Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 03/30/2010 5:08:24 AM PDT by RogerFGay
Leaders of a contrarian environmental think tank, The Breakthrough Institute, have a way to get beyond the climate science wars: Break the link between global warming research and the push for low-carbon energy.
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, in a new essay in Yale Environment 360, argue that environmentalists are too eager to link natural disasters and dangerous weather to man-made climate change.
They say this is a losing hand that has been made even weaker by the furor over the now-infamous hacked climate science emails, and controversy surrounding the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.They write:
Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.
The essay also suggests that climate advocacy and research have become too intertwined, with environmentalists seeking to represent the science as “apocalyptic, imminent, and certain.” The science has been harmed as a result, they argue, stating:
Greens pushed climate scientists to become outspoken advocates of action to address global warming. Captivated by the notion that their voices and expertise were singularly necessary to save the world, some climate scientists attempted to oblige. The result is that the use, and misuse, of climate science by advocates began to wash back into the science itself.They later conclude:
Climate science can still usefully inform us about the possible trajectories of the global climate and help us prepare for extreme weather and natural disasters, whether climate change ultimately results in their intensification or not. And understood in its proper role, as one of many reasons why we should decarbonize the global economy, climate science can even help contribute to the case for taking such action. But so long as environmentalists continue to demand that climate science drive the transformation of the global energy economy, neither the science, nor efforts to address climate change, will be well served.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus are a contrarian pair with a years-long penchant for telling the mainstream environmental movement that it’s screwing up the climate fight in one way or another. Several of their past essays have been controversial, notably 2004’s "The Death of Environmentalism."
The Yale Environment 360 website has a comments section below the articles. Look for a lively response to their new piece.
ping
Global warming theorists would have us believe that the 8 billion watts of energy poured out on the Earth by the sun EVERY second doesn’t cause temperature change, but an SUV idling in upstate New York will.
They can $hit green for all I care as long as they stay out of my wallet.
Can they also tell Graham cracker.
Gee, ya think? /s
Well DUH!
Beware the man who peddles doom and will provide you a solution upon receipt of your treasure...
Hundreds of new breeder reactors please.
Now we have the new thesis.
Forcing you to turn over the green in your wallet is everything the Green Movement has always been about.
Exactly how can the economy be "decarbonized"? The majority of all products bought and sold are carbon-based. The only "decarbonized" economy is a non-existent economy.
The Greenies are not going to like this. It would appear that the Climategate memos are finally causing the few untainted “Scientists” to try to save themselves by disassociating with the radical greens. Kind of like Bernie Madoff’s kids calling the FBI on him after they had lived the good life off the profits of his thefts for 20 years.
We lied for your own good, we got caught so now we’ll try another approach. Nevermind our lies. We still deserve attention. We are Yale.
Why do the greens want plants to starve?
Well, well -- now we have it! It's not about science at all; it's about "remaking the entire global energy economy" through "progressive energy policy."
GREEN = RED, the new way to sell impressionable idealists on failed Communist policies. Many of us already knew it, but it's still surprising to see Comrades Nordhaus and Shellenberger climb out of their green camouflage and wave their red banners. Perhaps they believe the endgame is near...
The problem is these SCHOOL kids don't realize their real part in all this: ask these kids to give up their wiis and phones, turn the TV off, walk to school, one pair of shoes, five pairs of socks, pizza once a month....
They're tools of politics...and they know sh**.
If they take it, I will begin burning tires at night and cutting down every tree I can.
This has been known for quite some time to the curmudgeonly. We have raised up a nation of fools.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
--H. L. Mencken
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