२४ फेब्रुवारी, २०१९

"The kids whom Feinstein was talking to are going to be dealing with climate chaos for the rest of their lives.... This means that youth carry the moral authority here..."

"... and, at the very least, should be treated with the solicitousness due a generation that older ones have managed to screw over. Feinstein’s condescension, though it’s less jarring in the video of the full encounter, which also shows gracious moments—including one when she offers a young person an internship—echoed that of Nancy Pelosi, from earlier this month, when the Speaker of the House talked about 'the green dream, or whatever they call it. Nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?'... The irony is that, when Feinstein said she’s been 'doing this for thirty years,' she described the precise time period during which we could have acted... If we’d moved thirty years ago, moderate steps of the kind that Feinstein proposes would have been enough to change our trajectory.... Given the failure of old-style politics on this issue, it is no surprise that youth are taking the initiative. Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest congresswoman in American history. The Green New Deal was hatched by the Sunrise Movement, which is composed of recent college graduates. And they are ancient compared with the sixteen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was in Paris last week to watch thousands of French youths join her in spreading the Friday for Future strikes, in which students skip school to demonstrate for climate action."

From "The Hard Lessons of Dianne Feinstein’s Encounter with the Young Green New Deal Activists" by Bill McKibben (in The New Yorker).

११२ टिप्पण्या:

Paco Wové म्हणाले...

Has anyone arguing the "moral authority" position ever not been a bullying, irrational hysteric?

Limited blogger म्हणाले...

Nancy, Di-Fei, Chuck, Biden and Hillary all facing their mortality.

Expat(ish) म्हणाले...

Has anyone made a list of climate modifiers we were supposed to care about over the last 10 years?

Global warming, climate uncertainty, climate chaos, global variation extremes, ....

I'd be exhausted if it weren't for the popcorn.

-XC

PS - I should note that I was deeply worried about global cooling when I was younger. Not as young as I was when I was assured that the hole in the ozone was going to make me die of cancer. And don't even get me started on the Logans Run issues I had over population growth, food riots, and peak everything!

Jaq म्हणाले...

The climate syllogism:

Hypothesis
????? (waves hands)
Catastrophe! Do something!

Remember that discussion of the evidence is off the table and it's only natural that scientific socialism is the solution to this problem!

North Korea? Climate saints! What we need here is economic collapse!


Sebastian म्हणाले...

Of course, prog arrogance is nothing new. But climate change is their way to assert their moral superiority with new intensity.

Take note, Althouse: they despise you even more than Feinstein and Pelosi--your way of life, your tender sensitivities, your demand for consistency and reasonableness.

Before long, the Feinsteins and Pelosis will be gone, as progs are busy scorching the earth on the left as well as in the culture as a whole.

Henry म्हणाले...

It's all year zero for these people.

Jaq म्हणाले...

It’s vitally important that the Enlightenment be brought to a close, since critical thinking is dangerous to the “consensus.” The real consensus is the same as it always was, that world communism will enable a return to the Garden, an eradication of evil, and eternal happiness. I have a relative who believes this sincerely, BTW.

alanc709 म्हणाले...

Eco-Social Justice Warriors. Just when you thought the balkanization of politics couldn't get anymore extreme.

Laslo Spatula म्हणाले...

"...sixteen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was in Paris last week to watch thousands of French youths join her in spreading the Friday for Future strikes, in which students skip school to demonstrate for climate action."

You mean kids will be 'politically active' if it gets them out of school for a day?

And the day selected is a Friday?

There is nothing new under the sun.

Of which that sun has nothing to do with 'climate change.'

Perhaps they can make it a four-day weekend and have a Monday protest against that racist, patriarchal ball of fire in the sky.

I am Laslo.

Bruce Hayden म्हणाले...

Oh! New term: “climate chaos”. Anthropomorphic global cooling, then global warming, have been essentially falsified. It didnt help that the researchers were hiding their work and got caught changing the underlying data to support their theories. Global climate change is, of course, unfalsifiable, so isn’t really a scientific theory, but rather is merely Gaia worship. So, the new iteration is Climate Chaos, whatever that is, and we are supposed to defer to a bunch of kids, suitably brainwashed by their left wing teachers. Nope. Sorry. Those kids don’t have any claim to moral authority here, since they are merely acting as convenient mouthpieces for the educational system.

Henry म्हणाले...

It's as if nothing ever happened before the present.

daskol म्हणाले...

The interesting part of this issue is the interview with the great VDH. That contains unexpected dialogue. This is standard elitist monologue.

Henry म्हणाले...

Reading McKibben's denialism -- of any constraint in the world to the panic of climate activists -- I conclude that Feinstein was far too kind.

Lucien म्हणाले...

