Yes, the worlds sea level is rising so blindingly fast that there is no difference between a photograph taken of Ocean Beach, near San Diego, from one taken 100 years ago and today.
So, based on this single pair of photographs you conclude that the world's sea level is NOT rising? That it will not continue to rise at an accelerating pace? Is that what you are saying? Based on this single pair of photographs you contend that the thousands of tidal gauge records, the satellite altimetry, the work of whole departments of degreed scientists are all false? Is that what you are saying?
And you are correct, government does indeed put a lot of money out to help people in time of disaster. Sometimes it is money well spent and sometimes not.
And... you here oppose such expenditures but you seem remarkably unwilling to say so outright.
I have been a little puzzled at your use of the term "CAGW" and its use by several deniers at this forum when I know of not a single instance of any one of us here who agrees with the mainstream IPCC position EVER using the term. Could it be that you do not actually wish to reject AGW, only that it's harm will not come in a catastrophic fashion? Is that your position? Is that what we should assume when one of you tacks that "C" on there? I suspect so.
As to the statement itself: AGW has never taken place before. Thus there is no historical basis to accept or reject it. Scientific evidence, however, is mountainous. Once again I direct you to the more than 1500 pages of reference, analysis and discussion of the peer-reviewed work of thousands scientists which may be found in WG1 of AR5 at
IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To state there is no evidence is - undeniably - nothing more than a lie.
You wish to forcefully take money from people, give it to a few already wealthy people and hope, hope, hope, that by doing that the global temperature will be one degree lower in 100 years.
My position and that of others, that global warming represents an actual and significant threat to human well being and that governments should act to prevent it, is rational and extremely well supported by the evidence as well as by the opinions of the vast majority of the experts in the field. To characterize the position that our governments should take actions as you have done here: as
taking money by force, is an empty and deceptive tactic which could be applied just as easily and just as accurately to medical research, to feeding starving children, to defending us from forest fires, to defending us from foreign aggression. And your contention that we seek to give money to "a few already wealthy people" is a complete and completely egregious fabrication. All the activities of government make use of funds acquired with the implicit threat of force: they call it taxation - and unless you are actually advocating complete and total anarchy, your position here is specious.
All the while not being able to point to a single time in the past 8,000 years, when there have been times that it was MUCH warmer, that any of your catastrophes have occurred. Not one.
At no time in the past 8,000 years or the past 800,000 have human actions presented ANY such threat, though you have to go back at least that far (the latter, not the former) and likely many
times that far, to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. And at no time since the Chicxulub impact, 65
million years ago - an event that ended the 200 million year long age of the dinosaurs, can we find CO2 levels rising as
rapidly as they are rising today. And I find it odd that you would here restrict yourself to 8,000 years of history when you have all repeatedly attempted to apply the planet's entire five billion year history as a basis for what would constitute an unprecedented situation. Looking at the complete history of life on this planet, there have been a multiplicity of occasions like the KT Event, when catastrophic climate change from a variety of causes have decimated life on this planet. The threat to our our well being that our climate has intermittently presented is not that it fails to be consistent but that it occasionally exercises that inconsistency at a pace too rapid for adaptation, for acclimatization, to take place. Life is the product of change, but it cannot survive if the rate of that change is too high. The rate of change the current situation will produce is just such an occasion. No one is predicting an extinction event. But changes that will cost the human species hundreds of trillions of dollars and the well being - the suffering and the lives - of billions of individuals are unavoidable under a continuation of the current scenario - a scenario you claim to prefer.
We must act. It
is too late to prevent all suffering simply because in our innocent ignorance we have spent decades upon decades crafting our current future and a momentum that will not easily abate. But we CAN
ease the harm, we can prevent some of the suffering and save some of the lives that the next few centuries under your scenario would cost. To fail to act in the face of overwhelming evidence and with complete disregard for the massive scale of harm your inaction will incur verges on a criminal assault against humanity. I firmly believe future generations: your children and their children for generations, will treat your posterity in precisely that manner.
