We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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A dumb attempt to silence Global Warming skeptics Two senior American politicians, one a Republican, one a Democrat, have sent a snotty letter to ExxonMobil in order to tell that firm that it should cease funding views that challenge the Green consensus. The effrontery of these twerps really takes the breath away. It further bolsters my view that many environmentalists, at least on the edges, are hostile to free speech and liberty more generally. If were a senior manager at this oil firm, I would reply by informing these characters over exactly what they can do with such letters. There is no longer any point pretending to be nice to these people.
The Wall Street Journal has a strong editorial here on the subject. Thanks to Reason’s Hit and Run blog for the pointer.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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The sensible moral perspective is: If the government can fund research into global warming that draws conclusions that are likely to increase its power, so can ExxonMobil.
Sense has very little to do with this, Ham. Belief in the human cause of global warming is nothing short of a religious belief in some sectors of the modern left, and like many other religious believers they dont want the fundamental tenets of their faith questioned. If that means they have to strong-arm some of the unconvinced, especially those with enough capital to make their views heard over the obstacles put in their way by the believers’ friends in the media, well then, so much the better. Bringing down an oil company will convince the rest of the skeptics to keep their mouths shut.
I wonder if the the two Senators will threaten the
19,000 signatories of the “Oregon Petition”. This petition signed by scientists was sent to the President in 1992 and declared:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate”.
To quote Monty Python, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
I think we mere observers can remain sensible. We know that Big Oil is going to throw money at anyone who can help keep their business going. We also know that government is going to do the same. I happen to be happy to believe that global warming is real – it’s a bigger conspiracy than JFK if all those scientists are being paid by…’the left’…to draw those conclusions – but I am, like you are, wary of those who will exploit it for bad ends. The gluttonous oil companies and their suspect science may be the best vanguard for freedom we have. 🙁
it’s a bigger conspiracy than JFK if all those scientists are being paid by…’the left’…to draw those conclusions
Well, quite. The fact that all manner of lefties would like to use climate research to put we proles in our place does not necessarily mean that it’s all wrong.
Some would have it that it is not difficult to be a bigger conspiracy than “JFK”, for example my toenails once a fortnight.
As to materially damaging Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) through CO2 etc, I don’t see how it is a conspiracy. The facts are there in the public domain for both sides: it’s just green religion and centralising politicians that amplify it out of all proportion.
Best regards
The article mentions James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institue (Not to be confused with the Goddard Spaceflight Center) This guy was one of the orginators of the Humans are the cause of global warming scare with some now discredited computer simulations back in the mid 1990s. After some more work he determined that ‘aerosols’ -particles from burning raw coal and dung were major players in climate change. This was significant since, if true, it made the whole Kyoto program which left out China and India, look ridiculous.
As a good memeber of the Church of the New York Times he had to do something about this. So his co religionists set up a not very competent and self- important, NASA PR bureaucrat and got him fired.
The whole debate is about power and money. No one should imagine for a moment that science has anything to do with it.
The ‘bigger than JFK’ thing was a little joke at the expense of conspiracy theorists in general. There’s no conspiracy there or in global warming…unlike the moon landings. :-O
I, like most people, have not seriously studied environmental science, so I am at the mercy of those that have when it comes to deciding the reality of global warming. If most scientists say it’s real, I’ll be polite and believe them. I am worried that some people who share my point of view (supporter of individual freedom) believe that we need to find some science to build our case against this new strain of statism. We don’t. The earth’s temperature can get to whatever it likes, and I’ll still believe that we each have those basic individual rights. I don’t care if CO2, terrorists, economic/gender/racial inequality, or whatever, is damaging our ‘society’; we should all always have the right to our bodies, minds, and property. The corollary of needing environmental science to win the argument against environmental statism is: if global warming really was proved beyond doubt, we’d have to submit to the green socialists.
Global warming as (at least) a 150 year trend is a given. Among other indicators is this one. The extreme long, the extreme short and the average all appear to have dropped by very approximately 40 days (~30%) in 150 years.
The questions are, is this human caused? Is it just a normal fluctuation in a normal longer interval pattern? Is it harmful or beneficial? Can we effect a change in trends? If we can/could, do we want to do anything to change it?
The senators’ efforts are not an effort to defend truth, but rather to combat heresy against the Green faith. We should avoid getting so caught in our resistence to mystical ‘science’ that we look like idiots denying the unmistakable and miss opportunities to learn the real how and why of what is happening.
