Climate Scientists Freaked Out By Extreme Temperatures in 2017
2014 was the hottest year on record. Until 2015. That record stood…until 2016. And 2017 is headed to be (far) hotter still? That’s unexpected? What precisely were we expecting?
At this point, is there an objective** observer with the brains of a sea urchin that doubts that our civilization faces a huge problem?
Those of you who had a course in basic probability and statistics know that the likelihood of this phenomenon’s happening by chance over the 130 years since such measurements began is 1 in 130*129*128*127, or 1 in 272,613,120.
**Objective = unconnected with any organization that benefits from climate denial
Craig,
We can all learn by example, here an observation for your consideration:
It’s a quote from a speech by Marian L. Tupy Editor of Human Progress;
“Since the fall of communism, global warming has been, without question, the most potent weapon in the hands of those who wish to control the behaviour of their fellow human beings. Lukewarmists like me do not caution against visions of an environmental apocalypse out of some perverse hatred of nature. On the contrary, concern for the environment is laudable and, I happen to believe, nearly universal. But, environmentalism, like all –isms, can become totalitarian. It is for that reason that, when it comes to our environmental policies, we ought to tread very carefully “
I know there are people who claim that climate change is a hoax, formulated to throttle the world (or at the U.S.) economy. But does this conspiracy theory have any credibility? Is there any evidence to support it? Donald Trump believes it, but he believes that 3-5 million people voted illegally in our last election and that he had the largest inauguration turnout in history. I’m not sure I’d use him as a model of truth.
In particular, why on Earth would I go out of way to believe what the CATO Institute’s Marian L. Tupy thinks about this? Btw, I LOVE the way organization’s like CATO have front groups with innocuous (and deliberately deceptive) names like “Human Progress.”
Here are a few notes I took from my interview with CATO’s spokesperson, Jerry Taylor:
1) Jerry believes that our civilization is not duty-bound to take preventative measures against climate change because we don’t have adequate visibility into the future. This does not hold water with me. Yes, we could be saved by a great number of things, e.g., a new technology or some unforeseeable event in the cosmos. But society’s depending on the unknown to halt the destruction of our environment is not sane, responsible behavior.
2) Jerry argues that, since the greatest damage from climate change will happen many decades hence, our imperative to mitigate that damage itself comes decades hence. This is a similarly unsupportable position; it has no more validity than an oncologist who discovers a small tumor on my lung but does not advise me to stop smoking, since the greatest part of the damage has not yet materialized.
3) Jerry asserts that free-market capitalism represents a self-correcting mechanism that minimizes environmental damage because capitalism abhors waste. Again, this is specious. What capitalists abhor is wasting money, not CO2, small but lethal quantities of heavy metals, etc. The choice here isn’t between wasting harmful byproducts of fossil fuels or not wasting them; it’s between cleaning up the waste or not cleaning it up. We have adequate proof over the past two centuries that, when industrialists are unregulated, they most often choose not to clean up after themselves.
4) The legal remedies that Jerry suggests are rooted in Libertarianism, a worldview that, in my opinion, offers fair and just solutions, and makes a great deal of sense in certain circumstances. Here, however, it’s clearly inadequate. Litigating against polluters for “trespass,” as Jerry suggests, will create a legal morass that the polluters (and their lawyers) will love, while the rest of the world slowly chokes and dies.
5) While I have to admit that Jerry’s ideas about the ad hominen logical fallacy are interesting, it’s tough to maintain that people of low moral quality make good scientists, or should be trusted to characterize the findings of science fairly and honestly. This doesn’t even need to be confirmed with empirical evidence; it’s true by definition: liars don’t tell the truth. Unfortunately, this clarity of understanding eluded me in the moment of the interview.
I readily admit that there are many ideas being batted back and forth by environmentalists which we most certainly do need to treat carefully, geoengineering chief among them.