What a brilliant idea! But don’t stop there, extend that thinking to every long-term policy decision: kids will have to live with the consequences longer than adults will, so they have moral authority over all that stuff.

Michael म्हणाले...

Well, it being New Yorker day at Althouse bring on Bill McKibbon to give us a verbal spanking. Jeez, what a tiresome man. And the children will be dealing with a lot more than climate "chaos" especially if the left turn in politics continues. Man made chaos indeed.

Laslo Spatula म्हणाले...

Don't trust anyone over 14.

I am Laslo.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

Kids can be very nice and affectionate individually, but when you get a bunch of them together they're trouble.

Biff म्हणाले...

"If we’d moved thirty years ago, moderate steps of the kind that Feinstein proposes would have been enough to change our trajectory."

Nonsense. "Climate chaos" is far too politically useful. Climate change, regardless of cause or reality, is a spectacularly useful tool for pushing authoritarian social change. For activists, no steps, whether "moderate" or extreme, will be enough.

On another note, were I a painter commissioned to paint a face that lacked any self-doubt, it would be hard to find a model better than "the sixteen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg."

Henry म्हणाले...

"...sixteen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was in Paris last week to watch thousands of French youths join her in spreading the Friday for Future strikes, in which students skip school to demonstrate for climate action."

It's worth remembering that only a few months ago, hundreds-of-thousands of French protesters lit Paris on fire because they wanted cheaper diesel fuel and higher speed limits. Count the votes.

This is why Feinstein's talk of plurality is more meaningful than McKibben's blather of moral authority.

McKibben: Scientists have told us what we must do and by when, and so legislators must do all they can to match those targets.

Leaving aside the utter misrepresentation here (which scientists? which evidence?), this is a totalitarian program.

Jaq म्हणाले...

We evolved to live in small bands with political instincts that work in small bands. Often small bands had charismatic leaders who were like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc... One has to step away from one’s “feelings” to manage a large society and think with one’s rational mind. Many simply refuse to do this and grasp at straws to return to the days of the innocence of mankind.

Aruru washed her hands, she pinched off some clay, and threw it into the wilderness.
In the wildness(?) she created valiant Enkidu,
born of Silence, endowed with strength by Ninurta.
His whole body was shaggy with hair,
he had a full head of hair like a woman,
his locks billowed in profusion like Ashnan.
He knew neither people nor settled living,
but wore a garment like Sumukan."
He ate grasses with the gazelles,
and jostled at the watering hole with the animals;
. - Epic of Gilgamesh

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
[And the LORD God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
- Genesis

Yes, Karl Marx showed us the way back!

daskol म्हणाले...

Contrast the discussion of heroes and heroic qualities in that interview with the puerile notion of moral authority in this piffle.

David Begley म्हणाले...

“Climate chaos for the rest of their lives?” WTF!

McKibben is insane.

Today Ann has marked the bottom of the formerly great New Yorker.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

A mind bimming with inexperience - Lautreamont

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"Well, it being New Yorker day at Althouse..."

LOL. That place is a vortex.

David Begley म्हणाले...

A blizzard yesterday in Omaha. Climate chaos!

chuck म्हणाले...

Bill McKibben is always good for a laugh, it's great to see The New Yorker supplementing their traditional cartoons with some climate humor.

DKWalser म्हणाले...

Moral authority is a meaningless term that carries an enormous weight. We're discussing a very complex subject, one that requires deep scientific and economic tools to properly analyze, and we're supposed to bow to the views of a bunch of kids merely because they have 'moral authority'? How does that moral authority grant them any additional wisdom, knowledge, or insight into the matter? They're not an 'authority' on anything more than what they had for breakfast -- not whether what they had was nutritional or not, but just on what they ate.

They're kids. If they study hard, when they're adults, maybe someday some of them will be authorities on some subject or another. Not today.

Humperdink म्हणाले...

"Kids can be very nice and affectionate individually, but when you get a bunch of them together they're trouble."

Yep, like boxer-mixes, they are pack animals. Add a pack leader and you get a real brouhaha. When target is an 85 year old geezer* senator, she doesn't stand much of a chance.



*Oop, for your reading pleasure.

Leland म्हणाले...

Hence, what is wrong with assuming authority via morality. The argument also furthers my opinion that these believers in climate chaos are a religious cult. They take on faith that it is happening and find morality in sacrificing for it.

Jaq म्हणाले...

"Kids can be very nice and affectionate individually, but when you get a bunch of them together they're trouble.”

"Although we adore them individualeee, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid...” - Mary Poppins

walter म्हणाले...

The road to Climate Stasis is paved with good intentions.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

What a wonderful world it would be if it were ruled by 13 year old girls.

mccullough म्हणाले...

Don’t worry about the climate, kids. It’s the national debt that will kill you.

