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Gotta love Stein!
Posted on 12/08/2005 6:24:53 AM PST by Pokey78
Is it just me or are the global warming headlines starting to overheat a little? The Independent on Sunday gave its report on the Montreal climate conference the somewhat overwrought title: "What planet are you on, Mr Bush? (And do you care, Mr Blair?)" Nothing in the rather dull article underneath justified the hectoring hysteria.
And, to be honest, I've no real idea what it means. Is the IoS asking whether Mr Blair cares what planet Mr Bush is on? Well, no doubt he'd be startled to hear the President's moving to Pluto, but I expect he'd take it in his stride.
As to what planet Mr Bush is on, he's not on Pluto but on planet Goofy, a strange lost world where it's perfectly normal for apparently sane people to walk around protesting about global warming in sub-zero temperatures. Or, as the Canadian Press reported: "Montreal - tens of thousands of people ignored frigid temperatures Saturday to lead a worldwide day of protest against global warming."
Unfortunately, no one had supplied an updated weather forecast to the fellow who writes the protesters' chants. So, to the accompaniment of the obligatory pseudo-ethnic drummers, the shivering eco-warriors sang: "It's hot in here! There's too much carbon in the atmosphere!" Is this the first sign of the "New Ice Age" the media warned us about last week?
The story originated in Nature, the hitherto distinguished scientific periodical whose environmental coverage increasingly resembles that celebrated Sunday Sport scoop about the London double-decker bus found frozen in the deepest ice of the Antarctic. That, of course, is absurd - in reality, as the trained scientists at Nature would be the first to point out, the Clapham omnibus would be lucky to make it as far as Tulse Hill before being embedded in a glacier.
The eco-doom-mongers were speculating on possible changes in thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic - or, as the Daily Mail put it: "Is Britain on the brink of a New Ice Age?" Europe could get so chilly that shivering Muslim rioters might burn the entire Peugeot fleet on the first night. Which would be good for the environment, presumably. After that, they'd be reduced to huddling round the nearest fire-breathing imam for warmth.
But the point is, as Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace puts it: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with." Got that? If it's hot, that's a sign of global warming, and, if it's cold, that's a sign of global warming.
And if it's just kind of average - say, 48F and partially cloudy, as it will be in Llandudno today - that's a sign that global warming is accelerating out of control and you need to flee immediately because time is running out ! "Time is running out to deal with climate change," says Mr Guilbeault. "Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don't have a lot of time."
Really? Ten years ago, we had a lot of time? That's not the way I recall it: "Time is running out for the climate" - Chris Rose of Greenpeace, 1997; "Time running out for action on global warming Greenpeace claims" - Irish Times, 1994; "Time is running out" - scientist Henry Kendall, speaking on behalf of Greenpeace, 1992. Admirably, Mr Guilbeault's commitment to the environment extends to recycling last decade's scare-mongering press releases.
"Stop worrying about your money, take care of our planet," advised one of the protesters' placards. Au contraire, take care of your money and the planet will follow. For anywhere other than Antarctica and a few sparsely inhabited islands, the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy. In the past third of a century, the American economy has swollen by 150 per cent, automobile traffic has increased by 143 per cent, and energy consumption has grown 45 per cent. During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent, and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Despite signing on to Kyoto, European greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 2001, whereas America's emissions have fallen by nearly one per cent, despite the Toxic Texan's best efforts to destroy the planet.
Had America and Australia ratified Kyoto, and had the Europeans complied with it instead of just pretending to, by 2050 the treaty would have reduced global warming by 0.07C - a figure that would be statistically undectectable within annual climate variation. In return for this meaningless gesture, American GDP in 2010 would be lower by $97 billion to $397 billion - and those are the US Energy Information Administration's somewhat optimistic models.
I've mentioned before the environmentalists' ceaseless fretting for the prospect of every species but their own. By the end of this century, the demographically doomed French, Italians and Spaniards will be so shrivelled in number they may have too few environmentalists to man their local Greenpeace office. Is that part of the plan? To create a habitable environment with no humans left to inhabit it? If so, destroying the global economy for 0.07C is a swell idea.
