August 25, 2019

"Seems like this advice, which will provide essentially no meaningful benefits to the world, is designed to achieve an exquisite balance..."

"... keep travelling but feel more virtuous by tweaking your usual routines with tiny sacrifices, while retaining some of the guilt and shame that appears necessary to be a genuine 'woke' person."

That's the top-rated comment on "How Guilty Should You Feel About Your Vacation?/And what can you do about it?" by Seth Kugel (in the NYT).

First, I highly recommend clicking through so you can see the fantastic illustration by Tim Enthoven (I see I recommended him before, here).

Now, to the text. Kugel is a travel writer. And the NYT makes money selling travel to its readers. The problem of air travel and carbon emissions is a huge conflict of interest for them, and it's painful or humorous to watch them try to writhe into a nonridiculous position.
So, O.K. How bad should we really feel? Well, first of all, no self-flagellation required for that week in Italy. It is true that your round-trip flight is probably the biggest single contributor to your carbon footprint this year (unless you moved from a studio apartment to a mansion or quit your job for the Nature Conservancy to become a coal lobbyist). But shame is the wrong emotion....
Why is shame the "wrong" emotion? And why does the text switch from "guilt" to "shame"? I thought the distinction was important! It's not even discussed. And the text goes on to suggest that the reason "shame" is "wrong" is because shaming isn't an effective way to get people to change what they are doing. It's not? Why not? Is that scientifically proven fact? You know, where you have the problem of people not wanting to believe the science about climate change, you ought to adhere closely to science, and yet you have nothing scientific about shaming (or guilt, which you unscientifically merge)!

It seems to me that shaming is often quite effective.
I was just talking about litter: When I was growing up in the 1950s in Delaware, the roadsides were full of trash that people routinely threw out the car window. But there was a big public campaign to make us all feel bad about it, and the practice — except for a few outliers — ended. It totally worked. Don't just say shaming doesn't work. I can think of other examples of effective shaming I've seen in my lifetime. People didn't use to pick up dog poop. People used to openly ridicule transgenders. Sexually harassing a woman in the office was a peccadillo. Ethnic slurs were part of the rough and tumble of social life.

Shame sure as hell worked. If you wanted to drastically cut down air travel — and why wouldn't you want to do that if you believe what you've been told about global warming and carbon dioxide? — you could do it with clear, stern shaming. You've got people flying all over the place in huge numbers — numbers that are predicted to "double in the next 2 decades" — and they're doing it in large part because the media barrage them with the idea that this is the good life, this is what impressive, successful people do, this is the way to fulfillment and happiness and even a higher consciousness and empathy with the real lives of the less fortunate peoples of the world.

Withdraw that support and replace it with the advice that you should not travel, that it wreaks depredation on the climate, that it is not even the tenth best way to gain understanding of other cultures.

You could do that so easily, New York Times. You are choosing not to. Shame on you.

Back to the Seth Kugel drivel:
[S]tart by cutting back on your overall travel mileage. Do you really need to take that many trips a year? There are platitudes aplenty about travel — it inspires, it educates, it reduces bigotry. But not all trips meet those standards: Consider an educational exchange program in Vietnam compared to a week at a resort in the Maldives.
An educational exchange program in Vietnam....? I agree that it's idiotic to fly from America to a beach resort on the other side of the globe, but Kugel is bringing it up to create a bigger contrast with his other option, which has Americans traveling almost to the other side of the globe and getting some absolution by making it "educational." You could travel by foot around your own town, maybe visit the parts with a high concentration of immigrants, and try to talk to people and form some kind of relationship, and stop by the library and get some geography and history books to read. That would be educational.
... So I recommend setting a high bar for your travel, making sure any trip maximizes your connection with the place you’re visiting, whether that be through volunteer activity, seeking out a particularly responsible tour operator or traveling where you have friends who can help you live truly local.
No, you know where you can "live truly local"? At home.

Kugel also presents the idea of flying to a distant foreign place and, once there, using trains to get from city to city. So you get a round-trip ticket to, say, Paris, but then you use trains to get to other European cities, and you can feel good about yourself because the alternative of flying as you hop around in Europe is worse.
When you do fly, pay a little extra to make it cleaner. Favor airlines that are taking their carbon footprint seriously....
Something I don't take seriously: airlines taking their carbon footprint seriously. Flying burns a massive amount of fossil fuel. The rest is propaganda. The NYT is telling us to take propaganda seriously. (And I know some of you think the NYT is nothing but a big propaganda operation.)

After a few more tips — including buy carbon offsets — Kugel ends with this mind-bogglingly elitist paragraph:
Most of this will make travel more expensive — and that may mean traveling even less. Think of it as a progressive tax paid by those lucky enough to travel for damaging the world those who can’t travel must live in. It is a small price to pay. And maybe it will make you feel a little less shame.
No! You should feel MORE shame for even thinking like that. Kugel is saying that the people with the money to pay more will pay more and should feel lucky and less ashamed for "for damaging the world those who can’t travel must live in." But refraining from doing what you can do is a core component of morality! To travel is to choose to cause damage. Kugel is just desperately trying to scare up every argument for continuing to travel by air.... other than relinquishing the idea that carbon emissions are destroying the world's climate.