Like a boss of mine a long time ago liked to say, “this isn’t a problem, it’s an opportunity.” But an opportunity to what? This is what we should be looking to discover.
Ham says “We know that Big Oil is going to throw money at anyone who can help keep their business going.”
Big Oil will continue to thrive regardless of what the Europeans do with CO2 restrictions.
I believe Europe and Britain are in the grip of hysteria regarding CO2. You’re fears are most probably wrong. And even if you are correct regarding global warming the dynamic growing economies of the world will not join you in suicidal energy restrictions. So by following Kyoto Europe is engaging in another nihilistic orgy.
Make no mistake. Countries that actually follow Kyoto will be left behind by nations, like the US and Australia and the entire 3rd world, that act rationally.
Midwesterner said most of what I wanted to say. As usual his post is both insightful and thoughtful.
We now have as almost a cultural given the idea that we all use more of the planet’s natural resources and energy than we should.
Well, I disagree. I want to use more. It is only through energy that I talk to you guys. It is only through the use of energy that I get to ASDA and buy food. When I buy tuna, it is only the use of energy that got it airfreighted from India. And I like tuna carpaccio.
Jonathan made a beautiful post a few days back about Ecuadorian flowers being on sale in the USA. Well that needed to be said. I also need to say that if I thought I was doing one iota of provable harm to the global environment by heating my home, running my computers or anything else I would be first in line to stop this.
Mid summed it up perfectly because he posed the real important questions. Is the climate changing? Is this a bad thing? Is there anything we can do about it? Is it our fault anyway? And most practically, can we realistically do anything about it?
OK, I added a couple to Mid’s list but I’m sure he won’t mind.
I frequently bet. I almost invariably win. A tenner says that global warming is dead in the water as a major threat by 2026. The greenies will have dumped it as untenable. Obviously they’ll have a new nightmare by then. I wouldn’t bet against that being a new Ice Age. I’ll put twenty on it at 2-1.
I know science and I know bullshit.
I had hiccups. It’s one of those things that just happens. They have cleared up now as they tend to.
Well, I’m an agnostic. I don’t believe in God. I do have a lot of time for folks that do. I frequently find myself agreeing with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs much more than my co-religionists.
Fundamentally, the global warming heresy is a secular religion. It is unprovable as all significant religions are similarly unprovable.
You either believe the wicked people of the Developed world are using more than their fair share of the world’s natural resources, or you don’t. That’s really what it comes down to isn’t it? Well, I was born in a well run hospital in Newcastle which was, lit and had all manner of outlandish technologies (all of which use energy) such as X-ray machines and scanners and telephones…
Precisely what technologies do the greenies want us to give up on? They hate airfreight, yet airfreight contributes only 2% to global freight carbon emissions so, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep on eating my Indian tuna.
Now I said I was agnostic. I am also a secularist. I can easily understand why, say, in Christians go to church in the hope of eternal salvation. I don’t believe that but it makes sesne. I utterly fail to understand why the likes of wankers like Jonathan Porritt want to destroy our life-styles on the basis of a highly dubious collection of scientific theories
OK, I double posted but this is something I feel strongly about. I have changed a little in the last few years but this environmental lunacy is one of the reasons I sought out a new political alternative: libertariansim.
I just wish we had the balls to call it liberalism and let the faux-liberal left go hang.
So, if there is global warming, is it a bad thing? I tend to think it a good thing. Certainly it is preferable to the extensive glaciation that covered much of Europe and North America not so long ago. Indeed, I fear we haven’t enough global warming.
Pulse and respiration?
Seriously,
I think the new left contains a lot of Shopenhauer’s pessimism and search for a denial (destruction?) of the will to live. I think there is some essentially vicarious suicidalism in it. “You first” as it were.
But I don’t have enough interest in either one to learn more. Why drink from a bitter well?
The more one digs into the quasi-religious pseudo-science of anthropogenic global warming, the stranger it seems. There is much more debate about the “facts” than most of us realize. Since 2/3 of the planet’s surface is ocean, and much of the rest is uninhabited desert, mountain, & pole — how do we know what the temperatures were all around the globe years ago, let alone today? So how can we “know” it is getting warmer?
One of the few undisputed measurements (since done from polar-orbiting satellites covering the whole globe) is that the temperature of the stratosphere (upper atmosphere) has been trending slightly downwards over the last few decades. Is that consistent with a planet that is supposedly getting warmer?
