, just like it is or even better while the other 80% can fend for themselves and fight over whats left.

       This is impacting/killing millions right now. We don't need to wait for future generations.

11622. nigelj at 05:44 AM on 19 February 2019
       A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate
       

       Thinking about climate change and more droughts and consequent food shortages, this is likely to seriously intensify right at the time population climbs to around 8 - 10 billion (if we do nothing to stop this), and when fisheries collapse beyond salvation  through extreme over fishing and global debt levels reach absolute crisis point. This will be perfect storm for future generations to contend with.

11623. One Planet Only Forever at 04:33 AM on 19 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       Art Vandelay,

       My comment regarding a comparison of Private Health Care and Public Health Care (the real issue), is the essential need for all actions to be governed in a way that results in developing sustainable helpful actions  and rapidly identifying and terminating harmful actions (exactly the same principle that applies to climate change and the need to terminate the harmful burning of fossil fuels).

       Pursuit of profit and popularity has been conclusively proven to develop unsustainable and harmful activities and powerful resistance to correcting them (climate science being a powerful case proving that point).

       Therefore, the only legitimate way to operate any system of pursuit of status based on popularity and profit is rigorous monitoring and enforcement of the principle of requiring people to be helpful, especially the higher status people, and the rapid termination of any harmful actions regardless of their developed regional popularity or temporary profitability (again - refer to the climate science case).

       So I am all for Public or Private Health Care as long as the Universal Moral Principle is governing what is going on. Governing Public Health Care systems is also required (some people can be expected to attempt to get higher status in harmful unsustainable ways in any system - just like politics needs to be governed by the Universal Principle, not just allowed to develop however it may develop based on profit and popularity), but it is easier to do that in a Public System than attempting to govern Private Systems, especially systems where private enterprises can claim the public do not have any right to know the details of what the Private Enterprise is actually doing.

       There are many concerns regarding dual Health Care systems (with people able to pay for Private Services rather than wait their turn in a Public System) including:

       • Richer people will be tempted to push for lower taxes and less funding for Public Health Care because the tax reduction for th richer person is larger than their likely medical expenses.
       • Richer people may be able to push for 'better Private medical treatment' than is available in the Public system. Everybody should have comparable quality of care.

       The way that parallel Private and Public would work best (and maybe the only way it would really develop a Good Result), is if all treatment is provided by the same group of people and institutions, with a richer person being able to Pay More to jump a wait-list for treatment without causing an unacceptable delay in treatment for the general population. Everyone gets the same treatment in a reasonable time through the Public System, with the impatient richer people paying premiums to get quicker treatment as long as spare capacity exists in the system.

       One exception would be unnecessary medical treatments which could be totally unregulated and for-profit. I see little value in expending public effort to limit the potential harm of unnecessary totally elective medical procedures chosen by people simply concerned about 'enhancing their image'. Of course, reconstructive plastic surgery for genetic impairments and accident repair would be in the Public System. And the specialists in those areas could perform such treatments for a premium when helpful treatments are not in high demand. But that talent should not delay any necessary helpful treatments just to 'do an expedited unnecessary treatment'.

11624. Art Vandelay at 17:44 PM on 18 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       I think a system of compulsary private health insurance is prefereable from a libertarian perspective, and it should also have the effect of making people more responsible for their own actions, by virtue of a direct financial imposition from higher premiums, or from a glass-half-full perspective, a financial reward for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. 

       Having personally witness societal transition from private to public health cover I don't think it's a coincidence that people are now less personally responsible and less inclined to take control of their lives and destinies than they were 30 or more years ago.    

       Ideally we do want a welfare system to operate as a safety net for people who for no fault of their own fall through the cracks, but at the same time we need to foster more positive individual cultures, where people act instinctively in positive ways for themselves as well as those around them.  

