This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Obama and his ilk won’t be happy until all Americans (except him and the Progressive elite) are as miserable and completely repressed as the people of Cuba.
You continuously bash the United States of America………If the USA is so awful why do people swim through shark infested oceans, float here on inner tubes, cross deserts and stow away in airplane landing gear holds to get here?
If things were as terrible here as you describe, the country would be empty………instead, we’ve got the opposite problem………people hide inside of oil tanker trucks to get into this country.
Seems to me that you’re the only one who doesn’t get it.
Brute,
Sounds like you are miserable and repressed anyway regardless of anything I can say about the actions of some American governments:-) Not all. Just some.
It sounds to me that you’ve swallowed a whole lot of propaganda about just how bad things are in Cuba. Yes they have problems. But even so they are just about the most successful of the Caribbean countries in terms of any meaningful index you’d care to look at. Yes I’d like to see them liberalise their system, and move to a more open democracy.
But, I’d just ask the question, do the Americans want that too? Would all Americans be comfortable with a genuinely successful, democratic, and socialist Cuba? Or is that a contradiction in terms for many of you guys and you just won’t settle for anything less than a Batista style military dictatorship?
PeterM
You wrote to Brute (3827):
Let’s do a quick sanity check on that statement.
Here is a list of all countries bordering on or in the Caribbean, with per capita GDP of each in US$:
So Cuba comes out #23 out of 29 (and less than half of the average GDP of all those countries).
Ouch!
Well, at least they’re better off than folks in impoverished Haiti, right?
Don’t make statements unless you know what you are talking about, Peter. It can backfire, because the facts are out there for anyone to see.
Max
We’ll that’s a pretty low standard that you’ve set Pete. Cuba is slightly better off than Haiti……a ringing endorsement.
Max,
You’re making the assumption that everything can be measured in $ terms and what we earn own and earn rather than what sort of life is possible. That’s about right for someone with a right wing mentality but I don’t believe most people see it that way. There are some things that you can’t easily put a value on. If you’d read the link in 3825 you’d have read:
“The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing or an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life. The index was developed in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian economist Amartya Sen.”
So, according to your philosophy life must be twice as good in Mexico as in Cuba. Yet according to the HDI life is better in Cuba. This tallies with a longer life expectancy in Cuba too. So which is a better indicator , the $ or the HDI?
Brute,
Life in Cuba isn’t just slightly better than in Haiti. Its a lot better. Life expectancy is 17 years longer in Cuba and almost exactly the same as in the USA.
Pete,
I’ve noticed that you’ve failed to list the freedoms and God given rights that the people of Cuba are not permitted to exercise.
Freedom of religion
The right to bear arms
Prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure
Private property rights
The right to due process
The right to a trial by jury
Prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment
The right to self govern
Freedom of the press
Freedom of assembly
Freedom of speech
Etc, Etc, Etc……….
Cubans have had these rights denied to them by their oppressive, “Progressive” government………which doesn’t seem to bother you in the least.
Cuba is a prison, yet you come here and extol the virtues of this dictatorial Socialist nightmare.
Are you on drugs?
Brute, PeterM, TonyB
Willis Eschenbach has written an excellent summary of “what went wrong” leading to and following “climategate”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/11/it-was-the-worst-of-the-times/
It’s worth reading.
Max
PeterM
You blather on with:
Not so.
It was YOU, Peter, who wrote (bold by me)
So I simply picked one of the “meaningful indexes” of a society’s human wellbeing, i.e. it’s affluence.
And Cuba rates pretty lousy among Caribbean countries.
That’s all.
Sure, there are “happy” Cubans (there are “happy” folks in Darfour or Haiti, as well).
Sure they have a better climate (and fewer winter suicides) than Sweden. In fact, they get some winter tourists there from Sweden.
And their music is great (although a little bit goes a long way for me).
But Cuba is among the poorest of Caribbean countries, as the data show. And I am sure that most Cubans are not too happy about that.
And they live in an autocratic system, which tolerates no dissent.
Why else would so many have tried to flee Cuba over the years since the Castro regime took over the power?
As was the case in the former Soviet-dominated East Bloc, that is the most “meaningful index” of a society’s failure and it’s population’s malcontent (i.e. are folks fleeing “OUT”, as in Cuba, or are they fleeing “IN” as in Switzerland and the USA).
Max
Brute
Cuba’s official motto under the Castro regime is (in Spanish):
(And they apparently enforce it.)