This is a terrible, execrable column. But do go over there and stare at the Tim Enthoven illustration. It makes the strong argument Kugel won't.

117 comments:

rhhardin said...

Put the travail back in travel.

Michael K said...

Better to fly to Vietnam so you can visit the patriotic museum of the war in Hanoi and grovel suitably.

Wilbur said...

Wilbur has step in-laws in their 70s who are serious Progressive, Trump-hating lefties, who preach about global warming, inter alia. Do you think they would consider not taking their world cruises several times a year?

Perhaps I'll ask them when I have to see them at Thanksgiving. Hey, maybe I wouldn't have to see them any more.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

(unless you moved from a studio apartment to a mansion

or already have a mansion, and bought another on Martha's Vineyard

it is impossible to be today's liberal and non-hypocritical

stevew said...

Count me in on humorous.

How long until these folks with wanderlust join the camp of Climate Change Deniers? If they continue to travel they are in effect denying the idea of AGW, so why not go all the way.

I travel by air almost weekly for work, one to eight thousand miles per week. I'm headed to Italy in a couple weeks for a couple of weeks, need to do the math but guessing my net carbon footprint from traveling for pleasure and not for work will be unchanged.

Sella Turcica said...

Reminds me of religious leaders who live in palaces or mansions with their mistresses or concubines or whatever when they’re not preaching poverty and chastity.

David Begley said...

Michael Mann’s hockey stick is fake per Canadian courts. The global warming scam is coming apart. Barack knew all along.

Birkel said...

Harvard guy.
Pull up that drawbridge behind yourself.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Kind of like Thom Friedman buying carbon offsets when he built his 14,000 square foot mansion. Also, after grubbing the lot and building the house, he lined the driveway with trees.

Ryan said...

Cant see the illustration for more than 1 second. I dont subscribe (and never will).

Sebastian said...

"Consider an educational exchange program in Vietnam compared to a week at a resort in the Maldives."

Sure, if you want to sink the Maldives quicker than global warming.

Sebastian said...

"Why is shame the "wrong" emotion?"

1. Shame is superficial: you do the right think because others might disapprove; guilt is internally driven, showing that you have Principles.

2. Drawing attention to prog shaming draws attention to prog shaming: it exposes the coercive nature of their pseudo-community that tries to make everyone fall in line, like it or not.

Rory said...

"Consider an educational exchange program in Vietnam"

Or just drive 50 miles and learn about people in your own state.

mesquito said...

I’m bound by my job and family obligations to spend nearly all my time within a 2-mile absurdly rural radius. I amuse myself by planning my next vacation. The health of the Planet does not figure into my plans. And an exchange program in Vietnam just sounds pathetic.

gilbar said...

You could travel by foot around your own town, maybe visit the parts with a high concentration of immigrants

a Good point! If you're SERIOUS about reducing your carbon footprint; instead of flying to Southeast Asia for your learning experience, try the strip club down the street. No need to fly halfway around the world for an encounter with a Laotian she-male... Most cities have this now!

Bill Peschel said...

No wonder liberals are displaying signs of mental illness. The cognitive dissonance is figuratively tearing them apart inside.

Remember when we used to laugh at neurotic New Yorkers? In the '70s, there was a Burt Reynolds movie (with Jill Clayburgh I think), and he falls to the street with a panic attack. And Jill shouts, "Does anyone have a Valium?" and gets a dozen offers in return?

For the last couple of decades, these neurotics have been in charge, and they've turned their cities into feces-strewn cesspits. They've kept the poor and minorities from advancing and hollowed out the manufacturing sector. They've instituted speech codes and turning social media into weapons of mass-suppression of anything other than the narrative.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost. They're seeing open opposition to their cockamamie ideas, and seeing scientific evidence that contradicts their beliefs. They may even have some glimmer of an idea that the powerful are pushing policies designed to keep everyone but them from enjoying the perks of wealth (else, we'd be seeing a push to ban private jets, which would reduce CO2 emissions and affect only .00001% of passengers).

gilbar said...

Seriously, tell me Again; WHY are you going to Southeast Asia for "educational exchange program "?

Robert Cook said...

Blogger Ryan said...
“Can’t see the illustration for more than 1 second. I dont subscribe (and never will).”


Fight the power, virtue-signaling brother!

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

they are painting themselves into a corner,
and tying themselves in knots as they do so.
Today's liberal tenets are unsustainable--
the earnest(?) ones will squeeze themselves until they have a crisis

Their charlatan betters will always cheat the system.

gspencer said...

"... keep travelling but feel more virtuous by tweaking your usual routines with tiny sacrifices, while retaining some of the guilt and shame that appears necessary to be a genuine 'woke' person."

That's the top-rated comment.

Sounds like something from girlie-man Rick Steves.

Ice Nine said...

I'll stop traveling by air along about the time Jose stops cutting down an acre a day of rain forest to cook his beans, and when Chang stops filling the ocean with his plastic waste. And I certainly won't *begin* feeling guilty about it until then.

