freeman3

Ricky talking about lobbyists got to me to thinking about campaign finance reform. So what if for elections for Congress and the presidency we leave existing rules for primaries with the EXCEPTION of having a third-party primary where any third-party candidate vies to be the third-party candidate. Then in the general election we assess the reasonable costs of running a campaign based on number of voters, historical costs of elections in that particular district, etc. Then the Republican, Democratic, and third-party candidate get that amount of public money and no more.
Never going to happen...but what

If candidates running for office could only use a limited amount of money, provided through some kine of public system they would no longer be as responsive to the lobbyists. They would respond to the wishes of the people more closely.

What people generally want is security and opportunity. What the US has failed to provide to the working class and increasingly the middle class are these two things. Security could come in the form of health insurance and more equitable labor laws and consumer regulation.
Opportunity in the form of cheap accessible secondary education, and in the form of equitable labor laws.

What business needs is less complex regulation in a less litigious business environment. Strangely (to Americans) these things are all found in social democracies like Sweden....

Fate

Come now. You can’t even dispute this. It is an article of faith for the left that Mankind is responsible for climate change

It was the French scientist Joseph Fourier who first realized that certain atmospheric gases shrouded the planet like a bell jar, transparent to sunlight, but absorbing to infrared rays. It means the atmosphere is heated from above and below: first, by sunlight as it shines through and second by the infrared the Earth emits as it cools overnight.

It was the Swedish scientist Arrhenius (building on work by American Samuel Langley) who first worked out just how much water and CO2 in the atmosphere warmed the planet. From others' work, he knew that CO2 was only part of the process. While CO2 and other gases trapped infrared radiation and so heated the atmosphere, warmer air holds more water vapour, itself the most potent contributor to the greenhouse effect. So, if atmospheric CO2 levels increased, water vapour would ensure the warming effect was seriously magnified.
As the first to put hard figures on the greenhouse effect, it's unsurprising Arrhenius's estimates weren't spot on. He thought it would take millenia to see a 50% rise in CO2 - but modern measurements show a 30% rise during the 20th century alone. He thought a doubling of CO2 would raise temperatures by 5-6C. Scientists now say 2-3C is more likely.

None of this is "faith".
Not 100 years ago.
Nor last week when it was announced that measurements had shown that the oceans were warmer than ever recorded.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... ceans-spd/

rickyp wrote:Fate

Come now. You can’t even dispute this. It is an article of faith for the left that Mankind is responsible for climate change

It was the French scientist Joseph Fourier who first realized that certain atmospheric gases shrouded the planet like a bell jar, transparent to sunlight, but absorbing to infrared rays. It means the atmosphere is heated from above and below: first, by sunlight as it shines through and second by the infrared the Earth emits as it cools overnight.

It was the Swedish scientist Arrhenius (building on work by American Samuel Langley) who first worked out just how much water and CO2 in the atmosphere warmed the planet. From others' work, he knew that CO2 was only part of the process. While CO2 and other gases trapped infrared radiation and so heated the atmosphere, warmer air holds more water vapour, itself the most potent contributor to the greenhouse effect. So, if atmospheric CO2 levels increased, water vapour would ensure the warming effect was seriously magnified.
As the first to put hard figures on the greenhouse effect, it's unsurprising Arrhenius's estimates weren't spot on. He thought it would take millenia to see a 50% rise in CO2 - but modern measurements show a 30% rise during the 20th century alone. He thought a doubling of CO2 would raise temperatures by 5-6C. Scientists now say 2-3C is more likely.

None of this is "faith".
Not 100 years ago.
Nor last week when it was announced that measurements had shown that the oceans were warmer than ever recorded.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... ceans-spd/

CO2 . . . blah, blah, blah.

Has the Earth ever been warmer than it is now?

Has the Earth ever been cooler than it is now?

Have the global climate "experts" been able to model anything accurately?

Respectively, the answers are "yes," "yes," and "no."

Can the global climate experts definitively say why their models have been wrong?

No.

Do they understand precisely what effect CO2 has?

No.

Does the AGCC hysteria happen to match up with what liberals want anyway?

In a billion-to-one coincidence, yes it does.

Keep up the hype!

Forget what "they" say. Do you really not believe the following things: (1) burning fossils fuels increases CO2 in the atmosphere, (2) that CO2 absorbs heat and remits it, so that some heat is reemitted back towards the Earth, causing the Earth's temperature to rise?Seems pretty reasonable and scientific to me. Those are the basic questions, not modeling or anything else.

freeman3 wrote:Forget what "they" say. Do you really not believe the following things: (1) burning fossils fuels increases CO2 in the atmosphere, (2) Do you really not believe that CO2 absorbs heat and remits it, so that some heat is reemitted back towards the Earth, causing the Earth's temperature to rise?Seems pretty reasonable and scientific to me. Those are the basic questions, not modeling or anything else.

