Some GWHs like to try to impose their policy views by stifling the debate about man made global warming. “It’s the consensus!” they thunder–deaf to the irony that “science” isn’t determined by consensus. “The skeptical scientists are on the oil company payroll!”they scream, which works for the choir but shows the rest of us their true ideological colors. “Skeptics are mere ‘deniers,’ akin to those who deny the Holocaust!,” they sneer, as if insults persuade and a predicted end-of-the-century future is as certain as the already happened past. And then there’s their supposedly great trump card, “To deny ‘climate change’ is to be ‘anti science!”
Rubbish, all of it. Over at the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby has a good rejoinder to some of this nonsense. Jacoby is reacting to the political slur from Bill Clinton that one can’t become the Republican nominee for POTUS unless they “deny science,” meaning man made global warming. From “Climate Skeptics Don’t ‘Deny Science:’”
In truth, global-warming alarmism is not science at all — not in the way that electromagnetic radiation or the laws of planetary motion or molecular biology is science. Catastrophic climate change is an interpretation of certain scientific data, an interpretation based on theories about the causes and effects of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is not “denying science’’ to have doubts about the correctness of that interpretation any more than it is “denying economics’’ to have doubts about the efficacy of Kenyesian pump-priming.
Exactly, when people say man made global warming is a “fact,” they play us for chumps, and conflate knowledge obtained via the scientific method–where the complexities of the forces that drive climate still are far from fully understood–with ideologically driven policy proposals that pretend to be objective science but are actually politics using global warming as the front. That’s GWH.
Jacoby also notes that the dissenters from the vaunted “consensus” about are some of the biggest names in contemporary science:
You don’t have to look far to see that impeccable scientific standards can go hand-in-hand with skepticism about global warming. Ivar Giaever, a 1973 Nobel laureate in physics , resigned this month as a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) to protest the organization’s official positionthat evidence of manmade climate change is “incontrovertible’’ and cause for alarm…By now, only ideologues and political propagandists insist that all reputable scientists agree on the human responsibility for climate change. Even within the American Physical Society, the editor of “Physics and Society’’ (an APS publication) has acknowledged that “there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree . . . that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are . . . primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.’’
Giaever is only one of many distinguished scientists who dissent from the alarmist view on climate change. Among the others are Richard Lindzen of MIT and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, both noted climatologists; the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study; and S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia.
The attempt to stifle such dissenting views about global warming–while still ongoing, alas–have failed. People have seen through the propaganda. They know they have been force fed–and denied objective reporting by an in the tank media–and they don’t like it.
They also don’t like anyone unilaterally declaring the debate over (as Clinton, Gore, and others have), when, in fact, it is just getting interesting. Nor do they like being looked down upon by their self-declared rescuers and media–snobbery is a real problem for the GWHs. They have seen the lies exposed–such as the end of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035–and taken the measure of the GWHs credibility. Whatever the ethics of Climategate, they saw that the scientists involved were not merely interested in a full and objective discourse.
They are sick of the DIRE WARNINGS OF DOOM! Their common sense tells them that there is far more to this story than the alarmists pretend or presume, particularly since things aren’t turning out the way the vaunted “models” have predicted. For example, their common sense tells them that record arctic blasts of the last few years are not evidence of global warming.
They rightly view GWH as a material threat to their pocketbooks. They see that the oil, gas, and coal industries are being suppressed by bureaucratic fiat. They know that the “green jobs” promise is, for now, hollow. They have noticed the Solyndra Scandal, and realize that it was partly caused by GWH, in the sense of why that company and industry had been picked as the beneficiaries for a mass tax money throw and flush. They know that increased gas and energy prices could be the death knell for any kind of meaningful recovery–which, they are well aware, would be just fine with those GWHs who preach decline and poverty. And they see the high-living hypocrisy of some of the most strident GWH advocates like Al Gore, Prince Charles, and Thomas Friedman, and think that since they don’t do what they say, they don’t really believe what they say.
If GWHs want to know why the polling shows an ever decreasing urgency over climate change–and why their panic mongering over a small hurricane and a bad Texas drought haven’t helped the cause (at least in the USA)–read this post very carefully.
I know, I know: 97 percent of scientists, and all that jazz. But the jig is up, fellows. You are going to have to impose your policies on an unwilling public, which we know you are more than happy to do (another reason for the growing skepticism. We don’t like authoritarianism). But that is not going to be as easy as you may wish.
