FTC Investigates Carbon Offsets

I am still on the road, but wanted to quickly stick something fresh up for discussion.

I have long been suspicious of the whole carbon offsets business (and frankly, it reminds me of buying indulgences). The FTC apparently shares similar concerns:

F.T.C. Asks if Carbon-Offset Money Is Well Spent

Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet.

But where exactly is that money going?

The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising claims, raised the question Tuesday in its first hearing in a series on green marketing, this one focusing on carbon offsets.

As more companies use offset programs to create an environmental halo over their products, the commission said it was growing increasingly concerned that some green marketing assertions were not substantiated. Environmentalists have a word for such misleading advertising: “greenwashing.”

The FTC also raised questions about how carbon offsets are being calculated:

Most suppliers of carbon offsets say that the cost of planting a tree is roughly $5, and the tree must live for at least 100 years to fully compensate for the emissions in question. By comparison, an offset sold by Dell for three years’ use of a notebook computer costs $2.

To supply and manage the carbon offsets, big consumer brands are turning to a growing number of little-known companies, like TerraPass, and nonprofits, like Carbonfund.org. These intermediaries also cater to corporations that want to become “carbon-neutral” by purchasing offsets for the carbon dioxide they release.

Ms. Majoras of the F.T.C. pointed out that spokesmen for events like the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards have recently started saying that their events are carbon-neutral (though the Academy Awards drew criticism for the way its offsets were handled).

The F.T.C. has not accused anyone of wrongdoing — neither the providers of carbon offsets nor the consumer brands that sell them. But environmentalists say — and the F.T.C.’s hearings suggest — that it is only a matter of time until the market faces greater scrutiny from the government or environmental organizations.

I suppose I will be carbon-neutral for the rest of my life, as I planted a couple hundred trees two years ago (for a United Way function). I can now get that Hummer without feeling guilty about it. Oh, and if you want to be carbon-neutral, just send me a check and I will plant a tree for you. 🙂

87 thoughts on “FTC Investigates Carbon Offsets”

  1. I notice that your post does not use the word “additionality.” Without this concept sure, it might be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff

    without it, one might even slide into irrational “indulgence” argument.

    (There is also the “length of cord” argument: why are solar panels on your own roof not offsets, but why are solar panels 100 miles away indulgences? IMO it is because solar on your roof is more arguable additionality in renewable energy, but in reality solar anywhere lowers the price of fossil fuel energy by reducing demand. If you really go back to the free market in fossil fuel energy you can make any renewable project look bad.)

  2. I notice that your post does not use the word “additionality.” Without this concept sure, it might be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff

    The article discussed the concept (but I don’t recall the word being mentioned). It pondered how many of the offsets might be double-dipping, and how many would have happened regardless of the purchase of the offsets.

    So, how far can I drive my Hummer for having planted 200 trees? How many trans-Atlantic flights can I take?

  3. To flesh out the anti-solar argument: You might feel good if you put solar up on your roof, or if through offsets you cause it to be built elsewhere.

    Then an economist comes along and says “yes, you have reduced your fossil fuel consumption, but we all know where that leads. Your reduced consumption will (at the margin) cause prices to fall, and therefore other users will increase their demand.”

    Maybe you haven’t thought about it, but that is the logic beneath the indulgence attack on offsets.

    And of course it could be made on those of us who choose voluntary efficiency. Has my little Eee PC here done any good? Or has it merely lowered costs for some other high-consumer?

  4. “So, how far can I drive my Hummer for having planted 200 trees? How many trans-Atlantic flights can I take?”

    That’s just chemistry, on the surface.

    We could determine the carbon in a tree and calculate it.

    They turn it into an additionality argument when they ask if the trees would have been planted anyway, and what will happen to them when they are grown, etc.

  5. Maybe you haven’t thought about it, but that is the logic beneath the indulgence attack on offsets.

    Maybe “indulgences” isn’t the right word then. The way I am using it is when someone uses money to pay someone else to sacrifice so they can indulge. That is different from me conserving, and then someone else increasing their consumption and voiding my conservation efforts. One has elitist overtones, and one is just due to wasteful energy usage.

  6. He is, but is taking care of his own indulgences, not paying someone else to do it. It’s like me planting my own trees versus using my money to pay someone else to do it (which they may not do anyway).

  7. I think you can see that is just a “length of cord” argument. By that logic a short cord (from the roof) is better, morally, than a long cord (out to the desert).

    As an aside this would ding me on practical grounds. Given our coastal gloom solar panels on my own roof would be significantly less productive than solar panels I paid for, but put 100 miles inland.

    Anyway to pick it up again, maybe the key is that I do share with you an idea of living simply, without excess consumption. At the same time I’m always aware that the fair measure of that is myself relative to earth’s billions. I do what I can ($11.98 electric bill this month) but I’m always aware that I live in hopeless luxury and indulgence relative to the rest of the world.

    I do actually grumble when I see 5000 sq. ft. homes on the cover of Solar Today, with the note that their $50K solar installation covers 70% of their air conditioning bill.

    It would be nice if they dropped $50K on solar for some hospital in africa, wouldn’t it?

    … it is actually STRANGE to me that the political momentum has been to glorify that kind of consumption (and local offset) while vilifying another!

  8. Robert, you’re not the only one to make the analogy with indulgences
    The ability of wealthy individuals like Al Gore to purchase what amounts to rights to pollute by buying carbon credits is a repulsive moral dodge, demanding us to consider useful analogies. One comparison that has occurred to many is the sale of Papal Indulgences that so infuriated Martin Luther. … But I think there is another good analogy, much closer to hand, both geographically and temporally.

    During the Civil War, it was possible for well-to-do men who were drafted to pay a $300 “commutation fee” and escape the draft. The move sparked much public outrage, creating the impression that the war was a “rich man’s war” and probably contributing to the disgraceful draft riots in New York City, which led to the lynching of African Americans.

    It seems to me that the purchase of carbon credits is a direct imitation of commutation fee.

    Hat Tip to M.Simon for all these:

    Enron invented Carbon Trading
    Amidst the talk about the benefits that Kyoto Protocol is supposed to promote, it is perhaps forgotten especially amongst the greenies how Kyoto was born in the corridors of very big business. The name Enron has all but faded from our news pages since the company went down in flames in 2001 amidst charges of fraud, bribery, price fixing and graft. But without Enron there would have been no Kyoto Protocol.

