A Modest Proposal

[Bob Schroeck]

Persons who dispute or disbelieve any given science or scientific conclusion for any reason should be forbidden from using any technology or service dependent upon or used in the determination of that science, or ultimately deriving from that science. This is to ensure that they remain properly "pure" and are uncontaminated by the false (and possibly satanic) forces behind the lies they wisely refuse to accept. For their safety, of course, the ban cascades as necessary to secondary, tertiary and further technologies.

For example, climate science deniers should be compassionately forbidden the use of (among many other things) weather reports, thermometers, cell phones (because they can display weather reports), long-distance communications (because they are relayed by satellites, which are used to generate false "evidence" for climate change), and refrigeration (because the same principles on which it operates can be used to generate patently false climate change results).

If opposition to a science or conclusion is not explicitly religious but phrased on the grounds that there is not a unanimous acceptance of the results, said person is only permitted the use of technologies the basis of whose function is completely and unanimously agreed upon. If even one expert -- as determined by the protected citizen's own criteria for experts whose opinion matters -- disagrees with the generally-accepted explanation in the smallest degree, the citizen is forbidden the technology for their own good.

Attempts to circumvent these protective strictures should be a class-A felony, punishable by imprisonment in a facility tailored to the citizen's technological restrictions.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

..., punishable by imprisonment in a facility tailored to the citizen's technological restrictions.

There are laws against cruel and unusual punishment, you know. And, the last time I looked, locking people up in a facility at the same technological level as the original Bedlam counted.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Surely forcing them to spend their days in close proximity to the works of Satan is worse?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[khagler]

Obviously the department responsible for those prisons would have to be called "Chief Directorate of Camps," and they couldn't possibly be located anyplace besides Alaska. For bonus points, someone named Lysenko should be found to run it.

[DHBirr]

An oddball thought crossed my mind (as they so often do), but I decided to toss this one out here, because it's at least tangentially related:
I read an article saying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is targeted for major budget cuts.  And I thought...

How do you think the government would react if somebody with deep pockets and a generally NOT social-conservative mindset offered to privatize such an agency, running it for his/her profit but letting the scientists pursue research the GOP doesn't like?  How would they respond once they realized that Americans who wanted real scientific data would turn to his/her firm and ignore anything the government said on related topics?  And I'm not just talking climate.  Suppose somebody of the Elon Musk ilk made it clear he intended to put NASA completely out of the space business — and hire away all its best people while he was at it?

Of course, I don't believe there's anybody with enough money and the right attitude for this.  But I like the idea of Republicans' horror as socially-liberal capitalists make the U.S. government irrelevant....  (You know, if you can fund a space program, you can fund a well-equipped private army/navy/air force "industrial security division," too.  Oh, a few more weasel words would need to be applied, but that's what lawyers are for.)  

N.B.:  This concept resembles certain aspects of some short stories Jerry Pournelle wrote in the 1970s.  "High Justice," in particular.
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Skyfire2020]

As a proud climate realist I have no problem with NASA being sold to the highest bidder. I want the real scientific data published because on the rare occasions the public actually find the raw data, it has always shown that NASA have "adjusted" the figures to "show" global warming.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/1136 ... rming.html

Think this is just fake news? Lets look at something easily measured - whether or not the Arctic is sufficiently ice free in summer for a boat to travel to the North pole. If climate change models are accurate then why do scientists get the prediction wrong every single year? And if they cannot predict sea ice within 12 months, why should I trust their predictions for 12 years or 12 decades?

http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/20/globa ... c-sea-ice/

Personally I put my faith in the solar based predictions that not only allows for previous Ice Ages (unlike the current Global Warming theory which states ALL climate change is man made so QED an ice age could never have happened) but also they predict the next significant temperature change will be downwards.

http://www.naturalnews.com/054990_ice_a ... spots.html
Finally, a quick comment on the subject of cutting irrelevant government.  If I was a U.S. citizen I would have been a Ron Paul voter.  I also don't see why Tanks and Military planes shouldn't be covered under the right to bear arms except for the obvious cost and maintenance issues.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44942719

Mark

[robkelk]

As a proud climate realist I have no problem with NASA being sold to the highest bidder. I want the real scientific data published because on the rare occasions the public actually find the raw data, it has always shown that NASA have "adjusted" the figures to "show" global warming.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/1136 ... rming.html

[better source needed]

Reading that article, I see that Christopher Booker has no idea how statistics works.

