Comments on: Nick Smith asks for a public education on climate change

By: freethinker

freethinker — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:18:52 +0000

And the reason the Greens couldn’t/wouldn’t persuade Helen to hold the debate during their 9 years of cooperation is ? Instead of spending time/effort on arguing the cause of climate change better to work on adapting to it or go the same way as the dinosaurs and their greenhouse gas emmissions. Just wonder if the suns activity could be involved as Astronomers are reporting that all planets in the solar system are experiencing similar temp changes but my Martian friends advise they dispensed with hydrocarbons Eons ago.

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By: Nandor Tanczos

Nandor Tanczos — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:08:46 +0000

Actually my understanding of the research (I’d dig out a ref if I wasn’t supposed to be doing something else urgently) is that GDP IS a reasonable proxy for (human) wellbeing, up to a certain point. After that, the correlation rapidly disappears, if not turns negative. That level was reached by the USA in about the 50’s or 60’s. I’m not sure if the study has been done for NZ, but I imagine we are not much different, perhaps a few years behind. Anyway, the evidence IS very clear now that it no longer is very meaningful in terms of wellbeing for wealthy countries like ours. A Genuine Progress Indicator would be much more useful.

Even for poor countries, measures like GDP that don’t account for the loss of social and natural capital are unhelpful for guiding policy decisions.

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By: bjchip

bjchip — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:01:27 +0000

Saves power and protects data at the same time. SUCH a good idea

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By: Jezza

Jezza — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:29:56 +0000

You can secure a machine with MS loaded on it by cutting off the electricity to it.

Cutting off electricity to a machine..?

Why you climate “believers” are trying to destroy the economy…

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By: bjchip

bjchip — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:04:35 +0000

Jezza

I have patience… I spent time at sea, and the ocean teaches patience like no other teacher.

I type pretty quickly and I keep a library of links to things that have proven useful…

———

…but I never ever EVER would consider buying or using a Microstuffed product if I can find a way to avoid it.

I have a huge amount of disrespect for the way MS has operated in the past (former Wordperfect user back from when it was “Satellite Software”) and I remember “the code’s not done until Lotus won’t run”… and I have absolutely no confidence in their security model. You can secure a machine with MS loaded on it by cutting off the electricity to it.

That’s about the only way.

… and that’s only a heavily edited version of how I REALLY feel.

respectfully
BJ

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By: Jezza

Jezza — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:35:50 +0000

You must have a word document BJ to just cut and paste the facts for these genuises, otherwise I wish I had your typing speed (or patience)…

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By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:28:47 +0000

Nine shades to a Rainbow
The sun’s light reflected back – j edgar loved Gambling they say
what a noodle!

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By: bjchip

bjchip — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:36:41 +0000

Jimrome

PLEASE go ahead and tell us how else to solve the problem?

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This is basic physics.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing faster than it ever has in the known history of the planet and is higher than it has been in 3 million years. There is:
a. No other source of the CO2 but us burning half the dead dinosaurs ever found.
b. The isotope studies tell us that it is us.
c. The last time the CO2 was here, it was 3 degrees warmer.

The temperature is increasing and almost all CLIMATE SCIENTISTS understand that we are at risk and how. Two degrees of warming is the limit. We are exceeding IPCC estimates on sea level, ocean heat content, sea ice.

We know the risk of non-linearity goes up astronomically if we exceed 2 degrees… non-linearities are not included in the IPCC estimates.

The world is warming. It is Us. It is CO2.

HOW DO YOU LIMIT CO2 EMISSIONS WITHOUT GOVERNMENT?

No libertarian has yet answered this with an alternative that can actually be performed by a society composed of human beings. We’d be happy to entertain options.

Since you also seem to wish to challenge the science, please feel free to post your challenges here. We are used to explaining where those challenges fail the tests of ACTUAL science.

respectfully
BJ

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:18:37 +0000

Old Nick, the Red-skinned One?

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By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:50:32 +0000

Nick’s Our man – he suffers permanent sunburn, must be a believer hey?

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By: Valis

Valis — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:09:14 +0000

92% say yes!

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:51:24 +0000

Shunda

http://www.should-a.com/pmv7r3

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:38:22 +0000

(correction) Shhhhhhhhhhhh*t!

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:35:37 +0000

We are plagued by Librarians!
Sssssssssssssssssssssssssh*t!

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By: Roy

Roy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:23:32 +0000

wat dabney Says: “GDP is a very good proxy for general wellbeing.”

Wat, you need to get out your “How to Lie with Statistics” book you referred to the other day – a major theme of it is “Correlation does not imply causation”. If we work towards identifying and improving the causes of wellbeing that do fit within our resource budget, rather than chasing some correlation, surely we will be better of?

Interesting in the second link how Cuba has a low GDP/capita and very high life expectancy.

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By: Valis

Valis — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:49:33 +0000

Speaking of loopy Libs

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By: wat dabney

wat dabney — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:39:47 +0000

- “GDP is a *crap* measure of general well being. There is a lot of work being done developing better measures and many are available.”

Do you think someone living in poverty in India would agree with your “sophisticated” view?

The fact is that GDP and child mortality rates, for example, are highly correlated:

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-11-reducing-child-mor tality/
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-3-human-development-t rends/

Or what about the rate of women dying in childbirth?

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-7-maternal-mortality/

GDP is a very good proxy for general wellbeing.

Poverty is the number one issue in the world today; and not the “relative poverty” that the Greens campaign on – where they seek political power by railing against the injustice of one rich westerner having slightly less wealth than another.

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By: Drakula

Drakula — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:37:37 +0000

Sleepy has just about covered most of the anomalies regarding the GDP except for one;

Suppose your house burns down there are the expences of (1) putting out the fire (2) cleaning up the property (3) materials and labour costs of rebuilding the house.

Regardless of the capital coming from insurence or charities etc. all the above expences are added (positively) on to the GDP.

Does this mean thet we should go around burning down our houses?

Marilyn Waring is on to it there needs to be amore accurate measurement.

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By: Valis

Valis — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:06:46 +0000

Great, another loopy Lib. Just what we need.

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By: jimrome

jimrome — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:53:52 +0000

Because governments throughout the world love convincing people that they are in danger and that they can only be saved by letting them take control. Globalists imagine and invent problems and then they offer us the solution, but the solution is always more government, more corporate monopoly, less sovereignty and less free market economy.

The global warming tax scam has kicked in. There’s no time left for a debate they tell us – we don’t want to hear about the medieval warm period, we don’t want to hear about how temperatures dropped as carbon emissions increased for four decades from the 40’s to the 80’s, we don’t want to hear about how the troposphere shows no build up of greenhouse gases, we don’t want to hear about sun activity and its direct correlation with climate change, we don’t want to hear about arctic ice samples showing how CO2 lags behind temperature increase. There’s money to be made and there’s peasants to flog.

Eco-fanatics and power-hungry elitists have taken total control of the global warming bandwagon. Before they choke the life out of modern industrialized civilization by eliminating the source of 80% of the planet’s energy, and in the face of fierce silencing techniques, it is vital to further understand why scientific evidence is not on the side of the theory of human-caused warming.

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