But consider the plight of the True Believer. CO2 (which they themselves breath out 24/7) is EVIL. It must be stopped. So what about nuclear power?
An observation from discussing this topic with a reasonably large number of people — the proponents of anthropogenic global warming who can actually hold up their end of a conversation about physics & measurements support greatly expanded nuclear power. Sometimes reluctantly, but support it they do. On the other hand, the people whose knowledge goes no deeper than “Everbody knows …” are as opposed to nuclear power as they are to CO2.
oh you mean this oregon petition? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
Oh yeah, that misrepresented one.
This is the relevant bit from the Wikipedia article referenced by wolltask
Best regards
The quasi religious aspects of this debate make it very difficult for someone like me (educated but lacking expert knowledge of climate) to come to any valid conclusions from published sources aimed at the layman. I think the situation is:
The climate is probably changing; this may be wholly or partly a result of human action; we may be able to stop or reduce our production of the agents causing this change through changes to our lifestyle; stopping their production may stop or reverse that change; this is probably a desirable outcome. There is a lobby who are unwilling to accept any doubt cast upon their hypotheses, to the extent of going to great lengths to stop, discredit or even ban the publication af any contrary view.
My own view is that only one of the “mays” above needs to become “wont” to make the current calls for changes in my lifestyle to become redundant. Therefore I prefer the strategy of wait & see; identify the actual outcomes of climate change and adapt as appropriate. This may place a moral obligation on those countries free enough to generate wealth to provide assistance to the people of poorer countries to allow them to adapt (but that is a different debate).
Ham, you have raised, in my view, an important issue.
How does one decide between experts with contrary views?
Your suggestion is to go with the majority of experts. I suggest that for any topic the best way of deciding who to believe, is to pay attention to their approach to the alternative position.
If they try to suppress discussion, denigrate the holders of the other view, claim superior authority and will not admit any possibility of error on their part then I think they are probably wrong.
I refer to the bullying, nasty and vicious variety of enviromentalists (like Monbiot in the UK) as envirofascists. The name seems to work for people who believe there is no room for debate on the subject and that sceptics should be ignored, shunned and ridiculed.
Oh Lordy, Midwesterner!
It’s come to that has it? Schopenhauer? As a kid I read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and I did a bit of philosophy at University. I was impressed by the Biritsh empiricists most and I have to say I liked William James a bit too. I almost “got” Spinoza and I have a soft spot for Descartes (who, incidentally, would probably have welcomed a spot of global warming seeing as he was what Manc folk call “nesh” all the time and died of a chill in a draughty palace in Sweden).
Now, the Germans. Oh my word. The Krauts build wonderful cars, tanks and aren’t too bad at the old aerospace thing and they can be truly proud of their composers (other than Wagner, obviously) but they can’t cook and they absolutely can’t do philosophy. Or more to the point, when they do philosophy, they do very bad philosophy.
I can sit down and enjoy reading Adam Smith or Descartes but has anybody ever actually read Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”? I once tried to read a summation of what Heidegger was getting at. I almost died. Hegel and Marx, well ‘nuf said on that duo. Not that I would regard Marx as a philosopher anyway, more just a bearded git. So who is left? Well, admittedly, Frege had a pretty good stab at philosophy of math though I prefer the approach of Peano to be honest. The aforementioned Kant might have been on to something, though I wouldn’t know for sure because what I know about Idealism is gleaned from third parties such as Godel (who was Austrian-Czech anyway) because Kant is almost pathologically unreadable.
Now, I’m working my way up to it.
Philosophers tend to be (and always have been) wankers. Most philosophy is mental masturbation to quote what Byron said about Keats. But without a shadow of doubt, without a scintilla of regret, without a shred of a misgiving I nominate Arthur fucking Schopenhauer as the toss-pot in chief. An absolute map of Africa on the bed-sheet of Western thought, a fuckwit of truly gothic proportions. A man (I shudder to use that word in the context) of absolutely no redeeming features in either his personal conduct or his academic “work”. Would you like to go for a pint with him? Thought not. And he wouldn’t stand his round would he? Would he buggery. He had a poodle and went on long walks by himself during which he thought depressing thoughts. What an absolute wanker.
