The drive to “stop” global warming–relabeled climate change–does not depend on facts on the ground. Yes, the earth has warmed in the last one hundred years and there is evidence that some or all of it may be due to human activities. But it is by no means a sure thing. There is also evidence that the warming trend has stopped, for example, a slight cooling trend in the last decade, and that the sun’s cycles have more to do with climate warming and cooling than anything we are capable of doing
But none of that matters. One scientist, for example, has claimed that we started global warming as soon as we began to till the earth! From the story:
Ancient man may have started global warming through massive deforestation and burning that could have permanently altered the Earth’s climate, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. The study, published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews and reported on the University of Virginia’s Web site, says over thousands of years, farmers burned down so many forests on such a large scale that huge amounts of carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere. That possibly caused the Earth to warm up and forever changed the climate. Lead study author William Ruddiman is a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a climate scientist
What are we supposed to do, become hunter/gatherers? No, just gatherers.
And here’s an apt punturing of the hysteria by George Will:
Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution
– New York Times, Sept. 23In this headline on a New York Times story about difficulties confronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word “plateau.” It dismisses the unpleasant — to some people — fact that global warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicate their apocalyptic warnings about it…
In the fifth paragraph, a “few years” became “the next decade or so,” according to Mojib Latif, a German “prize-winning climate and ocean scientist” who campaigns constantly to promote policies combating global warming. Actually, Latif has said he anticipates “maybe even two” decades in which temperatures cool…The Times reported that “scientists” — all of them? — say the 11 years of temperature stability has “no bearing,” none, on long-term warming…
The Times says “a short-term trend gives ammunition to skeptics of climate change.” Actually, what makes skeptics skeptical is the accumulating evidence that theories predicting catastrophe from man-made climate change are impervious to evidence. The theories are unfalsifiable, at least in the “short run.” And the “short run” is defined as however many decades must pass until the evidence begins to fit the hypotheses.
Making matters worse is the Draconian solution:
Warnings about cataclysmic warming increase in stridency as evidence of warming becomes more elusive. A recent report from the United Nations Environment Program predicts an enormous 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit increase by the end of the century even if nations fulfill their most ambitious pledges concerning reduction of carbon emissions. The U.S. goal is an 80 percent reduction by 2050. But Steven Hayward of American Enterprise Institute says that would require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the 1910 level. On a per-capita basis, it would mean emissions approximately equal to those in 1875.
That’s nuts.
The entire climate change agenda is as much about ideology and politics as it is about science. My fear is that in their zeal, they will not only destroy the economies of the developed world, but cause tremendous harm to the currently impoverished by stifling their development. For example, the “slow food” movement, driven mostly by prosperous Yuppie-types in part to halt global warming by reducing “food miles,” intends to drive down food imports, including those from the world’s poorest countries. I am all for local farmers’ markets, but slow food won’t do anything to stop warming, and indeed, is not capable of feeding billions of mouths. But if taken beyond a lifestyle choice for the already prosperous, it could work to prolong abject poverty around the world. Where’s the wisdom in that?
October 6th, 2009 | 3:10 pm
IMO, the key problem with Global Warming as a science is that time and time again, it’s called “irrefutably settled”. When something in science is irrefutable, it’s no longer science. Even Einstein’s theory, which has much stronger evidence than Global Warming and has been proven time and time again, is not settled by any means. The search for a refutation of Einstein’s theory is not only legitimate, it’s encouraged. It makes the theory stronger and it shows places where the theory needs refinement. The same could be said for Quantum Mechanics, which Einstein repeatedly tried to refute.
Anyone who believes that science can “irrefutably settle” facts need only look back to Galileo. It was a “settled fact” that the earth was the center of the universe, and Aristotle’s Physics showed that any other center was impossible. Galileo was just a theory without a comparable physics to ground it (until Newton). Galileo’s observations were interesting, but they defied the laws of the current physics. Besides, they could be fit into the “settled science” with enough tweaking. so anyone who held to Galileo’s view was a quack that deserved to be shunned.
I don’t know if Global Warming is true or not. The whole issue has become more political than the N-Rays Fiasco ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_rays ). But what I can clearly state is that as it currently stands, Global Warming as a “settled fact” is not science — it’s an ideology.
October 6th, 2009 | 10:24 pm
I suppose the matter won’t be “irrefutably settled” for some folks until sufficient, measurable global warming — if, indeed, the process is actually taking place — has occurred to eliminate further conjecture, by which time it might be too late to reverse such a process. It would be prudent for all concerned to develop an assessment based on reasoned examination of such phenomena as the continued melting of polar ice caps and glaciers (observed by NASA), without resort to political hyperbole — and that goes for BOTH sides — to determine what threat, if any, exists. The LAST thing we need is calling other people “nuts” because we disagree with them.
October 7th, 2009 | 6:11 am
[...] Originally posted here: Nothing Will Deter Global Warming Ideology » Secondhand Smoke | A … [...]
October 7th, 2009 | 11:09 am
History Writer
It is true what you say. But part of the resistance the skeptics have to climate change has to do with the proposed solution; Cap&trade. If C&T were not part of the Waxman bill, it would have passed long ago with no argument at all. Almost no one sees a problem with legislation which encourages investment in renewable energy, almost no one. What argument could there be? But Cap&Trade is a different animal entirely. It is designed to drive up the cost of living so that we will all reduce our consumption habits and energy usage. But this only hurts the poor to lower middle classes, and will have no effect on the wealthy at all. For example, Al Gore lives a high carbon lifestyle, so he buys carbon credits from a company he owns, listed on the Chicago Climate Exchange which he also owns. He can burn all the carbon he wants because he is a multi millionaire, soon to be a multi billionaire if Cap&Trade is adopted (the world’s first Carbon Baron). Regular folks don’t have that kind of money lying around. So they will want carbon subsidies to even the playing field, and over the years they will get them, destroying the effectiveness of Cap&Trade. All we need to do is dump Cap&Trade from the Waxman bill and this will all go away.
October 7th, 2009 | 1:37 pm
HistoryWriter: It WOULD be good if people were prudent about this. But they’re not. Just this one quote from the post says it all:
“A recent report from the United Nations Environment Program predicts an enormous 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit increase by the end of the century even if nations fulfill their most ambitious pledges concerning reduction of carbon emissions.”
Six.3 degrees doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enormous. The “medieval warming period” that brought prosperity to a whole continent and the “little ice age” that devastated Greenland were nowhere near a 6 degree change. So if the UNEP thinks we have irreparable, cataclysmic “climate change” on our hands if every nation on earth pretty much ELIMINATES all carbon emissions, where does that leave us? Nowhere. It can’t be done, it would impoverish the whole world if it COULD BE done, and –according to this report — it wouldn’t work anyway. But the Global Warming people want us to plug ahead, as if any reduction would do some good.
Well, this report says it won’t. If your house were about to collapse unless you worked on every wall, joist, wire, and pipe at once, and all you did was replace the plumbing, it would fall down. A little bit of work would not help anything. That’s the situation the UNEP predicts. According to this crowd’s own work, there’s no point in doing anything about carbon emissions. But they still want us to. And the only reason I can think of is that they know the temperature is not going to rise 6.3 degrees, or anything like it, but that they can get the change the entire world to do things the way they want them to. Hmmm.
October 7th, 2009 | 1:42 pm
Gail: Bingo! Inducing hysteria in the pursuit of political/ideological goals.
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