Birkel said...

Robert Cook signals his disagreement by calling names he thinks are clever.
Leftist Collectivists are not deep thinkers.

Birkel said...

Ice Nine,
The Left produces enough shame for the country.
I see no need to contribute to the oversupply.
:-)

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

I highly recommend clicking through so you can see the fantastic illustration

the dude in the picture is wearing shorts-- is that part of the shame?

Enlighten-NewJersey said...

What’s the climate goal? What’s the optimum temperature for the earth? When did this best temperature or best climate last occur and how long did it last? Who decided and how was it decided that today’s climate or one that’s warmer wouldn’t be the best ever?

John Borell said...

Luckily, I’m of the right, so I feel neither shame nor guilt about traveling.

whitney said...

The writer thinks shame isn't an effective way to moderate people's behavior? These people are completely out of touch with reality. Even weirder, probably their own reality. The left keeps people in line with shame

Anthony said...

Shame away!

Then it will be way less crowded for me to fly every-frickin'-where.

Fernandinande said...

When I was growing up in the 1950s in Delaware the roadsides were full of trash that people routinely threw out the car window. But there was a big public campaign to make us all feel bad about it, and the practice — except for a few outliers — ended. It totally worked.

20-some years later, the state of Delaware said it totally didn't work:

WHEREAS, the increasing amounts of refuse of all kinds that are thrown onto Delaware highways and beaches and the public property of the state and the private property of its citizens are a nuisance which must be controlled by law; and

WHEREAS, such litter is not only unsightly but is also a source of injury to citizens of the state and to visitors; and

WHEREAS, it has been estimated that clearing such litter costs the state at least $500,000 a year; and

WHEREAS, the citizens of Delaware have the right to believe that their roads and highways as well as their property shall remain clear of litter.

NOW, THEREFORE:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Delaware (two-thirds of all members elected to each House thereof concurring therein):

Section 1. Amend Title 16 of the Delaware Code by adding a new act to be known as Act 16, which new Act shall read as follows:

"ACT 16. LITTER CONTROL LAW

...(Approved July 22, 1976)...

Shouting Thomas said...

We can hardly wait for a real, functional, convincing Holodeck with no gloves or goggles.

Daniel Jackson said...

Ah the guilt of the World Traveler. Let's say the WT flies to India to take an educational month of study at an Ashram in Simla to study yoga and eat a healthy diet. The WT wanders by foot through the local markets buying goods and services spreading their rupees widely.

They offset their Shame/Guilt of bumping their carbon impact with the joy that comes of having (in local terms) the disposable income of a Raja garnering the awe and respect of a sea of truly poor inhabitants who scramble of one or two paisa tossed in a beggars bowl or the tip at a ridiculously cheap full course Raja meal.

Bullshit.

Stay home.

JackWayne said...

I believe that shame had some portion in the reduction of litter. I also believe that appeals to better manners had more to do with it. In Texas the slogan is “Don’t mess with Texas”. It’s funny and sends a positive message. The people in Texas have mostly responded well to this nudge. A shame slogan would have been entirely different.

bagoh20 said...

Oh they know perfectly well about shame, and it's effectiveness. It's what their policy, writing, and criticism of others is trying to do 24/7. They just hate when they feel it themselves. If given a choice between discourse and shaming, I see mostly shaming from these people. In fact, discourse is almost always banned and replaced with attempts at shaming.

jimbino said...

Those of us who have resisted the urge to breed need have no shame compared to the breeders, whose profligate actions effectively double their load on the planet for every two kids they have.

Michael K said...

Thank God jimbino refuses to breed. Too many idiots around.

Robert Marshall said...

To see the illustration by Tim Enthoven without a subscription to NYT, do a Google image search for "Tim Enthoven NYT how guilty", and it should turn up in first position.

Danno said...

Jimbino finds math is hard. If you and your spouse (presumably wife) have two kids, you are at just replacement level assuming no premature or accidental deaths with your children.

Robert Cook said...

”What’s the climate goal? What’s the optimum temperature for the earth? When did this best temperature or best climate last occur and how long did it last? Who decided and how was it decided that today’s climate or one that’s warmer wouldn’t be the best ever?”

Are you really this obtuse, or do you think you’re making a clever remark that a hundred others haven’t already made?

There is no optimum temperature for the earth. There are optimal temperature ranges for the varieties of flora and fauna currently residing on the earth. As climate changes, many extant life forms die and others appear. If the climate changes as most climate scientists predict, it will wreak great havoc on human society (and on many other extant life forms).

However, whether our society collapses and we die out or not is of concern only to us; neither the earth nor the universe will notice or care. The earth will remain and other life forms will follow us as we followed the dinosaurs.

Danno said...

That is unless you have successfully mastered asexual reproduction.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Shame doesn't keep the able-bodied from parking in handicap spaces, if they're shameless.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Shame doesn’t work if the shamed is not in thrall to the shamer.

I care about what my church, friends, and family have to say about my choices and I am susceptible to being shamed by those, and only those, actors. Like I give a shit what anyone else thinks. I’m just as indifferent to NYT preaching about travel as enthusiastic fornicators are to my church’s preaching about sexual morality.

bagoh20 said...