September 25th, 2011 | 1:14 pm
How much are you getting paid to repeat this?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
How much are you gwtting paid to question it? You’re the one whose name containms the word “rent.”
September 25th, 2011 | 1:25 pm
“Catastrophic CO2 Climate Change Crisis” is the worst disaster imaginable, so until we see these scientists in their countless thousands, marching in the streets and ACTING like it’s the emergency they said it was, we will conclude academic exaggeration. We will be thankful and grateful the planet and Humanity have been spared a comet hit of a climate crisis and the ultimate peer review is the voting majority you see before you of “former” climate blame believers. Nobody is going to vote for taxing the air to make the weather colder and hand over the management of the planet’s temperature to carbon trading markets run by politicians and corporations.
Obama is now a denier as well since he didn’t even mention the “crisis” in his state of the union address after 25 years of CO2 crisis warnings. And where were the thousands of consensus scientists when they were completely snubbed by Obama, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for climate change and as NP stated; his “role in meeting the great climatic challenges”? So follow our leader and get ahead of the curve planet lovers because Obama sees Climate Change Crisis for what it was, another Iraq War of lies and fear mongering. The CO2 mistake has made omen worshipping fools out of all of us for the history books. Meanwhile, the UN had allowed carbon trading stock markets to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 25 years of climate CONTROL.
If you really love the planet and want to get the corruptive influence of politics out of science, do the right thing. Fear is never sustainable so let’s leave that to the neocons shall we?
Billions of children were falsely condemned to a CO2 death knowingly, so let’s get the charges over with sooner than later:
U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001
By Phone: Department of Justice Main Switchboard -202-514-2000
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line -202-353-1555
September 25th, 2011 | 1:41 pm
[...] festival online now, (25/Sep/2011) September 25th, 2011 | No Comments | Posted in News SecondHandSmokeWesley J. [...]
September 25th, 2011 | 4:13 pm
I usaly dont even bother to discous it That mutch anymore, just show them(AKA: The Carbonazis) this:
From Time Mag, 1974
Another iceage
huh
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
and this article is infact more acurate tegarding clima in our present date, the fact that the world cools.
Harryhammer Reply:
October 6th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
@mikael,
mikaei,
There has always been a scientific consensus predicting that global average temperature would rise.
That includes 1974.
Climatologist Thomas C. Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., and his colleagues put together a team to survey all major journal papers published between 1965 and 1979 and found that out of a total of 71 major journal articles, only 7 articles predicted that global average temperature would continue to cool.
In 1953, when Al Gore was 5 years old, Time magazine and Popular Mechanics were running articles on the work of a physicist named Gilbert Plass.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890597,00.html
Physicist Gilbert N. Plass had just completed some calculations on the atmospheric warming effect of carbon dioxide. He drew attention to the point that man-made CO2 emissions would have a significant warming effect on the Earth’s temperature.
Popular Mechanics reported the results under the headline:
“Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature”.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/11/16/1953-popular-mechanics-growing-blanket-of-carbon-dioxide-raises-earth%E2%80%99s-temperature/
September 25th, 2011 | 8:26 pm
While there may be Sceptics who are not anymti-science there are, sadly, too many who are. The problem with the skeptics in this particular case is the lack if credible evidence to support an alternative hypothesis. Notice, your article is big ad hominem arguments and light on data. That doesn’t do much to promote the credibility of your point of view regarding global warming or that skepticism about it somehow adheres to te scientific method specifically and scientific reasoning more generally.
Pauld Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 5:02 am
@GD, “The problem with the skeptics in this particular case is the lack if credible evidence to support an alternative hypothesis.”
The null hypothesis is that the warming we observe is the result of natural variations in the climate system. The burden of proof is on those who wish to reject the null hypothesis.
Insofar as most skeptics would agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause some warming, I think it is fair to modify the null hypothesis to something like this: “The global warming that has been observed over the past 40 years has primarily been caused by natural variations in the climate system rather than by greenhouse gases. ”
Although the IPCC suggests that it is possible to reject this null hypothesis, the evidence that it cites is remarkably thin. I cannot in a comment put together a full critique of the IPCC’s attribution studies, but I agree with this statement by Dr. Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT:
“The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn’t reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.”
“Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574567423917025400.html
A more in depth critique of the IPCC’s attribution studies can be found in this in press peer-reviewed article by Dr. Judith Curry, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS3139.1
If you would like to engage in a substantive discussion of this issue, I would be more than happy to do so. Merely citing evidence that climate scientists disagree with my position, however, does not advance the discussion.
Pauld Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 8:05 am
@Pauld, Just to throw in a little bit more for discussion, I would make the following additional comments. Dr. Judith Curry’s article presumes some basic understanding of the literature about climate models and is somewhat difficult to follow, if one does not have a background in this area. A law professor actually does an excellent job of summarizing some of the key points and the relevant peer-reviewed literature that it is a little easier for the layman to follow in this article: Johnston, “GLOBAL WARMING ADVOCACY SCIENCE: A CROSS EXAMINATION”, University of Pennsylvania Law School, ILE INSTITUTE FOR LAW AND ECONOMICS , 2010, that can be accessed here: http://www.probeinternational.org/UPennCross.pdf
The particular section that is relevant to this discussion is “Obscuring Fundamental Disagreement Across Climate Models in both Explanations of Past Climate and Predictions of Future Climate” that is found at page 26 of the PDF.
The Curry article is by a well-credentialed climate scientist that appears in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The Johnston article is a scholarly article by a law professor that is pitched to sophisticated layman and policy-makers. Both articles agree on the fundemental points that they make.
Read together the two articles make a very strong case that the IPCC report understates the major uncertainties that exist in attempting to determine what portion of the observed warming has been caused by greenhouse gases. In fact, some of the most important uncertainties are not even discussed in the IPCC report. As Johnston argues, they are “obscured”. These articles are, I think, compelling critique of the IPCC’s position that the null hypothesis can be rejected with any degree of confidence.
Chris Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
@GD, GD, it’s terrible reasoning to assume that just because someone has failed to give a correct answer that your answer must therefore be more correct. I understand what you are saying, but I think your thought process illustrates why this is a political debate more than a scientific one,in essence, your side has better idea than our side, so let’s go with it. Sounds more like a debate on Keynesian vs. Austrian economics than climate modeling.
September 25th, 2011 | 8:32 pm
[...] Global Warming Hysteria: Skepticism Is Not “Anti-Science” » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things B… — and even more apologetics trying to justify the rights denial. Share and Enjoy:Written by: Jerrald Hayes on September 25, 2011. [...]
September 26th, 2011 | 7:46 am
Mr. Smith,
Are you sure that you didn’t name your website after your favorite global warming deniers?
Many of them went from being second hand smoke deniers to global warming deniers.
Most of them joined forces with private corporations and conservative think tanks a long time ago?
Fred Seitz:
• Co-founded the George C. Marshall Institute.
• Principal scientific adviser to the R.J. Reynolds medical research program.
• Known as the “$45 million man” for the amount of money he helped R.J. Reynolds distribute for research that specifically avoided the health issues surrounding smoking.
• Admitted that R.J. Reynolds was funding his research, and used the results to claim that the evidence was inconclusive about the health effects of smoking.
• After that, he went on to become a global warming denier.
Fred Singer: (similar story)
• Heartland Institute’s “Global Warming Expert.”
• Senior Fellow with Alexis de Tocqueville Institution when they attacked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over a risk assessment on environmental tobacco smoke.
• On a tobacco industry list of people who could write op-ed pieces on “junk science,” defending the industry’s views.
• Known as the granddaddy of fake science designed to debunk global warming.
• Served as a consultant to Exxon, Shell, Unocal, Sun Oil, ARCO, Ford and GM. All of those companies, of course, have vested interests in fighting off reductions of carbon dioxide emissions.
Craig Goodrich Reply:
September 29th, 2011 at 8:47 pm
@Harryhammer, In fact, there is no credible scientific evidence whatever that secondhand smoke, as clearly opposed to actually smoking, is hazardous to health. The EPA in its famous study did exactly the same cherry-picking and stats-fudging made obvious by the current exposure of climate pscience. Unpleasant and smelly, yes. Disagreeable, yes. Dangerous, no.
And of course there is no actual scientific evidence either for any causal relation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the two-decade temperature rise ’70s to ’90s. All of the evidence, from satellites to deep-diving buoys, indicates that the overwhelming influences have been ocean currents and solar activity.
