It’s worth remembering in all the Global Warming screeching that the US Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto Protocol. If you look down the list at the link, you’ll find some of our most liberal Senators (Feingold, Wellstone, Durbin, etc.) opposed it, no matter what they say now.
They did this for a reason. Looked at closely, Kyoto – which excludes the two most populous nations on Earth, China and India, because their economies are just “developing” – actually, although covertly, promotes Global Warming. The Chinese know this. Look at their reaction today to the latest global warming utterances from the UN. And the Chinese, naturally enough, are signatories to the Protocol – a document which is pretty close to unenforceable anyway. Why not sign?
If you are genuinely concerned with global warming – and I think all of us should be in an intelligent scientific way – start finding solutions that are less political and more technological. Kyoto is a propaganda item.
Has anyone not seen this great essay on ‘complex systems’?
Sigh … Once again we come back to our latest and greatest doomsday scenario. You do realize that that all of them have a religious aspect, to wit, unless we repent and (fill in the blank), God will destroy the world.** In this case it is to stop using carbon.
Roger, your heart is in the right place, but there is no scientific proof of either global warming or more importantly that man is responsible for it. What we have instead are a large number of studies on different aspects of the atmosphere and a large number of atmospheric models. The studies that give the “right” results are interpreted to support the existence of global warming. The atmospheric models are not in agreement with each other or with the actual temperature changes that have taken place. But we are told that we should believe their results for 100 years from now. In other words if we average together a number of erroneous results we get a correct result.
Then we get the “it couldn’t hurt” argument, which is just a variation of the precautionary principal. For example, to be on the safe side, don’t use GM foods. Since we can’t prove GM foods are safe, only that they have no harmful effects, the environmental Luddites use that as an argument to ban GM foods. Unfortunately it can hurt to ban the use of carbon when we have no other practical alternatives. Since we are currently the largest user of carbon-based fuels, it will hurt our economy more than any other country. Of course the Kyoto folks would never have done it for that reason. I am sure they had our best interests at heart. But even if one is naive enough to believe that the Kyoto proposals were not done to hurt our economy, there is no rational reason to agree to them, because there is ample evidence that the cuts proposed by Kyoto will have no impact on the average temperatures of the earth.
So to sum up, we do not currently have a correct theory on “global warming” but we are going to do something to solve the problem. How do we not know that our solution will not exacerbate the problem? Without man’s influence, the earth has cycled through periods of cold and warm. We are currently somewhere in the middle of an interglacial period, which means that if we remove the so-called anthropogenic forcing function the earth will sometime in the future enter another ice age. But I guess that is okay, because that is due to natural causes and not mankind.
**I guess we really shouldn’t worry about the supposed rise in sea level due to “global warming”. After all God did promise Noah that he would never flood the world again!
I think you misunderstand me, Richard. At this point I am agnostic about global warming. I am not, however, agnostic on such things as pollution and the War on Terror, both of which clearly exist. Therefore, I favor new energy technologies and increased nuclear energy to end reliance on foreign (read: Saudi, Iranian, Venezuelan, etc.) oil and to keep the environment as clean as possible.
Roger,
I am sorry if I gave the impression that you are a believer in global warming. I know that you have stated many times that you have doubts about the “scientific consensus” on global warming and that you feel there are many good reasons other than global warming to end our reliance on the use of fossil fuels. It is just that I am sick of hearing politicians and environmental ideologues using global warming as a tool to beat us into submission. If we take it as “gospel” that global warming is a fact then we can be forced to give up the use of anything that contributes to global warming. This would give the Left total control of our lives. Communism would seem like a walk in the park compared to “Scientism”. After all you can argue whether Communism is correct, but you can’t argue against the laws of nature.
It really upsets me to hear people attempt to use scientific consensus to shut off debate. Scientific consensus is the antithesis of the scientific model. If science were a religion then it would truly be blasphemy for anyone to use scientific consensus as a way of preventing the questioning of any scientific principle! Science can only advance when someone comes up with a theory that challenges conventional wisdom.
I’m still waiting for the new Ice Age I was promised in the 70s.
Call me a crank, but I suspect EVERYthing that comes out the UN anymore. When a UN-hyped granfaloon report tells me to jump, my defensive reaction is to sit. Is this my fault, or UN’s?