Thanks Midwesterner for the comparison. I think you’re right. The enviro-Nazi viewpoint is deeply depressing. The idea that all human activity is actively damaging Gaia is bonkers. I’m English and practically all the territory of this crowded little island is shaped by thousands of years of human activity. Our great northern national parks didn’t get the way they look through nature. They got to look the way they do through sheep farming. Lots of foreign folk pay good money to come and look at the English countryside. Oy Vey Gewalt! Enough already! The way Sir Jonathan Porritt goes on, you would have thought we’d had 40 years of Commies stripping the land to mine lignite at a rapacious rate. Or the “Virgin Land Scheme” or the unalloyed disaster of the Aral Sea…
Ah, but those things only happen if you put collectivist morons in thrall to German philosophers in charge.
And while I’m still on the subject of German philosophers, by all accounts Liebniz was a total dy/dx.
I almost got a little Anglo-Saxon on the subject of Liebniz but I feared smite control (which I’ll probably get anyway for using “Kraut”). Calculus is a flexible method, feel free to substitute the variables as you see fit.
I am less shocked than when the president of the Royal Society (Lord May) sent a letter to scientific journalists a year or two ago (and I’ve lost the link but I think the business editor of the Telegraph did a piece) stating that the argument was over and not to give sceptics a platform.
I can argue on the difficultly of modelling a system you don’t understand (because it’s apocalyptic model results that are the only thing suggesting action is necessary, if all other things were to remain the same [ie no feedback] doubling CO2 would raise T by <1C): from the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC;
"We think we have high understanding only for carbon dioxide and methane, medium for ozone and solar forcing, low understanding of stratospheric water vapor, the direct effect of aerosols and contrail cirrus, not to mention very low understanding of indirect cloud albedo effect and land surface albedo."
We don't get clouds - we really haven't a clue how and why. Even with all the fudges, models fail to accurately describe cloud distribution - and they are rather important to where we go.
Weather is dependent on feedback - tomorrow's input is todays output. Error expands exponentially, as any difference between reality and prediction is magnified in each cycle - we can only forcast 5 days weather or so in England, even with some fairly big computers and a lot of practice.
So why should we trust models? This error grows in any single scenario you run until there is no match to reality. Even with a perfectly realistic model, real world and virtual world run parallel but out of sync; you (obviously) couldn't use the model to predict weather at a specific time. So we use lots of scenarios, changing our input variables and our feedback strengths slightly, around the right values (to the best of our knowledge). We can then average the results.
Thus to get valid predictions our inputs need to be right. There are a huge number of variables, not all well characterised (see top) so how do you pick?
It is always useful to know how sensitive your system is - if by varying a feedback by only a small proportion of the error in our estimation of it, we arrive at totally different answers, we need more physical research: the chance of using a value of it close enough to reality to give us a valid answer is too low to bother (and less the more you have, and Oh there are so many here).
But of course we can run it against past data and see, and shuffle the variables 'til we get an answer that looks right. Trouble is, the more variables, the more ways there are to fit a data set, and only one is right.
What do we pick? The ones that we think are right. And run it. And correct to get an answer that agrees with what everyone else is saying, pretty much. Repeat. Publish. Keep your job/get promoted.
Science to a large degree is the simplification of complex looking stuff to the greatest amount possible while still getting an answer near enough to reality to be useful (eg Henry's law, Raoult's law ...). This works, to varying degrees, until you meet a system too complex to approximate enough that you can attack it (like, say, the exact wavefunction of N2). Then you're stuck, so you can give up or you can cobble something together that agrees roughly with current theory.
What's the chance of picking every variable or forcing dead right? Even then, we can't predict the Sun, and a few big eruptions would soon kick real and virtual worlds out of line.
You’d all prefere to belive research from the same industry that for years kept producing papers that confirmed that lead from car fumes was GOOD for us – Now thats bonkers.
Also i’m no scientist but i think research into global warming has come on a bit since 1992.
Go and read about the carbon cycle (it’s very intresting) and then say your not even a tiny bit bothered about the fact that we are pouring out millions of years worth of trapped carbon all at once.
Oh and i saw a butterfly yesterday – IN DECEMBER!
(not that proves anything but crazy eh!)
I have stated my position on this on many a thread, and it’s basically this
Deal with effects of any warming occuring and stop kidding yourselves that you either know or can do anything about the causes, because quite frankly I dont believe our scientists are smart enough to understand the causes.
As I have said before, these wonderful models that are always touted have the Sun cas a constant factor. It isn’t.
And I’d be much happier to believe in our scientists and their competence, if they had only recently discovered that LIVE trees produce methane(they had previously thought only DEAD trees did that. Smething I find astonishing!) So planting more trees produces MORE so called greenhouse gasses!!!
Go figure!!