I go from one YouTube genre to another, usually wearing each one out sequentially, and moving on. Lately, I'm into the American nomad movement. These are people who live entirely in vehicles moving from campsite to campsite around the country. It's a surprisingly diverse group, although almost all Caucasian from what I see so far. Young, old, singles and couples. The younger ones rely on digital/online work and the older ones use that and retirement payments for income. Most live on less than $1000 per month and often far less.

I was really surprised by the number of solo females who have chosen this, both young and old. Women who just walk away from the security of a home to live alone on the road in vans or motor homes they have built into functional, very efficient mobile lifestyles. No men, no ties, no schedule, no worries. They seem to love it, and I'm both impressed and envious. I have a huge home, with lots of dependents and grinding voluntary responsibilities, and I really want to try this lifestyle myself. I've always been a loner, and it really calls me. I'm pretty well off financially, but it's been a long time since I had the kind of bliss these people seem to have every day. I really miss having few responsibility. I think I will start working toward this goal for myself. I want to be a nomad!

Just one example of many: https://youtu.be/_f6Y--D_1pc

Jim at said...

If the climate changes as most climate scientists predict, it will wreak great havoc on human society (and on many other extant life forms).

For one, you have no way of knowing that. It's just more alarmist crap.

The Earth's climate has been changing for 4.6 billion years. How will we know if we've 'defeated' climate change?

See, the point being made wasn't snark. It was illustrating this climate change bullshit is just that. Bullshit.

It's simply another tool by the left to exert control. Well, fuck that.

Robert Cook said...

”The years rolled by; the Earth lived on, even when a stricken and haunted mankind crept through the glorious ruins of an immense past.”
—Cordwainer Smith

RK said...

Yes, I’ve long known that jet fuel emits a ghastly amount of greenhouse gases, but I pinned that on the fossil fuel and aviation industries.",

Yes, if it wasn't for the fossil fuels and aviation industries, air travel would be much more environmentally friendly.

Yancey Ward said...

Not all hypocrites are self aware. In fact, probably most aren't.

jaydub said...

AGW is a Marxist power play that uses ignorance and faux science to intimidate sheep into surrendering their standards of living, their wealth and their fundamental freedoms on the altar of the all powerful state. There is nothing virtuous about a sheep. Those of you who cannot or will not or dare not travel may condemn yourselves to live your entire lives within ten miles of some Midwestern backwater, but that does not mean that everyone must. Like many, I've traveled the world and I've visited, lived and/or worked in more than five dozen countries, two dozen of them in just the past five years, and I'm not done yet. If you think you can understand a different culture and its people by walking down the street and talking to a few foreigners who happened to immigrate to the same backwater, then you know nothing of the world, its subtleties or its richness. An immigrant in your town is living in your culture, not his own, and he does not act or think like he does in his native environs. Moreover, too many people equate traveling to tourism because most who do neither cannot understand the difference between the two - you need to not only see somewhere to understand it, but to hear it and smell it and taste it, too. I feel pity for those who are intimidated and cowed by petty tyrants who spout unsubstantiated climate alarmism, but if self flagellation and hair shirts make you feel better, go for it. Just don't expect aves because of it.

Robert Cook said...

Jim at, you really are obtuse. There is no “defeating” climate change, there is only adapting to it as best possible or dying out. There is also trying to mitigate the speed of climate change by altering, such as is possible, the natural and unnatural conditions that tend toward the acceleration of the climate change that is always occurring. Climate change is a product of conditions on the earth, natural and unnatural. Humankind exerts tremendous influence on the earth’s climate conditions, as do all other life forms (including non-animal life forms).

Tank said...

There has been no warming at all in the US since 2005. Carry on.

Arashi said...

Come October, I shall journey to Austria via a big honking jet to partake of a 12 day motorcycle tour of various passes in the alps. I shall not feel guilty, nor shame, just joy at being able, at my own expense, to tour some of the great motorcycle roads in Europe.

For the entire trip, somewhere a person or persons who truly beleive in CAGW will be having horrible headaches, and they won't know why. More joy.

bagoh20 said...

" If the climate changes as most climate scientists predict,..."

They have been mostly wrong, often by orders of magnitude, so now what, flip a coin?

If they are wrong and CO2 is not the culprit, and much evidence does support that, then the temperature might not warm significantly, go lower, or rise regardless of our CO2 mitigation efforts.

It seems pretty foolish to me to pick a strategy that:
1) can only effect one possibility if at all,
2) is enormously expensive and likely to cause great political and economic upheaval,
3) is highly unlikely to be successfully implemented in time.

I think it's wisest to be realistic, flexible, and do as little harm as possible until we learn more. This would involve: 1) continuing to develop alternative energy sources, which is actually doable, and which we will do regardless, 2) begin to adapt our infrastructure to address more than just one possibility, 3) relax and stop scaring people for no reason and using that fear for political purposes, which will lead to dumb policy, wasted lives, and lost opportunity.

bagoh20 said...