    Congress’s concerns about Kyoto were well founded
    Carbon trading is the EU’s principal strategy for meeting its Kyoto target of reducing CO2 emissions by 8% by 2012. The scheme was launched two years ago in the hope that it would achieve what more than 10 years of political commandeering had failed: significant reductions in CO2 emissions. Instead, year after year, most EU countries continue to increase their greenhouse-gas emissions. Rather than proving its effectiveness, the trading system has pushed electricity prices even higher while energy-intensive companies are forced to close down, cut jobs, or pass on the costs to consumers.

    … The ETS’s malfunctioning is partly due to an inherent flaw that allowed member states to allocate more emission permits than European industrial plants actually needed. Although Europe’s energy utilities receive carbon permits free of charge, they have passed on the market price to industry and private consumers. In consequence, Germany’s energy costs rose by almost ?6-billion ($9.2-billion) in 2005, a price tag that is expected to double in the next couple of years. The cunning strategy ensured that power companies reaped billions in windfall profits. And yet without the massive sweetener, Brussels could not have gained the support of industry for this risky scheme.

  9. BTW, I think California’s solar program, to fund solar for everyone’s roofs, is idiotic, for that reason of efficiency.

    We know placement will be sub-par on homes, and that maintenance will be lax.

    And we’ve got all that great desert out there. Why don’t we use it?

    Moral confusion.

  10. Why not just say that solar on every roof is a step in the right direction and that anyone who questions that is simply making the best the enemy of the good? –JMG

  11. Robert, List,

    I have also used the indulgences analogy when discussing this with friends.

    European power generating companies want to continue to add 1 tonne of CO2 into the European atmosphere, but claim that they will invest in technology in India and China which will remove that tonne of CO2 from their power plant emissions.

    The only reason is that the cost of clean up in developing countries is considerably cheaper and less regulated than in Europe. And they will probably get away with not actually carrying out the task at all.

    It reminds me of the earlier business scam slightly of paying a company to cyrogenically freeze you upon your death and then revive you when technology allows it…

    Yeah Right.

    If you want to save carbon dioxide emissions you need to do it at home and in your own back yard.

  12. “If you want to save carbon dioxide emissions you need to do it at home and in your own back yard.”

    In a nutshell, that’s what flies in the face of my chem degree.

    I don’t remember in the valence charts an orbital for a moralitron attached to each carbon atom.

  13. RR, I’m also uneasy about buying offsets, but I did so last year. I would welcome anything you’d suggest as an alternative. Let me give you the perspective of at least two offset buyers (me, and a friend who’s thinking about it for this year). First, we have already done everything we think reasonable to reduce our energy consumption. We both live close to work and drive very few miles per year. I use an electric scooter whenever possible. I replaced an energy-guzzling fridge with a more efficient one, and the few lights I use regularly are all CFLs. My friend likewise uses CFLs (as a renter she can’t do anything about her fridge). After all that, we still have non-zero emissions.

    I will pick one example, electricity use. To get these emissions down to zero we’d both have to generate our own power with solar panels, or get our utility to do so. My friend rents, and I live in a small house. Ideally, we could pay our utility to generate our power renewably, and this is effectively the same as if we spent extra money to produce our own power. Only there would be economies of scale. PG&E doesn’t offer us this option, though. Still, there might be a utility somewhere that does offer such a program, and if I pay the premium for someone else’s power to be generated from renewables, it will have the same net effect (assuming that other person wasn’t able to pay him/herself). This is the concept behind offsets.

    All that said, I’ve grown leery of the offset companies and this year I’m looking to have my offset money better targetted. In my case, my emissions (including air travel) were offset by an amazingly low $70. I bet the offset company got a big share of that money. I’ve been thinking that I could just donate $100 to some worthy carbon-reducing cause and both skip the middleman and get Uncle Sam to kick in $30 as a tax deduction. I’m open to (serious, please) suggestions.

  14. I think there is a very good alternative to carbon offsets, and that is direct investment in renewable energy companies.

    You can give as a gift a share of a company developing solar, batteries, wind, etc. The bonus is the gift pays dividends and could appreciate nicely rather than just being a “feel good” gesture that may or may not reduce the risk of global warming.

    If everyone invested 1% of their income in new renewable energy technology firms, which is theoretically doable but not likely to happen, the risks of global warming would be substantially reduced.

  15. Robert – you need to clean the solar panels occasionally. Don’t forget to use your 100% organic, non-CFCs or GHG propellent, biodegradable, never tested on animals, made by union labor, recycled plastic container (or better yet comes out of a reusable glass mason jar), politically correct glass cleaner on that 😉

    David – how does investing in renewable companies make a difference? It seems to me that the VCs and companies wishing to green up their image are throwing plenty of money at renewables.

    The problem is no demand for renewable energy. A better way is to open up retail electric competition to get people to volutnarily sign up for green power as we do here in Texas. (Well I don’t because it is more expensive.)

  16. I was thinking about solar output on the cumulative set of subsidized homes, after 10 years.

    I guess I’d feel better if there was a study that showed follow-on electricity production was “high.”

    (Note to King, that was one of the things that convinced me that the California bill had become pork-barrel politics. As I understand it, offsets are only available for Union-built systems. If you or Robert (fine engineers that you are) were to climb up there and build one … no credit.)

  17. If you or Robert (fine engineers that you are) were to climb up there and build one … no credit.)

    The “credit” is like the reward I get for writing: Internal. 🙂

  18. Odograph said “.. it is actually STRANGE to me that the political momentum has been to glorify that kind of consumption (and local offset) while vilifying another!”

    I agree. The “tree planting” offset cannot be taken to a larger scale without an increasing diminishing effect. On a hot summer day, I have heard, a mature weeping willow puts out more CHx compounds than a dirty little gasoline-powered mower doing a lawn.

    I know some work with “algae farms” is underway, and probably could have a more widespread and larger effect than “tree planting”. Plus, with algae, you feed some of it to snails, and the snails become the protein source for chickenfeed (chickens love snails!), cutting back the grain consumption for livestock.

    As much as people mock and criticize the “top down” approach to solving the problem, disdaining “Big Brother” I think the scale and power of the world economy is beyond the mental grasp of the originators of “pundit-speak” on talk radio that basically slaps a “liberal” label on any attempt to go at the problems of energy and AGW, and “BOO!”s from the grandstands.