11625. Philippe Chantreau at 15:35 PM on 18 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       Unfortunately yes, we have to protect people against themselves, because once the consequences of their behavior hit, consequences of which they were informed in most cases nowadays, these people don't want to die just yet, and they don't want to suffer too much either. However, given  a choice beforehand, these same people would rather not pay for health care, but engage in the risky behaviors anyway. The problem is that everybody has to shoulder the consequences of their beahviors, not just them. And also, we don't tell them when consequences hit that they're flat out of luck, humans are funny that way. So, it is inevitable indeed that society take steps to make the whole thing viable. That includes actively discouraging wrong choices when it is patent that, satistically, too many will make the wrong choices. In Switzerland, health insurance is completely private, but having it is not an option; those who persists in not getting one are assigned one by default, and then have to pay the premiums. That's the only way the system can work, whether we like it or not. People have strange ways of doing risk assessment and risk/benefit analyses; they also have addictive behaviors, from heroin to sugar. I have never heard the ideologues whining about the Nanny state proposing anything fundamentally different that would be workable in reality.

11626. Art Vandelay at 10:51 AM on 18 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       KR, I'm not advocating national health care, just pointing out that there are trade off's wrt some individual freedoms, where the government seeks to protect people against themselves through fines and taxes etc. For example, high taxes on cigarettes, taxes on alcohol, and in future there's likely to be a sugar tax, a salt tax, a fat tax etc.  

       Where I live in Australia we have private and public health systems operating in parallel, so if someone wants a non-essential or non-urgent medical treatment, they must do so via the private system. Also, if you want an urgent medical proceedure to be performed by a surgeon of your own choice you'll need to use the private system. 

       For a person earning an average salary of $80,000 they will pay a healthcare levy of about $1600 pa and if they choose private insurance too, an extra $2000 - 3000 per year on average. 

       For a high income earner (>$200k) the levy increases to >$4000, though most high income earners use the private system because the standard is higher.

11627. nigelj at 07:10 AM on 18 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #7
       

       A perfect example related to Monbiot's article, from todays news: Britain's richest man quits the UK: Billionaire Brexiteer Sir James Ratcliffe 'relocates to Monaco in a bid to save £4bn in tax'

11628. nigelj at 05:49 AM on 18 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #7
       

       George Monbiot gets is so right:  "It is true that the people of my generation are not equally to blame. Broadly speaking, ours is a society of altruists governed by psychopaths. We have allowed a tiny number of phenomenally rich people, and the destructive politicians they fund, to trash our life-support systems. While some carry more blame than others, our failure to challenge the oligarchs who are sacking the Earth and to overthrow their illegitimate power, is a collective failure. Together, we have bequeathed you a world that – without drastic and decisive action – may soon become uninhabitable."

       Yes, and I think the reason we have done this is partly because are still in the neoliberal "greed is good" economic cycle that started in the 1980's with Reagon and Thatcher, where the rich were seen as saviours and above criticism, and any criticism was branded as envy or "class warfare".

       Tax was falsely branded as theft and government business regulations and environmental rules were  vilified by business people and think tanks, and they claimed it was for the public good to get rid of these  when it was really simply so that they could indulge their personal interests in an unconstrained way at the expense of the public at large. A library full of books has been written on it, including Monbiots own "How did we Get into this Mess" and the books by Joseph Stiglitz an economist.

       With neoliberalism some good underlying ideas somehow became twisted into something totally ridiculous that defies commonsense and reason. I honestly think that 90% of the time extremist ideology is the enemy whether of the extreme right or the extreme  left. We need a great deal more pragmatism if we are to get out of this mess.

       The tide is perhaps turning. The economist.com has just done an article on the attitudes of the millenial generation, and they are questioning neoliberal values, and switching on to environmentalism and equality.

       There simply has to be movement at the top of society and in politics. Most people are not going to cut their carbon footprints hugely until they see a lot of people doing this, and until they see movement at the top of society and in politics with a concerted effort to build renewable electricty grids etc.

       But what comes first the chicken or the egg? Politicians won't move until they see the public buying electric cars etc. Such a frustrating situation.