Phil 314 म्हणाले...

They loved me with Kavanaugh, and now it’s all gone, all forgotten...

Ignorance is Bliss म्हणाले...

...in which students skip school to demonstrate for climate action."

From "The Hard Lessons...


Hey students- you want some hard lessons? Instead of skipping school, why not spend your time studying physics, or chemistry, or some other STEM field, so you can grow up to do something useful about climate change, such as develop nuclear power, or more efficient batteries, etc.

Going out of your way to be uneducated is not going to solve the problems facing your generation.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Lord of the Flies.

David Begley म्हणाले...

One of Trump’s greatest achievements is his exposure of the media as the Fake News and political hacks. MSM has less than zero credibility.

Michael म्हणाले...

Let us make sure that our children grow up fearful and resentful of the adults who are screwing them over. Let us make sure that African American children know they have been dealt a losing hand and will be subject to whitey chaos the rest of their lives. Let the children know that in a decade or so the world as they know it is going to be either chaotic or over.

All this at the point where being alive in America is the luckiest thing that has happened to a population in human history. But instead of gratitude we get Bill McKibbon.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Many authors have indicated an integral link between a person's will to live, personality, and the functions of the prefrontal cortex.[2] This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behavior.[3] The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.[4]. - Wikipedia

Not fully developed until one’s mid twenties, it’s *science*!

Rory म्हणाले...

Henry said: "Leaving aside the utter misrepresentation here (which scientists? which evidence?), this is a totalitarian program."

What will happen is that every powerful position will suddenly morph into science. Keep in mind that Marx thought he had discovered the laws governing history. You could probably get a billion people today to agree with the proposition that Marx was a scientist.

DavidUW म्हणाले...

When clerics of the old religions lose their moral authority, the priests of the new religions assert theirs.

JAORE म्हणाले...

I saw the left grant Cindy Sheehan the ultimate moral authority because she lost a son to war. Other grieving mothers that supported the war? Feh. And when the POTUS was a Democrat? Off you go, Cindy, the ash heap of history is not nearly full.

It's pretty clear how the left determines the real basis for granting moral authority.

Michael The Magnificent म्हणाले...

In Search Of S02E23 The Coming Ice Age

Ralph L म्हणाले...

No complaints about the crushing burden of government debt we're leaving them.

virgil xenophon म्हणाले...

"I TRY to be cynical, but I can't keep up.."

----------Lilly Tomlin, great political philosopher...

hombre म्हणाले...

“Global warming,” “climate change,” now “climate chaos.” Soon McKibben and the other warmist bedwetters will settle on a descriptor that is immune from ready ridicule and debunking.

Meanwhile, God is dropping snow throughout the Arizona desert and we can’t decide whether it’s global warming, climate change or, now, I guess, climate chaos. We do know it’s “snow” and it’s not the first time.

Rumor is they’ve had to start cuddle classes at the universities to calm the students. Donations of puppies, kittens and pacifiers are welcomed.

Roger Sweeny म्हणाले...

Bill McKibben supports the kids because they agree with what he, a 58 year old man, believes.

If a group of young Trump supporters had done the same sort of thing (you must support a wall because it will determine what kind of country we grow up in) and Feinstein had reacted the same way, he would have been lecturing us on how young and stupid they were.

Jaq म्हणाले...

BTW that fact about the late development of the pre-frontal cortex is why Democrats are constantly trying to push the voting age younger and younger.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Soon McKibben and the other warmist bedwetters will settle on a descriptor that is immune from ready ridicule and debunking

If there were such a term, don’t you think they would have busted it out by now?

Michael K म्हणाले...

McKibben is a nut. If we don't start seeing some sun spots soon, next winter is going to be worse and the trend line is down.

hawkeyedjb म्हणाले...

The world has gone insane. Now we are to live according to the dictates of a pack of ignorant teenagers. Has anyone ever read Lord of the Flies?

The development of the modern industrial economy is what allows us to feed and clothe 7 billion people. With the medieval economy favored by the Greens and their child-warriors, only a few hundred million will survive. Is that the real goal?

jimbino म्हणाले...

Top the extent that the taxpayers are burdened by the fight against global chaos, it is the taxpayers who have the moral authority to decide, not the kids, especially since it is they and their progeny who will gain almost all the benefit.

ga6 म्हणाले...

Well, we have gone from Global Cooling (The New Ice Age!), to Global Warming (we are all Frogs In the Kettle) to Climate Change (something bad is going to happen we just don't know what) to Climate Chaos (Mad Max cubed) in my lifetime. Very interesting....

MadisonMan म्हणाले...

I think the general problem here isn't climate -- it's that Senators are so creakily old that they don't understand current problems except through the filter of the Mainstream Press, which gets many many things wrong. Or they are told things by their fawning staff, and then they forget, again because of the challenges of age.