Perhaps there is a room full of constipated mathematicians working it out with a pencil as we speak.
PS the figures on rises in ocean levels seems to me, well, risable.
The only rises will occur if all the ice on LAND melts.
The artic ice flows and bergs etc will not add one iota to sea levels because of that pesky law physics called Displacement. Eureka indeed!
a) Global Temperatures are rising, will continue to rise, turning arable land into deserts, and the rest awash in oceans ever rising, turning back man into a brute struggling to survive in an apocoyptic wasteland filled with furious weather, famine, and disease.
b) A relatively small sample of temperature readings, most within the last few decades, using similar equipment and techniques, seems to indicate an increase in temperatures in certain portions of the globe, and within certain areas of the atmosphere within those portions, the cause unclear though several theories are postulated.
Which sounds like science and which sounds like religion?
And religions have a habit of quelling any debate, unlike science.
Seriously, are we entering another Dark Age? Our doom isn’t Global Warming, it is Statism.
RAB, increases in sea levels could be caused by thermal expansion of the water already in the sea.
One point that isn’t often mentioned is that the global warming true believers are themselves climate change deniers – they deny both the medieval warm period and the mini ice age ever happened. I think that throwing the “Climate Change Denial” meme back in their faces could be useful…
Alex,
I’m sorry I failed to attribute the quote I threw in before:
“We think we have high understanding only for carbon dioxide and methane, medium for ozone and solar forcing, low understanding of stratospheric water vapor, the direct effect of aerosols and contrail cirrus, not to mention very low understanding of indirect cloud albedo effect and land surface albedo.”
// Fourth Assessment Report, IPCC, 2006. //
Science has come on a lot. Lots of it hasn’t – it’s new, often complex and quite hard to find simple explanations. The real fun is that, apart from climate models and historical reconstruction, climate science is just the application of a vast array of different fields, from atmospheric reaction dynamics to agronomy. The effect of all these on one system, over a substantial timescale, are unmodellable. There’s too many factors, known unknowns and even unknown unknowns.
I do not say I believe “research from the same industry yadayada..”. I say that to believe the claims of near-omniscience fortelling apocalyptic change eminating from certain groups would require me to see something more than oddities of weather that have always gone on. Basing your evaluation of something on who presents it isn’t my way.
And the carbon cycle’s boring (and we’ve had a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than we have now). Chaos, that’s something a little more exciting, and relevant.
Yep Simon, good physics,
But I’ve got some eggs here and you can provide the pan of water.
How long do you think we are going to wait for breakfast when putting the pan on the windowsill?
Thermodynamics of oceans mean that there is a constant steam from hot to cold and back again.
The overall effect is minimal.
Your second para is spot on though.
The very facts they like to ignore!
By what measure is Snowe a senior republican? She’s close to the median in terms of seniority. She’s got relatively few friends in the party and has shown very little ability to shift party opinion on anything. The two committees she’s chair of are Small Business & Entrepreneurship and the Subcommittee on Fisheries and the Coast Guard. Neither of these are terribly dominant. She’s a Republican in the mould of Chafee, only good at it and lacking his only republican belief (a support of trade). Indeed, on trade she ranks with some of the uglier Democrats.
Senator Jay Rockefeller and his wife (2 people!) have between them four children (4 people!). So he has ensured that in the family generation after his own the population has doubled.
Consequently, assuming that each child, when an adult, consumes about as much energy as its parents, the concerned senator has been successful in doubling his family’s energy consumption in just one generation. Congratulations!
Nick, your 11:49AM comment is one of the reasons I read Samizdata. I tried several attempts at a reply and could not begin to do it justice. It stands alone. On all levels.
I’ve read it several times. I’ll read it a few more. And then I’ll go and do some other reading that it inspires. Thanks for a good laugh and a good think.
The new buzz phrase would appear to be Watermelons . . . green on the outside and red on the inside.
Rab, in the Arctic many icebergs carve from glaciers which flow down from land-based icecaps. One theory is that melt-water lakes are forming in the heat of the summer sun on top of the Greenland icecap. These lakes are believed to cause underground ravines to form which make their way through and undermine the base of the glacier. This is believed to increase the speed of the carving process and therefore the glacier retreats. Last summer while hiking in Greenland our Inuit boatmen could not lay food depots for our party as far north as we had planned due to the exceptional amount of ice in the fjord. There are numerous carving glaciers in this fjord and the ice comes from them. I wondered whether these two facts could be connected.