From Tank's link:

"The lack of warming in the United States during the past 14 years is not too different from satellite-measured global trends. Globally, satellite instruments report temperatures have risen merely 0.15 degrees Celsius since 2005, which is less than half the pace predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate models."

Despite the lack of actual warming, we read and hear every hour of every singe day how that nonexistent warming is the cause of just about everything that happens from weather to social phenomenon. Some people are clearly lying, and some people are being fooled badly.

Birkel said...

Michael Mann is paying the lawyers of a man he sued rather than admit the scam of AGW.

Let's just all admit that changing the minds of the willfully ignorant- like Robert Cook - is impossible. Hell, if millions of lost dollars won't push a hoax "scientist" to admit his fraud, what makes anybody think anybody else will?

Drago said...

jimbino: "Those of us who have resisted the urge to breed...."

LOL

Sure jimbino. You "chose" not to breed.

Uh huh.

Wink wink

bagoh20 said...

Yea, the Michael Mann case is pretty damning to whole alarmist argument. They refuse to show their work, they don't reduce their own excessive carbon footprints, and they try to ban, shut up or punish anyone who disagrees, and yet this is the most important issue in history. It can't be that important if you won't show your work, and refuse to do your part unless you get paid.

M Jordan said...

Wow! Althouse is en fuego. Seriously, the best post I’ve read here. I even read it aloud to my wife, a first.

Robert Cook said...

AGW is a Marxist power play....”

Such comments are the sure sign of fanatics, duped, and nitwits. There is no “Marxism” guiding any institutions or parties that are warning of AGW.

Bill Peschel said...

"Yea, the Michael Mann case is pretty damning to whole alarmist argument. "

But ... but ... it's SCIENCE! Bill Nye says so.

bagoh20, I too would like to try the solo trip. I had planned one after my divorce 25 years ago. Just a car trip through the South: Nashville, Memphis, down the Miss to NO, Atlanta. Then I met the woman who became my wife, then children, then you know.

So go for it. Even if you can get away for a week. And good luck.

Birkel said...

Yes, Robert Cook, that was precisely what I meant by willfully ignorant.
Thanks for the timely example.

JPS said...

Aviation accounts for under 3% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, according to the EPA. That is of course still a very large quantity of CO2.

With all the headlines about commercial aviation and CO2, the recommendations to fly less, the sale and purchase of indulgences (sorry - carbon offsets; I keep making that mistake), and the accurate accusations of hypocrisy on the part of jet-set climate alarmists, I might have guessed it was a more consequential fraction.

Arashi said...

So Al Gore is motivated by altruism? Lord love a duck but you are just so willfully ignorant. The man has a carbon footprint the size of a small third world nation, and he, the godfather of AGW, is being truthful and not guided by personal greed and hatred for the rest of us?

Dang - I got this really nice bridge for sale. It even comes with indulgences from the gorical to offset its carbon foot print. Just send small, non-sequential unmarked bills in a plain brown envelope, no return adddress please. I'll get the deed to you right away.

pious agnostic said...

I don't understand how making a trip "educational" in any way offsets the carbon cost shame.

"Education" is entirely experiential, as are all the other things that are suggested. For example, you could fly to some impoverished country and spend your whole time pulling people from burning buildings, and it would certainly improve everyone's experience of life, but how does that reduce anyone's carbon cost? People who would otherwise have died will now be alive and contributing to the world's accumulated carbon crisis. You'd actually be hurting the environment by saving people's lives.

Perhaps, instead, if you traveled the world murdering people who would otherwise live to ripe old carbon-scattering age. But certainly, it would be much, much, better to stay at home and simply hire locally-sourced people to carry out your carbon-reduction schemes while you stay virtuously at home in your yurt.

Even if you can convince yourself that the experiential benefit of travel is so enriching as to justify the horrifying cost to the climate, you will be dead in what, a few dozen years? Then what, the carbon of your body becomes sequestered (hopefully!) in the ground and all your memories and experiences are simply gone, gone, like tears in the rain.

Of course, it's possible that some of these totally serious science believers have some sort of idea that they will carry their memories and experiences into some sort of fairy-tale afterlife.

It really must be very, very, difficult to believe in something like CAGW that requires, if you truly take it seriously, you to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible and yourself last.

Arashi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
whitney said...

You know I just realized what this is all about. It's about finding a way to excuse all the elites running around in private jets who continually tell us plebs how to reduce our carbon footprint. Sycophant

Arashi said...

If you really beleive in CAGW and want to do something about it, plant trees. Lots and lots of tress. It actually does not matter where you plant them, just plant them. They sequester a lot of carbon and provide shade, soil retention, food, and other good things for people and other living things.

You can even shout at the sky while doing that if it helps asuage your guilt.

jaydub said...

Cook: There is no “Marxism” guiding any institutions or parties that are warning of AGW.

So, the Paris Accords did not dictate a $100B redistribution from "rich" countries to "poor" countries? It may be true the Marxists are not doing the warning, the Marxists are doing the stealing and redistribution.

bagoh20 said...

plant trees. Lots and lots of tress. It actually does not matter where you plant them, just plant them."

