PRESIDENT Obama likes the concept of cap and trade, but apparently not a lot of people understand that the “cap” in his proposed cap-and-trade legislation refers to the limit that the government would impose on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and that the trade refers to the need for industry to buy emission permits from the government and from other companies to “trade.”
Furthermore, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, President Obama’s strategist are realizing that the term “trade” reminds people of the volatile stock market, which makes them uneasy about the policy.
So, the President plans to change the language he uses.
According to yesterday’s article by Peter Nicholas and Jim Tankersley pollsters have tested 19 phrases and found “clean energy jobs” had the widest appeal, with 42% of the respondents “very enthusiastic” about it.
So we are apparently likely to hear less about cap and trade and more about clean energy jobs – but they hardly mean the same thing!
Ah, the corrupting influence of power.
Wouldn’t it be better to find an alternative policy solution rather than playing politics with words?
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Buzzwords: Rephrasing Obama’s lexicon
Scratch ‘cap and trade’ and ‘global warming,’ some Democratic pollsters tell Obama. They’re ineffective. Republicans are also rethinking how to use words to their advantage.
By Peter Nicholas and Jim Tankersley, May 11, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-language11-2009may11,0,6330691.story
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
How about we re-brand it to the truth — TAX and RATION energy.
Energy is burning carbon, or oxidizing it if you will. There is nothing clean or dirty about doing that to power heat engines.
I suggest we stick with the truth … and skip the branding, re-branding word games.
There is no such thing as aclean energy job, regardless how the masses might like the sound.
Well well well poor old Joe Biden has picked up some unclean baggage that is also in need of rebranding.
http://business.smh.com.au/business/bronte-sleuth-finds-ponzi-link-to-biden-20090511-b0le.html
Bill-tb, you seem to be saying that all methods of releasing, generating or otherwise harnessing energy are exactly the same.
How odd.
Burning coal releases lots of carbon, which in greenhouse terms is usually referred to as ‘dirty’, in much the same way that a noisy audio signal or colourful language are referred to as ‘dirty’. You understand the concept of metaphor, right?
In the case of burning coal, it’s literally dirty too – particularly with (e.g. Latrobe valley) brown coal. I’m not sure what your objection is. Perhaps you’re an idiot?
FDB,
CO2 is not dirty. Burning coal is dirty because of the Sulfur Dioxide, Mercury, Particulate Matter and Acid Gases. You know, actual real pollutants that cause actual real problems?
I’m not sure where you got the idea that CO2 was dirty. Perhaps you’re brain dead?
Metaphor, genius. It’s a metaphor. You can read, yeah?
Unwanted = ‘dirty’.
If you have some evidence that CO2 in the atmosphere is perfectly safe at any level, then show it. Getting all het up about terminology is pathetic.
Good to see you acknowledge there is such a thing as pollution. I bet if you were around a few decades back, you’d be disputing everything on your list (other than maybe particulate matter, because it’s indisputably dirty – black smoke, soot etc.).
Tax and ration. Cap and kill.
WE have to take control of the lexicon. And lets have no more talk about “forcing” for the love of stupid science-workers everywhere. Nothing is being forced and to use the term is to buy into the whole model with all its bizzare and errant assumptions.
“If you have some evidence that CO2 in the atmosphere is perfectly If you have some evidence that CO2 in the atmosphere is perfectly safe at any level, then show it. Getting all het up about terminology is pathetic., then show it. Getting all het up about terminology is pathetic.”
What an evil dishonest blockhead you are. Slimier than an eels plea-bargaining attorney. AT ANY LEVEL. What filth you are mate. You are just vermin.
“at any level”
AT ANY LEVEL.
What a no-good scaley belly-crawling afterbirth you are. Greasier than a bran turd.
Lets have some evidence that CO2 levels are unsafe at anything less than 1500 ppm jerkoff.
I’d be happy to set the carbon-tax to kick in if levels got higher than 2000ppm worldwide.
A few years ago I went to a meeting, in Fremantle, of the Ecological Society of Australia, where there was some attempt at lexicological adjustment.
In a debate on deliberate fuel reduction burning (prescribed burning), a Dr Ray Wills passionately opposed such burning. He even suggested that use of the word ‘fuel’ should be discontinued, since the leaves, bark, wood etc. on the forest floor are valuable habitat for wee beasties (er, biodiversity).
Yesterday, on the radio, I heard the same Dr Wills, now an expert on renewable energy sources, objecting to government plans to refurbish a couple of coal fired power stations. He would prefer the use of ‘biomass’ as fuel. Does this mean burning wood? What will happen to the wee beasties? (sorry, biodiversity).
FDB,
“Getting all het up about terminology is pathetic.”
That’s what the whole post is about! Why are you here?!?
“I bet if you were around a few decades back, you’d be disputing everything on your list”
…what can I say, your reasoning is impeccable. You will win many arguements with such irrefutable thinking.
Clean energy sounds nice and jobs even nicer. Since it usually implies solar, wind and hydrogen, it even sounds better for many advocates of renewable energy. It is also much simpler for the public to grasp than “carbon trade” because it is not expected of everyone to understand that much chemistry and photosynthesis.
In the English language the words, dirty, contaminated, and polluted have their own contextual meanings. In Turkish the word used for “polluted” is “dirty”, and in Arabic it is “contaminated”. This terminology is much more alarming and threatening but could be considered misleading due to technical reasons. The word “clean” is usually used (in all three languages) to negate the three terminology but has no scientific meaning in the sense that one cannot measure it. This is just one example. there may be many others, so
“changing the lexicon to progress the grean agenda” is a good and worthy proposal.
“That’s what the whole post is about! Why are you here?!?”
I’m here to say that it’s pathetic to carp about the terminology, when everyone knows it’s the very concept of doing anything about emissions that you guys are against.