11629. Sunspot at 01:15 AM on 18 February 2019
       The Methane 'Time Bomb': How big a concern?
       

       https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/17/methane-levels-sharp-rise-threaten-paris-climate-agreement

11630. Postkey at 18:53 PM on 17 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
       

       “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN “

11631. KR at 13:21 PM on 17 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       Art Vandelay - 'Nanny state' wrt healthcare is a poor assertion. You have the choice of either (a) a government run program where you have the power of a vote and elected representation to correct excesses, or (b) being subject to the commercial whims of assorted insurance companies.  Not a single nanny, but rather a raft of them, all rather viciously focused on their profits rather than your wellbeing. 

       I've been in companies where we lost insurance (had to go to far more expensive vendors) due to one or two employees with 'preexisting conditions', otherwise known as health histories. I see people who for various reasons suffering interruptions in insurance going bankrupt or dying because they cannot afford uninsured medications for heart problems or insulin. 

       We pay for roads, streetlights, sewage and water services, and (for quite a while now in the US) Social Security as a baseline retirement investment. Health care is entirely reasonable as a social common good. And it would be far cheaper to do that as a single-payer system than the current structure. 

       [On the point of costs: it's estimated that the proposed US "Medicare-for-all" would cost ~$32T over ten years. Sounds expensive. Until you realize that under the current system we're on track for spending ~$50T over ten years, meaning that a single-payer system would save almost 40%]

11632. nigelj at 05:48 AM on 17 February 2019
       A Duplicitous Minister?
       

       Art Vandelay, I agree the world needs to stop relying on population growth to boost economies and I have said myself we need to get population growth rates down to zero, but immigration is a different thing because it doesn't change global population. Australia seems to be under populated (quick google search), even when you take in to account much of it is not habitable, so the resource pressure isn't there.

       I'm not suggesting you open the flood gates to huge numbers of immigrants or refugees, because it's always a balancing act and I feel should be based on people with useful skills. And it's Australias business of course. Imho it just wouldn't be right to manipulate immigration to make climate accounting look good. 

11633. nigelj at 05:29 AM on 17 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
       

       "The lion’s share of the blame must be assigned not to the passengers, however, but rather to the ship’s owners, managers, and captain—along with the shipping industry’s government regulators. In their wanton disregard for risk, the responsible parties are not unlike today’s climate deniers.'

       Yes especially as the passengers would have expected sufficient numbers of lifeboats at the very least.

       The climate issue could be slightly different because politicans take their lead from opinion polls. Americans are not particularly concerned about climate change. This might partly explain the weak climate policies.

       Europeans are much more concerned. And their climate policies are stronger.

       Latin Americans are very concerned, but their governments do not have strong policies, but this could be partly explained by their governments being authoritarian and generally ignoring public sentiment.

       en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_opinion_by_country

       None of this absolves governments and corporate interests, who are not responding strongly enough even in europe where public concern is generally high. I'm still left with a strong sense politicians are not listening to voters enough in most countries even europe, and its probably due to pressure on politicans from lobby groups, wealthy libertarians and similar people who resent government regulations, and campaign funders. 

11634. One Planet Only Forever at 02:20 AM on 17 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       Art Vandelay,

       The Nanny State claim is negative trigger-wording made-up by people who are not interested in improving awareness and understanding and applying that knowledge to hep develop sustainable improvements for the future of humanity.

       Any limit on freedom to believe whatever you want and do as you please can be Framed as "Nanny-Statism" or "Socialism" (which has also been made into a negative trigger-term by the same people who made-up the term Nanny-State).

       The improved safety of vehicles only happened through Nanny-State imposition of improved Standards and Specification. And the improved safety of bike helmets also only happened that way.

       So the Nanny-State/Socialism can actually be a Very Good Thing. It is just that having "Reduction of harm to Others" and "Helping Others" imposed is contrary to the developed preferences of some people. The Cultures/Systems that develop those type of people (resistant to improving their awarness and understanding, and resisting reduction of harm to Others, and resisting helping Others), require correction.

11635. Art Vandelay at 00:46 AM on 17 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       Philippe Chantreau, I'm not suggesting that the negatives with universal (government) healthcare outweigh the positives, just pointing out that there's the inevitably of a nanny state.

       Medicare in Austrlia, where I live, is very successful overall, and for many older retired folk unable to afford private health care it's a godsend of course.