If you plant trees in the middle of roads and runways they do significantly more to reduce CO2. I'm surprised this point has not been made by those so deeply concerned.

Robert Cook said...

”So Al Gore is motivated by altruism?“

I don’t know what motivates Al Gore, but he is not a Marxist.

JPS said...

Robert Cook, 2:07:

"Such comments are the sure sign of fanatics, duped, and nitwits. There is no “Marxism” guiding any institutions or parties that are warning of AGW."

Minus the (very mild) insults, I kind of agree with you. (I don't wish to alarm you by doing so.) At least this far: I don't believe that climate scientists, even very alarmist ones, are pushing a hoax because, if accepted, it will generate greater support for policies they prefer. In my experience they are absolutely sincere.

However, those scientists are overwhelmingly of the political left. They do in fact favor anyway the policies they urge adopting in response to "the climate crisis." See also the cartoon (posted on the door of a colleague I respect) in which a grouchy-looking white guy in white shirt and tie harrumphs at the Climate Summit, "What if it's all a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

In other words, it's a two-headed coin: Heads we're right and society *must* adopt our recommendations; tails we're wrong, but who cares, society should do as we recommend anyway.

And that's a dangerous thing in science. The more you like your conclusions, the more you should mistrust them, or rather your own process for reaching them. That's not how I see climate science working, at least not the subset that gets the press releases, the stream of papers in Science and Nature that exclaim, It's even worse than we thought!

Now as you get further away from politics, you get statements like, "The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all....Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing."

Unless you think that quote was manufactured - and I may have accepted its validity because it didn't surprise me a bit - I hope you will admit, it is, as one alarmist said of a prominent climate heretic, "unhelpful to the cause."

JPS said...

[Oops - for "further away from politics", read "further away from science, and into professional politics"]

Michael K said...

"The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all....Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing."

The loss of original data and the computer coding and comments at East Anglia have convinced me that this is the greatest scientific fraud since Phlogiston or Phrenology.

It's not just Marxism but there is lots of old fashioned capitalist greed. Grants, you know.

Jack Klompus said...

"Robert Cook signals his disagreement by calling names he thinks are clever."

Being a predictable one-dimensional Floridian transplant to NYC does that to people.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

I don't feel guilty about my "carbon footprint" because climate change or chaos or whatever they're calling it is bullshit.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/08/23/climate_alarmists_foiled_no_us_warming_since_2005_110470.html

pious agnostic said...

I worked as a software engineer for 30 years. I also play video games.

Computer models just aren't that great. They look good within their parameters, but when the parameters aren't well defined, they are worse than useless.

They inspire false confidence when it isn't warranted.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Computer models just aren't that great. They look good within their parameters, but when the parameters aren't well defined, they are worse than useless.

Known as GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Arashi said...

They also do not work well for systems that have hundreds of variables, most of which cannot be measured - so the modelers make assumptions. Loits and lots of assumptions. And since they will not share their data and assumptions, they are not to be trusted at all.

pious agnostic said...

It's amusing to have deeply-serious non-engineers tell me that these models are "the best we have" and that "we must act upon them."

They're the first to fight red-light camera tickets.

bagoh20 said...

If climate computer models didn't exist, climate alarmist would have invented them, becuase they are a perfect device to legitimize a hoax, bury a greedy motivation, dress up bad science, or re-imagine inconvenient data.

Wait, didn't climate scientist invent these models, then design the parameters and algorithms, and later adjust the data? Was that in an attempt to prove or disprove a hypothesis? And aren't they just too complex to explain, too hard for common people to understand, too important for anyone to question? That's all pretty convenient - incestuous even.

Beasts of England said...

’There is no “defeating” climate change, there is only adapting to it as best possible or dying out.’

How do you adapt to an unproven hypothesis?

Nancy said...

"Seth Kugel is a former Frugal Traveler columnist for the NY Times." HAHAHAHA! Guess he gave up on frugal traveling.

Birkel said...

Easy, Beasts of England.
My adaptation is pointing and laughing.

Maillard Reactionary said...

Again, what a crock. Virtue-signalling bullshit. Who cares what these self-appointed smacked asses think?

I don't feel guilty about anything I do, and nobody's going to change that.

Especially about travel. Some of my best experiences have been when away from home-- although certainly not all of them.

Interesting how human nature never changes. Check out Matthew 7:3.

gbarto said...

One point: Cook is absolutely right that the climate changes and is changing. You can argue about how much or what's causing it, but this is a planet that has seen the ice ages, the Medieval Warming Period and even a super hot and swampy time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Here's the interesting part: Once you acknowledge that the climate changes, that this may have consequences for human beings and that human actions may affect the climate accidentally or on purpose, the human effect on climate becomes political.

For example, do you destroy the fossil fuel industry that has lifted so many out of poverty and continues to do so, maybe even altering the course nature was naturally taking, just to prop up real estate prices in coastal cities while gutting the economy of people living in the heartland? I, for one, am reluctant to use all our climate control resources making sure rich people who fly on private jets don't have to worry about their beachfront properties. Let the rich who will be most financially impacted by climate change be the ones to spend the money to limit it.

