The Redhunter

We do think alike. Funny how we both picked the Copenhagen horror flick and Charles Krauthammer.

I don't quite get your shift in tone on this, Tom. in a previous post, only a few weeks ago, you seemed to be saying that pumping GHGs into the atmosphere might actually be dangerous for the planet, and that this is (part of) the reason why nuclear power is a good idea.

But this post seems to rest on a very odd argument. Namely:

1. Any solution to the problem of climate change will involve government regulation of industry.

2. Government regulation of industry is a Bad Thing.

3. Because the solution is distasteful, therefore, the problem itself must be illusory. Indeed, not just illusory, but a conspiracy cooked up by your political enemies, those liberal lefties.

This is similar to the position of those who, disapproving of the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror, argued that therefore terrorism itself must be an illusory threat.

And even if anthropogenic climate change genuinely is a serious problem...by the end, you almost seem to be saying that it would be better to be free on a planet that was spiralling into ecological meltdown than to live in a tyrannical (but inhabitable) world.

"Liberty or death" indeed. I admire your stubborn brand of patriotism, but most rational people would choose tyrannical survival.

Global Warming!-IS- Human/ Industrial Waste!
The best indisputable SCIENCE example that should be the #1 item on the Copenhagen Agenda would be the toxic waste dump, the size of Texas, 900 miles off of the United States and Canadian West Coast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreatPacificGarbagePatch
That is a Big SCIENCE problem with no dedicated U.S SCIENCE and INNOVATION DEPARTMENT to address the issue. The U.S (or Canada) has not even sent out a SCIENCE research vessel to evaluate this ecological disaster; neither country wants to take the responsibility for the industrial/human pollution or even acknowledge its existence.
No Profit-No Action!-No SCIENCE! Will the World Trade Organization and the New Industrial World Order address the issue? Where is their World Department of SCIENCE?
Can the problem be solved with SCIENCE? Probably so, Americans are very ingenious primarily because we were raised with the compliments of Freedom and Democracy and are free thinking individuals. We could probably figure a way to clean up the mess and possibly make a profit doing so.
We can do nothing until we have a DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE that is free to address SCIENCE and to develop the advancement of SCIENCE. (Yes, for the sake of humanity; SCIENCE FIRST.)

This Lawrence Baker fellow is leaving that exact same comment on other sites too. Google for "No Profit-No Action!-No SCIENCE!" and you'll see what I mean.

"Anonymous" - Any pollution is a bad thing, but before we do anything we must consider the cost to benefit ratio. I include personal freedom as a cost. Sometimes the cost is worth the benefit, sometimes not. So with regard to power plants, I said in my previous post that "As with investing your money, it's good to diversify. We are currently not diversified with regard to electricity production." In other words, we need a little of everything. My take is that we're out of balance and need more nuclear plants. I don't want to get rid of coal plants, just adjust the balance.

So of course we should limit pollution from coal plants. But I don't to limit these emissions because they may lead to global warming but because I want clean air too. There is no conclusive evidence and certainly no scientific consensus that such emissions lead to global warming.

I find your game of "gotcha" rather tiresome, and am tempted not to respond at all. If you do come back, let's just lay our our positions and leave it at that. This said, I'll bite just this once. You accuse me of saying that:

"1. Any solution to the problem of climate change will involve government regulation of industry."

That is exactly the position of the environmentalists.

"2. Government regulation of industry is a Bad Thing."
I never said or implied such a thing, nor did Charles Krauthammer. Of course some regulation is necessary. The question is how much. Liberals want more, conservatives less. You imply I take an all or nothing approach. I don't.

"3. Because the solution is distasteful, therefore, the problem itself must be illusory. Indeed, not just illusory, but a conspiracy cooked up by your political enemies, those liberal lefties."

Again, I never said or implied such a thing, nor again did Charles Krauthammer. I do think that global warming is at best unproven and perhaps completely incorrect. I don't think it's a conspiracy, and think that those on the other side genuinely believe it's happening. Some do exaggerate the evidence, fake results, and rig the peer review process. This was shown to be the case with the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Center in Britain. It may be the case elsewhere, and we need a serious investigation into the matter. Either way, I'd never accuse everyone who believes that the earth is warming due to man is part of a conspiracy.

"you almost seem to be saying that it would be better to be free on a planet that was spiralling into ecological meltdown than to live in a tyrannical (but inhabitable) world."

We're not headed towards any sort of "ecological meltdown" whereby our very survival is at risk. The sort of hyperbolic scare stories as illustrated by the crazy video posted at top are simply untenable. So we can dismiss that nonsense.

Worst case the earth gets a bit warmer and we notice a few changes here and there. I am certainly not willing to take the extreme measures that the environmentalists want us to take for what is at best an unproven theory, and at worse completely wrong. The measures the environmentalists want us to take are not small potatoes, to put it mildly.

I am disturbed by your casual dismissal of liberty, and seeming embrace of tyranny as the solution ("I admire your stubborn brand of patriotism" being a throwaway line). If it is your position that a tyranny , then you confirm the worst of our fears about the environmentalist movement.

Finally, next time please leave your blogging name, and tell me a bit about yourself. What country do you live in, where do you fit on the political spectrum, that sort of thing. I'm interested (for the moment) in someone who thinks that tyranny may be necessary for our survival (if that is what you think).

But either way, know that I don't like to get into long-winded debates. I post, you comment, and I generally leave it at that. See my comments policy at upper right for reference.

Sorry, forgot to leave my name last time. It's Mylne by the way - thought you'd have recognised me! Aren't I the only left-winger who actually responds to your blog? ;-)

CO2 is not a direct health hazard. It's colourless and odourless and breathing has in no way been shown to be bad for you. So it only makes sense to classify it as pollution if you believe it's a cause of climate change.