Thanks Midwesterner!
I almost added that, as a frequent traveller to the truly great Satan of global warming, I have always found that the air quality in the USA beats Europe every which way. I have tried to explain this to environmentalists but I guess you have to see the stars as bright as I saw them over downtown Atlanta to understand…
America the great polluter… Yeah, right. I was recently in Key West and I visited the Florida State Park at Fort Zachary Taylor several times. I left no litter. I certainly didn’t want to litter one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been but I also noted that there were rangers with 9mm automatics. The idea that the USA blithely destroys the global environment is, frankly, bullshit. From my several experiences, Americans love their wild places and are deeply protective of them in a way that us Euros don’t really get.
We went snorkelling over the reef and I had a bit of a shock when I saw a 9ft nurse shark. I reported this to the boat captain and he was more concerned about whether I’d done any harm to the fish… Suitably chastened, I went back to looking at the reef and all the fishes of the sea and it was wonderful and everyone behaved themselves. Not a single person did a damn thing to damage the reef, although when I yelled “shark!” a few few did get out of the water. Well, the captain didn’t like to use the S-word and only referred to it as a “real big fish”. But they all knew what that meant.
So, the waters off Key West (where bizarrely on an island with a maximum 5m elevation and where it has never snowed the gas-guzzling SUV is king) are stunningly full of fish. Not just the fish, also the seabirds that we fed with stale nachos, the pelicans, the egrets…
Well, I can forgive the average Conch of not caring about the environmental impact of their Ford-150 or air-con and closer to home my in-laws have a holiday home near Bassenthwaite lake in Cumbria. They have fish, opsreys, buzzards and red squirrels and the last few times I was there the weather was fantastic. If the price of anthropogenic global warming is a carribean full of fish (some of which are rather tasty – yellow-tail sushi is a real treat) and a lake-district teaming with assorted wildlife then what are these people worried about?
So you had a nice time then on this poor old doomed planet then Nick M (Bet your mum loved the photo’s, especially of the hotels. Mine always does!)
That was a blinding post that Mid referred to by the way!.
My last word, before I wend my way to Bedforshire is-
We’re smart, we’re homo sapiens
We have shaped the world to an extent that no other species could dream of.
We will survive.
But if we dont, well bugger it ! No worse off than 99% of all creatures that have lived on this earth.
One more time, how does this God and Gaia shit go again???
This is just a theory, but:
You have a movement that threatens your buisness. You then create a theory, optionally backed up by some falsified data, for this movement to follow, which is far less of a threat to your buisness, and you can discredit quite easily anyway.
You play along with it for a while, using your many connections in government to help further statism (which will help you, indirectly, of course).
And the real problems continue to be ignored.
Human-induced catastrophic climate change seems to fit that quite well.
Alice is quite correct. The way to tell if someone really is concerned about C02 emissions (rather than being a rich kid striking a pose) is to ask them something like “are you in favour of taking the regulations off the atomic power industry”.
These regulations do NOT improve “health and safety” indeed by telling companies exactly what to do they both increase costs and undermine health and safety (no private company wants to poison people – they would be sued to bits if they did that).
However, normally “Green” people are opposed to atomic power stations even in their current hyper regulated state.
There are a few real environmentalists (James Lovelock springs to mind) – they may be wrong about the effect of CO2 emissions, but they clearly mean what they say (Lovelock proves this by, for example, saying “bury all the nuclear waste in my garden, we need those power stations and a lot more of them”). But I bet both these Senators are not honest people.
When have they ever supported new atomic power stations? There have been hardly any in the United States for decades (because of all the red tape). So much for “global warming” – and so much for “getting the United States off depending on the Middle East”.
Even hydrogen power (for cars and other such) depends on electricity to “crack” the sea water to get the hydrogen (electric cars, of course, depend on electricity directly). And for all the talk of better solar cells, more nuclear power stations (which means more fisson stations as fusion is not comming any time soon) will be needed it people are serious about this – but of course they are not serious.
It is all empty words.
Nonsense Paul, fusion will be commercial in twenty years, just ask the fusion guys, especially when there’s government money up for grabs. (Mind you, they’ve been saying that since the sixties).
Chem Ed:
This doesn’t really inspire much confidence in the IPCC, or the models.
The chief drivers of climate are of course the sun and water in all it’s forms. If the list of climate forcings were put in order of importance it would probably look something like this.
1) The great big shining thing in the sky.
2) Water vapour in the atmosphere.