  19. I spend a couple cents extra for wind power. I don’t care about carbon, I just think renewable/sustainable energy should be encouraged. I pay 0.22/kwh so it is only about 10% extra.

  20. Actually, based on past trends and cycles, we may be near an Ice Age soon. My conservative friends love this idea, which happens to be true. Moreover, it was hotter when Lief Ericson established colonies in Greenland and North America about 700 years ago…advancing cold wiped out those establishments.
    I think problem No. 1 is energy independence for the U.S., and clean energy. Clean energy generally reduces carbon output anyway.
    There are plenty of reasons to not like pollution, w/o worrying about global warming….pollution decreaes the quality of life, and lowers property values…it is a killer too…so, let’s reduce pollution.
    But buy some property a little south of the equator…in your children’s lifetimes, we may start to see temperatures start dropping, and as much as nine degrees c. in 5 years….

  21. MTBF – for the solar panels, maybe decades, less for the inverter and other electrical components. But seriously, you do need to clean them and if they don’t have a tracking device you need to change the angle 3 or 4 times a year to keep them running at peak efficiency.

    Union built? Maybe you are coming around to the realization that the environmental movement is a political one first and foremost. And as SteveD pointed out in the other thread, a movement based on very bad science (anti-nuke, anti-DDT, anti-GM food, anti-BGH). Oh but you SHOULD believe them about global warming. Because THIS time the environmental scientists are really right.

  22. Maybe less coming around that you are getting a better mental model of odo?

    And I thought I’d told you the story of the guy on a Sierra Club hike who said he was pro-nuke, and how we had a fairly pro-nuke conversation without any of the greenies raising an eyebrow, let alone casting us out.

    (I described myself then as nuke neutral, I might be leaning a little pro as time goes on.)

  23. As I understand it, the best net win for co2-by-trees is to halt rainforest destruction.

    The thing is, that has “additionality” written all over it.

    Would those particular hectares really have been cut down without your funding? Will your funding really protect them?

    I was chuckling this last Christmas when I remembered that my sister had given me 2.5 hectares “protected” in Belize ten years ago.

    Do you think they are still protected? Or is there an American retirement home built atop them?

  24. I get my panels cleaned every winter. Until there’s a drought and it doesn’t rain.

    Say your panels are tilted at your latitude. So at the winter or summer solistice, they are producing cos(22*) or 92% of the optimum power. Just don’t sweat it. Unless you like climbing on the roof.

    California changed the rules 1/1/2008 to give rebates to self installed solar installations. They are going to “performance based incentives” where your rebate check depends on how much power you generate.

  25. I’ve got solar panels on my roof and I’m lax about maintenance. (I don’t like climbing the roof.) We’ve only washed the panels every other year. We use plain tap water, mop and squeegee, not glass cleaners. The annual rain does not do a very good job of cleaning the panels. The last time we washed our panels, our output increased by about 20%.

    We are not allowed to change the tilt of our panels. The city said our panels must conform to the roof.

  26. Odo, thanks for the pointer to CarbonFund.org, they look like the kind of outfite I was looking for.

  27. My homeowners association won’t let us have solar panels – at any angle. But I did design a solar array for my house just to see what it would look like.

    I’m glad CA has changed the rules to allow DIY. IF states are going to subsidize things there shouldn’t be strings attached.

    Cheatneutral is pretty funny. I can be the offset for a bunch of people.

  28. Carbon Offsets remind me of AIDS.

    Remember when Clinton-era Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was saying that the US was going to lose an entire generation to AIDS? That generation is still around, and now AIDS is growing mainly in Africa, where the diagnosis is lax but profitable (because of UN funding for AIDS). Auto accident victims in Africa have been reported as AIDS-related.

    So Carbon Offsets will become (have laready become?) a vehicle for transfering money from guilty western liberals to Third World elites. Wasn’t that wealth transfer the whole point of making a fuss about the scientific nonsense of alleged anthropogenic global warming in the first place?

  29. One reason the term indulgence is used so frequently, is that if fits so well with the opinion that many people follow the religion of environmentalism and have absolutely no scientific understanding. They believe that humans and/or technology are inherently evil.

    They fear “chemicals”, not understanding that everything is chemicals. They want food with with no chemicals. They freak out about trace levels of compounds with well established toxicology profiles, but they simply don’t know that their charbroiled hamburger or veggie burger contains known toxic compounds (at safe levels)

    They hyperventalate about 5 or 10 ppb arsnic in water when there are studies showing 50 ppb to have a positive effect.

    I had a Sierra Club kid stop at my door, (young Mormans do mission work, so do young environmentalists) he told me that 40% of the planet was paved. I pushed him on this and he was simply incapable of understanding that his statement made no sense, he had faith that he was right.

    Now we are told that doom is imminent, Gaia is sick and human parasites are to blame. But wait you can ease you burden brothers and sisters, just make a $1000 vow of faith and all you sins will be forgiven.

    For those of you who want to do something to ease your carbon footprint, here is an idea, bag your grass clippings and throw them in the regular trash. You have just sequestered some carbon in a landfill. Don’t recycle that newspaper, throw it in the trash, another succesful carbon sequestration project.

    Or you could do what I do, live close to work, live a modest lifestyle, get energy efficient appliances when you need them and continue to yell at your kids about turning off the lights and keeping the door closed, because I’m not paying to heat the whole neighborhood you know. I do all of these things because I am cheap, the earths climate will work itself out on it’s own.

  30. At this point, doubters, Occam’s razor is not on your side. Too much evidence has built on the action of CO2, on the resulting warming, and even on impacts to biodiversity.

    All you can do is make an illiterate argument that some science, somewhere, might prove your case for inaction.

    It’s preposterous really, you pretend you have the science, but you don’t.

  31. Robert, have you checked those 200 trees recently? How many are still alive?

    IMHO the only way tree planting can be considered a genuine carbon offset is if you commit to nurturing the trees to maturity and ensure they live for their normal lifespan, which is basically impossible unless you plant the trees on your own property and live until you’re 140. Even then the absorbtion of carbon is very slow and it would have been much better to have not emitted the carbon in the first place.

    A carbon offset program that invests in renewable energy sources almost certainly does more good, but it will never be as good as plain old conservation.

  32. The reason indulgences were bad is because sin is a moral issue. Paying someone does not take away the immorality of your own sins. Global warming however is not a moral issue, it is a practical one. It is a problem in this world which we will all continue to face.

