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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Buying ‘Carbon Offsets’ is the 21st-century equivalent of buying Papal Indulgences – a salve to the consciences of the deluded for having committed an entirely fictitious sin dreamed up – rather conveniently – by the indulgence-peddlers themselves. A ‘Sin of Emission’, one could say…
– Commenter Tanuki
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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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Do you really, truly believe that the ‘environmental movement’ (which is, of course, not a coherent movement at all) has ‘dreamed up’ the notion of human-influenced global warming simply to profit from elaborate carbon trading schemes?
Do you think this is a more likely scenario on present evidence than the scenario that some of the most wealthy and powerful commercial interests in the world, that is, energy companies and their government cronies, are deliberately reducing what should be an objective analysis into a ‘debate’ driven by pseudo-science in which the default option if we can’t all agree is for them to continue raking in massive profits from the status quo?
Question 3: do you ever worry that your political or philosophical perspective has developed into its own feedback loop, building a stronger and stronger signal by amplifying its own noise? I’m not being facetious, I think it’s a question we must all ask ourselves from time to time.
energy companies and their government cronies
Some energy companies loved the carbon offsets. Enron was a big fan and why not, they could make a mint trading worthless chits with government collusion on the price.
And yes, I think it quite possible that the warming science will fall through. The evidence isn’t there, the models are primitive, and the system is not understood. Further, it has not been argued to my satifaction that warming is a bad thing. Bear in mind that from the late Cretaceous to the middle Eocene the average global temperature was 10C warmer than today resulting in no permanent icecaps and temperate forests in Antarctica. And yet, life survived, thrived even. On the other hand, the Younger Dryas, some 12,000 years ago, was colder than today and much of Canada, Britain, and Scandinavia were under thick ice sheets. So tell me, or wise one, what is the ideal temperature for the earth? And please, support your case. I mean, why should we spend trillions on a themostat that most agree will not regulate the temperature in the first place just so we can achieve some unspecified temperature. Should we not first pass a law mandating the temperature first?
Pretty much. It’s just another bit of rent seeking. As for the ‘movement’ not being coherent… I agree (in all senses of the word) but what difference does it make? Centralised leadership has never been a prerequisite for a mass movement.
As I have argued before, environmentalism is NOT a conspiracy, it is a confluence of interests.
It is indeed a good question. I can only say I was once at least partly ‘sold’ on the idea of anthropogenic global warming. But the more I looked at it, the more ‘unsold’ I got (things like this for example).
Nice quote!
I got sick of going round to friends houses and hearing of their plans to ‘green’ their lives and how we must all offset our emissions bla bla bla.
So i devised this little Test to see how much my newly-green friends actually knew about the science of climate change.
The reult was totally unsurprising.
Fictional yuppy serial killer,
If the sceptics are using pseudo-science, what word do you reserve for the doom-mongering we are killing our planet guff issuing from the gorifice (and many other sources)?
“do you ever worry that your political or philosophical perspective has developed into its own feedback loop, building a stronger and stronger signal by amplifying its own noise?”
Yes, constantly. It’s one of the things that goes with being a scientist, at least in theory.
And in this case, it led me to spend weeks of work over a period of years learning about the science so I could make my own mind up. And I’m still working on it.
One point of correction – the environmentalists have not dreamed up global warming to profit from carbon trading. The environmentalists seized on global warming as justification for their puritan guilt over technological progress and change. The rich capitalists invented carbon trading as a way of making money out of gullible environmentalists, and are inclined to help the hysteria along.
Fundamentally it doesn’t affect the energy companies much one way or the other. They could build wind farms or nuclear power stations as easily as oil wells, and charge more for the privilege. No, the people with reason to fear carbon cuts are the users of energy: steel works and haulage businesses and so on. And indeed anyone who relies on the advance of industry, who buys goods in the shops, who lives in a country with an expanding population.
Patrick Bateman,
I wage war on feedback loops, (except for this kind).
As I have never found my combination of opinions together anywhere yet, I doubt it is part of a feed back loop.
Unlike many here, I think humans do have some contributory effect on global temperature . But not only is there no sound research to show we are warming it, there is at least a little that suggests we are cooling it. Additionally, if the data didn’t show that the temperature was going either up or down, it would suggest we were in the middle of a change of direction because the earths temperature just doesn’t seem inclined to stay put on any scale.