11636. Art Vandelay at 20:58 PM on 16 February 2019
       A Duplicitous Minister?
       

       nijelj@10, If we're going to be serious about reducing emissions to zero we'll need to embrace a new economic paradigm that doesn't rely on on a population ponzi scheme. Japan really is the template for an economy that doesn't rely on increasing consumption by virtue of an increasing population.  No country on the planet should have a population that cannot be supported by its own natural resources, and there needs to be policies that limit the percentage of human footprint including land allocated for primary and agriculture.   

11637. Philippe Chantreau at 15:45 PM on 16 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       The Nanny state argument holds for health care until people need it. No advocate of personal freedom I know can muster the personal responsibility to not use the health care available when they need it badly. Ideology doesn't weigh much in the face of acute appendicitis with rupture and septic shock. I find this argument to be total nonsense. One doesn't get to opt out of life's risks. Everyone can break a leg and need an ORIF. Who has the balls to say no because they decided to opt out of coverage on the basis of personal conviction? 

       Any kind of insurance model works like this: you pay for it so you can benefit from it if you need it, which happens unexpectedly. During all that time when you don't need it, you payments help those who do. When you happen to need it, it's there for you. For health care, which is quite expensive, it only works if everybody pitches in. If you drive a car, you're exposed to accident risk, no matter how good you think you are. If you're living life, you're exposed to illness risks, no matter how healthy you think you are.

11638. nigelj at 15:24 PM on 16 February 2019
       A Duplicitous Minister?
       

       I don't think it makes much sense to reduce immigration to make the emissions reductions numbers look good. It's not reducing global emissions. It means you miss out on any benefits of immigration.

       I wonder if we have to judge countries with high immigration by also considering per capita emissions as well as total numbers.

       Of course immigration can get too high and put pressure on infrastructure. New Zealand has had high immigration recently but double the Australian numbers after accounting for difference in population size. So does Australia really have a problem? Careful that big reductions in immigration don't crash your property market.

11639. RedBaron at 15:20 PM on 16 February 2019
       A Green New Deal must not sabotage climate goals
       

       Michael Sweet,

       Perhaps you should actually read my answers and this thread before you go telling other people they haven't read it. 

       Post #15 has a compareson between a cap and trade and a tax and dividend, and sauerj came on advocating a Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. Whereas I personally don't find any of the above compelling, and proposed something similar to all of the above but with the key difference being a conservative capitalist free market solution supporting  verified carbon offsets.

       My objection to the socialist dogma attached to the green new deal is very different than my objection to the bipartisan EICDA.

       The GND was dead on arrival and many of its talking points have already been discarded as unworkable. However, its big advantage is that of all the other carbon markets out there, it is the only one that even acknowledges the other side of the carbon cycle. So that's its good part. The bad part is in being unrealistic and fiscal and political suicide.

       The EICDA is fiscally responcible and realistic. Unfortunately it won't actually reverse AGW even if passed.

       So we have different plans that are unworkable. I suggested taking the best parts of each and adding a bit of conservative responcibility to them and making capitalism a driver for reversing AGW instead of a driver for causing AGW as it is now.

       We are paying people to dig and drill for fossil fuels and they are doing it. If we paid people to sequester that carbon back into the soil, they would do that too. If the people being paid to drill for fossil fuels were also the ones paying for it being sequestered back in the soil, the the markets would naturally balance themselves while balancing the carbon cycle!

11640. Riduna at 13:16 PM on 16 February 2019
       A Duplicitous Minister?
       

       Art Vandelay – Good point.

       Australia has no immigration policy but one is in the process of being formulated. Pending its evolution, immigration is being reduced from around 190,000 per annum to 160,000 and may be further reduced once government produces a bipatisan policy.

       Although population growth results in higher demand for electricity it is likely that this will be met in full by renewables. Not so in the case of  transport sector emissions – at least not until EV’s achieve price parity with fossil fuelled vehicles, likely to occur over the next 5 years.

11641. Art Vandelay at 12:50 PM on 16 February 2019
       2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
       

       One side effect of universal healthcare is the loss of some degree of personal liberty, and in many cases the imposition of taxes and levies. 

