top of page

Rebuttals of the Week! #36: Conflate carbon dioxide with air pollution… then insist you’

paris
 

You see this a lot these days: People present their interpretation as definitive and insist that anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. Then when the interpretation is demonstrated to be flawed… they simply say “Well just ignore that because I’m still right!”

Here is my exchange with Alice:

Alice B: seriously?? You nutters at The Australian need to live in China for a year and see if Climate change and pollution is not real and see if THAT is not shrinking the economy i.e half China’s population will die young if they dont do somethng about their emissions! Now THAT aint good for economies!

Going to Getugly: You are an exceptional illustration of just how clueless people are about this subject while being absolutely certain of the excellence of their perception of the matter.

The problems you are referring to in China are not due to carbon dioxide emissions. They are due to actual air pollution as a result of untreated toxic emissions from industry.

Alice B: this exceptional illustration of clueless (LOL) can understand you can have both CO2 emissions from coal and untreated toxic chemical waste. LOL i.e. And most of the source of energy used to power these toxic chemical producing industries are powered by coal. ( As China has become more wealthy it has stopped using its own low grade coal an importing Australia’s high grade coal and has either closed allot of its own crap coal mines or exporting the crap to places like Africa)

Going to Getugly: That’s my point Alice…NOT yours. I’m the one who is distinguishing between carbon dioxide… which is what is allegedly driving climate change… and air pollution which is what is adversely affecting the health of people in China. You are the one who conflated those two things. And now that you’ve had that conflation pointed out to you… you are struggling to justify it. Unfortunately all you’re doing is emphasizing the distinction which you failed to make in your original comment.

Alice B: I do understand the difference. Conflated original comment or not, Climate change is affecting China as much as anywhere else. i.e I STILL stand by my point (it is not a justification) i.e Coal in China has has and is still a major source of energy that results in co2 emissions which in return WILL shrink the economy as climate change worsens ie. so to argue the Paris agreement will slow growth , is laughable as it is climate change that will slow growth dramatically going forward.

Going to Getugly: So I think you’re acknowledging that my criticism that you conflated climate change with air pollution in your original comment was correct. Your assertions that CO2 emissions “WILL shrink the economy as climate change worsens” of course is nothing but conjecture based on a whole lot of assumptions that you’re making being true. I think the IPCC claims climate change will shave off 10% of a country’s GDP over the next 80 years… which is computer generated fortune telling and as Scott Adams has argued is an insignificant number anyway. Even the guy who came up with the number says in Forbes magazine that “the statistic mischaracterizes the evidence”.

Your argument doesn’t make sense anyway. To assert that it’s somehow “laughable” to be concerned about the negative impact on economic growth brought about by the Paris agreement because of concern over the negative impact on economic growth brought about by climate change is fallacious.

Not to mention the fact that you haven’t even tried to grapple with the main problem: Even if you accept that the claims of the climate change establishment are 100% accurate and if everyone complies to the letter of the Paris Accord over the next 80 years (which no one will of course) by their own estimates the effect on temperatures by the end of the century will be something like a reduction in global temperatures of 3 tenths of one degree. In other words… it will have no meaningfully quantifiable affect whatsoever.

Which means we will get the negative economic and social impacts of this radical top down intervention into national economies by UN bureaucrats and we will get the alleged impact from climate change.

The only reason for supporting any of this is as far as I can tell is that it allows people… presumably like yourself… to feel good about yourselves in the present moment because you can delude yourselves into believing you’re helping to ‘save the planet’ by acquiescing to all of this bull shittery.

Comments


Subscribe to Our Site

Thanks for submitting!

bottom of page