MD Greene म्हणाले...

It snowed in parts of Los Angeles last week. Not much, but still.

It's cheap to use students as shills to push a government agenda, not least one endorsed by a dim bulb like AOC. The teacher should be ashamed.

Feinstein would have been better off responding by asking some questions.

-- How many times have you flown to get somewhere in the last year? Your parents? Your grandparents? Are you all willing to stop taking vacations?

--How many of your relatives drive SUVs? How many bicycle to work? How many go by bus or train?

--How many plastic bags did your family throw out last week? Does your family compost its food waste? How much of your family food is grown at home?

--When you were a baby, did your parents use cloth diapers or disposables? Does your home have LED lights or the old incandescent ones?

In fact, young people care about these matters, and they are eager to do their bit. Encouraging them to think about personal responsibility stirs their idealism and is effective.

Telling them how important you are and that you know better stops working by the time they are 10 or so. I know this for a fact.

SteveR म्हणाले...

We used to call this chaos, the weather.

Charlie Currie म्हणाले...

As I've said before, children are to be seen and not heard.

These kids need to go outside and play. On their own. By their self. Unaccompanied. Free from adult (I use that term loosely) supervision.

All the kids I grew up with were constantly told to get out of the house, go outside and play, and don't come back until you're called...or break something.

Charlie Currie म्हणाले...

Blogger dda6ga dda6ga said...
"Well, we have gone from Global Cooling (The New Ice Age!), to Global Warming (we are all Frogs In the Kettle) to Climate Change (something bad is going to happen we just don't know what) to Climate Chaos (Mad Max cubed) in my lifetime. Very interesting...."

Add to that, the Population Bomb, mass starvation, Peak Oil, California's on again, off again Permanent Draught.

Name one thing predicted by "experts" that has been realized. Ever.

Francisco D म्हणाले...

We had record snowfall this week in Oro Valley, AZ.

The average high temperature in February is normally 70 degrees. This past week we had two days with highs in the mid 30's. We have not seen 70 for quite a while.

Can someone explain how greenhouse gases affect both warming and cooling? Based on my scientific training, a model has to make specific prediction, not just predict that bad things will happen.

Can that person also explain how the US can affect worldwide greenhouse gases (India, China, etc) while it is also reducing its own gases?

JPS म्हणाले...

If I grant McKibben's premise that the youth have more moral authority than middle-aged me, it does not follow that they know better than I do what needs to be done. In fact, if I grant that 97% of climate scientists are right*, it doesn't follow that their policy prescriptions are sound.

One of my best friends is a distinguished scientist and a climate alarmist. If we disagree about how to measure isotope ratios in corals, I readily grant that she is probably right and I am probably wrong, because she does that for a living and I know only what I have (briefly) read.

If we disagree on how much importance to assign to CO2 versus natural variability in recent decades' warming, she's on shakier ground relative to me. She's more immersed in the climate world, but hey: I'm a scientist too, and neither of us is actually expert in attribution. We know what we've read.

And if we disagree on how to address projected warming via public policy, sorry, no! She has no more clue than I have, and certainly no more moral authority by virtue of being Concerned (TM).

(* Skeptics: Don't start in on me. I know all the glorious dimensions of bullshit packed so efficiently into this trope.)

MountainMan म्हणाले...

The only way these kids will experience any "climate chaos' is if they live thousands of years until the beginning of the next "ice age". And even then the change will be so gradual - taking place over several thousand years - that mankind will adapt the way it did through the last ice age, such that no chaos really occurs. Rapid man-caused "climate change" is a complete fiction and is just another manufactured crisis to get the public to buy into more government control of their lives. This is the biggest scientific hoax in the history of the world.

Temujin म्हणाले...

These kids have nothing to worry about. The national debt will collapse their entire system before they see any glaciers melt.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

This is the biggest scientific hoax in the history of the world.
After Genesis and all the Turtles.

Michael K म्हणाले...


The only way these kids will experience any "climate chaos' is if they live thousands of years until the beginning of the next "ice age".


How do you know it's "thousands ?" No sunspots. We might be in the first bye art of a mini-Ice Age, like 1450. That lasted 400 years.

Jupiter म्हणाले...

"If we’d moved thirty years ago, moderate steps of the kind that Feinstein proposes would have been enough to change our trajectory"

What a lying, po-face crap-weasel this McKibbben thing is. He knows perfectly well that thirty years ago, lying po-faced crap-weasels like himself were still trying to destroy Western civilization with the Nuclear Winter hoax.

Pillage Idiot म्हणाले...

The correct response:

The entire workforce of the U.S. will be required to accomplish the goals you have just delivered. Therefore, all of you will be pulled from school beginning tomorrow.