Likewise, all the evidence indicate that the major oil companies — Shell, Exxon, BP, etc. — have been funding GWH organizations with orders of magnitude more money than skeptical ones, because they hope to profit from “renewable energy” tax subsidies.
Where on earth, Harry, do you find this rubbish, and why on earth would any rational person believe it?
Harryhammer Reply:
October 6th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
@Craig Goodrich,
Craig,
What’s happening now is nothing new.
Here’s the smoking gun:
The New York Times ran an article about the American Petroleum Institute in April of 1998. It outlines a very specific and detailed plan by oil and gas industry representatives to invest millions of dollars in an effort to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol and discredit the scientific consensus opinion that greenhouse gases are causing the planet to warm.
http://www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/ew@shell/API-prop.html
The draft plan, titled “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” concedes that opposition to the protocol is not shared by the public or a vast majority of scientists worldwide. “There has been little, if any, public resistance or pressure applied to Congress to reject the treaty, except by those ‘inside the Beltway’ with vested interests,” it notes.
The New York Times reported that according to the document, a key component of the plan would be to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media, and other key audiences.” To do this, they would “recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry’s views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun’s heat.
You might also want to study the Montreal Protocol.
It is considered the most successful international agreement to date.
September 26th, 2011 | 10:26 am
There is a difference between denying the realities of Nature and policy.
It is a matter of policy and politics what people decide to do about the rationally undeniable fact that man’s usage of fossil fuels has changed the climate at alarming rates.
I do agree though, people most likely will not respond appropriately to combat climate change. Our evolution has favored immediate gratification over long-term planning for abstract, complicated matters which may not affect us directly. Throw in scientific illiteracy coupled to profit incentives and there is little chance.
I feel very sorry for the children of today. They will encounter tremendous challenges in old age. One can envision their incentive to impose euthanasia on the ignorant elders – whom they will not be able to care for.
Pauld Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 2:31 pm
@David, “I do agree though, people most likely will not respond appropriately to combat climate change. Our evolution has favored immediate gratification over long-term planning for abstract, complicated matters which may not affect us directly. Throw in scientific illiteracy coupled to profit incentives and there is little chance. ”
Yes, Yes, it is such a shame that we are not just ruled by the liberal, ivy league- educated elites who have risen above the primative evolutionary limits, the greedy motives and the short-sightedness that plague lesser mortals. Coincidentally, I bet they agree with you.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 28th, 2011 at 10:16 am
@Pauld,
Pauld,
I’m guessing you’d rather be ruled by uneducated oil men from Texas?
September 26th, 2011 | 10:46 am
Rentboy: “How much are you getting paid to repeat this?”
Get a new argument, Rentboy.
September 26th, 2011 | 11:07 am
Commenter “Harryhammer” does a reasonably good job of regurgitating Ross Gelbspan-inspired talking points, but of course is woefully short of evidence to back up those claims. Notice the sheer lack of any links to direct quotes made by skeptics saying 2nd hand smoke isn’t harmful. If those actually existed, Al Gore would have used them long ago to wipe out the credibility of the skeptics.
Also notice the sheer lack of any evidence to prove the otherwise paper-thin (and so far unsupportable) accusation of guilt-by-association with fossil fuel industries. If such an accusation wipes out the credibility of skeptic scientists, then by default it wipes out the credibility of IPCC Vice Chair Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, who was commissioned by Greenpeace to write a paper for them… while he was rising in the ranks of the IPCC, as I detailed here: “Climate Science and Corruption” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/climate_science_and_corruption.html
Will commenter “Harryhammer” tell everyone that the IPCC is corrupt from van Ypersele’s association with the mega-dollar Greenpeace organization? Don’t count on it.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 28th, 2011 at 10:28 am
@Russell C,
Russell,
They are called the Tobacco documents.
The Library contains over 11 million documents produced by major tobacco companies and organizations, many of them internal strategic memoranda made public as a consequence of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
The documents deal with the tobacco industry’s advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities for the last century.
Researchers, journalists, students, and activists interested in tobacco control issues and public health policies use the Library extensively to investigate tobacco industry strategies.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/about.php
Furthermore, it isn’t guilt by association to point out that many of the most vocal global warming deniers have a history of arguing on behalf of industry against science.