Max
Max
Yes it was a good piece. It would be interesting to know how widesapread noble cause corruption is-as suggested by Schneider et al-amongst the wider climate hierarchy.
You may remember I wrote about it in connection wuth Tony Blair and the last Labour Govt who enormously influenced the EU when he was President of it and also influenced the G8 . Politicians in particular always believe they know what is best for us, so I suspect that they are steering us in all sorts of insane ways because they think it is for the best.
The trouble is that they lose all sense of reality (witness Peter and his Cuba example)and try to impose AGW mitigation on us without knowing if it exists, or the costs and consequences.
Did you catch this example that I posted on the Nurse thread?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dont_know_the_cost_dont_know_if_it_works/
tonyb
As we all know, the recent tide of events has not been good for the CAGW cause: climategate, revelations of IPCC malfeasance and fudged data, the failures at Copenhagen and Cancun plus the harsh winters across most of the northern hemisphere (where most of the world’s population lives) have all been serious blows to the cause.
Now comes another blow, as a fall-out from the 8.9-magnitude earthquake disaster in Japan.
The rescue and relief operation is under way in the region after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which are thought to have killed more than 1,000 people.
But the focus is now shifting to the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where one reactor was severely damaged in the aftermath of the earthquake and four operators have been injured (none seriously). Japanese government sources are apparently telling us that radiation levels are not yet alarming and are now falling, but that a meltdown of one reactor is still a possibility. As a result, thousands of people are being evacuated from a zone 20 km around the plant as a precautionary measure.
Anti-nuclear demonstrations have already started in Germany. More are sure to come, as the anti-nuke lobby and activists use the catastrophe to further their goal of a “nuclear free” Germany. Switzerland’s Socialist Party has already raised the question of whether this country should abandon new nuclear construction. Other countries, where an anti-nuke lobby or activists exist, are likely to follow. I can see the US anti-nuke lobbyists and their lawyers “girding their loins” already.
So much for replacing carbon with nuclear.
These developments will make it more difficult to push through any kind of a “fossil fuel phase-out” for power generation, as there is no viable alternate except nuclear power.
So far, only a very small number of total flakes have tried to turn this event into a plus for the CAGW cause, by raising the question of whether the earthquake could have been caused or aggravated by “climate change”, but no one has taken this ludicrous suggestion seriously.
So it looks to me like another blow to an already mortally weakened CAGW cause, and we are back to “drill, baby, drill” in the USA.
Unless this blows over, it looks like a leveling off of atmospheric CO2 at 450-500 ppmv is not going to happen.
Sorry ’bout that, Peter.
Max
I was waiting for this to come up.
I think we’ll have to wait for the final result of the nuclear accident’s damage to assess the political fallout. (no pun intended).
More on this later……..have to take a nap in preparation for a party tonight then tomorrow……….off to my nephew’s 2nd birthday party!
Max,
I wasn’t expecting that even you would think that counting up the dollars was a meaningful index. Yes if you live in a society that puts a money value on everything then it is important to have some, but the concept of money is a relatively new one in terms of human development and even now in some parts of the world, the most common means of exchange is by barter. This happens either formally, or informally, simply the return of one favour for another. How do you measure all that economically?
If I need to catch a cab into the city from where I it costs me $50 or so. I lived in Cuba I could hitch hike in for free. Apparently its illegal to not pick up hitchhikers! So, am I, and Australian society $50 better, or worse, off as a result of that transaction?
PeterM
Give up on this one, Peter. You are only making yourself look sillier with each post. The “taxicab” analogy is just another waffle – hardly anybody has a car in Cuba, anyway, so you might just get your free ride on a donkey.
But, more to the point, you claimed that Cuba was “just about the most successful of the Caribbean countries in terms of any meaningful index you’d care to look at”, so I gave you a “meaningful index”, which showed Cuba rates poorly among Caribbean countries, as far as its population’s affluence is concerned.
Then you restricted the discussion to a “mush” index:
And now you come with a hypothetical taxicab analogy.
Get serious, Peter. Give it up.
Refer to my previous post for a more meaningful “index” (the “human retention rate”, as measured by the inverse of the number of people trying to flee, both successfully and unsuccessfully).
And read this to get better acquainted with the history, human exodus, living conditions and human rights in Cuba:
http://www2.fiu.edu/~fcf/juanclark.cuba/clark97.humrtscond.
It’s not a pretty picture.
