Posted on 01/22/2014 5:38:40 AM PST by Kaslin
The Hill, the newspaper that covers Congress, says this year, there will be a major policy battle over "climate change." Why?
We already waste billions on pointless gestures that make people think we're addressing global warming, but the earth doesn't notice or care.
What exactly is "global warming" anyway? That's really four questions:
1. Is the globe warming? Probably. Global temperatures have risen. Climate changes. Always has. Always will.
2. Is the warming caused by man? Maybe. There's decent evidence that at least some of it is.
3. But is global warming a crisis? Far from it. It's possible that it will become a crisis. Some computer models suggest big problems, but the models aren't very accurate. Some turned out to be utterly wrong. Clueless scaremongers like Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal., seize on weather disasters to blame man's carbon output. After Oklahoma's tragic tornadoes last year, Boxer stood on the floor of the Senate and shrieked, "Carbon could cost us the planet!" But there were actually fewer tornadoes last summer.
4. If the globe is warming, can America do anything about it? No. What we do now is pointless. I feel righteous riding my bike to work. That's just shallow. Even if all Americans replaced cars with bicycles, switched to fluorescent light bulbs, got solar water heaters, etc., it would have no discernible effect on the climate. China builds a new coal-fueled power plant almost every week; each one obliterates any carbon reduction from all our windmills and solar panels.
Weirdly, the only thing that's reduced America's carbon output has been our increased use of natural gas (it releases less greenhouse gas than oil and coal). But many environmentalists fight the fracking that produces it.
Someday, we'll probably invent technology that could reduce man's greenhouse gas creation, but we're nowhere close to it now. Rather than punish poor people with higher taxes on carbon and award ludicrous subsidies to Al Gore's "green" investments, we should wait for the science to advance.
If serious warming happens, we can adjust, as we've adjusted to big changes throughout history. It will be easier to adjust if America is not broke after wasting our resources on trendy gimmicks like windmills.
Environmental activists say that if we don't love their regulations, we "don't care about the earth." Bunk. We can love nature and still hate the tyranny of bureaucrats' rules.
We do need some rules. It's good that government built sewage treatment plants. Today, the rivers around Manhattan are so clean that I swim in them. It's good that we forced industry to stop polluting the air. Scrubbers in smokestacks and catalytic converters on cars made our lives better. The air gets cleaner every time someone replaces an old car with a new one.
But those were measures against real pollution -- soot, particulates, sulfur, etc. What global warming hysterics want to fight is merely carbon dioxide. That's what plants breathe. CO2 may prove to be a problem, but we don't know that now.
The world has real problems, though: malaria, malnutrition, desperate poverty. Our own country, while relatively rich, is deep in debt. Obsessing about greenhouse gases makes it harder to address these more serious problems.
Environmentalists assume that as people get richer and use more energy, they pollute more. The opposite is true. As nations industrialize, they pay more attention to pollution. Around the world, it's the most prosperous nations that now have the cleanest air and water.
Industrialization allows people to use fewer resources. Instead of burning trees for power, we make electricity from natural gas. We figure out how to get more food from smaller pieces of land. And one day we'll probably even invent energy sources more efficient than oil and gas. We'll use them because they're cost-effective, not because government forces us to.
So let's chill out about global warming. We don't need more micromanagement from government. We need less.
Then free people -- and rapidly increasing prosperity -- will create a better world.
It is NOT warming, and it is NOT my dang fault.
One thing that I have noticed is that the more of those damn “wind farms” they put up, the worse these storms are. I think the windmills are causing all of this bull****.
If we cause warming, how can we make it get warmer today?
The very best rebuttal to global warming hysterics is to demand that they present a negative case, that does not use circular logic.
Simply put: “Using measurable conditions, what would we see if global warming was *not* taking place? If you were utterly wrong, what would prove it?”
The MMGW hysterics are *desperate* to avoid naming *any* condition that could prove them wrong. They want the idea of MMGW to be magical, not scientific, in character.
They insist that MMGW is “proven” by everything, extremes and means, highs and lows and all in between, with religious fervor. MMGW means that they get power over others and wealth; more government control and the restoration of an elite over “the masses”.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ — Humpty Dumpty, in Through The Looking Glass
Man Made Global Warming is like that. It is, precisely because they say it is, evidence notwithstanding. And those who disagree are evil and to be damned, and oppressed if at all possible. It is just another snake cult, led by wannabee Thulsa Dooms.
This sums up my feelings on the issue exactly. I am not a “Denier”, whatever that really means, but I am a skeptic. What I DO deny is the scare mongering and the catastrophism of the Left and this subject. Its the greatest attempted power grab EVER.
Green Capitalism: The God That Failed
But this means that, so long as the global economy is based on capitalism and private property and corporate property and competitive production for market, we're doomed to a collective social suicide - and no amount of tinkering with the market can brake the drive to global ecological collapse. We can't shop our way to sustainability, because the problems we face cannot be solved by individual choices in the marketplace. They require collective democratic control over the economy to prioritize the needs of society and the environment. And they require local, reigional, national and international economic planning to reorganize the economy and redeploy labor and resources to these ends. I conclude, therefore, that if humanity is to save itself, we have no choice but to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a democratically planned eco-socialist economy. [emphasis mine]
We really don't know. Even a thousand year time span is far too short to measure these things. Measurements for the last 200 years are distorted, tainted, and unreliable.