       Examples include having to wear a helmet when riding a bike or wearing a seat belt in a motor vehicle, with non-compliance resulting in fines or a loss of license etc. 

       Where I live in Australia we've just been informed that our motor vehicle registration will be cancelled if we have faulty airbags.

       It may sound trivial but there's no doubt that universal health care does create something of a "nanny state".

11642. Art Vandelay at 12:36 PM on 16 February 2019
       A Duplicitous Minister?
       

       It raises the question of whether countries such as Australia should maintain high population growth policies when it's clear that population growth is more than offsetting reductions in per-capita emissions, making it very difficult to maintain absolute emissions targets.    

11643. nigelj at 05:52 AM on 16 February 2019
       Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton?
       

       Daniel Mocsny @7, I agree with a lot of that. You appear to be arguing greed and materialism is deep in our genes, but our intelligence gives us an awareness of the destructive side of this, but is thus far failing us in terms of the climate issue.

       However humanity has made short term financial sacrifices to fix quite a few environmental (and social) problems successfully. Insurance policies are another example. So intelligence does sometimes triumph over our baser instincts. And we have made some progress with the climate problem. The climate problem has to be mother of all environmental problems in terms of scale and complexity and I suspect this is slowing down our response, and of course theres been a concerted denialist campaign on a massive scale.

       There are other factors. We are psychologically hardwired to respond most acutely to short term threats rather than slowly unfolding more distant dangers. But intelligence gives us a mechanism to transcend this, and we have to start rationally thinking about such future risks.

       Daniel Mocsny @8

       You are sceptical of things like carbon taxes. Granted they are not the ideal solution, and people will try to find ways around them or might not spend all the dividend wisely, but Britain has a carbon tax and is doing well with renewable energy, and Australia had a carbon tax at one point, and when it did use of renewable energy increased sharply. So while some people subvert the system many don't.

       We don't want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. And your better idea is what exactly?

       Regarding morality. A few genuinely amoral people (sociopaths) are irelevant to the climate issue unless they get to be President...or leaders of corporations. But the moral majority outweigh the amoral minority.

       I agree climate change has an obvious personal moral dimension. For example one can conclude it's wrong to pollute and cause others harm, however people internalise morals and dont always live up to them, even if they genuinely believe in the morals. Most people probably believe its morally wrong to speed in a car but they still do on ocassion. Moral codes have to be enforced in some way. A carbon tax is a gentle way of enforcing the morality.

       Half the problem is the need for a 21st century energy grid. Only governments and corporations can really provide this, not joe bloggs in the street. But as interested individuals we have to put pressure on government, and this means we have to first accept an individual understanding of the moral dimension of the climate issue.

11644. One Planet Only Forever at 05:35 AM on 16 February 2019
       Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton?
       

       The following is a fundamental observation regarding the economic modelling and evaluations used to determine a 'Carbon Price'. I believe it is aligned with the comments by Nigel and Daniel.

       The economic evaluations are incorrect because they do not accurately incorporate the complex reality of the behaviour of people, particularly the way many people can be tempted to allow Helpfulness to Others to be overpowered by basic drives related to things mistakenly considered to be moral objectives that can be allowed to compromise the Helpfulness (do not harm) Moral driver:

       • Perceptions that Their Tribe is Superior to or Purer than Others
       • Tribal Loyalty
       • Unquestioned Subservience to, or Respect for, Hierarchy in Their Tribe
       • Perceptions that being corrected is Unfair to their Tribe
       • And desires for the Liberty to believe whatever they want as justification for whatever they want to do.

       It appears that economic models are based on the belief that competition in the games will internally promote and reward helpful sustainable developments and naturally effectively identify and correct harmful unsustainable developments.

       The reality is that human behaviour that is not governed by the Universal Principle Objective of "Helping to develop sustainable improvements for humanity - As a minimum, Doing No Harm to Others" has a history of developing very damaging results that also develop powerful resistance to correction.

       That reality is ignored by many economists because requiring external governing of all economic activity for Helpfulness (and preventing harm to Others) is 'contrary to their preferred beliefs'.