    It is wrong to criticize a person for paying someone else to reduce or offset carbon emissions. One of the most fundamental principles of economic development is the division of labor. Everyone benefits by a social system in which each person concentrates on and develops expertise in a particular area. Such a system greatly increases social efficiency and social welfare. Paying someone to reduce carbon falls under the same principle as paying for goods rather than building them yourself.

    The ideal way to deal with global warming is to treat it as an economic rather than a moral issue. Everyone who puts out carbon would have to pay a tax, and everyone who takes in carbon would get a credit. The dollar amount per pound of carbon would be based on estimates of the harm due to carbon emissions. There would be no need to worry about “additionality”. Rather, every economic activity which affected carbon levels would automatically get its cost adjusted to take into consideration the costs or benefits from that activity. Economists have shown that such a system produces an optimum balance between reducing pollution and other social goals.

  33. Then an economist comes along and says “yes, you have reduced your fossil fuel consumption, but we all know where that leads. Your reduced consumption will (at the margin) cause prices to fall, and therefore other users will increase their demand.”

    A real economist would note that the lower price discourages production. The system reaches a new equilibrium point after your conservation action, at lower aggregate consumption. How much lower? I leave that as an exercise for the student.

  34. Odo – You said you were a chemist. Did you miss those days in class when they discussed significant figures, measuring errors and uncertainty?

    Suppose I came to you as a chemist and told you that I had some physical process that had been repeated 5 billion times. Then I told you I had directly measured much less than 1/3 of the system for 400 of the 5 billion trials. But not to worry, I have an indirect proxy measurement for a few locations over a few hundred million locations. Oh and by the way, for the last 50 trials or so some of my direct measurements may have been contaminated by external forces.

    So I take this small set of data that I have, and I write a computer model using the data. I can’t model the whole system, so I break the model into large grids and time series. Some of the recent data I collected doesn’t fit. So I parameterize (put in fudge factors) to force the model to validate some of my data. There are some process in the model I understand really well. Others I don’t. I’ll ignore the ones I don’t really understand and just assume they don’t make any difference.

    Then I run my computer program. It seems to fit the recent data. (It should since I substituted recent observed data for independent variables in the model). So I run my computer model for the next 200 processes or so.

    I know my data isn’t that great but I don’t have time to run lots of iterations on my model to try to get a handle on how much the data errors contribute to uncertainty out several hundred data points. In fact I run my model and my colleagues run their’s and we get a range of outcomes. We ignore the model results where nothing much happens or something maybe positive even happens. We concentrate on the worst outcomes of our model where everything seems to go wrong. Like chicken little we run around and tell everyone that the sky is falling with absolute certainty.

    Now when someone questions our work, and points out that we have crappy data and a crappy model that may be leading to bad results because maybe we weren’t paying attention in our Freshman chemistry class on the day they were talking about data errors and compounding of data errors and modeling errors (or in english when they talked about run-on sentences). Instead we call these people stupid, unscientific, and model deniers.

  35. I was there long enough to know “handwaving” when I see it.

    Five paragraphs of smack to not beat a preponderance of peer reviewed studies.

    I know the “talking point” answer to those studies is conspiracy theory. That itself should be enough to warn away the rational.

  36. My homeowners association won’t let us have solar panels – at any angle.

    I’ve been wondering about my HOA. But here in California I think it’s illegal for an HOA to prohibit solar panels.

    I was considering the SunPower all-black panels, I would have them follow the roof line and not worry so much about the efficiency losses at different times of year. K.I.S.S., and they would be attractive.

    Two things stopped me: first, the cost was very high, I was quoted $9/watt net of subsidies, and the subsidies are capped at stupidly low levels. The cost simply can’t be justified because thanks to my conservation efforts my bill is about $20/month. Even then I still considered it – I believe I could generate all my power needs (with grid banking) from my south-facing roof. My bigger concern is the effect installation would have on the integrity of my roof. All things considered I’d rather pay someone else to build a large-scale solar facility somewhere else and sell me power at a higher rate. The sun ain’t going anywhere – I can always revisit this in a few years if panel costs drop and installation becomes simpler.

  37. Odo – post 2

    The world is roughly 5 billion years old. Man has been around a few hundred thousand years, and we have 10,000 years of recorded history. Our ancestors lived through ice ages and warming period before climate scientists told them to worry about things. Instead they walked across the land bridge from asia to north america.

    The thermometer was invented around 1600, about the same time as the barometer. Humans began directly measuring weather and climate only 400 years ago. We did lots of weather measuring in the developed world, some measuring at sea, and not so much in the remote part of the world. NOAA was formed about 100 years ago and started collecting data in North America. Until the 1800s we only measured temperature at the surface. Balloons measured some data at altitude. About 40 years ago satellites started measuring weather globally. NOAA established surface station monitoring about 100 years ago. Over the last 50 years or so, cities have crept out towards the monitoring station, and the data collectors have built parking lots, placed air conditioners and done other things that may be biasing the data towards higher temperatures (see Surface Stations for examples.

    Climate modelers use general circulation models of the atmosphere and ocean. They can’t model the whole atmosphere so they break it into large grids and time series. The models have some positive and some negative feedbacks. They don’t take into account biological processes.

    One doesn’t need to be a climate modeler to see the problems with modeling a very complex system, like the climate.

    You also don’t need to be one to point out that the data, models, and the modelers might be biased. I don’t mean that in the perjorative. Climate modelers are probably good people. But they are locked into a theory and world view that may be clouding their judgement. It happens all the time. I’m probably biased too. I admit it.

    Think about the scientists developing Vioxx. They were honestly trying to help their patients. I don’t believe any of the scientists knowingly wanted to harm patients. Clinical drug trial data is a whole lot simpler than weather and climate data, yet the Vioxx scientists missed something. The real world didn’t behave like their clinical trial world, or they misinterpreted the results of their models.

    Back in the early days of the environmental movement those who questioned the conventional wisdom and the status quo were celebrated and admired.

    Now the environmental movement is the conventional wisdom and status quo it has no room for dissent.

    I remain a skeptic and agnostic on the whole AGW issue. If you want to call me a denier, then I’ll wear that label proudly too.

  38. You can cut it short. Your argument is that your notes, cribbed from other deniers, trumps actual PHDs in the field, right?

    This fundamentally an anti-intellectual argument.

    You presume that those atmospheric scientists have not crossed their i’s and dotted their t’s.

    Why? Because other anti-intellectual trolls told you so.