Max
Hell’s bells Pete………move into a commune.
Brute and Max,
Well you shouldn’t run away with idea that I support everything in Cuba. The authorities there don’t allow open access to the internet which wouldn’t suit me at all. I’d probably end up in jail along with that American guy who was arrested recently for supplying internet equipment to a Jewish group in Havana.
But the taxicab analogy isn’t
Brute and Max,
Well you shouldn’t run away with idea that I support everything in Cuba. The authorities there don’t allow open access to the internet which wouldn’t suit me at all. I’d probably end up in jail along with that American guy who was arrested recently for supplying internet equipment to a Jewish group in Havana.
But the taxicab analogy isn’t hypothetical. Neither is the bartering example, or when families take care of children and the elderly for free, whereas the economic costs of doing the same thing through the economic system are very high. How should these be handled in terms of national GDP? I’d just say that economists do have a lot of trouble with how to handle these kind of issues, so I wouldn’t expect an easy answer from you.
Can I just ask why you think it is that the USA have always given Castro and the Cuban revolution such a hard time? Shortly after his victory he visited America but Eisenhower refused even to see him. He knew he probably wouldn’t survive unless he had an ally in either Washington or Moscow, so why make him choose Moscow? Was that a smart thing to do?
PeterM
Did Castro pick the “losing team” (and losing political ideology) or did the “winning team” reject Castro?
It’s interesting, I’m sure, but I’m not going to rehash history on a “what might have been?” basis. There are guys who have done this for all sorts of events. Wiki even has a name for this type of fiction: “alternate history”.
The best one I’ve seen is “what if Japan had not attacked the USA in 1941?”.
(You’d be talking Japanese right now, Peter. And I would probably eventually have become part of the “tausendjährige Grossdeutsche Reich”.)
Max
Hansen 1986 : “2 to 4? Degrees Warming From 2001-2010
Max,
The difference with Cuba is that Castro is still alive and the system there is still very much alive too.
So, its not at all hypothetical in the way of your ‘waht if’ examples, and there is now a second chance, after the ending of the cold war, and the imminent change of leadership in Cuba, to build bridges. The Cubans have highlighted the issue of the USA not co-operating with their investigation into a terrorist attack on their plane,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_Flight_455
and imprisonment of 5 Cubans accused of espionage, and I’m sure the Americans have their own list of issues to be addressed.
So it would appear to me, as a neutral observer, that a little goodwill, from both sides, may go a long way. The end result could well be a Cuba that was freed from blockade, a more liberal political system and and the possibility of a better life for all Cubans.
Isn’t that what everyone wants?
PeterM
I can’t comment on Castro, Cuba and the USA today, except that it appears to me, from the little I have heard, that a rapprochement will only come after the Castro brothers are gone.
Too many exile Cubans in greater Miami, who still have an ax to grind. This group is a fairly strong political force in the USA.
I know one of these “exile Cubans” who escaped with his parents and grew up in USA – later was transferred to Europe by a US multinational company. This guy is 100% American – but he still has a visceral hatred of Castro. So I don’t think the US will get closer to Cuba until there is a change of leadership there. But that is bound to happen soon, in view of the age of both brothers.
I think Cuba would have much more to gain from a rapprochement than the USA, i.e. from US tourists and investments. There are quite a few European tourists there, but the infrastructure is apparently pretty limited. This could change with a freer investment-friendly new regime and an influx of dollars.
Max
Max
Brute,
Do you have an original reference for the claim of 2-4 degs per decade? I’m pretty sure the reporter just got this wrong at the time. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers!
Or on Fox TV or Wattsupwiththat!
Jeez Pete. Hansen is a lunatic now and then………admit it and move on.
Front page, Palm Beach Post/Miami News, June 11th 1986
Hansen 1986 : “2 to 4? Degrees Warming From 2001-2010
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=71XFh8zZwT8C&dat=19860611&printsec=frontpage
PeterM and TonyB
This comes from a post on Climate Etc. site by a poster named Jim Owen (an engineer or scientist apparently involved in the NASA shuttle program)
It summarizes what we have been talking about here fairly succinctly, i.e. we cannot change our climate.
Lomborg has said essentially the same, possibly a bit more eloquently.
We’ve gone through the proposed “CO2 cutback” numbers for the USA and UK and confirmed that the suggested programs will not change our planet’s climate, even if you add them all up.
So Owen’s message makes good sense to me. How about to you?
Max