The point about tyranny as the price paid for survival is a reductio ad absurdam. (From my point of view, of course, your contention that CO2 regulation will amount to tyranny is absurd) But as a thought experiment...if it was a choice between ecological meltdown leading to the extinction of the human race, and a society where we lived our lives under the jackboot of the EPA, of course EPA fascism would be preferable.

Thinking in this way is uncomfortable. Don't think that I relish fascism. Even the prospect of the government telling me what kind of car I can drive or how many flights I can take every year is unpleasant. I love taking planes. But it clarifies the issue. In the hierarchy of human needs, freedom ranks lower than survival. I certainly don't think that I have some inalienable right to emit CO2, and that this right overrides the right of my children to live in a world with a stable climate.

***

To clarify, I don't know for sure whether climate change will wipe out life on earth - that seems rather far-fetched. But I'm a layman, how could I know? I do believe, though, that there is a very strong scientific consensus that the effects could be very bad indeed. Even the Bush government admitted this in its last years of office (though it shrank from embracing any kind of a policy response).

To say that because there are still a few dissenters it is still too soon to take action, seems irresponsible. You would never be so cavalier if it was your own health at risk. If eight out of ten doctors told you tobacco caused lung cancer, but two told you it didn't, would you keep on smoking?

snake hunter sez,

First things first! China burns lots of coal; get them to comply, then we can talk climate, and government control of industry. reb
-----------------------------------

How much coal do you think the Chinese should be allowed to burn, Snake hunter?

The average Chinese emits 2.65 tons CO2/year. The average American emits nearly 20 tons. Finding a fair middle ground is what climate diplomacy is all about.

M. Karimov, whereas I do not dispute your numbers, remember that the population of he U.S. is 300 million plus. The population of China is > 1.3 billion.

This from Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback Colum of 12.14.09:

• There is indeed a strong scientific consensus regarding climate change. The deniers simply aren't honest about this.

• The consensus is that in the last century, air has warmed by about one degree Fahrenheit while the oceans have warmed a little and become slightly acidic; rainfall patterns have changed in some places, and most though not all ice melting has accelerated.

• That consensus is significant, but hardly means there is a crisis. Glaciers and sea ice, for example, have been in a melting cycle for thousands of years, while air warming has so far been good for farm yields. The doomsayers simply aren't honest about how mild the science consensus is.

• Predictions of global devastation -- climate change is a "profound emergency" that will "ravage our planet" -- are absurd exaggerations, usually motivated by political or fund-raising agendas.

• Climate change has serious possible negative consequences, especially if rainfall shifts away from agricultural regions.

• Global poverty, disease, dirty air and lack of clean water in developing world cities and lack of education are far higher priorities than greenhouse gas emissions.

• Smog and acid rain turned out to be far cheaper to control than predicted; the same may happen with greenhouse gases.

• The United States must regulate greenhouse gases in order to bring American brainpower, in engineering and in business, to bear on the problem.

• A carbon tax, not some super-complex cap-and-trade scheme that mainly creates jobs for bureaucrats and lawyers, would be the best approach.

• If the United States invents technology to control greenhouse gases, no super-complex international treaty will be needed. Nations will adopt greenhouse controls on their own, because it will be in their self-interest to do so. Smog and acid rain are declining almost everywhere, though are not governed by any international treaty; nations have decided to regulate smog and acid rain emissions on their own, because it is in their self-interest to do so.

As for the e-mails hacked from a greenhouse research center in the United Kingdom, e-mails are private correspondence. Copying them without permission is at the least unethical, and perhaps a crime. If you saw private letters on someone's desk, photocopied them and posted them on the Web, you would be considered a person of low character. Whoever hacked the climate e-mails is at the very least an unethical person of low character, and one should be wary of the agendas of unethical people.

[+] EnlargeClimate talks
AP Photo/Anja NiedringhausA Copenhagen protester passed out under the strain of verbiage.

That said, many climate scientists are rigidly ideological and believe dissent must be shouted down. This is partly because of money and privilege. The United States and European Union spend about $6 billion annually on climate change research, and every penny goes to alarmism, because it can be used to justify government expansion. Being a climate doomsayer is a path to cash and tenure -- even to celebrity, as making wildly exaggerated claims got Al Gore a Noble Prize plus stock in companies now winning government subsidies triggered by alarmism. The doomsayers are lauded by foundations, go to parties with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and attend taxpayer-subsidized conferences in Nice. They've formed a guild with intense focus on maintaining guild structure. The 1962 Thomas Kuhn book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is best-known for introducing the "paradigm shift" concept. Kuhn's larger argument was that science is not an abstract truth-seeking realm, rather, subject to fads and what is now called political correctness, and one in which many scientists are concerned foremost with safeguarding their sinecure by toeing the line.

Plus the alarmists need to divert attention from the inconvenient truth that 20 years ago, Gore and James Hansen of NASA began to say that without immediate drastic action against greenhouse gases, there would soon be global calamities. Nothing was done -- and no problem so far. That is no reason to be complacent -- warming-caused problems may be in store. But for the self-interested alarmists, this is a reason to shout down their critics.

Disclaimer: He was year behind me at Colorado College. I did not know him but I think he is a very smart guy.

TLGK

TLGK, that was a very smart comment. I agree with most all of it.

Sure, the climate is warming. As your friend says, though, there are always cycles. More, just because it's warming doesn't mean the end is near.

I'm all in favor of conservation and reducing emissions, pollution, whatever you want to call it. But monstrosities like what they're cooking up in Copenhagen would be all pain for no discernible gain.