    This would be different and you had a good set of atmospheric scientists on your side, but you don’t.

    All you have is a huddle of savages talking smack about the educated folk.

  39. Odo – so scientists and peer reviewed journals are never wrong?

    Were you also asleep in physics class when they discussed “Luminiferous aether”. Could I not find lots of peer reviewed journals discussing and validating this theory? Was Tesla not one of the most brilliant minds on the planet? More brilliant than James Hansen, yet Tesla was wrong.

    Were all the physcists locked into a theory that seemed to explain the data, and BIASED toward that theory, even though it is wrong.

    My guess is that AGW will never be proved right or wrong. Either we will run out of fossil fuels before we know for sure or we will have abandoned their use and not have collected enough data.

  40. I don’t think there is a conspiracy. AGW theory is one possible explanation for the data. Nobody has told me what to think. I’m the only one that I know who has pointed out the ether argument. (Michael Crichton uses Eugenics, another popular scientific theory.) These are my own ideas. My background is in Chemical Engineering. At one time in my life I was a real scientist getting paid to do real research and published my results (for internal peer review – my work was proprietary).

    I was also one time the keeper of a proprietary heat and material balance simulation program used to model systems. So I know something about both computer programs and the underlying equations of state and physical properties.

    Unlike the environmentalists, I will state for the record that there are good people on both sides of this debate who are motivated by doing what they think is best. People can be misguided without being either stupid or evil. I happily admit to the idea that I might be wrong on AGW.

    But I also think that there are a lot of people who have latched on global warming as a political movement as a way to increase the power of government.

    Now to bring us back to the topic, the big difference between you Odo and me is that I have my doubts about AGW.

    However, instead of only writing about it. I am actually doing something about it. I am working on a carbon capture and sequestration project. SURPRISE!

  41. I think the denailist position is absolutely worthy of scorn at this point. And it was fun to go off a bit.

    I don’t think you are really a “savage” though. You said the earth was 5 billion years old.

    That’s better than this crop of Republican Presidential candidates can do.

  42. BTW, this is false:

    “Now to bring us back to the topic, the big difference between you Odo and me is that I have my doubts about AGW.”

    I can doubt, but still (a) recognize the preponderance of scientific opinion, and (b) support moderate and appropriate actions.

    A carbon tax to halt expansion of CO2 emissions is, at this point, moderate and appropriate.

    And certainly we can live happy lives with that. Many of us here are already heading down that road.

  43. I think there are a lot of things we can do to decrease CO2 emissions without destroying our economy. Would be all for that. Thus my weekend project to install the $500 worth of insulation I purchased on 12/31 to qualify for the EPACT 2005 tax credit. I’ve been shopping for my new wheels – boosting mileage from 18 mpg to 25 mpg.

    A carbon tax to halt expansion of CO2 emissions is, at this point, moderate and appropriate.

    It depends what you do with the tax money. If you turn around and give it to alternative energy producers or put it back in the general fund it looks like the same old income redistribution popular with liberals and socialists.

    If you divide the carbon tax revenue by 300 million and give it back to every legal resident that would be better plan. That is a kind of income redistribution but at least it takes the politics out of dividing up the money. If the politicians don’t get their hands on carbon taxes they won’t be tempted to buy votes with it.

  44. For those of you who want to do something to ease your carbon footprint, here is an idea, bag your grass clippings and throw them in the regular trash. You have just sequestered some carbon in a landfill. Don’t recycle that newspaper, throw it in the trash, another succesful carbon sequestration project.
    Not quite!

    In a landfill grass clippings (and other biodegradable substances, including cellulose aka newspaper) gets degraded. Due to lack of oxygen some of it will get converted to methane. While some landfills collect the methane and use it to generate “clean” electricity, many don’t. Pound for pound methane is 20x worse GHG than carbon dioxide.

    But yeah, it’s pretty funny how the religion of natural products is spreading. Some people seem to prefer completely baseless claims from natural products over scientifically proven medicines. These people do not seem to understand that nicotine is a natural product, as are the active ingredients in pot, herione, etc.

    I do all of these things because I am cheap, the earths climate will work itself out on it’s own.
    Now there’s the beauty of capitalism: saving the planet because it PAYS!

  45. I’d be for something revenue neutral if we weren’t already up debt creek without a paddle.

    I guess the way economists put it is that the government cut taxes and increased spending at the TOP of a business cycle. That makes it kind of hard to either stimulate growth or reduce debt.

    (I’m so tired of 5 sec TV pundits who ask for another tax cut without addressing the debt issue.)

  46. The funny thing is that people still reflexively refer to the Republicans as the party that cuts spending!

    The sad thing is that no new taxes has become an article of faith among Republicans.

    And then you look across the isle at those spineless jellyfish and you think: “Hey, these guys aren’t so bad…”

  47. (I’m so tired of 5 sec TV pundits who ask for another tax cut without addressing the debt issue.)

    I’m tired of politicians (Republicans got the boot for this in 2006)that earmark and increase spending as revenues climb. If we just held all spending at the rate of inflation and population growth, the expanding economy would wipe out the debt.

    If you pass a carbon tax or cap and trade, then use the auction money to reduce debt the politicans will just use it as an excuse to increase spending. Nope better to just send everyone a rebate with their federal taxes for every legal resident with a legal SSN.

  48. I’m a lapsed Republican, not only for the fiscal responsibility thing, but significantly for it.

    Sorry King, the idea that “we can’t pay our debt because that will mean more debt” is cruel preemptive catch-22.

    As demonstrated in the last few years.

  49. BTW, surfing today’s financial news, it looks like we might all be getting checks to “stimulate the flagging economy.”

    That will put us at WWII debt levels, way beyond Vietnam era.

    (And of course all the candidates agree that we should be paid.)

  50. Optimist said:
    Not quite!

    In a landfill grass clippings (and other biodegradable substances, including cellulose aka newspaper) gets degraded. Due to lack of oxygen some of it will get converted to methane.

    This is conventional wisdon, and I believed it until I saw a talk by a garbologist. It was a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure it was Dr. William Rathje, the guy who wrote this book

    He is an archeologist, but instead of digging up trash from ancient civilizations, he digs up our trash. He points out a number of myths about landfills, like the percentage of stuff (like diapers and fastfood wrapper, less than often claimed). He also said that the big myth is that the trash is degrading. To the contrary he finds that the trash is barely degrading at all. He talked about finding food, gross but intact and identifiable from the 50s, how did they know it was from the 50s? because of all the newspapers and dated mail that were buried with it, intact and readable.