Also, unlike many here, I definitely think global warming of whatever cause is a short term bad thing. As a past farmer, I can tell you that small changes in the weather can mean the difference between money in the bank and more bills than bucks. Around here, a very small change in temperature can shift a dew point front several hundred miles. Our present systems of agriculture are set up for rain and temperature to be in certain areas. Adapting to a change is certainly possible, but will have gigantic effects on infrastructure investment not to mention land values. In the short term there would be shortages and commodity price increases, borrowing against land value would be more expensive and a lot of people would lose varying amounts of money. In the long term (as long as we don’t have any Roosevelt style recovery prolonging programs) things would sort themselves out.
Now, about those carbon offsets, we have almost fifty acres of trees, tens of thousands of trees, and I would like to rent them out to anybody needing carbon offsets. Anybody want to rent a tree?
Patrick,
Patrick, follow the link and learn how you (and everyone else) can get carbon offsets for as little as $9.95(Link)
I think the comparison to buying your way into heaven is totally apt. The climate change movement is using emotional blackmail, dodgy science and intimidation to get everyone in line. Its the ultimate case of political correctness gone bad.
Mid, head on (again). On one side there are the people who scream that the glaciers will melt tomorrow and drown us all, on the other are those who observe the coldest winter they can remember and ask :”what warming?”. Of course, the former are doing all they can (which is a lot, as they “own” the media) to force their opinion on the rest of the world, and the latter are merely left to play defence. Neither, though, understand how truly complex climate is. There is precious little rational debate about this, and even that precious little is barely allowed to trickle into the MSM. Of course, the same can be said on the war in Iraq, and any number of other controversial subjects, so what else is new?
Not “head on”, but rather “spot on”…:-)
Do you think that if all the environmentalists in the world committed suicide:
1). That would save the rest of us a lot of earache
2). In not flying to Thailand or Nepal to find themselves, they’d cut down on their own spurious carbon emission targets
3). The trains would be less crowded and First Great Western would be able to deliver me my complimentary glass of red wine on a Friday evening, without all these bitter, envious non-First Class paying environmentalists preventing this by blocking up the vestibules with their sanctimonious anger at having to stand, because they can’t get good enough jobs to pay for a seat
I ask merely for information.
(1) Without a doubt.
(2) True
(3) True
Plus, if they were eco-sensitive in their choice of location when they do themselves in, they can shuffle off their mortal coils in the knowledge they are going to make excellent fertiliser for their big green plant buddies.
It is a win-win for everyone!
How about: there’s a whole bunch of equivocal data which suggests that the aggregate average global temperature may be rising, based upon temperature records that were generated under largely-unknown conditions with equipment of unknown calibration, and in any case no worthwhile records going back more than a few decades. Whatever anyone knows about temperatures before then is inference based on a sack of anecdotes about the Delaware River being frozen when General Washington needed to move his cannon across. And some people claim that these events correlate with the atmospheric content of certain gases (CO2, methane, and water vapor being favorite candidates.) And then a few people insist that correlation means causation.
From this “data” we get a variety of models, which purport to predict the weather not two days into the future, but two centuries. These predictions are used to explain how we’ll all starve, except for the ones who drown.
Perhaps, then, one might understand why most people are a little reluctant to give up their freedoms or their livelihoods on the basis of supposition based on speculation, which in turn derives from shoddy math.
So, in answer to the questions:
1) Maybe the Gores of the world didn’t invent global warming just so that they could rent trees out. Doesn’t stop them from trying to make a buck and grab more power over peoples’ lives.
2) Without a global warming crisis, how will governments grab more power? They can’t justify a power grab with “We don’t know if it’s a problem, or even if it’s real.”
3) Keeping one’s eyes open does wonders.
Keeping one’s eyes open does wonders
Certainly. One does have to look in all directions, though.
When I first saw this I misread the text as “Paypal Indulgences”. I thought – instant online remission od sin – the Catholic Church is really entering the 21st Century.
Sunfish, global warming as a midwestern USA phenomenon for ~150yrs is very real and well documented.
Days of ice on a lake is a very untamperable statistic. In big part because it is so heavily documented by people who didn’t know or care about global warming. In my sailing clubs (both water and ice), we often have betting pools on when the ice will ‘come in’ or ‘go out’.