       The Religious Adherents of that type of flawed economic thinking and its harmful compromising of Helpful social and political actions are in serious need of correction, and serious limits of their ability to impact what is going on until they are corrected.

11645. nigelj at 05:01 AM on 16 February 2019
       Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton?
       

       OPOF @6, you are right in that a referendum in america would come up against a lot of marketing spin, especially from the side opposed to renewable energy, but I think have a bit more faith in the the public. Polling does show a desire for more action on climate change despite years of denialist spin. Whats the worst the denialists can do? They have already fired all their ammunition. 

       And could it do worse than the current approach?

11646. michael sweet at 23:26 PM on 15 February 2019
       A Green New Deal must not sabotage climate goals
       

       Red Baron,

       ThinkProgress, a progressive news site, disagrees with your claim that the Green New Deal will not reward farmers who sequester carbon on their farms.

       A Green New Deal opportunity for America’s farmers.  Perhaps you should read more carefully before you criticize it.

11647. Daniel Mocsny at 19:43 PM on 15 February 2019
       Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton?
       

       Putting a price on carbon sounds like a good idea, but it suffers from a serious flaw: it works by trying to harness selfishness, which is the root cause of man-made climate change in the first place. The only solution to a problem whose root cause is selfishness is to somehow make people less selfish. Trying to appeal to selfishness to fix a problem caused by selfishness is rife with potential for backfire effects. It's like trying to solve the drug problem by harnessing the urge to take drugs.

       For example, consider a person who only cares about money, which is to say a person who only cares about benefit to self. If you impose a Pigovian tax on that person, s/he can respond in one of two ways:

       1. Behave differently so as to consume less of the taxed commodity (the policymaker's intended outcome), or:
       2. Try to subvert or abolish the tax.

       If the players in the game are purely selfish, then they will consider all the costs to themselves and choose option 2 whenever the cost of subverting or abolishing the tax is less than the cost of complying with it.

       The election of Donald Trump in the USA, and the similar electoral catastrophe unfolding in Brazil, assures us that option 2 is viable.

       Even if we somehow get James Hansen's fully refunded fee-and-dividend scheme, for the carbon tax to be effective at fighting climate change, it has to inconvenience somebody. The inconvenience must be severe enough to re-wire the entire global economy - that is, to redirect all the massive effort we currently direct toward coal mining, oil drilling, airport building, road building, and all the other things we do with fossil fuels. All those inconvenienced will then, if they are selfish (and we know they are because they're raping the planet right now with fossil fuels), look at how much the carbon tax is costing them, and see if they can get more for their money by using it to buy politicians and fund anti-science propaganda.

       It's easy to understand the problem by comparing hardened criminal inmates of a maximum security prison to the general population of law-abiding people. In the maximum security prison, inmates must be powerfully incentivized to behave somewhat like law-abiding people behave mostly without the need for external enforcement. No conceivable structure of external nudges and incentives can get the prison population to behave as civilly as law-abiding people behave. The moral compass is cheaper and more effective than any system of coercion. The moral compass is actually a kind of very powerful distributed computing system, constantly weighing up vast numbers of individual actions and their consequences. Trying to coerce amoral people requires a vast rubric of laws, expanding endlessly to plug loopholes that keep opening up.

       Unfortunately, our moral compass is generally blind to the harm caused by burning fossil fuels. Most people literally care more about the welfare of a single cat than they care about the harm they are doing to the entire biosphere by driving their cat to the veterinarian. Until the vast majority of people come to view contributing to climate change as morally wrong for them, humanity will remain on its path to not become the first intelligent species that doesn't destroy itself.

       Instead, of the tiny minority of people who bother to engage with climate change at all, most try to frame the problem in purely impersonal terms, as if their own contributions to climate change are irrelevant.

11648. MA Rodger at 19:37 PM on 15 February 2019
       It's El Niño
       

       Max or not @202,

       I have to conclude that you have nothing to link the 18.6 year cycle of the lunar orbital plane to ENSO intensity other than the coincidence of 2015 seeing both a major El Niño and the 'minor lunar standstill' in that 18.6 year cycle and this coupled with the one previous major El Niño occurring 18 years earlier.