Mike Smith said...

I couldn't agree more that Al Gore is not a Marxist. He is a profiteer.

As for Michael Mann's court loss in Canada, here is why that is so important to the underpinnings of global warming alarmism. http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2019/08/the-iconic-image-of-global-warming.html

And, yes, if we are going to use GISS, HADCrut, UAH, NOAA or RSS to track global temperatures there must be an optimum value. Otherwise, what is the point of charting them and breathlessly reporting their values when the alarmists think it is in their best interest (and keeping silent when not)?

MayBee said...

The shame will be plunging economies dependent on tourism dollars into recession.

jimbino said...

@Danno

Jimbino finds math is hard. If you and your spouse (presumably wife) have two kids, you are at just replacement level assuming no premature or accidental deaths with your children.

Somebody please read this real slowly to Danno:

The math is this: assume you and your breeding spouse in life each contribute 1 unit of death to coral => 2 units of coral destruction. Each of your brood will then contribute at least 1 unit of coral destruction. With two offspring, for a total of 4 units of coral destruction. There is no "replacement" involved, unless your share of dead coral be magically resurrected before your brood should get a chance to destroy it all over again.

n.n said...

Wait, didn't climate scientist invent these models, then design the parameters and algorithms, and later adjust the data?

The models (i.e. hypotheses) fail to reconcile with observation and circumstantial evidence (e.g. [past] scientific myths). So, they adopted a mechanism characterized in isolation, then applied liberal doses of brown matter and energy to massage the data and fill in the missing links. Nature, for Her part, is operating within Her normal range, human cults established with emanations from the twilight fringe be damned.

Tank said...

Going out to ride my bike. It's in the 60's. Hope the sun is ok.

Michael K said...

jimbino is going to make the world safe for coral by not "breeding."

Good news, even if coral reefs recover from bleaching just fine.

But it is still a good idea for you to not breed.

Birkel said...

jimbino:
The math is this. I assume you are a net negative to society. Act to end that travesty.

Fen said...

jimbino: The math is this: assume you and your breeding spouse -

See? Like all these assholes, jimbino means Other People, not him.

Fen said...

Here's the interesting part: Once you acknowledge that the climate changes, that this may have consequences for human beings and that human actions may affect the climate accidentally or on purpose, the human effect on climate becomes political.

No. This is a chicken or egg problem.

Look at it again, assuming this time that the Marxism came before the Climate Doom.

Of special note: how the climate cultists refuse any solution (like nuclear power) that does not involve redistribution of energy production and consumption via rationing (ie. global socialism).

You really want to end Climate Doom and save the planet? Shoot all the Marxists. They killed over 120 million humans last century, and they will destroy even more this century.

DavidUW said...

Shame is only effective if you share the same values. I don’t care about “global warming” so I travel when and where I feel like it.

Yancey Ward said...

Jimbino,

You are destroying coral right now, as we write. What are you going to do about it?

Fen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fen said...

Cook: Such comments are the sure sign of fanatics, duped, and nitwits. There is no “Marxism” guiding any institutions or parties that are warning of AGW.

Gods, you are an idiot. Your own people have said just last year that it is irresponsible to discuss climate change without including means to promote economic equality and blah blah blah marxism.

Maybe you aren't stupid, maybe you are just dishonest:

Still, what is most shocking about the Green New Deal is a number of socialist wish-list items that have nothing to do with climate change. Don’t want to work but still want to live a cushy lifestyle? No problem. The Green New Deal has you covered. It promises “economic security” even for those “unwilling to work.” Yes, not those unable to work, but those unwilling to do so. Also on the menu: free higher education and trade school tuition. And Ocasio-Cortez didn’t forget to include universal basic income and health care as well.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/436320-the-sham-of-green-new-deal-is-its-true-intent-advancing-socialism


Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/07/10/feature/how-saikat-chakrabarti-became-aocs-chief-of-change/

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s landmark October 2018 report declared that preventing runaway global warming will require “far-reaching transitions in energy, land … and industrial systems” for which there is “no documented historic precedent.” Oxford University climate scientist and report author Myles Allen explained, “It’s telling us we need to … turn the world economy on a dime.”

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21837/socialism-anti-capitalism-economic-reform

Milwaukie guy said...

Over the last couple of decades, as CO2 has risen from .04% of the atmosphere to .04% of the atmosphere, global biomass has increased 10%, if you can believe the UN. Jet travel builds biomass you h8ters.

Fen said...

I'm getting really tired of constantly having to prove that water is wet to the Leftist assholes who continue to troll this blog.

Fuck you. War.

Bobb said...

I follow the lead of Hollywood and climate scientists. Whenever I travel by air I combine it with a statement that air travel by others is destroying the planet. That statement innocuates my travel.

Fen said...

Fen's new approach to dialogue with Leftwing Marxist Scum. YMMV.

jaydub said...