    The amount of methane that comes out of the landfille is from just a tiny fraction of the organic material buried there.

    I was ranting a bit and I don’t really advocate throwing yard-waste and paper in the trash, and neither would Dr. Rathje, but it makes about as much sense as calling AWG a moral issue and then selling carbon credits.

    So as a feedstock for gasification, why not the trash, we have the infrastructure to pick it up and transport it, it is mostly organic.

  51. I was ranting a bit and I don’t really advocate throwing yard-waste and paper in the trash

    We could extend the idea and replace the mountaintops that have been removed by coal mountain top removal mining by replacing them with man-made mountains of landfill! Sculpt it to the former shape. 😉

  52. So as a feedstock for gasification, why not the trash, we have the infrastructure to pick it up and transport it, it is mostly organic.
    All I can say to that is: Amen!

    Unfortunately, nobody gets elected promoting a sensible policy, because there’s no pork in it. Much better to promote E85, or some other dimwit idea…

  53. The ideal way to deal with [asserted anthropogenic] global warming is to treat it as an economic rather than a moral issue.

    That was what Bjorn Lomborg did, and did he get any respect from the usual suspects? No, instead he got a bunch of irrelevant nonsense tossed at him by Scientific American, among others!

    Remember, Lomborg started off by accepting that recent global warming is happening — even though the data is excruciatingly sparse, as KofK points out so eloquently.

    Then Lomborg accepted that the asserted global warming was anthropogenic — something which is a statement of belief rather than an objective observation.

    So far, you would think that Lomborg would be OK. He was drinking the Kool-Aid along with the rest of them.

    But Lomborg was not OK. He had sinned. He was treated as lower than dirt — because he treated the issue as one of economics. He demonstrated quite convincingly that it would be a foolish misuse of the planet’s limited resources to try to stop anthropogenic global warming. We could do much more good by investing those resources elsewhere — such as clean water & sanitation.

    For that dreadful departure from the Only True Doctrine, he was cast into the lowest circle of the hell created by the true believers in anthropogenic global warming!

    To add injury to insult, no-one from the True Believers Club has ever refuted Lomborg’s assessment. Never! They have criticized, they have carped, but they have never refuted it.

    Guess they can’t. And that tells us all something very important.

  54. odograph said:
    I think the denailist position is absolutely worthy of scorn at this point

    What exactly is the denialist position? I have a pretty good idea of what the consensus veiw is, but I find that many global warming proponents claim to have the consensus and then immediately step out beyond the consensus into alarmism. Such as 20 ft. of sea level rise or GW caused Katrina or runaway greenhouse (venus-style) or thermohaline stopping causing European ice-age.

    Here are two related pieces by
    Mike Hulme and Andy Revkin They are both talking about the same thing and one references the other. These guys are not denialists or even skeptics, and I think they made a very good point.

    I don’t know if there are more denialists or alarmists out there, but for most of them it is a matter of faith.

  55. I actually like landfills for long term carbon storage, especially if we make use of the long term methane bleed. They are doing that here locally (Puente Hills).

    Dennis asks:

    “What exactly is the denialist position?”

    There isn’t one. Instead there are a thousand little ankle-biters of “positions.” Denialists flit from one to the other like moths, with the goal of avoiding any action.

    The really interesting thing is that they don’t, in fact, stand on a position.

    They use Lomborg as a distraction for instance, even though they are not ready to live his actual lifestyle (no car) or take his recommended action (massive aid for africa). They just use him to flit.

    (Though, the flaw in his argument is that he claims to know maximum, worst case harm from AGW. It is actually the uncertainty that warrants insurance.)

    I don’t have energy to follow those other links right now. I suspect though that they don’t change the big picture. They don’t disprove AGW or prove that it is without risk.

  56. I skimmed the articles. They seem more about how AGW is described to the public, and how uncertain risks should be explained.

    People are stupid on risk (see the current debt crisis).

    And if AGW was easy to explain, they’d understand it already.

  57. My shy friend odograph wrote of those whom he calls “denialists”:
    They don’t disprove AGW or prove that it is without risk.

    If that is an example of the “strength” of the asserted anthropogenic global warming argument, it is no wonder the True Believers have begun losing the battle with the informed public.

    (The True Believers have won the battle with tax & regulate politicians — but those people use that True Belief simply as a fig leaf to cover their otherwise-naked power grab).

    A totally non-contentious scientific observation from geology is that climate (however defined) has been continuously changing for billions of years. Written historical records confirm that climate has been in continuous flux for at least the last thousand years.

    Based on scientific observations and historical evidence, we think that the planet is still warming up after the last Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. Based on the geological record, this gradual warming trend will probably continue (with fluctuations) for a geologically-short period until the next Ice Age begins. If the past is any guide, the next Ice Age will begin quite suddenly.

    Surface temperature measurements show no evidence for warming over the last decade. The very limited amount of deduced warming over the last century does not correlate at all well with human production of the minor Radiatively Active Gas carbon dioxide.

    Now, odograph, don’t be shy.

    Tell us exactly why we should reject the Occam’s Razor hypothesis that any warming is a continuation of long-established natural fluctuations?

    Tell us why we should instead accept the hypothesis that any warming has a completely different (anthropogenic) origin than the natural climate fluctuations seen over millions of years?

    Time to put up or shut up, odograph.

  58. Sorry but this is a standard ploy.

    You reject the 1000 atmospheric scientists, and then say that I (a computer programmer with a rusty chem degree) have to prove global warming to you.

    Nitwit.

  59. BTW, I consider your list to be classic “ankle biters.” They don’t disprove general warming or that it might be a problem. They just contest inconsequential bits of the thing.

  60. Shy odograph wrote, in response to a request for why we should accept the hypothesis of alleged anthropomorphic global warming:
    You reject the 1000 atmospheric scientists …

    This is the standard brain-dead True Believer ploy — the appeal to authority.

    First, something is not so simply because somebody else (or even a lot of other people) say that it is so. Appeals to authority ultimately have to be backed by the evidence that led those authorities to reach that conclusion. On important matters, each of us has a responsibility to do some checking.

    Second, the so-called “1000 atmospheric scientists” has been debunked too frequently for any intelligent person to offer it in evidence. The Naomi Orestez misrepresentation of “consensus” has been thoroughly exposed, for anyone with an open mind. In reality, the situation is that some active scientists accept the AGW hypothesis, others reject it, and many recognize that the issue is unresolved.