       Of course, the major cycle regarding tides is the metonic cycle which is 19.0 years in length. Yet if such tidal effects triggered El Niños, they would presumably be premature El Niño and thus minor El Niño.

       As for what drives the intensity of an El Niño, it is the warm pool accumulated in the western Pacific alone that provides the heat. It is a lessening of trade winds (roughly measured by SOI) coupled with the instability of the warm pool that triggers an El Niño and both of those are greatly influenced by the PDO. In a warming climate, it is surely the frequency  of major El Niño that is expected to increase, not the intensity of individual El Niños per se, although there is much still to learn on this mechanism. (See for instance Cai et al (2015) 'ENSO and greenhouse warming'.)

11649. Daniel Mocsny at 19:08 PM on 15 February 2019
       Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton?
       

       His “Dismal Theorem” article argues that the marginal value of reducing emissions – the SCC – is literally infinite, since catastrophes that would cause human extinction remain too plausible to ignore (although they are not the most likely outcomes).

       The word "likely" seems to refer to the prior probability in the Bayesian sense: the likelihood of an extinction outcome based on a purely terrestrial perspective: what we know so far of planet Earth and humanity's interaction with it. However, a cosmological perspective suggests things might be much worse. One plausible resolution of the Fermi paradox raises the extinction probability of nascent technological civilizations to nearly 1.0. Namely, we can account for our failure to observe any extraterrestrial intelligence by hypothesizing that whenever technological intelligence evolves in the universe, it destroys itself before escaping its home planet on a large scale and reaching Kardashev Type II or Type III civilizations that would be visible across interstellar and intergalactic distances, respectively. If true, this would mean the so-called Great Filter lies just ahead of us, rather than behind us.

       A mechanism for intelligent self-destruction seems obvious enough, just from observing our own behavior. Intelligence initially evolves to increase individual reproductive fitness, by enabling the individual (and later groups of individuals) to extract more energy and resources from their environment. This frees the newly intelligent species from the constraints of natural selection which limit all other species from wrecking their home planet. (Before humans, no other species on Earth had by itself caused a mass extinction of other species.) Since no species ever had to worry about over-consuming its entire planet, there was no selective pressure for self-restraint. Thus the newly intelligent species must develop an ethic of self-restraint quickly enough to take up the slack for having thrown off natural selection. But the entire evolutionary history of the newly intelligent species was driven by self-interest, and evolution has no foresight. Evolution cannot foresee that getting smarter and smarter and better and better at consuming more resources will ever cause a problem. Our evolutionary psychology therefore becomes a serious obstacle to our sustainability. We've been selected for our ability to grab as many resources as possible from a world in which resources were essentially infinite, but our ability for obtaining them was scarce.

       Given the rapid compounding effects of exponential growth, the newly intelligent species must evolve a culture of restraint at a pace thousands of times faster than its instincts of greed and selfishness were shaped by natural selection. Humans show virtually no sign of evolving this culture of restraint. Nearly everyone wants more money, and individual wealth is the main predictor of individual carbon footprint. Were humans psychologically equipped to become a spacefaring species (as far as we can tell, we'd be the very first in our light cone), we would see an inverse correlation between individual wealth and environmental destructiveness, instead of the current positive one.

       Even worse, an unfolding climate disaster would only tend to increase selfishness, since having more money enables a person to avoid being the first to die. We've seen this on a small scale with weather disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, in which the wealthy were better able to escape by burning fossil fuels.

11650. nigelj at 16:07 PM on 15 February 2019
       A Duplicitous Minister?
       

       The minister is indeed very duplicitous. I was interested to find out if any coal and gas fired power is planned for australia. The wikipedia article below could be out of date by now, but it suggests almost no coal power is planned and little in the way of gas. I just wonder if the minister knows this full well and has little intention of changing it, but was  playing to the pro coal power lobby and his conservative leaning supporters mainly  to look tough and say things they want to hear. I hope so. But anyway the list of renewable energy projects is impressive.

       en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_power_stations_in_Australia

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