Another fallacy of the left's logic on AGW is the same as the fallacy of their logic on economics, that being discounting positive changes over time and assuming the pie will always be the same size as it is today. It's rather like Alexander Graham Bell looking at his invention of around 145 years ago and being able to foresee the iphone - he couldn't get there from where he was and neither can the AGC alarmists see the technology improvements that will occur 145 years into the future. At the rate humanity and technology are advancing it's not unreasonable to assume that humans will not even be weather constrained in a century and a half.

bagoh20 said...

All your climate control resource belong to us.

Beasts of England said...

’The math is this: assume you and your breeding spouse in life each contribute 1 unit of death to coral => 2 units of coral destruction. Each of your brood will then contribute at least 1 unit of coral destruction.’

I took a screenshot of this comment for my ‘abstract logic’ folder. 😂

Birkel said...

Fen,
I accept your declaration of war.
Which one of these bastards is first?

Maillard Reactionary said...

Grand Beagle Fen said: "Maybe you aren't stupid, maybe you are just dishonest"

As Glenn Reynolds says, embrace the healing power of "and".

You could also, perhaps, dispense with the "maybe" part.

wildswan said...

We could actually plant a billion trees in the US without a lot of trouble. In Minnesota they plant 12 million trees annually. So in ten years 120 million. If ten other states planted at the same rate we'd have 1.2 billion trees planted in ten years. If all fifty states planted, we'd have 6 billion trees planted in ten years. So we could chop trees down for fuel and housing and still have improved the carbon situation that is scaring fellow citizens. This could be done and it would be a lot better than travelling in a way that's no fun (educational exchange in Vietnam!!) as if having no fun excused one's use of airline fuel.

And if all countries did this that would be 1 trillion trees. That many trees would wipe out ten years of furnaces, air travel and air conditioning, according to the UN. We'd be saved. And if it turned out that there was nothing to be saved from, well, trees are always nice to have around, unlike Socialists and Greenie Stormtroopers.

Fen said...

Another fallacy of the left's logic on AGW is the same as the fallacy of their logic on economics, that being discounting positive changes over time and assuming the pie will always be the same size as it is today.

It's even more illogical than that. Socialism kills innovation. If you are facing the advent of a global catastrophe, the VERY LAST THING you want to do is embrace Marxism.

There's a saying (from West Wing, I think): "If the goverment had been in charge of curing polio, today we would have the best Iron Lung that money could buy, and no vaccine".

The Marxist/Climate Doom Axis will have the same result.

Anonymous said...

Man, you liberals are frickin' super idiots.

Enlighten-NewJersey said...

Hey Robert Cook, it appears I’ve hit a nerve. Climate hysterics have very specific demands and goals for lifestyle changes and wealth redistribution, but can’t give us the specifics of the Goldilocks climate we’re supposed to produce through our sacrifices. You’re huffy because I asked the obvious questions and you have no answers.

Robert Cook said...

"Hey Robert Cook, it appears I’ve hit a nerve. Climate hysterics have very specific demands and goals for lifestyle changes and wealth redistribution, but can’t give us the specifics of the Goldilocks climate we’re supposed to produce through our sacrifices. You’re huffy because I asked the obvious questions and you have no answers."

Okay, you answered my question: You're hopelessly obtuse. (A polite way of saying stupid.)

Enlighten-NewJersey said...

Robert Cook, I am seeing the climate hysteria for what it is, a money and power grab. The demands from the hysterics will never end because the climate on earth will forever change until it’s been blown to bits by an asteroid or crashes into the sun. The goal is control and wealth redistribution. You’ve got nothing that proves otherwise so you resort to name calling.

Tina Trent said...

I like the way they sell ten thousand dollar watches to people who never have to go to work.

TestTube said...

Talking about dumb theories, I have for the last few years read many name-calling comments labeling Robert Cook as a Marxist or Communist. Yet in those years -- YEARS -- I have seen no evidence in support of that theory.

I have seen many well grounded comments from Robert Cook that thoughtfully and insightfully lay out a center-leftish position. But nothing remotely in the Marxist/Communist camp. And nothing I would consider idiotic either.

So I challenge anyone to point out some comment, either from the distant past, or which escaped my regular perusal of these comment threads, that fingers him as either Marxist or Communist.

Skippy Tisdale said...

"Climate change is a product of conditions on the earth, natural and unnatural. Humankind exerts tremendous influence on the earth’s climate conditions, as do all other life forms (including non-animal life forms)."

Hey Cook, watch this and then get back to us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

RobinGoodfellow said...

execrable

Perfect word. Not used enough.

PaoloP said...

"And the text goes on to suggest that the reason "shame" is "wrong" is because shaming isn't an effective way to get people to change what they are doing."

If the article suggests that, it's evident that the author - and certainly many others - sees himself as belonging to a different category than ordinary people: he gives the example to lesser folks, but he's not personally responsible.
Logically, if his example isn't effective, he can continue with is travels.

Apparently, pollution is caused by the mass, which has to be educated; he, instead, is a fully formed person, whose precious individuality has to be appreciated and allowed to experience life at its fullest (but with some little shame, like a spiritual tax, a modern indulgence).

John Althouse Cohen said...

Most of this will make travel more expensive...

In other words, it will give more support to airlines — the corporations causing so much harm. It’s like a private subsidy for airlines.