None of you have any technical or engineering skills that would be of use, so you will all immediately begin as an apprentice to a trade person (e.g. electrician) or go to vocational school.

Those who score the lowest on the mandatory technical skills test will immediately be put to work as insulation installers. Your training should be complete by summer of 2019, so you can begin adding insulation to homes in Phoenix when it is 118 degrees. (Of course it will probably be about 140 inside the attics.)

You teachers likewise have zero engineering skills and will no longer have students. However, you do have a driver's license. Your new job will be as a dump truck driver at the big strip mine the U.S. is opening to get the rare-earth minerals we need for the magnets in the windmills.

Thank you all for your service to the country. Unfortunately, we cannot achieve your timeline using only 40 hour work weeks. You will each have to work 10-hour days, for six days a week.

dbp म्हणाले...

McKibben's piece is begging for a good Fisking: Every sentence is either a half-truth, a lie or an assumption.

Jim म्हणाले...

Is there an uglier person in popular life than Bill McKibben?

dbp म्हणाले...

If the US could have magically flipped a switch precisely 30 years ago (not 29 years and 11 months, for that would have been TOO LATE!) and stopped all of our CO2 emissions. Guess what? It would have made no difference at all--All the CO2 from centuries past would still be there and the developing world has replaced our output.

Martin म्हणाले...

"Moral authority" is such an incoherent, garbage concept it is almost indescribable.

If today's youth have "moral authority" because they will bear the consequences of climate change, what about the "moral authority" of an 8-month fetus whose mother contemplates aborting it? Or, for that matter, a child whose parents decide to have another child, thereby diluting the parental attention and family resources that will go to the first one?

I call bullshit on all of this "moral authority" stuff, from McKibben to Parkland HS to every other stupid claim that tries to manipulate my good nature by changing a complicated issue into a simplistic feel-good trope.

Wince म्हणाले...

Feinstein’s condescension... echoed that of Nancy Pelosi, from earlier this month, when the Speaker of the House talked about 'the green dream, or whatever they call it.

Another reason for the condescension and reliance on positional authority is that Feinstein and Pelosi cannot argue the facts, because most of the facts that refute the the "green dream or whatever they call it" (GDWCI) also refute their own, albeit less extreme climate hysteria.

I like the term "Green Wet Dream" (GWD). It has a certain ring to it.

Char Char Binks, Esq. म्हणाले...

Pippi Långstrump will save us.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

Blogger JPS said..."If I grant McKibben's premise that the youth have more moral authority than middle-aged me, it does not follow that they know better than I do what needs to be done. In fact, if I grant that 97% of climate scientists are right*, it doesn't follow that their policy prescriptions are sound."

This.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

DiFi's correct response would have been to tell the little shits to come back and talk to her when they can deliver a few precincts.

LA_Bob म्हणाले...

Crazy Jane (who is not so Crazy) said,"...Feinstein would have been better off responding by asking some questions..."

Excellent approach!

LA_Bob म्हणाले...

JPS said, "(* Skeptics: Don't start in on me. I know all the glorious dimensions of bullshit packed so efficiently into this trope.)"

I am a Proud Climate Denialist. I deny there is any such thing as climate, weather you agree or not!

n.n म्हणाले...

Climate chaos is an admission that we cannot predict the future or know the past with any measure of accuracy outside of a limited frame of reference (i.e. scientific logical domain). Climate chaos is the natural state where temperatures can vary by as much as 40, 50 degrees in a matter of hours and even minutes. That said, inference of a process from a characterization in isolation to liberal proportions is the state of the art in a post-normal, pro-choice world.

papper म्हणाले...

These children speak with the moral authority of the completely ignorant, which is to say they have none whatsoever.

Seeing Red म्हणाले...

Climate Chaos - hysterics.

Hey Skipper म्हणाले...

[Jupiter:] If we’d moved thirty years ago, moderate steps of the kind that Feinstein proposes would have been enough to change our trajectory

1. Climate change projections show the climate change that is now apparently occurring mean that the Southeastern and Midwestern sections of the United States will be subject to frequent episodes of very high temperatures and drought in the next decade and beyond.

2. If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit from the year 2050-2075, according to these projections. This rise in temperature is not expected to be uniform around the globe but to be greater in the higher latitudes, reaching as much as 20 degrees, and lower at the Equator.

3. Sea levels will rise by one to four feet by 2050.

4. At the same time, inland heat will cause inland waters to evaporate more rapidly, thus lowering the level of bodies of water such as the Great Lakes.

5. NASA climate scientists affirm that global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.

I'm quite certain that everyone who isn't a climate denier would find these predictions completely correct, if a bit conservative.

Hey Skipper म्हणाले...