3) Clouds. (We’re not sure if they’re positive or negative, a lot depends on the height.)
4) The oceans. (How they absorb and distribute energy drives weather and climate)
5) Land use, ice, etc. (Land Albedo.)
6) The carbon cycle, (minus man’s tiny extra contribution)
7) Other greenhouse gases.
8) Last, and very much least, CO2 emitted by humans using energy to drive our civilization.
(Probably somewhere in that list is the effect of the Sun’s magnetic field, the Earth’s magnetic field and our position in the galactic arm, as well as volcanoes and other things which generate particles in the atmosphere which can act to block out solar energy, (cooling), hold heat in, (warming), or form nuclei for water vapour to condense around, (we just don’t know).
Thanks for reminding us of that quote, Chem ed. There are too many people, for whom the scientific ‘debate’ is over, who do not understand how little the scientists understand about climate.
And another thing to remind the greens about: as far as profusion and variety of life on earth is concerned, warm and wet is good, cold and dry is bad.
Well obviously, we’ve gotta go nuclear. If the likes of Mr Porritt object then we just cut off his electricity. The idea that nuke stations are dangerous is bonkers. Completely raving. I’ve got an MSc in Astrophysics and I’ve looked at the evidence. Quite how we got to the situation where the received wisdom is that nuclear plants are evil cancer factories is beyond me.
Kevin B, fusion would be cute, fusion would be nice but… it’s been “just around the corner” for 50 years. I know they achieved the Lawson Criterion at JET a while back but that is still a hell of a way from making the whole thing economic. And when the public get to learn that fusion plants aren’t entirely radiation free and have decomissioning issues as well they are gonna feel they’ve been sold a dummy.
Basically, this whole debate is nonsense. We are faffing about when we should be building fission plants which we know to be economic. The civilised world has built itself another false dilemma here. How to keep the grids lit would be a big problem if it wasn’t for the fact that we can burn Uranium (and have been able to for 50 years!).
I used to go along with the consensus that nuclear was bad when I was a kid. I really don’t know why except that seemed to be what everybody thought… so it must be true. Then I learned about how the stuff works and well… There is nothing to be frightened of. Obviously, nuke plant accidents happen but then so do accidents on oil rigs and down coal mines. My road to Damascus moment occurred when I saw a tabulation of radiological risks and discovered that flying was more radiologically dangerous than living on the reactor plate at Calder Hall.
So, why do people hate nukes? I suspect very few of them actually have the slightest idea what goes on in a reactor. At the most basic level it is simple fear of the unknown. I suspect that most of them think of nuclear physicists as madcap Prof Frinks meddling with things they don’t understand. I suspect that related to this is the anxiety of the Promethean myth. Have we been too clever and will we have to pay for it? What these people don’t understand is that nuclear power isn’t as clever as they think. It is a proven, established technology and essentially a nuke plant is a giant kettle. A kettle needs heat and the unwashed masses think that generating that heat by burning coal is somehow less weird than converting mass to energy. Coal, oil and gas, are vastly more quaint and Fred Dibnah-ish and reassuringly industrial revolution than destroying Uranium. We shouldn’t have such power, we shouldn’t have that capacity because it could be used for evil.
On August 8th 1945, roughly 5 grams of Uranium-235 was transmuted into energy (mainly across the EM spectrum) over Hiroshima. People still haven’t got their heads around that. It seems alien, strange, god-like. If so little can produce so much… Are we to be trusted with such power?
Well, I visited Sellafield once. I saw a lot of bored technicians and very few mad scientists hell-bent on global apocalypse. I think it is well past the time we told the anti-nuke types that the truth of the matter is that fission is generally dull. Just like fishing, oddly enough.
Nick M
Many years ago I used to install telemetry systems. Most of our business was with the water industry, but we also used to sell to fish farms and a surprising number of fish farms happen to be sited next to Nuclear plants. All that nice warm water comes in handy.
It never bothered me working beside a reactor or taking home any free samples from the fish farms.
The only time I felt threatened, (apart from the drive to and from site), was when I had to walk down a slim gangway between two ponds to check a sensor.
Crabs on one side and lobster on the other. If I lose my balance, which way should I fall?
Kevin
I’ve had crabs
But I much prefer lobster.