Is the Earth a passive rock, or an eco-system?

freeman3 wrote:Forget what "they" say. Do you really not believe the following things: (1) burning fossils fuels increases CO2 in the atmosphere, (2) Do you really not believe that CO2 absorbs heat and remits it, so that some heat is reemitted back towards the Earth, causing the Earth's temperature to rise?Seems pretty reasonable and scientific to me. Those are the basic questions, not modeling or anything else.

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

CO2 also increases plant life. This is caused by plants needing CO2 and producing Oxygen. (I was teaching that to my 10 year old daughter last week, glad to help)

I think the questions are being bandied about and seldom being answered. So, I answered some.

Now, has there been hotter times in our Earths cycle? How did that happen and how did it stop?

More importantly, did life survive the global warming and cooling? (since so-called experts cannot make up their minds)

Has the Earth ever been warmer than it is now?

Yes. And we know why as well.Primarily more CO2 and methane gases in the atmosphere.

Has the Earth ever been cooler than it is now?

Yes. And we know why as well. There were specific "forcing events". Gigantic volcanic eruptions, massive meteor strikes, an orbital change... All of them changed the atmosphere and its ability to retain heat.

Have the global climate "experts" been able to model anything accurately?

Depends. Which forecast? The earliest forecasts by Arrhenius were not very accurate. Models work by taking in observations (measurements) and recalculating as the observations provide more and better information about the major factors. (Total amounts of gases in the atmosphere, relative amounts of gases, Absorption by the ocean and ground, reflection by clouds, and snow, ice melting, and more....) Models get better and better every day. This, is science. Not faith.
Current accepted forecasts are that a doubling of CO2 from 1890 will raise temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees celsius. And we've increased CO2 levels by 30% (Observable measurement, not faith).

Can the global climate experts definitively say why their models have been wrong?

As they get data, they constantly learn. That's how science works. Which models were "wrong" by the way? There are many...

One simple answer to the question of why there are so many climate models is that science is a global activity. Around the world, there are roughly thirty research groups that have developed their own global circulation models. While the basic structure of these models is comparable, they all differ in their details. The Earth's climate system is incredibly complicated: to begin with models must portray the physical interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, land surfaces, and sea ice with respect to a multitude of processes operating on many different space and time scales. Different models make different choices about which elements of the physics to emphasize, for instance by how finely the vertical structure of the atmosphere is subdivided. Different models also have different portrayals of elements of the climate system that are more challenging to model, such as the treatment of clouds, aerosols, or the carbon cycle

.

Moreover, all climate models incorporate human activity in the form of greenhouse gas emissions. To develop a climate model that extends a century into the future necessarily means projecting economic activity resulting in greenhouse gas emissions into the future as well. Climate modelers cope with the uncertainties of economic projections (what if the world economy collapses?) by adopting a set of standardized greenhouse gas concentration scenarios (now termed Representative Concentration Pathways, or RCPs), and running the climate models across each scenario in turn. More scenarios means more output projections to conside

r.

Do they understand precisely what effect CO2 has

?
Yes. The physical characteristics are well understood. The parts that aren't as well understood have to do with the effect of the oceans. However, increasingly observable data is helping. Since we are predicting 20, 30, 40 years and more into the future... the question is what do YOU (mean by "precision"?
Most of the predictions concerning global warming are being met. If the timeline is off by a few years, in the grand scheme of things, thats reasonably precise. Climate isn't weather...

Fate

Does the AGCC hysteria happen to match up with what liberals want anyway?

If you lived in places already affected by climate change, (Capetown for instance, or the Solomon Islands) maybe you'd be more worried.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-change

But again, none of this is faith. Its science....

Well, once you stipulate to those facts being true...Then human activity (by burning fuels) have caused the Earth to warm up. What other questions do you need answered? As for other time periods the Earth is hotter than it has been for 400,000 years which is longer than Homo sapiens has been around. So is it just coincidence that all of a sudden the Earth would start to warm up when we are burning up a lot of fossil fuels since 1950?
https://climate.nasa.gov/system/resourc ... -768px.jpg

Now, Brad, there have been higher CO2 levels in the past and higher temperatures. There were different causal factors for those things, however. (Whether sun activity or changes in the Earth's orbit). So what other causal factor could you point to now that is causing the increase in the temperature? What has changed since 1950 other than humans burning a lot of fossil fuels?

We have a reasonable scientific explanation for why the Earth is warming up--the burning of fossil fuels (60 percent of which stays in the atmosphere). We have no other explanation that would support another theory. Therefore, global warming is being caused by human activity. Now, is it possible that the Earth is warming up for reasons unrelated to burning of fossil fuels that we don't understand?Sure, it's possible; science is not perfect. But global temperatures rising due to burning of fossils is the only scientifically supportable explanation as to why global temperatures are rising at present. That's what science is all about. If there is a different scientific explanation I would like to see it. People that deny Global Warming are basically left with the contention that the Earth is a very complex eco-system and therefore something else may be going on. Ok...are we supposed to base decisions on what we are doing with regard to temperatures rising based on that...or what the only reasonable scientific theory is?

bbauska

More importantly, did life survive the global warming and cooling?