Well, except for one thing.

The predictions and assertion I listed are virtually direct quotations from Global Warming has Begun, Expert Tells Senate.

It was written in 1988.

Precisely nothing it so certainly predicted is even remotely close to being true.

Compare AGW against the null hypothesis, which is this: within conceivable concentrations, CO2 has virtually no effect on climate.

That's the climate denier position.

Which is leagues closer to explaining climate since 1988 than the Climate Catastrophists, including McKibben.

You'd think they'd feel some shame at having got it so wrong.

You'd think.

JPS म्हणाले...

Hey, Skipper,

There are assumptions behind all those projections that are not nearly as ironclad as you take for granted. Plenty of non-“deniers” would acknowledge that, when talking to someone they trust.

JPS म्हणाले...

Hey, Skipper,

Well played! You got me.

Unknown म्हणाले...

Huh, Kids have Moral Authority

Whatever they profess to care about momentarily

is a Moral Issue

Unknown म्हणाले...

Doing nothing is often a fine option

Molly म्हणाले...

Those kids, as a group, will almost certainly have average incomes that are at least 30% higher than those of adults today. But they are insistent on policies that will impose costs on today's (relatively) poor, in order to protect them -- the (relatively) rich -- from bearing costs (higher air conditioning bills, for example). Why this isn't seen as cruel selfishness of the (future) rich.

Hey Skipper म्हणाले...

I neglected to make clear that those model certainties were going to be readily apparent by 2020, roughly thirty years from 1988.

Epic fail. Total epic fail. Failure so complete that the legacies of abject failures bow down in admiration.

Yet the NYT, and McKibben, are dead certain we are on the cuspy tipping point of without drastic action we are all going to die.

Atheists will find their religion.

Mike (MJB Wolf) म्हणाले...

If global warmists could point to one prediction from their models that has been correct over the last thirty years one might be more likely to believe their crisis theatre. The young are always dumb and easily misled.

virgil xenophon म्हणाले...

hawkeyedjb@9:31am/

" With the medieval economy favored by the Greens and their child-warriors, only a few hundred million will survive. Is that the real goal?"


Yes..

Rosalyn C. म्हणाले...

Is global warming/climate change a castastrophe or actually a lucky break? According to some of the references posted by commenters here, Earth has been for the last century on the verge of another periodic ice age (documented by earth scientists studying ice cores and deep sea beds) which would have wiped out humanity for perhaps hundreds of years. Some ice ages occurred in sync with changes in the earth's orbits, other ice ages likely resulted from catastrophic volcanic activity which blocked out the sun. There is nothing that can be done to stop or prevent an ice age. Unintentionally however, modern mankind has discovered how to heat up the planet. Now the problem is how to regulate that heater. Teaching children to be hysterical and angry about the earth "dying" and manipulating them to demand unrealistic and drastic actions? The teachers hardly seem wise and definitely not moral.

Freeman Hunt म्हणाले...

Young people know almost nothing and have no life experience. Anyone encouraging them to be politically active is only doing so as a means to an end. There's nothing noble about it.

Children talking about politics, even the politics one agrees with, is annoying.

n.n म्हणाले...

Chaos implies incompletely, and, in fact, insufficiently characterized, and unwieldy. The models are hypotheses. The super computers run low resolution, low fidelity simulations of the globe, where climate change is observed within a square mile, within a season, a month, a day, an hour. That said, anthropogenic CO2 was chosen as the mechanism for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming based on an inference, because no other explanation was conceivable, and because they want to decarbonize -- a cynic would link this to Pro-Choice -- the economy. Anyway, The Gray New Deal has niche applications, and may be considered in a basket of policies.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

Blogger Molly said..."Those kids, as a group, will almost certainly have average incomes that are at least 30% higher than those of adults today."

Not if they get their way on their pie in the sky plans.

One could call it karma.

narciso म्हणाले...

ah mullah McKibben, of the church of the skydragon, inducing insanity, and making it sound normal,

Charlie Currie म्हणाले...

Bob said...
"Crazy Jane (who is not so Crazy) said,"...Feinstein would
have been better off responding by asking some questions..."

"Excellent approach!"

No. She should have smiled and said: "Aren't you precious. Now go outside and play. The adults (I use that term loosely) have work to do." Then turned around and walked away.

When they get a little older, and after a few drinks in a bar, they'll just call the cops on them.

narciso म्हणाले...

Maoism done right:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/02/the-new-york-times-does-twitter-penance-for-not-fully-embracing-greennewdeal/#comments

rehajm म्हणाले...

I fail to see why children get to be stupid about economics or horrible policy because they have some sort of moral authority based a theory of future climate that may or may not come to fruition.

Adults should know better, too...

SomeoneHasToSayIt म्हणाले...

