- caveat bettor says:
Dobson is a big government Keynesian who wants the government to coerce people to behave according to his enlightened agenda. Sounds like Al Gore to me (just a different agenda).
Anyways, liberty is always desirable next to death. Come over to the Light, Al!
May 15th, 2007 at 1:29 pm - Al Swearengen says:
Al Gore wants to curb the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, and he’s on par with a guy who makes money off of parents wanting to make their kids ‘not gay’?
...Al Gore is not comparable to James Dobson. Keynesian economic theory doesn’t jive at all with our economic policy of the 90s! I can understand how someone would characterize Dobson as Keynesian, but to label any deviation from laissez-faire capitalism as something to the opposite extreme is something I notice a lot of from the right-wing economists out there who tend to get their voice into print more often than others.
... - caveat bettor says:
Al, you are the passionate wordsmith, and you have my respect.
Both Gore’s position on carbon and Dobson’s position on gays requires faith, at least from where I observe things. And both of them want to use the coercive power of government to get their way. Therein the equivalence, at least in my feeble mind.
- Al Swearengen says:
With “a chunk of ice the size of California melting off of Antarctica” today - I’d suggest that the question of faith in regards to global warming is with the side that says it isn’t happening.
The difference between someone using government to limit the rights of gays and someone using government to deal with an environmental problem is enormous.
...The interest of Exxon’s money is well within its rights to publish anti-science literature to temper the government’s will to act on something that will effect the bottom line, but Swearengen the investor and Swearengen the citizen are two different beasts entirely…and while I’d be the first to peg a buy price on Exxon stock if I thought the commodities market was in for an upswing in pricing, I’d also sell that stock without the slightest bit of ill-will felt towards the governments that took the initiative to form a policy to tax carbon emissions.
There are millions of choices out there to build an investment strategy around. If regulation is going to have an adverse effect on one sector, then it’s time to get out of that sector and figure out something else. Much better to have legislation pass that forces a 2% drop in value of the stock you had to sell, than for 100% of the value to drop when oversight and regulation is lax or non existent (Enron)!
Or as they say in Baltimore…”It’s all in the game”
- Al Swearengen says:
And caveat - thanks for the kind words! I enjoy reading your blog a great deal - - - unique is a rare quality to find in the blogsphere, but your site fits that description, without a doubt.
- caveat bettor says:
Al, I concede that there are more recorded instances of ice melting than ice thickening (I haven’t surveyed comprehensively, but I do know of evidence that parts of Greenland and Antarctica have thicker ice now than before).
I follow the Goddard Institute of Space Science data on global temperatures and agree that the earth’s surface is warmer today than 30 years ago. In terms of what actionable items should be implemented now is a more involved question. (For example, see Becker’s treatment on the ridculously low discount rate used by the IPCC, which is a basic denial of time value, here http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2007/02/global_warming_1.html).
Al, do you think population replacement is an issue? If so, then shouldn’t all people who are reproductively capable be regulated into birthing and rearing their 2.1 children, as population replacement dictates? Including gays? Just wondering.
I think that population replacement is a bigger problem than global warming, in terms of the science. The former is certainly more falsifiable than the latter, with respect to Karl Popper.
So, if we should regulate carbon emissions to some degree, it logically follows that we should regulate population replacement to a greater degree.
What am I missing here?
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Deadissue debates passionately with me
We don't agree on some things, but he seems to have the cajones of his convictions. Here is one little discussion we are having on Dobson v Gore, global warming, and the coercive government on his blog:
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