I highly recommend taking half an hour or so to read this layman’s primer on the global warming controversy:
Primer
I can just about guarantee that when you finish it you will know more about the issue than Al Gore (if you don’t already).
I think an effort to achieve “energy independence” by government (taxpayer) financed research on “new energy technologies” is a bad idea for several reasons.
In the first place, �energy independence� as a goal is bad because it is the antithesis of free trade. Free trade has the enormously beneficial effect of seeing production migrate to the most efficient, lowest total cost producers. A goal of �energy independence� would sacrifice that � meaning that, in all likelihood, we would wind up with a much less efficient source of energy. Since every business uses energy in some form, this would put virtually every American business at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world.
Of course, that assumes the government comes up with anything even remotely feasible at all. What reason is there to believe that the government can do such a thing? Government does only a few things well � and commercial scientific research isn�t one of them.
The VERY BEST thing the U.S. government could do would be to lift all of the vast restrictions on exploration, drilling and refining that exists today AND repeal all corporate income taxes on American oil companies, refiners, shippers, etc. The more profitable the industry becomes, the more capital will flow to it and the more research, exploration and production will come from it.
Our fears about our dependence on �foreign oil� are exaggerated. Remember that in general, those who export oil to us are as dependent on us as we are on them. The Arabs learned this after the embargo of 1973. Today, we are far less dependent on any one supplier than ever before. Here is where we are getting our imported oil (last six months of 2006):
Canada 20.1%
Mexico 12.2%
Saudi Arabia 11.5%
Venezuela 9.8%
Nigeria 7.5%
Iraq 4.4%
Angola 4.0%
Algeria 3.6%
Virgin Islands (U.S.) 2.6%
United Kingdom 2.2%
Kuwait 2.0%
Ecuador 1.9%
Russia 1.7%
Brazil 1.4%
Norway 1.3%
Netherlands 1.2%
Aruba 0.9%
Chad 0.9%
France 0.8%
Trinidad and Tobago 0.8%
Libya 0.8%
Azerbaijan 0.6%
Belgium 0.6%
Gabon 0.5%
Argentina 0.5%
As an example of who depends on whom, we get 9.8% of our crude oil from Venezuela, but that accounts for over 44% of their exports. We account for 99% of Canada�s exports, 92% of Mexico�s and 55% of Nigeria�s. We only account for 15% of Saudi Arabia�s exports, so theoretically there is some vulnerability in that case, but they have long memories and surely remember what happened the last time they tried to use oil against us.
As far as the oil in the Mideast is concerned, we also should not forget that much of it actually belongs to western oil companies � the companies that bought the land, explored it, found the oil, drilled and extracted it, and began shipping it around the world. The Arab governments, starting with the Iranians in 1950, then stole all of that property, including the oil. One could make a very good case that we should, in fact, go to war over oil � to return it to its rightful owners and get it out of the hands of lunatics.
The Global Warming crowd have decided that debate about the extent and the actual root causes should be cut off. To them the ‘scientific consensus’ trumps any alternate theory.
God! Isn’t this what has held back real scientific advances. I remember the story of a gentleman named Harrison, who created timepiece which would help ships’ navigators determine a ship’s true longitude. The scientific ‘consensus’ not only prevented Harrison from receiving his due reward, but he was forced time and time again, to prove the legitimacy of his timepiece. The ‘consensus’ became a quasi-religion which tolerated no alternatives, and no debate.
Look at the Global Warming ‘consensus’ advocates: US Senators threatening those who promote and fund alternate positions, while those who promote and fund the Global Warming ‘consensus’ position are never questioned.
You have meteorlogical professionals, whose credentials are being threatened by Global Warming ‘consensus’ advocates, simply because they truly have opposing views about the causes and wish to have a true debate and scientific analysis.
You listen to the accusations that the US is at fault for this, but the US has lead the way in reducing air polution. China has the dirtiest factories in the world and has no intention of imposing the kinds of measures that the US has done since the ’60s. Yet, China gets a pass while the US is threatened by hypocrites like France, with ‘taxes’ for not complying with Kyoto. (BTW European countires like France and Germany have admited they can’t possibly meet their goals.)
I’ll get excited about the GW crowd when they start, per Professor Reynolds, agitating to ban private jets and stretch limos before they get to mammoth SUVs. Since it’s unlikely they would ever allow more nuclear plants, I suppose that option is kaput.