Think this is just fake news? Lets look at something easily measured - whether or not the Arctic is sufficiently ice free in summer for a boat to travel to the North pole.

Way to move the goalposts, dude. That's like saying "let's see whether a high-jumper can jump over a ten-storey building, and if he can't, high-jumping as an Olympic sport is fake."

If we wait until the North Pole is ice-free, then it'll be far too late to fix the problem.

Change which "NP" you're looking at - instead of looking at the North Pole, look at the Northwest Passage. I'll wait for you to find the numbers yourself and run your own historical statistical comparison.

If climate change models are accurate then why do scientists get the prediction wrong every single year? And if they cannot predict sea ice within 12 months, why should I trust their predictions for 12 years or 12 decades?

Are they getting the predictions wrong? Or are the predictions within the stated margin of error (necessary because all humans, including you and me, are fallible)?

http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/20/globa ... c-sea-ice/

[better source needed]

This is a biased source. Please provide an additional source that is not on the conservative end of the spectrum, so that political bias can be cancelled out.

Better yet, start with a neutral source so that the political biases don't need to be cancelled out in the first place.

Personally I put my faith in the solar based predictions that not only allows for previous Ice Ages (unlike the current Global Warming theory which states ALL climate change is man made

[dubious - discuss] [citation needed]

so QED an ice age could never have happened) but also they predict the next significant temperature change will be downwards.

http://www.naturalnews.com/054990_ice_a ... spots.html

[unreliable source?]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_News: "Natural News (formerly NewsTarget, which is now a separate sister site) is a website for the sale of various dietary supplements, promotion of alternative medicine, controversial nutrition and health claims,[2] scientific fake news,[3] and various conspiracy theories,[4] such as "chemtrails", chemophobic claims (including the purported dangers of fluoride in drinking water,[5] anti-perspirants, laundry detergent, monosodium glutamate, aspartame), and purported health problems caused by allegedly "toxic" ingredients in vaccines,[2] including the now-discredited link to autism.[6] It has also spread conspiracy theories about the Zika virus allegedly being spread by genetically modified mosquitoes[7] and purported adverse effects of genetically modified crops, as well as the farming practices associated with and foods derived from them.[8]"

Given that description, why should I consider Natural News to be any more reliable than the Weekly World News?

Finally, a quick comment on the subject of cutting irrelevant government.  If I was a U.S. citizen I would have been a Ron Paul voter.  I also don't see why Tanks and Military planes shouldn't be covered under the right to bear arms except for the obvious cost and maintenance issues.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44942719

Mark

The USA's "right to bear arms" is for the militia - it says so right in the Second Amendment. Join the militia, get your training, show your militia need, and get the militia officers to issue you a tank or military aircraft, and that's fine. Get one for yourself without having any idea how to use it, and you're a danger to both yourself and others.

(No officers and discipline in the group? Then it isn't a militia, it's just an armed mob.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

The Second Amendment is neither here nor there. Plus, I'm a bit touchy about it. If it's to be discussed, let us please put it in it's own thread.

More on-topic, I wish something like Bob's proposal could be enforced. But it's better used as an object lesson for children.

[ordnance11]

Actually, Bob that's already happening with the anti vaxxers and their children. They're gambling with their kid's lives.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Skyfire2020]

I have given my counter arguments.  If anyone wants to dismiss them as fake news then so be it.
I believe that global warming theories go back to at least 1985. http://what-when-how.com/global-warming ... l-warming/
It is now 2017 and I am still having to take time off work because of ice and snow.  I will pay attention to global warming when this mythical ice free future arrives and not a second before.
Mark

[ordnance11]