    Logically, there are two distinct questions:
    1. Is the planet warming (however defined)?
    2. If so, is the cause anthropogenic or natural?

    The answer to the first question depends very much on the timescale. We also have to accept that, given the sparseness of the data and its unrepresentative distribution, the real error bar is large — probably larger than the asserted warming. And we have to recognize the First Rule of Climate Data — the better the quality of the data, the less obvious is any recent warming trend.

    But even if we do a Lomborg and accept that warming is occurring, what is the evidence for that being anthropogenic rather than natural? You, odograph, have no answer to that — apart from a logically-meaningless appeal to authority.

    Personally, I have an open mind. Maybe the planet is undergoing current warming. Maybe that warming is so different in character from the billions of years of natural fluctuations that it could be anthropogenic. But I have yet to hear any convincing argument from any True Believer.

    And that includes you, odograph.

    Wake up, man! You assert that anthropogenic global warming is so important that we ought to change the behavior of every human being on Earth, yet you cannot mount even the humblest defense of the hypothesis? Why not?

  61. If you ignore what I say, I can’t take you very seriously. I said:

    “I can doubt, but still (a) recognize the preponderance of scientific opinion, and (b) support moderate and appropriate actions.”

    You reject that just like you reject the science, because it is inconvenient to you.

    Come on, your post is anti-intellectualism run rampant. Do you seriously think the atmospheric scientists did not consider natural climate cycles? That they did not, in fact, start there?

    Really you want me to play this point-by-point game with you for one reason and one reason only:

    If we play it, we are as important as scientists. If we can argue it, there is no reason for expert opinion.

    Tell me, if you get a pain and thing you might have an ailment, do you argue in some blog with some random stranger about it, to get the truth? Or do you go to a doctor?

  62. Odograph wrote:
    Tell me, if you get a pain … do you go to a doctor?

    Odo — have you been to a doctor recently? The doctor will tell you that YOU are responsible for your own health care. The doctor will advise, inform, and make recommendations, but YOU the patient have to make the decisions. If you choose to reject the doctor’s recommendation, or to seek a second opinion, the doctor will respect your decision.

    That is in stark contrast to alleged anthropogenic global warming, where the patient is ordered to hand over his wallet, bend over, grab his ankles, and “think of England”. And the person abusing the patient is not even the doctor; it is some ill-informed bureaucrat that happened to stumble into the doctor’s office. Oh well! Maybe the bureaucrat is married to someone who once was a doctor.

    There is substantial scientific evidence for a gentle natural global warming trend since the last Ice Age, with significant up & down fluctuations around that trend — you know that, odo. The simplest credible explanation for recent temperature data is a continuation of those natural trends. Why are you not able to offer any real support for an alternative explanation?

    If you support moderate and appropriate actions against your unquantified possibility that alleged anthropogenic global warming may actually be occurring, that is fine. Welcome on board the nuclear power train.

  63. Weakest comeback ever. You agree that doctors make recommendations … just like scientists.

    Do you ignore them and go to the medical denialist (there are some) sites for your answers?

    You are doing what was in-vogue for the Republican party in the last few years: accept science when it helps you, but reject it whenever it gives you an answer you don’t want to hear.

    That is intellectually corrupt.

  64. Odograph wrote, in desperation:
    Weakest comeback ever.

    Come on, odo. You ought to be better than that.

    Here you are, telling us that 6 Billion human beings ought to lower their living standards because of alleged anthropogenic global warming — yet you cannot provide even an outline of a sketch of a suggested argument for the existence of alleged anthropogenic global warming. That is really sad!

    Instead of serious points, we get “1000 scientists”; we get a version of “it is all too difficult for an ordinary person like me to understand”; we get a version of “your mother’s ugly, and a Republican too”. What we don’t get is any kind of understandable case.

    Can you maybe begin to understand why True Believers are having such a hard time converting reasonable people to their religion?

    As I mentioned earlier, I am open-minded about alleged anthropogenic global warming. I am prepared to listen.

    But I have had a really hard time finding anyone on the True Believer side to explain why anyone should accept their hypothesis. On the other hand, there is no problem on the skeptical side finding people who will talk science and observations that cast doubt upon the One True Belief. Why do you think that is?

  65. You are doing what was in-vogue for the Republican party in the last few years: accept science when it helps you, but reject it whenever it gives you an answer you don’t want to hear.

    Republicans? I see this behavior far more in environmentalists. They appeal to the authority of science on AGW. But ignore what the authority of science says on things like genetically modified food, the safety of herbicides and pesticides, or the use of bovinge growth hormone.

    I tried to engage a climate modeler once about the GCMs. I asked a simple chemical engineering question: “What equations of state are you using in your model?”. The answer I got back was more or less “It is none of your f’ing business you stupid AGW denier. I’m a scientist and don’t have time to deal with you.”

    That inspires a lot of confidence. As a chemical engineer, I know a lot about calculating pressure, temperature, and volume of gas mixtures over a wide range of conditions. Turns out the gas laws aren’t very good at predicting temperatures at low pressures (less than 10 bar). The simple gas laws assume no interactions between the different chemicals that make up the gas mixture. In the real world this isn’t true. The GCMs predict temperature differences smaller than the mathematical errors in the gas laws they use.

  66. The GCMs predict temperature differences smaller than the mathematical errors in the gas laws they use.

    Yes, King, and that is before considering other modeling issues such as discretization errors.

    My day job involves mathematical modeling of physical systems which are MUCH simpler than global climate. Even so, my industry’s track record on predictions is quite poor.

    Models are great for showing us the consequences of our assumptions; but that does not tell us if we have made the right assumptions. A Global Circulation Model which incorporates the assumption that CO2 will cause global warming will predict exactly that. So what?

    Models can be useful for explaining complex interactions. For example, one of the few bits of solid data out there is that the stratosphere has cooled very slightly over the last few decades (based on satellite measurements). How can there be global warming and stratospheric cooling simultaneously? I have never seen a credible physical explanation of that.

    If the planet’s surface is getting warmer and the stratosphere is getting cooler, the lapse rate must be changing. What would cause that? When the “climate scientists” at realclimate.org were asked about it, the responding “scientist” got the sign of the tropospheric lapse rate wrong! And those are the guys we are supposed to trust blindly? Don’t think so!