I think we should be concerned about the scientific process. Many scientists believe in global warming but that does not justify their pushing what is essentially a social engineering agenda. Finding scientists who support radical policy changes is essentially the same as legislating from the bench. I agree with you and Glenn Reynolds that switching from oil to nuclear has many benefits including energy independence. It’s great reading posts like yours. Without the blogosphere there wouldn’t be much of a debate.
Good thing we have the internet and the printing press. The scientific establishment has circled the wagons around The Big Bang and Evolution, and the ramparts are being erected over Global Warming. We still might be entering a new Dark Ages, with “consensus” being all so important.
Roger having the Government or worse the UN find ways for us to save energy is just about the worst way in the world that we can do anything about moving towards different energy sources. It is surprising to see people like Glenn Reynolds and others advocating a non market based approach to this problem.
Furthermore believing that we are going to take enough money out of the terror regimes pockets to make a difference is laughable, no matter how much Woolsey thinks it is a good idea. We should have never given them the oil in the first place they had no idea how to get it out of the ground nor did they even realize that it was worth anything. That was a terrific illustration of the extreme hazards of giving money to those who have not earned it.
I would be uncomfortable knowing that I was on the same side as these two nitwits…lying nitwits on top of it.
If you look across scientific disciplines you find for instance that our genome, somewhere in the range of 34 thousand, has only 4 to 6 genes controlling skin color.
We have a tendency to exaggerate very small variations witch in the grand scheme of things bear little impact on the survival of our specie. I suspect as much with the current weather hysteria.
The sun has a lot more of an impact on weather than we have been willing to give it credit. For scientific purposes we just started looking up.
How is intelligent science going to research something as chaotic, unstable, and unpredictable as Nature?
Does this mean the Global Warmists are now the new intelligent designers?
How about using intelligent scientific research funding to design ways of surviving Nature’s awesome power instead of funding ways to kill off the human race?
Could one of you scientific geniuses splain something to me.
Here in Los Angeles we were told last year to expect an El Nino. I’m not sure but this is one of the driest years I’ve seen.
So basically, if these predictors of weather and climate can’t predict one year to the next, how in the name of …… (insert your god) can they be taken seriously in predicting the next 100 years?
hmmmmmmmmmm, rhetorical!!!
To lower the stress of humanity upon the earth, the most effective thing the hysterics could do is hitch a ride on the Hale-Bopp comet, next time it flies by.
I think, as is so often the case, that we’re having the wrong debate. The climate is getting warmer, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt about that. Is it due to human activity or not? That part seems more murky.
Debating about who to blame seems silly, since we probably won’t know the actual truth for decades.
Instead of a foolish debate about who to blame, why don’t we start attacking the real problem: what are we going to do about it? There are lots of possiblities:
I’m in favor of greener energy policies on general principle, whether you factor in greenhouse gases or not. I think we can find better solutions than burning fossil fuels. “Waste not, wont not” – it’s not a cliche for nothing.
No single “alternative energy” source I’ve heard of so far seems likely to be a silver bullet, but more research seems like a good idea. I think the various alternatives can best be used in specific cases where they make the most sense (eg, a company that processes some vegitable matter and uses the cast off material as biomass fuel for its own processes).
Nuclear power is a non-renewable resource, but it sure looks attractive next to coal.
Better batteries or fuel cells can solve a lot of our automobile problems, so research money there seems like a good idea.
We can build much more efficient buildings and building use patterns. How many office buildings have thermostats that automatically change setpoints overnight when the offices are empty? Can we find a material that is translucent or transparent, but a better insulator than glass? Can we install more efficient lights? I bet we can. There is an easy 10% gain here and, if we work hard, another 10% can be had. That’s a LOT of gallons.
The main thing we have to fear are big government-mandatated programs that try to engineer big, complex systems from scratch (think Denver airport baggage handling). We’ll be much better off if we let a thousand flowers bloom than if we mandate a government florist.
Above all, we’ve got to quit wasting time debating about causes: eventually, CLIMATE IS GOING TO CHANGE. It always has and it always will. The spread of humans on the planet was set back by the last ice age; we weren’t prepared. We could be a lot more prepared this time if we would quit yammering about BLAME.