Actually it's not ice and snow now. It's more frequent and destructive hurricanes and hurricanes. Higher tidal flow and storm surges. You can already se the effect in places like Miami when it's a multimmilon dollar effort to replenish the beach. You're going to see a point when that city asks for state and federal aid to keep the beach going. In the meantime the atlantic and possibly the gulf coasts are all going to be just rocky beaches and kill kill off tourism.  Add the fact the rising sea level is seeping into the limestone and contaminating the water supply. I give it 10-20 years before South Florida's water supply will be so contaminated with salt that it will be uneconomically feasible to supply low priced drinking water.  That's just south Florida mind you. Every metropolis along the coasts will have their own set of issues and you'll going to see a migration away from the cities like what happened to New Orleans after Katrina.  Whehter it happens in a trickle or a flood would be interesting. D.C would definitely revert back to a literally swamp. The building where I work has issues with water coming out of the ground right now.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[robkelk]

I have given my counter arguments.  If anyone wants to dismiss them as fake news then so be it.

I'm asking you to back up your arguments with actual science (instead of wishful thinking spread by people with a vested interest in the status quo).

“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”
– Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950

And let's avoid using terms like "fake news" - that is now a null-content buzzword that avoids actual thinking.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Morganite]

The OP here seems like the sort of thing that, were it to be done in support of a position I agreed with, would generally cause me to try to avoid that person henceforth.

At the moment I'll just note that "What if we got the government did things to hurt people we don't like?" seems an even more dubious than usual proposition when the people you don't like control a large and expanding chunk of the government.

-Morgan.

[Black Aeronaut]

skyfire2020 wrote:

---

It is now 2017 and I am still having to take time off work because of ice and snow.  I will pay attention to global warming when this mythical ice free future arrives and not a second before.

When we talk about 'Ice Free Winters' we're mainly referring to the polar ice caps, which are a FAR BETTER INDICATOR than your local wintertime precipitation.
The ice caps are melting.  There is incontrovertible proof of it.  No wiggle room with ideas such as "but there have been temperature shifts before!"

Here, peruse this: http://xkcd.com/1732/ and some explanations here: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index. ... xplanation

It's a timeline of Earth's average temperature going all the way back to 20,000 BCE.  Any further than that and humans are barely figuring out numbers greater than ten.  And I mean that seriously.  We, as a species, have existed for a preciously short amount of time in the grand scheme of things, and yet in so little time we have made such an impact.

We have the ability to control our own climate.  It's just whether or not people want to bother with the change that's required.

If nothing else, the Governator had some interesting things to say about it all.
http://www.facebook.com/notes/arnold-s ... 713574658/

[Skyfire2020]

The earth has gone massive changes since it was a burning mass of molten rock that would instantly kill any human that stepped foot on it. Asteroids, super volcanoes and a collision with a Mars sized planet that created the Moon are a small sample of the highlights. The atmosphere has changed as much as the land. Oxygen was a trace gas before all those pesky plants started "breathing" and I believe there was a much much higher CO2 rate.

The earth is not some precious snow flake forever frozen in time less it be destroyed by a single human breath. It is a constantly changing "living" organism in its own way and even if CO2 became 10% of the atmosphere it would be nowhere near the top 100 worst things to have occurred to the planet.

The Sun is the primary source of heat for this planet. If the Sun goes nova we burn in fire, if the sun stops without going Nova then we die by ice and a 100% CO2 atmosphere wouldn't stop the cold. The Sun may well be a variable star and even if it does meet the scientific definition, it is certainly nowhere close to a constant output. A 4C increase in temperature is merely solar spring and a 4c decrease is autumn. For those who argue that these events happen over millennia not years, we simply don't have yearly reading from any previous ice age to check.

I'll leave you with this quote from Michael Crichton that sums my thoughts up in a much more elegant way.

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/166244- ... ing-vanity

Mark

[Black Aeronaut]

Dude. We put holes in the ozone layer ourselves. We did. Not some random act of 'mother nature'.

We make nuclear weapons that can level an entire mountain range. In fact, at one point in time, we actually were making NUCLEAR DEMOLITION CHARGES with the express purpose of moving an annoying piece of geography!