Even if the warming is exclusively in the American midwest (which it certainly appears it is not) that is a significant part of world agriculture and therefore important.
But before anybody who hasn’t read my history of comments on this topic starts yodeling, I think the matter is not understood at all and the ‘solutions’ proposed do not even rise to the level of credibility of blood letting as a cure for hypertension.
I think it can be considered as proven as anything can be that the solar system is warming re Martian ice cap shrinkage. I am presently agnostic on whether we are making things better or worse, there is very strong evidence suggesting that we are significantly cooling the planet in at least one of our activities.
Alisa, Madison, Wisconsin is about as Green as it gets. It has a rather impressive school of meteorology. A little while ago an MSM news crew walked around campus poking their camera into the faces of random students and asking them about global warming. There were a few of the predictable answers which were of course picture framed, but there were also students who doubted it was understood, doubted the solutions were appropriate, and at least one who doubted global warming existed. (It was not clear whether that last one was referring to global warming at all, or just anthropogenic).
I was surprised to hear these opinions expressed on that campus. And I was even more surprised to see them broadcast. I think many even on the left are realizing that the environmental movement has been hijacked by anti-technology primitivists. Most left leaning types I know like technology and are also genuinely concerned about environmental matters. It is these people who are beginning to understand the absurdity of Kyoto and that it may have intended outcomes they don’t support.
Did you notice that one of those links I put up, the one on the possible cooling effect of air travel, came from UC Berkeley?
Al Gore is a great international environmentalist. His electricity bill is about $1,500 per month and environmentalists seem to be okay with that. My electricity bill is about $15 per month. So I have $1,485 per month of offsets to sell to anyone who is interested.
Mid: I withdraw my comment about “a few decades.” At least until I can figure out how to word it to actually fit that pesky annoying data. While the Mendota Lake graph shows a trend, at least locally, how many other instances are there? I guess what I’m asking is, are there enough similar anecdotes that we could legitimately call them “data?”
As far as the rest of the solar system goes, about ten years ago I kept hearing that the Sun had gone out for part of the 20th century: No neutrinos, meaning no fusion, meaning less heat. That could explain the extraterrestrial warming trend you reference.
Mid:Most left leaning types I know like technology
A Red Riding Hood moment…”all the better to spy on you, my dear.”
He he. Although one of my left leaning friends feels duely guilty about his passion for very large carbon foot print recreation. Accelerants on bonfires. In sufficient quantity to make them light with a thump and make a small mushroom cloud. Should I still be worried? He seems harmless enough the rest of the time. And he doesn’t do it very often. And any rumors that I contribute to his addiction are specious gossip.
Got a light?
I’m sorry Sunfish, I never saw your 6:06 comment until I rebooted my computer and reread the threads. Oops.
Actually there is a lot of untamperable data that indicates warming, most of it in the form of ice masses and reserves. The absence of adequate ice on Hudson’s Bay for polar bears to hunt is one example. The hasty retreat of almost all non polar glaciers is another. Major ice masses are one of (the very?) most reliable sources of average temperature/humidity/solar effects. There are no scientists ‘interpretting’ how many days a lake is frozen. Glaciers can be measured by the foot. I have very serious doubts about most of the atmospheric sampling data because it usually has inadequate sampling intervals geographically and in both the short and long term scales. I like to use Lake Mendota data because this lake has had the longest operating limnology research station on it in North America.
I haven’t seen data on whether this is a global pattern or distributed away from the poles, but it does suggest we are seeing substantial disruptions in the short term, geologically speaking. These changes have huge economic and market significance for two reasons.
One, as weather patterns change, land values significantly change. This is something the markets will solve and there is not much we can or should do about it.
Two, productive regions of agriculture will substantially shift. When you look at the infrastructure for agriculture this is a substantial market impact. To the extent that it interfers with nation’s abilities to feed themselves, this can become a security issue.
This raises the very serious and far reaching question of if, and should, we do anything about it. Weather is incredibly complicated, and even if we shift the temperature averages off of the present trend, we may be over correcting a trend that is already ending or we may screw up rain fall distributions even worse. Changing temperature trends is likely as simple as adjusting the ratio of daytime to nighttime civil aviation flights.
It is a big long complicated issue and knocking these anti technology/primitivist greens out of credibility gives us a chance to consider these things more thoughtfully.