Some life did. Not all.. Sometimes it was just weedy vegetation that survived...
There have been 6 major extinction events , and many other smaller events. Some were caused by Climate change. especially the Quatanary extinction event.
We're going through one right now. Its called the Holocene extinction. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates. And the cause is human activity.

The problem with a changing climate is that species can't adapt to it quickly. If a climate warms a species must either migrate towards a pole, or up in elevation. The speed with which migration can occur is often less than the speed that the effects of climate change occur. (drought for instance). We're already seeing migration of species into new northern ranges. Unfortunately the flora in the new region isn't always capable of supporting the fauna, and the southerly flora can take longer to migrate...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

rickyp wrote:Fate

Does the AGCC hysteria happen to match up with what liberals want anyway?

If you lived in places already affected by climate change, (Capetown for instance, or the Solomon Islands) maybe you'd be more worried.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-change

But again, none of this is faith. Its science....

Oh, but it is "science" of a most fundamentalist variety. "Heretics" and "infidels" will be mocked, scorned, punished, and shunned.

Most of what you "know" is supposition. All the nonsense about meteors and other catastrophic events, even the dating of supposed events, is guesswork. You call it "science."

Okay. Feel free. But, stop persecuting unbelievers.

I don't think it's about polar bears or other species that can or cannot migrate in time. Different species will thrive in different climates. The Earth will be teeming with life under all of the modeled scenarios. Is anyone predicting Venus?

What it's really about is how many people live on the coasts and what will happen to them ...

freeman3 wrote:Several points: (1) Danivon's list was based on his observations whereas your list was from some anti-tax entity that has every motivation to scour the country for every possible corporation that purportedly did something for employees as a result of the tax reform,

Danivon's list was Kimberly Clark and Walmart. What I'm saying is that you start with a cognitive bias that accepted Danivon's list -- which presumably was something he read somewhere -- but rejected mine. In other words his list became "his observations" whereas my list became "some anti-tax-entity" motivated to "scour" ... "every possible corporation that purportedly"... You don't see your approach as biased?

(2) I actually did not even quibble with the 273 figure, (3) Did I do anything unfair in analyzing the information?, (4) and are we not allowed to use our brains in analyzing it?.

Of course, just accept that you come to the issue with certain biases, like every other human on the planet.

Ricky:

I don't disagree with you about the nature of American regulation RAYJAY. Its generally looked upon as positively abusive by foreign businesses trying to do business in the US. And I do think the notion of ending two regulation for everyone written, is a simplistic, but perhaps useful policy. I believe it was conducted in the UK for a number of years.
I agree with you that regulation in the US is too complex

.

It's good to agree. The reality is that some regulation is good, and some regulation is bad. Trump has gotten rid of some bad regulation, and it has helped our economy. For example, regulators had put Met Life on the too big to fail list. It was challenged and they lost in court. Then they wanted to appeal. Trump stopped this nonsense. Met Life is not the same as Lehman Brothers once was.

The CFPB was prohibited from regulating auto finance. This was the Dodd Frank law that you talk so highly about. The CFPB decided to go after the $900 billion auto loan industry anyway by going after the banks that do some of the loans. This had nothing to do with protecting the economy. Congress couldn't stop them.

You've got to understand that real people and real businesses suffer when regulators go after them. Often the regulators lose in court, but it is too late for the businesses that are crushed.

CFPB was thriving under Obama, and it has now been curtailed.

Ricky:

So, the fact that for the first time in 20 years, incremental gains are being made - in part because of the new tax law (but mostly because of market conditions), its a big so what?

Those crumbs are people's livelihoods. They are the reason that in spite of Trump being the biggest a$$hole President ever, he will have a 2nd term ...

I plead guilty to being biased. And obviously this predisposed me to look for arguments that undercut the underlying (implied) argument of your post which is that tax reform has had positive benefits for workers. And of course with the internet each side has sources it can cite to in support of its position. And it can get kind of annoying if the other side just immediately rejects a post.

But one cannot expect people on the other side to be impartial. But you can expect people to fight fairly. Don't misrepresent the other side's position, don't put as the other side's position strawmen that you know don't exist, don't take things out of context, try to use sources that have some basis for being trusted, etc. In other words, argue in good faith. When people argue in good faith against my position, when they make good arguments...that will tend to make me refine my position. You cannot expect people to change fundamental beliefs, but some reevaluation is in order if you realize that the other side has a good argument on a particular point. When intelligent people argue in good faith from different points of view..that's apt to lead to a more nuanced understanding of the issue for all concerned. That's a good thing, no?