Do not pretend that mankind does not have the capability to reshape the earth as we see fit. We are perfectly capable of doing so, and any wishful thinking to the contrary is so full of bullshit that I might begin to wonder about your living conditions.

[robkelk]

A 4C decrease is not "autumn", it's "middle of another Ice Age deep deep winter."

Also, natural processes take approximately five millennia to change the global average temperature by 2C either way. We've managed that trick in the last two centuries - and the global average was dropping, not rising, before we started burning all those fossil fuels.

Sure, the planet will still be here in a millennium... but will there be any people left alive on it?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh, it'll still be livable. But a lot of coastal cities are gonna become barrier reefs, and in fairly short order at that.

Not even San Antonio may be safe. You guys know why Texas is so flat?

BECAUSE IT ALL USED TO BE SEA BED!!!

So go ahead. Keep it up. Mother Nature will eventually bite back. And whether we want to or not, our carbon footprint is gonna shrink drastically, and for reasons you're gonna like even less than 'green energy legislation'.

[SilverFang01]

@Skyefire2020 What do you believe scientists would gain by convincing the world that reducing carbon emissions is a good idea?
What do you believe is the end goal of the so called "Great Climate Change Hoax"?

Right now the evidence is overwhelming that climate change is happening, and that our models may have been a tad conservative on the rate of change. Every year is the hottest on record, until the next year.

When will you be convinced? When will the evidence be enough?

[robkelk]

When will you be convinced? When will the evidence be enough?

For some people, no amount of evidence is enough.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Right. It's not about evidence, it's about ideology ("the other side is in favor, therefore I must oppose"), or religion ("God would never allow man to damage the world like that!", which was also a serious argument fifty years ago against pollution control). Or it's about being too frightened of the implications (for either the future or your worldview), so you refuse to believe the evidence; therefore the evidence must be false, no matter how much of it there is or how little sense a hoax makes. For entirely too many people, maybe almost all people, comforting self-delusion is preferable to a terrifying truth, and this is the terrifying truth they choose to deny.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[khagler]

You've overlooked some possibilities, like memory ("the same people have in the past produced many apocalyptic scenarios that could conveniently only be averted by a massive increase in government power, and they've always been wrong before, so maybe I should be skeptical of their claims this time") or basic human decency ("I want nothing to do with any ideology whose adherents think sending dissidents to the gulag is funny--or worse, are serious about it").

[Bob Schroeck]

The thing with the memory objection is that when the apocalyptic scenario is averted, you get the same people who objected to the effort to avert it saying, "See? Nothing happened! You didn't need to do that!", conveniently ignoring that it was the effort that made it not happen. And your "basic human decency" sounds like a strawman to me; I'm not familiar with either party joking about gulags. Although given that not long ago Trump was suggesting Operation Wetback and the Japanese-American Internment were great ideas whose time has come again approaches it...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

khagler wrote:

---

"the same people have in the past produced many apocalyptic scenarios that could conveniently only be averted by a massive increase in government power, and they've always been wrong before, so maybe I should be skeptical of their claims this time"

Citation please?

khagler wrote:

---

"I want nothing to do with any ideology whose adherents think sending dissidents to the gulag is funny--or worse, are serious about it"

You do realize he was being facetious, right?  I mean, it's really parody - it's the same kind of nonsense like actually building Trump's Border Wall or creating concentration camps in the USA for Muslims.

[khagler]

Black Aeronaut wrote:

---

khagler wrote:

---

"the same people have in the past produced many apocalyptic scenarios that could conveniently only be averted by a massive increase in government power, and they've always been wrong before, so maybe I should be skeptical of their claims this time"

Citation please?

khagler wrote:

---

"I want nothing to do with any ideology whose adherents think sending dissidents to the gulag is funny--or worse, are serious about it"

You do realize he was being facetious, right?  I mean, it's really parody - it's the same kind of nonsense like actually building Trump's Border Wall or creating concentration camps in the USA for Muslims.

Here's an article on some big past apocalypes: http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/24/sev ... edictions/
I hope he was being facetious, but it's a horrid thing to even joke about. It's almost as bad as the infamous British commercial where a schoolteacher summarily executes dissidents.