You can only get the right answers when you ask the right questions.

America was created because our Founding Fathers, instead of asking a question like
"Who should rule?", instead asked something like "How do we structure a government that is least likely to evolve into tyranny and/or bloody revolution?" Very different answers, depending on the question.

Similarly, in the climate debate, the wrong questions are being asked, e.g. "Is man contributing to warming?"

The right questions are: "What should the average temperature of the Earth be, and why?"

Until that is answered to satisfaction, asking other questions that assume or skip those 2 fundamental ones, is foolish, dangerous, and possible evil.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

If the research of Habibullo Abdussamatov and Valentina Zharkova is remotely correct, then we are headed for a sunspot minimum signifying loser solar energy output. In other words, an extended period of global cooling. Their math looks right, what I have seen of it, and if the juxtaposition of the Maunder Minimum with the Little Ice Age of the 18th century is not coincidental, then we are about to spend the next decades freezing our collective asses off — and laughing at the global climate alarmists (when our teeth aren’t chattering).

MountainMan म्हणाले...

Michael K said: "How do you know it's "thousands ?" No sunspots. We might be in the first bye art of a mini-Ice Age, like 1450. That lasted 400 years."

I don't disagree with you and others that we could be entering another Little Ice Age due to solar activity, or lack of it. I was thinking of the Milankovitch cycle and the end of the Holocene and the beginning of the next glaciation, or ice age, when much of the northern hemisphere will be covered in ice up to a depth of a mile more more, as far down in the US as the the Ohio River Valley, for example. The elliptical shape of the earth's orbit around the sun, the tilt of the earth's rotation, and the precession of its axis, according to Milankovitch, makes this somewhat predictable. Toss a few good volcanic eruptions, like Tambora in 1815, into the mix and we could see more "years without a summer" like in the early 19th century. But we are still thousands of years away from the end of the Holocene, since temperature cycles on approximately a 100,000 year period. If the human race still exists at that time it will be interesting how much of the population will survive.

I agree with Bjorn Lomborg that the unproven (and unprovable) assertion of AGW is a major distraction from things we really should be worried about, like an EMP attack or Carrington event - maybe one of the worst things that could happen to us - or a large meteorite striking earth and leading to another great dying off. There are also many other problems in the world today, like lack of clean water and sanitation and the ongoing scourge of malaria, both of which kill many people every year, while the supposed AGW kills no one. Another big improvement would be access to affordable and reliability electricity to the remaining desperately poor, it would alleviate a lot of poverty, but the AGW true believers are not only putting that in jeopardy but putting our own current reliable electric power generation here in the advanced world at risk with the proposed green agenda (e.g., see the recent degradation and increased cost of electricity in Australia - a nightmare). Even if AGW were true - and it isn't - it would not even make my top 20 list of the most important things we could work on to improve life on earth for the greatest number of people.

Elliott A म्हणाले...

@Big Mike--There is a lot of heat from the last 200 years of high solar activity stored in the oceans and it will probably take 50 years until the effects of low solar are noticeable. That being said, CO2 is not the driver of climate, the oceans are. What the CO2 does do is green the planet and cause higher agricultural yields and spread of forested areas into previously barren areas. The climate always changes. The sea level always changes. We just do what we have always done, adapt.

n.n म्हणाले...

"What should the average temperature of the Earth be, and why?"

This is the basis for one aspect of skepticism. First, a global temperature average is not a meaningful statistic. Second, plants and animals thrive in warm, humid environments, with elevated C02, and do adapt in short order to variable conditions. The political debates are not about global warming or even climate change, both are normal conditions, but rather catastrophic, and, in most instances, anthropogenic, effects forced by C02 exclusively, and a minority view of all anthropogenic forcings, of different magnitude and efficacy, notably at local and regional scales.

MountainMan म्हणाले...

"What should the average temperature of the Earth be, and why?"

Along these lines, a commenter on a FB page I follow named Bob Hunt (wish I could remember the page) put forth the following excellent questions:
___

Questions no climate scientist ever attempts to answer:

* What is Earth’s optimum temperature?
* At what location on Earth is this temperature taken? Why?
* How long in Earth’s history has this optimum temperature at this location existed and what are the benefits of it compared to other temperatures?
* If you could return this location to its scientifically determined optimum temperature range, how would you regulate and maintain it?
* What would that effort mean to temperature ranges in other locations around the globe? Would temperatures in these other locations be equally and proportionally regulated?
* Are there natural factors beyond man’s control that make this effort impossible to achieve and maintain? If not, how much would the effort cost to achieve and maintain on an annual and decadal basis? What are your assumptions?
* What are the unintended consequences of attempting to regulate Earth’s temperature? If we do nothing, is life on Earth threatened with near-term extinction? If not, why?
* Are there more important issues that should be addressed with this money?
* If we can successfully regulate Earth’s temperature and we decide to fund the effort, what will we do when men and women begin arguing about turning the temperature up or down?