If you plot the number the IPCC (The Kyoto people) tell us constitute human-generate CO2 versus the UN estimate of total human population, for every year from 1970 to 2003 (latest figures yet available) you make an interesting discovery:
Within a few percent up/down apparently at random, the ratio has not changed. Certainly there is no trend: It was 5% below average for the period in 1983 and 1999. It was 8% above average in 1979. These are the ‘outer limits’, every other year is between these ‘extremes’.
Why is this so interesting?
Because during this period the human race has become industrialised globally for the first time, fossil-fuel-burning on an unprecidented scale. Just think of the industrialisation of China, India and the rest of SE Asia for one thing. But it has made no difference! ALL that matters is the number of people. NOTHING else does — and it’s the IPCC & UN who are saying this.
So if this global warming business is so serious, if it is the greatest crisis in history, the solution is obvious: everyone who believe that to be so can do their bit to save the planet–and this is the only way–by killing themselves off.
I’m sure us skeptics would thank them for this. One way or another.
JEM,
Can you provide any links or search arguments? I want to bookmark them into my “research/environmental” category. I’m alway looking for interesting counter arguments to anti technology statements and dogma.
Thanks.
Midwesterner,
This is the full table I quoted from:
Year Popn. PCE/Dev/Ave
1970 4076 0.96
1971 4231 0.98
1972 4399 1.00
1973 4635 1.03
1974 4644 1.02
1975 4615 0.99
1976 4883 1.03
1977 5029 1.04
1978 5097 1.04
1979 5389 1.08
1980 5330 1.05
1981 5164 1.00
1982 5118 0.97
1983 5101 0.96
1984 5281 0.97
1985 5436 0.98
1986 5600 0.99
1987 5731 1.00
1988 5958 1.02
1989 6072 1.03
1990 6143 1.02
1991 6252 1.02
1992 6121 0.98
1993 6129 0.97
1994 6262 0.97
1995 6402 0.99
1996 6560 1.00
1997 6696 1.00
1998 6656 1.00
1999 6522 0.97
2000 6672 0.96
2001 6842 0.97
2002 6973 0.98
2003 7303 1.00
Where “Popn.” is world population in millions
“PCE/Dev/Ave” is “Per Capita Emissions Deviation from Average” for the Period.
The info is available at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2003.ems
This is the site of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This Center is cited by IPCC in their report used as the basis of Kyoto. (Note: the actual site shows production/capita, not deviation from average capita as I do, but that’s only a minor cosmetic ajusement.)
As you will see, there is a lot more data available there, which I am still looking into. For one thing, it seems the Per Capita Emissions did grow from when they first reprted them 1950 until about the mid 1960’s. This is doubly odd, because that period more or less coincides with the time when even the AGW panic merchants agree global warming actually fell back somewhat. (!!!!!)
But want (failed to) happen between 1970 and 2003 is obvious and clear.
Midwesterner,
Sorry, I copied the wrong population numbers. This the corrected version, but please note it makes no difference to the ratios in the last column, which is what matters.
The (correct) world population statistics are found at http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html
1970 3,708 0.96
1971 3,785 0.98
1972 3,861 1.00
1973 3,937 1.03
1974 4,011 1.02
1975 4,084 0.99
1976 4,155 1.03
1977 4,226 1.04
1978 4,298 1.04
1979 4,372 1.08
1980 4,447 1.05
1981 4,523 1.00
1982 4,602 0.97
1983 4,683 0.96
1984 4,763 0.97
1985 4,844 0.98
1986 4,927 0.99
1987 5,013 1.00
1988 5,100 1.02
1989 5,186 1.03
1990 5,274 1.02
1991 5,358 1.02
1992 5,441 0.98
1993 5,522 0.97
1994 5,602 0.97
1995 5,683 0.99
1996 5,763 1.00
1997 5,842 1.00
1998 5,920 1.00
1999 5,997 0.97
2000 6,073 0.96
2001 6,149 0.97
2002 6,224 0.98
2003 6,299 1.00
JEM,
Thanks. I bookmarked them and will go back and explore the Oak Ridge site if I can. Interesting that (by far?) the biggest recorded drop occured during Reagan’s years and directly correspond to airline dereg. Hhmm?
The census site historical data is also interesting and very useful but I presume we both share doubts about those projections.
I presume we both share doubts about those projections.
To be sure. But:
(a) I don’t know where there are more accurate ones available.
(b) Since this is the basis of Kyoto, presumably the people who signed up to that believe them. In which case, they obviously didn’t believe in little things like the actual evidence getting in the way of their (pre-decided) conclusions.
Seems a good motto for IPCC would be, “Don’t confuse us with the facts”