September 26th, 2011 | 11:46 am
“It is a matter of policy and politics what people decide to do about the rationally undeniable fact that man’s usage of fossil fuels has changed the climate at alarming rates.”
I agree that it is important to separate policy choices from science in the global warming debate. Even if one accepts the IPCC in whole, it is still very much an open question as to what policy choices are possible and most effective to address the problem posed.
Roger Pielke, Jr., a political scientist and son of a prominent climate scientist, has been making this point repeatedly and, I think, convincingly in his writings. For the most part, Roger Pielke, Jr. is willing to accept the science set forth in the IPCC reports, but argues that the appropriate policy choices are not thereby settled. To his credit, he has written extensively on what polcies he thinks make sense within the realm of what is politically feasible. His proposals, however, are disputed by both sides of the debate and, perhaps most vigorously, by the so-called “mainstream” global warming activists. Bjorn Lomborg has a similar take on the need to separate science from policy.
I disagree that it is a “rationally undeniable fact that man’s usage of fossil fuels has changed the climate at alarming rates.” Although I think that it is well-established that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause some warming, it far from established the extent that the observed warming has been caused by Co2 as opposed to other natural and human forcings, as well the internal variability of the climate system. Separating out the effects of all these contributing causes of global warming is an extraordinarily difficult scientific problem that is far from settled. I think that the evidence to support my last sentence is so strong that it is almost self-evident. As just one example, the recent CERN cloud/cosmic ray experiments open up an entire area of inquiry that has barely been explored.
As yet another example, Roger Pielke, Sr., a widely published climate scientists, agrees that CO2 is an important climate forcing, but argues that there are many other man-made forcings that are as important or nearly as important, that need to be considered in devising policy. He also acknowledges that the the climate system has significant internal variability. He advocates his position with great force and substantial evidence, but he is largely ignored by the IPCC.
I won’t even attempt to speak for Dr. Judith Curry, as I think her position is very nuanced and she speaks well for herself in her own in her extensive writing on these issues. I think, however, it is fair to say that she argues persuasively that is a great deal of uncertainty in the existing attempts to separate out natural climate variability from man-made forcing in determining the cause of the observed warming. I think it is also fair to say that she believes the the debate would be greatly advanced 1) if scientists would openly acknowledge this uncertainty and then work to reduce it; and 2) if policy specialists would address the issue of how current decisions can best be made in light of this existing uncertainty.
From my perspective, the advancement of climate science and the debate about policy has been gravely injured by scientists who want to short-circuit the debate by claiming that the scientific issues are settled and their preferred policy choices are obvious. As Mr. Smith points out, a large portion of the public, whose votes are necessary to move forward, are not buying this position and rightfully so.
Harryhammer Reply:
September 28th, 2011 at 10:36 am
@Pauld,
Pauld,
Lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry decide policy.
You want to pretend that science is important to you when in fact all you really care about is policy.
You can see what a oil and gas lobbyist looks and sounds like here:
http://planetsave.com/2011/02/17/hertsgaard-nails-inhofe-oil-lobbyists-amazing-video-interviews/
Pauld Reply:
September 29th, 2011 at 4:38 am
@Harryhammer, Science and policy are both important in this debate, much like two wings of an airplane are both needed to fly.
In global warming politics, the science is weak and the proposed policies are absurd. As William Mead has noted:
“The green movement’s core tactic is not to “hide the decline” or otherwise to cook the books of science. Its core tactic to cloak a comically absurd, impossibly complex and obviously impractical political program in the authority of science. Let anyone attack the cretinous and rickety construct of policies, trade-offs, offsets and bribes by which the greens plan to govern the world economy in the twenty first century, and they attack you as an anti-science bigot.
To argue with these people about science is to miss the core point. Even if the science is exactly as Mr. Gore claims, his policies are still useless. His advocacy is still a distraction. The movement he heads is still a ship of fools.
It is a waste of time to talk science with Al Gore. It is a waste of time to listen to him at all. That, apparently, is what the world at long last is beginning to understand. The policy makers and the heads of state who only two years ago were ready to follow Gore up the mountain have softly and quietly tuned him out.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/27/the-failure-of-al-gore-part-deux/
Harryhammer Reply:
September 29th, 2011 at 11:35 am
@Pauld,
Pauld,
Your camp wants to “drill baby drill.”
Harryhammer Reply:
September 29th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
@Pauld,
Pauld,
On this issue, there’s nowhere else to go.