2. Is the warming caused by man?
This is impossible to prove one way or the other.
3. But is global warming a crisis?
Only in the same way that everything is a crisis these days.
4. If the globe is warming, can America do anything about it?
No. Absolutely nothing. If America disappeared tomorrow with its carbon footprint, there would be no measurable change in global temperature (see answer to #1)
The error made by the AGW fear-mongers (almost certainly intentionally) is looking at data from only part of a cycle and assuming / promoting the idea that this is a long-term trend.
Here's a fun fact for people to chew on. Most of the trends "discovered" by the AGW crowd are a few tenths of a degree C over the span of a century or so. Did you know that the historical data used as input into these models has to be adjusted and scaled to account for changing accuracy and precision in measurement techniques and equipment; adjusted and scaled for population changes in the vicinity of the monitoring stations; adjusted and scaled for changes in land use in the vicinity of the monitoring stations etc. These biases and scaling factors are themselves estimates of how such things as population, land use, etc. affect local weather patterns and readings. So they use estimated numbers to adjust the historically inaccurate data (eg. many older readings came from mercury thermometers of questionable calibration via the mark-1 eyeball of even more questionable calibration) The kicker in all this? These adjustments and scaling factors are at least one order of magnitude larger than the very trends they purport to have found in the data! Change your mind on some of the scaling factors a little bit and suddenly you think we're headed for an ice age...
Or if you are a less than scrupulous "researcher" you carefully pick the date you begin your trend analysis on. Pick it in one of the downswings of the global climate cycle and gosh, everything looks "up" from there - we're going to fry! Pick your start date in in one of the upswings of the cycle and everything trends down from there - wow, we're all going to freeze! As they say, the fun thing about statistics is you can work with them and show any dang thing you want to show.
The article was spot on.
#1 is true, a fact during the times of the Roman empire, they were growing grapes for their wine in Scotland of all places and there is ample evidence that Greenland got its name because it was green and not white. His point is that the climate changes all the time and there aint a damned thing any one of us can do about it and furthermore the earth doesn’t even notice or care, period.
If you want further proof, go stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and for the first time in your life discover your own utter insignificance (that was taken from the GC Lodge visitors book penned by a female physician on her visit in 1898). That blown up volcano next to Flagstaff, along with its caldera in between, had more to do with what we see than most even know.
#2 is actually correct in that he says evidence, not proven fact about AGW. The problem is that assertion is only based on very bad computer models that in no way account for the effects of fluctuations on the sun and the frequency pattern of solar flares.
His main point is that AGW is a giant farce based on assumptions and not peer proven scientific fact, just unproven theory.
A very big case in point was the debacle of the ice patrol last month around Antarctica. The so-called scientific fact finding trip found the wrong facts and damned near killed all the pointy headed fools who embarked on it.
I also think 1. is likely wrong, and 2. is definitely wrong.
What I want to know, as a technical/scientific type of guy, is why some physicists haven’t simply compared the amount of heat that comes to the earth from the sun per year, and compare it to the amount of heat generated by man?
It seems to me that the amount generated - in total - by man would have to be the tiniest fraction of what comes from the sun.
And even idiots know that the heat output from the sun varies.
What am I missing? Yeah, greenhouse gases trap heat, but how much? And where’s the proof that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
#1 and #2 are both lies... I quit reading this tripe when they opened with a lie.
This is absolutely the case. Hard to care about pollution when you don't know where your next meal is coming from.
just sayin'
Excellent point
Problem is that the left has politicized the science of climatology so much that we'll never really know what's actually happening. This is bad, IMHO.
As for man-made warming (or cooling, whatever), that's some serious hubris on AlGore's part. 'Tis the reason why I pay attention to him, it makes me feel all-powerful..."Conservatives are ruining the weather! Conservatives are ruining the economy!" and so on.... :-)
There’s a meeting of world “leaders” in Davos today...Their topics are world economics and Global warming. ..
They want total control!
One of the researchers traveled to the area where it was found, now a place so cold that snow covers it for 3/4 of a year.
Said scientist wondered why a wooly mammoth would be that far north in such a harsh climate. He reckoned that during the time of the animal's short life, the area was a steppe and the moderate climate supported all sorts of animals no longer with us.
Without missing a beat, my 13 year old boy stated that it must have been warmer back then and that the climate change to colder weather there ultimately had a hand in the extinctions of many animals that depended upon area.
I'm glad something so obvious is understood by my son, and that the man-caused climate change b.s. being thrown at him in school is going in one ear and out the other.
I later told my boy that I'm going to lobby for a government funded grant to study how long ago T.Rex was killing all those cute polar bears which then forced the smart penguins to swim from the Arctic to the Antarctic for their safety. He laughed and said that sounds about as real as humans causing the earth to warm.
Then you missed a good article.
Stop it, Mr. Stossel!
Feeding them FACTS only enrages them!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.