    None of the above makes me a “global warming denier”. In fact, the only global warming deniers are the punters at the IPCC — the guys who pushed that “hockey stick” temperature profile which denied the evidence for the Medieval Warm Period. I am still open to hearing the argument for alleged anthropogenic global warming — but nobody is making it.

  67. I answer that in two quick points:

    1) I am a Republican, and am looking at trouble in my own party.

    2) “They do it too” is not a good answer for ignoring science.

    (Heck, if I thought lefties were rational science (and human nature) believers I might be one. They aren’t. I’m not.)

  68. Should I have added this:

    3) Assuming some worse case and harmful GW solution is stupid.

    I say “moderate” you say “extreme.”

    Why? Because it short-circuits the problem in your mind.

  69. Here is another problem with AGW theory. According to the theory, solar radiation in the form of short wavelength radiation strikes the earth and is reflected back and converted to longer wavelengths. This radiant energy is then captured by greenhouse gases.

    Carbon dioxide filters out radiation over a small bandwidth. As CO2 concentration rises, less energy is available for capture by CO2. It is the law of diminishing returns.

    Imagine you want to darken a room in your house. You buy a plastic film at the hardware store that filters 50% of the UV light. The first layer of film you apply removes 50%. But it isn’t dark enough so you apply a second layer. The second layer removes only 25% (50% of 50%). A third layer removes only 12.5% and so on. At a certain point adding more layers makes very little difference.

    Same with CO2. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, CO2 has risen some 100 ppm. But we’ve warmed up only about 2 C. The next 100 ppm can’t remove MORE energy than the first 100 ppm because there is less radiant energy available.

    Climate modelers like to show people the last 400,000 years and how CO2 has varied over a narrow range. If you go back farther you will find that CO2 has been as high as 1,000 ppm and the earth was COOLER than it is now. Obviously CO2 concentrations aren’t the only thing or even main thing driving global temperatures. I guess the argument is they are what is driving it NOW.

    So ask your favorite climatologist “What about the Little Ice Age? What caused that?” The best answer I’ve heard is “We really don’t know. Maybe more volcanic activity, more particulate matter in the atmosphere.” So they can’t explain climate changes for which they have real data. But they expect us to believe they know with certainty what might happen in the future.

  70. Addendum:

    There has been a lot of hyperbole up above, with claims that I believe absolutely in AGW, as some religious thing, and want to break your lifestyle as a result.

    I said no, I can doubt and still respect scientific opinion. And I can support moderate and appropriate action.

    Still the claims that I believe in some absolute or demand extreme action keep coming. That is dishonest rhetoric.

    Here’s something I just found out on the webs. It is something I take with a grain of salt. It is more of a worst case (I hope!) than any kind of assured outcome:

    More than a decade ago, many scientists claimed that humans were demonstrating a capacity to force a major global catastrophe that would lead to a traumatic shift in climate, an intolerable level of destruction of natural habitats, and an extinction event that could eliminate 30 to 50 percent of all living species by the middle of the 21st century. Now those predictions are coming true. The evidence shows that species loss today is accelerating. We find ourselves uncomfortably privileged to be witnessing a mass extinction event as it’s taking place, in real time.

    The frustrating thing is that the people who lie an distort are holding an extreme line. They don’t want moderate and appropriate action, as insurance against such uncertain (yes) but also extreme outcomes.

  71. Addendum:

    There has been a lot of hyperbole up above, with claims that I believe absolutely in AGW, as some religious thing, and want to break your lifestyle as a result.

    I said no, I can doubt and still respect scientific opinion. And I can support moderate and appropriate action.

    Still the claims that I believe in some absolute or demand extreme action keep coming. That is dishonest rhetoric.

    Here’s something I just found out on the webs. It is something I take with a grain of salt. It is more of a worst case (I hope!) than any kind of assured outcome:

    More than a decade ago, many scientists claimed that humans were demonstrating a capacity to force a major global catastrophe that would lead to a traumatic shift in climate, an intolerable level of destruction of natural habitats, and an extinction event that could eliminate 30 to 50 percent of all living species by the middle of the 21st century. Now those predictions are coming true. The evidence shows that species loss today is accelerating. We find ourselves uncomfortably privileged to be witnessing a mass extinction event as it’s taking place, in real time.

    The frustrating thing is that the people who lie an distort are holding an extreme line. They don’t want moderate and appropriate action, as insurance against such uncertain (yes) but also extreme outcomes.

  72. Still unable to present any kind of case for the existence of alleged anthropogenic global warming, Odograph whines about those who:
    … don’t want moderate and appropriate action, as insurance against such uncertain (yes) but also extreme outcomes.

    OK. So which uncertain extreme outcomes are you prepared to pay for insurance against?

    The planet has been hit by asteroids many times over geological history. Good evidence that such a collision caused immense species extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. We obviously need to pay for insurance against that.

    There have been mass die-offs related to epidemics. The Black Death in the 14th Century killed at least one third of the affected populations. Surely we need to pay for better insurance against that kind of event?

    And what about insurance against the next Ice Age? If the past is any guide, we know there is a high probability that one is coming.

    If you could stop trembling in fear, you would recognize that the most effective insurance is a healthy technologically-advanced society with access to very large energy supplies.

  73. I’m glad Odo brought up extinction. Here is yet another area where environmentalists who want us to yield to the authority of science ask us to ignore it when it is inconvenient for them. Governor Sarah Palin writes in an op ed today her opposition to placing polar bears on the endangered species list. The scientific consensus is that the species populations are stable and not threatened. Yet this is an inconvenient truth for those who want to use the polar bear to impose limits on carbon. Pictures of polar bears on melting ice flows or swimming in the arctic (something they do naturally) are climate porn to the AGW crowd.

    Science my arse.

    BTW – I agree with Odo that we ought to do the easy things to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency. It is a bad idea to import most of our transportation fuels from people who don’t wish to trade freely with us.

  74. I think where you are two peas in a pod is your refusal to see science for what it is, and to label any scientist who gives you an “inconvenient” answer as an “environmentalist” instead.

    That’s sad (and sick) when you think about it. The K-guy’s test for science:

    Does he say we need to do anything?

    No? Ok, he might be a scientist.

    Yes. No, he’s an environmentalist.

    (It’s kind of a neat self-sealer, if you don’t think about it too much. It allows you to ignore anyone who spots any problem.)

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