Every scientific organization that exists is in agreement.
There’s no “let’s wait and see the other scientific organizations have to say.”
The actual scientists have spoken.
But, you’re a hack.
A hack’s bottom line on any issue is how it might impinge on big industry profits.
I’m betting that you’ll never change your mind on any issue ever.
As far as policy is concerned, your camp wants more of the same.
Your camp doesn’t see greed as much of a problem.
Economically, the United States did very well in the 1950′s.
During Eisenhower’s presidency, the top marginal tax rate – what the richest Americans paid on their top tranche of income – was around 90%.
In the 1960s, under John F. Kennedy, that was lowered to around 70%, but that rate still meant the rich had a limited incentive to be greedy since they wouldn’t get to keep most of their extra money.
All that changed with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and his slashing of the top marginal tax rate by more than half (before it was adjusted upward slightly late in Reagan’s years and then during Bill Clinton’s presidency before being reduced again to 35 percent under George W. Bush).
Various tax loopholes and lower rates for capital gains also have let many of the richest Americans enjoy tax rates about only half of even those lower marginal income tax rates.
In other words, the American tax structure has been turned on its head.
The rich went from paying between 70 and 90 percent on their top income, to now paying 20 percent or less on their income.
How’s it working out?
We were promised that tax breaks for the rich would trickle down and create heaps of jobs.
Where are they?
The conservative economic policies currently in place have created a much bigger incentive to be greedy.
Have you ever played Monopoly?
The rich are running away with the game.
We’ll all be calling it an early night if this continues.
pauld Reply:
September 29th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
@Harryhammer, http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/04/tax-rates-and-share-of-tax-revenues.html
September 26th, 2011 | 8:34 pm
If you have a background in science and you listen to Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, you would immediately be a major skeptic. The man is brilliant and absolutely destroys the AGW hysteria.
September 26th, 2011 | 10:05 pm
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September 28th, 2011 | 10:01 pm
[...] Good grief. If Climate Progress and other GWHs really want to see why their pet issue is sinking like the Titanic, they need only look in the mirror. Here, I hold it up for them. [...]
October 1st, 2011 | 3:22 pm
@Harryhammer,
Harrysackofhammersforbrains, you are posting on the wrong article – this is not a debate on tobacco, this is a debate on the pseudo science behind the cult of AGW.
Harryhammer Reply:
October 3rd, 2011 at 11:21 am
@Physics Grad,
Physics Grad in your dreams,
Here’s what the American Institute of Physics has to say on this issue:
“The Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics has endorsed a position statement on climate change adopted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Council in December 2003.”
Here’s what the American Physical Society (APS) has to say on this issue:
“ Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
Here’s what the Australian Institute of Physics has to say on this issue:
Policy:
The AIP supports a reduction of the green house gas emissions that are leading to increased global temperatures, and encourages research that works towards this goal.”
Reason:
Research in Australia and overseas shows that an increase in global temperature will adversely affect the Earth’s climate patterns. The melting of the polar ice caps, combined with thermal expansion, will lead to rises in sea levels that may impact adversely on our coastal cities. The impact of these changes on biodiversity will fundamentally change the ecology of Earth.
Here’s what the European Physical Society has to say on this issue:
“The emission of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, among which carbon dioxide is the main contributor, has amplified the natural greenhouse effect and led to global warming. The main contribution stems from burning fossil fuels. A further increase will have decisive effects on life on earth. An energy cycle with the lowest possible CO2 emission is called for wherever possible to combat climate change.”
You might want to pretend that you are an architect instead.
October 21st, 2011 | 8:56 pm
[...] Global Warming Hysteria: Skepticism Is Not “Anti-Science” “Skeptics are mere 'deniers,' akin to those who deny the Holocaust!,” they sneer, as if insults persuade and a predicted end-of-the-century future is as certain as the already happened past. And then there's their supposedly great trump card, … Read more on First Things (blog) [...]
October 28th, 2011 | 3:30 pm
@Harryhammer,
Nice example of falacious thinking.
I love your combination of argumentum ad verecundiam and ipse-dixitism with an ad hominem attack thrown in for good measure. It builds on your previous use of the straw man argument and really shows the depth of your cognitive horsepower. Keep up the good work and soon you will have a Nobel peace prize just like your hero Al Gore.
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