HT म्हणाले...

Before I responded, I wanted to make sure I read McKibben's piece, as I consider him one of the intellectual godfathers of the modern climate change/environmental movement, which began with his book, The End of Nature (way ahead of its time, in a way). But Feinstein is one of my favorites in the Senate, in either house, in fact.

Here is the 'money' quote IMO:
"If I’m a lawmaker and I think that the minimum wage should be thirty dollars an hour, and you’re one who thinks that eight dollars is generous, we’ll probably try to pass a law that sets the mark somewhere near fifteen dollars, and then argue about it again after the next election. There would be no point in holding out for what I can’t get. But, in the case of the environment, the opponent is not the Chamber of Commerce. The opponent is physics, and physics doesn’t negotiate."

HT म्हणाले...

"He knows perfectly well that thirty years ago, lying po-faced crap-weasels like himself were still trying to destroy Western civilization with the Nuclear Winter hoax. "

Said someone who knows zero about Bill McKibben and the books he's written.

Roger Sweeny म्हणाले...

Similarly, in the climate debate, the wrong questions are being asked, e.g. "Is man contributing to warming?"

The right questions are: "What should the average temperature of the Earth be, and why?"


My first stab at an answer: Since people have built cities, farms, etc. that work with the temperatures of the last 50 years or so, the best temperature for humans is probably something close to the temperature of the last 50 years or so, not a lot more, not a lot less.

Narayanan म्हणाले...

HT said ... The opponent is physics, and physics doesn’t negotiate."

Substitute physicists and data fudge

So which physicist have shown global average temperature is index of anything useful in the discussion?/.

n.n म्हणाले...

The young, naive new deal activists.

Rory म्हणाले...

Roger Sweeney said: "My first stab at an answer: Since people have built cities, farms, etc. that work with the temperatures of the last 50 years or so, the best temperature for humans is probably something close to the temperature of the last 50 years or so, not a lot more, not a lot less."

I think these cities and parts of cities are probably the product of the same technologies that would be restricted by government action. You might want to chose a date when cities were developing more organically.

Kevin म्हणाले...

Sounds like he’s advocating the kids declare a national emergency to go around Feinstein and the Legislative Branch.

Unfortunately those kids will also be living with the effects of unconstrained illegal migration for their whole lives as well, so the same argument backs up Trump’s border emergency.

Hey Skipper म्हणाले...

HT said ... The opponent is physics, and physics doesn’t negotiate."

True. But that statement is painfully simplistic.

No AGW predictions that were supposed to have come to fruition by now, or in the near future, have been remotely close to what has actually happened. Worse, based on actual physics (reality), if one would have to choose between AGW and the null hypothesis — CO2, within conceivable ranges has virtually no effect on climate — the null hypothesis wins hands down.

Remember Hansen's 3 scenarios? CO2 has been largely been following scenario A (unconstrained increase), while temperatures have been following scenario C (CO2 strongly constrained).

Regarding the ideal temperature, the IPCC has as its goal keeping the global average temperature to 1.5ºc above that prevailing at the beginning of the Industrial Age.

Why? How is that knowable? Within what margin of error?

Further, shouldn't the real benchmark be the earth's average temperature *now*, absent human activity? It's almost enough to raise the suspicion Warmenists don't know what the real baseline is.

Nichevo म्हणाले...

DiFi could have said something interesting. She could have said:

--Children, you discordantly howl because you believe that you have been used ill by our way of life. And indeed you have been abused. And betrayed. You were brought to my office in a process of abuse. You were brought to me by your most serious abuser, your teacher.

--Missy, I'm talking. The next time you jump on the end of my sentence I'll have you dragged off to a Turkish jail.

--Children, I say to you that your teacher has abused you, because you appear before me with your skulls full of mush, making demands in a way that I hope you wouldn't behave towards a waiter in a restaurant, and expecting that this is all going to have a good result, the result you want. Any teacher that pits you in this situation has betrayed you. Any teacher who prepares your minds and spirits in such a way that you can be led like this, has abuaed you.

Your teacher is a very wicked person, and we will be looking very closely at her, and at all of you, to see if you are all right or if you have been injured by bad teaching, or in any other way. We have all of your names and addresses. Somebody will be in contact with your parents and employers. Here is another number if you want to tell us more about your teacher.

Thank you for coming! Today will have a good result, just not the one you expected. Bye now!

--Missy, if you weren't a teacher, if you could never be in the presence of children not your own, what else would you do for a career? By any chance, are you able to code? What else? Are you fertile?