Mailbag - The Gormogons

ScottO writes in regarding this recent post:

Most Estimable GorTechie,
While reading your post “Convenient Settled Science”, when I got to your question of how the action advocates know the earth isn’t coming out of the last ice age, I thought of a couple more questions, to wit: How do they know the earth isn’t entering a new ice age, and should be trending cooler? More generally, what makes them think the earth’s climate should remain constant just because they’re alive to notice, when it never has been in the past?
Hubris is right. As Rush Limbaugh used to say, it’s exceedingly arrogant to believe that we puny humans could change the earth’s climate in any significant way.
As for the IPCC et al., Matthias Shapiro, who tweets as @politicalmath, posted something at the end of September that I found interesting and entertaining. He posed a situation and asked what we could determine from the facts; he then said the answer “I don’t know” should come from two groups of people–those who are completely ignorant of the IPCC’s report and the science behnd it, and those who know it very well.
Finally, in your suggestion that “we” should curb some emissions, I presume that “we” refers to all humans, including those in nations that already employ central planning, and in this planning do not include environmental concerns.
Kindest regards,
ScottO (@gscottoliver)

I was re-watching a bit of Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson the other day, and in the intro segment of the episode he said that the Earth is currently warming from the last Ice Age. The question is maybe the warming over the last century is due to natural cyclical changes and not human caused factors.

But yes, when we don’t understand or can’t measure accurately all the factors that contribute to the Earth’s climate, it’s hard to believe that we know that we should take immediate and significant action.

I followed the link through and Matthias Sharpiro poses a great question – it’s worth reading. And it’s worth using when talking to a climate change action required zealot.

As far as your final question – yes, for any effort to be effective, it needs to be worldwide. And Kyoto Protocols aren’t going to do it. But consider that developing countries usually go through periods of increased pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as they improve their industrial base. So is the rest of the world going to dictate to them how to get there? It’s a complicated problem…and short-sighted solutions won’t get us there.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.