Only, because you’re all such poor, brave, marginalised Galileos, you can’t get your no doubt copious scientific work published.
So it’s just “why oh why do they want to call their policy something?”. Shock horror! Government wants name for policy that people will like!
Hold the front page.
FDB,
I’m not against rebranding in principle, but I am against rebranding that is deceptive:
1) Global warming -> Climate change
2) Carbon dioxide pollution -> Carbon pollution
3) Cap & trade -> Clean energy jobs
What’s pathetic is you trying to browbeat anyone with divergent views on AGW. How’s that going for you?
I’m not against the concept of reducing emissions, I’m just against all the concepts that suck. Cap and trade won’t work. Even your buddy Hansen agrees with that. See, I can generalise as well.
” Why are you here” ?
Actually I must give Jennifer credits for encouraging people of different viewpoints to post comments and guest posts at her blog!
Nothing is as boring as a forum of only like minded. It is a very futile discussion.Nothing is as boring as people who say ” this is OUR forum!!!!P*****a off!!!!
Ann, I agree with you. But FDB is master of the ad hom and it does get tiring.
If by ‘master of the ad hom’ you mean, ‘person who knows what ad hom actually means’, then guilty as charged Joel.
Hint: me saying that you are stupid because of your argument is the precise OPPOSITE of ad hominem. Look it up before you use it again.
FDB, the opposite of an ad hominem would involve no abuse at all!
From our favourite source wikipedia: “Merely insulting a source in the middle of otherwise rational discourse does not necessarily constitute an ad hominem fallacy.” But it does if you use the insult because your logic isn’t that strong.
Or “In common language, any personal attack, regardless of whether it is part of an argument, is often referred to as ad hominem.”
Let’s argue the definition of “is”.
This is yet another demonstration of how phony AGW is.
It was global warming when the mild temp increases could be easily mis-represented as deadly and threatening.
Now one seldom hears or reads ‘global warming’ at all.
It is now climate change.
Cap and trade- arbitrarily capping CO2 emissions of out-of-favor industries and and forcing them to ‘trade’ for the right to exist, is so unpopular the hypesters hope that a mere name change can save the credibility of the cliam.
AGW- Apocalyptic Global Warming, as promoted by Hansen, the IPCC, Obama, Schmidt, etc. ad nauseum, is, was, and shall be, a scam. There was never a dramatic climate crisis at ahnd, nor will there be.
AGW is as credible as ancient alien astronauts, Area 1 having alien artifacts, or UFO abductions.
FDB,
So you apparently believe that ‘to not believe in AGW’ is to be ‘for pollution’.
Is that correct?
>>>Comment from: FDB May 12th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I’m here to say that it’s pathetic to carp about the terminology, when everyone knows it’s the very concept of doing anything about emissions that you guys are against.<<<
If I argue against incarcerating someone who I believed to be innocent, would you then accuse me of being against the concept of incarceration????
Language rebranding is all about marketing, of creating public perceptions of credibility, or of evading accountability.
Some years ago I complained to the proper authority about a public servant who had altered (some of our) documents without our permission, and had not recorded any other authority to do so. In addition I also complained about his subsequent alterations (omissions) of facts in reports to inform superiors and Ministers, which covered up these alterations. After about a year, the relevant authority (internal review) decided that there had been some “communications problems”, and would be talking to the Dept head to ensure that this did not happen again.
A few years later I found that critical omissions of relevant facts to in reports to influence decision makers were still routinely practiced in that dept. So fraud and cover-up lies are merely “communications problems”.
Guess you could call them that.
“FDB, the opposite of an ad hominem would involve no abuse at all!”
Wrong.
Ad hominem is saying that an argument must be wrong because of the person advancing it. There need be no abuse involved at all. One could be perfectly civil and commit the fallacy.
e.g. let’s have an example:
Say you’re 6 foot 5 and Italian.
You say “that short person over there must have trouble slam dunking a basketball, due to their height”.
I say “but you’re 6 foot 5, old friend! With all due respect to you and your kind, you can’t possibly be correct about what a short person is capable of”.
Or I say “but you’re Italian, and yesterday an Italian told me that Mt Gambier is taller than Everest, so despite the many positive traits of your wonderful race and culture, I reject anything you have to say about relative heights. Now let’s go have a canoli”.
That’s the ad hominem fallacy in a nutshell. Well, 2 nutshells. No abuse, no insults, just a specialised kind of plain old total wrongness.
The opposite is the inference that because someone advances a stupid argument, they must be a certain kind of person (uneducated, unintelligent, unserious, biased, a liar, etc etc). This is FAR more often where abuse comes in, and it has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the ad hominem fallacy. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nada, zilch, zip, forgeddaboutit.
It’s a bummer that so many people get it so wrong, but there’s no particular need to join them. If you think someone’s abusing you, you’re better served saying that, than by falsely accusing them of ad hominem.
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
Yeah, you went there.
Types of ad hominem (yes, there’s more than one):
1) Ad hominem abusive
2) Ad hominem circumstantial
3) Ad hominem tu quoque
Your narrow definition is hardly the “consensus”.
An example:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html
“A debater commits the Ad Hominem Fallacy when he introduces irrelevant personal premisses about his opponent. Such red herrings may successfully distract the opponent or the audience from the topic of the debate. ”
I’d say you do this pretty often. So does Graeme but he’s in an entirely different league =).
Our US friends always like to say that anyone can become President. Even cheap Chicago hustlers I guess.
Why would anyone be surprised at dishonesty by the man? Reminds me of the Eddie Murphy movie
“The Candidate”.
If you want chapter and verse on the dishonesty Google “Tthe Market Ticker” and read about the capricious use of power re the Chrysler failure. This will end in tears.