Me too!

Altough I quibble with the image. This one is considerably more wankh-worthy.

That’s the whole point. He’s an idiot. The humor is in the vast gap between his conceit and reality.

Luck you, a collectors item. As a penniless hippie in the U-district, I couldn’t afford it but the Id Bookstore displayed it in the window quite prominently. I am pretty sure that the counter ad was an issue or two later. Heinlein is a fraught case. Someone once referred to the John Birch Society not being conservative enough for him. Some Heinlein I still like, especially the so-called juveniles. Some late Heinlein is, to be charitable, embarrassing. But from a pure writing standpoint—style, grace, verve,etc—second rate at best.

No I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding.

Hey, my influence is showing. One day, all comments in the blogosphere will be drafted in the famed Glorious Godfrey style.

I’m so proud.

So proud.

Klaus just like Lomborg is making the point—not a bad one—that in the debate about climate change you get different picture if you take a long term view of the changes.

You see, there’s not much to misunderstand about VK’s little philippic. Consequently, I’d say that the probability of a misunderstanding is rather small.

Our man is saying:

” Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).”

For somebody who is supposed to ask for the rescue of science and reason from the clammy embrace, blood-caked clutches and drooling maw of environmentalism, the prez is certainly making sure he sounds ambiguous. The scope of the answer to his own rhetorical question (about the “long-term view” you’re going on about) ranges from “it’s just business as usual” to “heck, at least it doesn’t look like life on the planet is going to end, or anything”. Oh, and he skirts the issue of how much of that indeterminate amount of temperature change is man-made.

In other words, if I may appropriate Metternich, his “point” is a resounding nothing.

As every horror movie fan knows, the repressed never quite goes away. Throughout the piece, the prez grudgingly admits that something will have to be done about those temperature changes:

“The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.”

and

” Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.”

On the one hand, he’s saying that in the long run the miracle markets™ and the Perry Rhodanesque technologies that are just around the corner will sort everything out. On the other hand, he reminds us of the fact that the tree-huggers are just a bunch of Luddites. And, sneaky git that he is, after making sure that we’ve run out of hands, he hedges his bets by mentioning “the institutions” and “the countries” i.e. the state. ZOMG pass me the salts. Let’s not forget, the prez is an obnoxious prick and a demagogue, not an idiot.

Note as well that, again, he doesn’t explore the causes of those “mild” temperature changes. All we know is that he has simply dismissed the anthropogenic hypothesis as “arrogant”. He doesn’t seem to want to belabour the point much, which is strange for such an—apparently—excitable fellow.

You see, I have an interesting family. My elder brother is a naturalized US citizen, kin and kith, blood of my blood etc., and a bit of fundie arsehole winger too. He’s at any rate more forthright than the prez. He told me once that “the atmospheric results (sic) of planes are in the big picture no more important than my farts”. At least that’s a thesis one can falsify.

BTW, I’m not precisely too far to the left on economic matters. Just sayin’.

Let’s be honest. It doesn’t take the nose of a Chasch (another Jack Vance reference) to realize that the only thing that’s clear and unequivocal about Klaus’s rant is that THE! HIPPIES! ARE! OUT! TO! GET! US! (again).

And since it’s good to shave with Occam’s Razor, I’ll assume that that’s the actual point of his piece.

This is actually a trade mark Lomborg move.

Klaus is like Batman. He has learnt his moves from the best.

Still, his martial artistry is not yet quite up to the standard of his alleged mentor, no siree. We’re talking about a pro, in the field of climate skulduggery.
…

Really, let’s give it a rest. He’s your prez, you don’t find him as ghastly as many foreign observers do.

I mean, I know where we’re coming from here. I also hail from an ex-communist country and I’ve spent many years in Spain, where they’ve had to deal with not entirely dissimilar issues, to wit:

it is in no way strange for a young democracy that has suffered for decades under a dictatorship to succumb to the guiles of a charismatic cunt prone to displays of demagoguery.

Time to move on, I guess?

Same issue IIRC - I have it in the loft. 1968.
I wouldn’t call Heinlein “second or third tier”.

Vance can be great, but I never found Cugel very clever. He coined a great insult, though – someone got called a “Khoontz”.

No I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding. Klaus just like Lomborg is making the point—not a bad one—that in the debate about climate change you get different picture if you take a long term view of the changes.

This is actually a trade mark Lomborg move.

No, really.

Well, rascally Lomborg may be a bit of hack, but there is more meat to the bones of his argument than what Klaus is displaying here. “An exceptionally warm winter or 0.6% temperature increase in a century is nothing next to hundreds of millions of years” is pretty much all our statesman has to offer in the way of “science”, isn’t it? Oh, and don’t forget the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were hot. Remember when that Habsburg bastard, Rudolf, bumped off our Přemysl Ottokar?

This doesn’t speak well of Klaus’s cast of mind. It’s just a crude attempt to fit global warming into the Procrustean bed of sub-Hayekian antisocialist rhetoric.

Very true. The emphasis, though, should be on the sub bit of the sub-Hayekian discourse.

The man is essentially a mouth-breathing ideologue. His “column” is not quite so much about preaching to the choir as about vomiting beer upon the most enthusiastic sections of one’s audience, during a skinhead concert.

Man, I’m all about poetic misprision, am I not?

about 20 cm according to my quick google search.

this is a meaningless statement.
..which temp scale is used?

every temperature scale is arbitrary. to cite a relative increase without specifying which scale was used shows a certain level of ignorance. just give the magnitude of the increase (AND include the temperature units).

That’s not true. Major floods and wildfires have become steadily more common in the past seveeral decades; major floods in most of the world are about 4 to 6 times more common than they were in 1950. Major wildfires are at least an order of magnitude more common than in 1950. (That’s from a UN report called the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment.) The total energy released by tropical storms (which is strongly correlated with sea surface temperatures) has about dubled in that period as well (according to an MIT study). Extreme heat waves (like the one that killed 35,000 some-odd people in Europe a few years ago) are already 2X more likely than a century ago. The WHO estimates that global climate change is already causing at least 150,000 premature deaths a year, mostly in Africa, as a result of lower crop yields, new disease vectors, changing land use patterns.

This is all pretty much measurement, not modeling. The projections are far more severe, but also less certain obviously. But it’s compelling, at least to me, that most major climate change models would have correctly predicted historic changes in ambient temperatures based on historic atmospheric GHG concentrations. In other words, the projections are probably pretty solid.