But even the poseurs of the European chancelleries are having second thoughts. Which is why, in their efforts to flog some life back into the dead Kyoto horse, the eco-cultists have to come up with ever scarier horrors, such as that "New Ice Age". Meanwhile, the Bush Administration's Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate brings together the key economic colossi of this new century - America, China and India - plus Australia, Japan and South Korea, in a relationship that acknowledges, unlike Kyoto, the speed of Chinese and Indian economic growth, provides for the sharing of cleaner energy technology and recognises that the best friend of the planet's natural resources is the natural resourcefulness of a dynamic economy.
It's a practical and results-oriented approach, which is why the eco-cultists will never be marching through globally warmed, snow-choked streets on its behalf. It lacks the requisite component of civilisational self-loathing.
Wake up and smell the CO2, guys. Sayonara, Kyoto. Hello, coalition of the emitting.
FReepmail me to be added or removed to the ECO-PING list!
Gotta love Stein!
I love it....as I sit here shivering in -17 record breaking cold, even for Wyoming. Still the idiots are yapping about global warming.
I really love their claims of global warming causing an ice age, do they ever listen to themselves or are they so mesmerized by the sound of their voices that they just make noise?
Thanks for this post.
It's 7 degrees in my part of Montana this morning: it was -10 degrees yesterday. Must be that global warming.
Wyomimg is a big place. Where? Close to the WY border, in Rapid City, I have a very unique situation, it is 41 degrees on the east side of the house where the sun is shining on the thermometer. The temperature readout on the Ford Explorer parked in the shade on the west side of the house reads -9F. Global warming in just 50 feet, or if your walking in the opposite direction, I suppose it would be global cooling.
Nice post! Many great points there, especially on how rapidly the US is cleaning up its act without being involved in Kyoto.
Everyone should also remember that science and technology are advancing at a breakneck pace. What seems an insurmountable problem now may be tractable in 10 years, and trivial in 20. Spending billions or trillions of dollars on this now is not the smartest approach IMO. Especially since the actual science is far from well understood yet - what we need right now is a whole lot of data gathering and research.
Jerry Pournelle wrote many years ago that perhaps manmade "global warming" was actually saving us from an upcoming Ice Age. How ironic if that were true...
That is amazing - a 50-degree difference on one house! I think I'd almost have to get video of that - one long take, so no one can accuse you of creative editing.
I wanted to repeat this because you have put some of my thoughts into words so well for me, thank you! I am not as sceptical of Global Warming as most here, but I do think it is silly to spend all that capital at this time on a problem we really aren't sure about. When and if the time comes, I believe we'll have the technology to "fix" the problem. Be it solar reflectors in orbit, or seeding the skys to increase reflective cloud cover. Not just that, but the US would be at the forefront of those efforts.
Yeah, global warming is a serious problem, all right. I plan on making it one of my top priorities right after we recover from the Great American Heterosexual Aids Pandemic that's gonna affect every family in the country by 1990.... < /sarcasm off>
The sun does some amazing things, but if I were able to take the actual air temperature rather than the reflected benefit of direct sun on the thermometer it would be a lot closer to -9 than plus 50.
I just wanted to add one more point - any environmentalist that's really concerned about global warming and pollution should be pushing for the US to build as many nuclear power plants as possible to replace coal and oil fired plants. That would greatly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, as well as having the nice side effect of increasing our energy independence.
Another great point that I have brought up before. We SHOULD be pushing Nuclear, and very hard. Its a no-lose proposition. Everyone wins except for the handwringers.
Fact is though, most of the hard left are Luddites, and want to see us living like Native Americans (except for the "eating buffalo" part...).
I want my global warming!
Good article. Perhaps as the planet freezes up into an ice ball the likes of big Al Gore will be silenced once and for all.
Near Greybull.
GREAT stuff bump! Thanks for posting this!
I got a "C" in one of my MBA classes in the early 1980's for arguing with the professor about this. It seemed clear to me that Nuclear energy was the best way to go.
That class was supposed to be an "easy A", but I was too dumb to ask if that meant only for Liberals. The only species they want to see extinct are humankind. The professor was so against the human race that he said he'd never contribute to the problem by having children. I thought that was a good start. :-)
If Liberals never procreate, we might be on the right track.
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