Busting Myths on Climate Change
Note that it echoes a bunch of the argumentation you’ll find here at 2GreenEnergy. For instance, while it’s true that there are unknowns surrounding the exact details of the effects of climate change, i.e., what precisely will happen where and when, this hardly justifies inaction. In fact, in most aspects of our lives, the exact opposite would be true; we have fire insurance on our dwellings not because we expect fires, but because the consequences of such fires would be catastrophic. The article’s author provides another good analogy: we don’t recommend disbanding the U.S. military forces because we’re unsure if an enemy will attack.
I covered a great deal of this in my most recent book: “Renewable Energy—Following the Money,” where, for instance, I summarized my interview with Jerry Taylor, spokesperson for the CATO Institute as follows:
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, or 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, 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) Jerry makes the following argument: even if we (i.e., CATO) are bad people, that doesn’t mean we’re wrong. While I have to admit that this use of the ad hominen logical fallacy is 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.
In any case, I hope you’ll check out the New York Times piece linked above. As always, I welcome your comments.
I care about my children and grandchildren. Let’s move to solve the problem.
The BBC recently put out this relevant article about the influence of cooling and warming trends in the Atlantic Ocean, and a possible effect on the current “slowing” of global warming: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28870988
However, the warming is no doubt continuing apace in the Arctic, as witnessed by the large waves occurring there this summer, creating another potential feedback loop. To state the obvious, it’s too difficult to accurately predict today’s weather, so to predict with certainty the way in which climate change will unfold is nearly impossible. What is certain is that we are headed towards huge worldwide problems if we don’t work quickly to mitigate rampant greenhouse gas emissions.
Craig,
I see what is occurring around the world, and perhaps the CO2 problem may be the “culprit”, but that all boils down to mankinds “spitting in the soup” attitude. Here is a simple example – the invention of the “pot-belly stove” proved that the user needed to have an exhaust system to keep from being suffocated by the CO2. Hence, a stove pipe was invented and used to provide fume exhaust means for the “pot-belly stove”. Mankind saved his own life, but started to pollute the world’s atmosphere.
Today – we have an accummulation of much more pollution “problems”, i.e.
garbage pits in the seas & oceans (increases water acidity levels, resulting in fish environment less capable to feed the world);
reduction of forests (decreases the natural absorption of CO2 by trees resulting in the ozone layer being reduced in protection for the earth;
and of particular interest is mankind’s use of pesticides (i.e. Monsanto Roundup / Agent Orange) to “clean out the weeds”) resulting in toxin accummulation & human ADN modifications – death!)
These are only a few “road-sings” of mankinds prowess of being capable of “spitting in his own soup”!
We must look to resolve the problem of climate change as complex as it is, perhaps the most complex problem to face humanity so far. We must stop vested interests from impeding our progress in minimising the effects of climate change which I like to refer to as a latitudinal shift in climate, but in fact the effects of climate change are far worse and its associated catastrophic weather patterns are becoming increasing detrimental to the existence of life on this planet.
I believe living in a post-carbon age and reversing the effects of climate change is achievable, in fact most of the technological innovation is already in place what is impeding progress in many countries is a reluctance to change, a lack of political will and vested interests stifling technological advancement and impeding the progress of humanity towards a post-carbon future. I have details on my website about this…
http://www.greeningsolutionsone.com
The Future is electric. If one has the time and interest these are worthwhile videos to view. Races start September 13, 2014 in Beijing which is now apparently one of the cities with severe pollution.
There are 55 short videos about Formula E racing. While the lack of noise of ICE racers and the whine of the electrics is mentioned, the lack of exhaust pollution is seldom pointed out, see #36 and #39. Transportation is mentioned as the primary source of pollutants but it may be second to the production of certain types of food and the need for water to do so.
http://green.autoblog.com/2014/08/11/formula-e-holds-full-scale-simulation-ev-race-at-donington/
First, let’s call the thing by its true name. People need to replace the ambiguous and feeble phrases “climate change” and “global warming” with the far more accurate, evocative and impactful words “climate disruption.”
The word “change” leaves open the fraudulent interpretation that the disruption is natural, and the word “warming” ignores the severe consequences at both ends of the temperature scale, as well as with regard to volatile shifts in rainfall patterns (drought/flooding), and widespread lethal effects across the biosphere generally (crop failures, mass die-offs and extinctions of vital species, oceanic acidification and rapidly expanding dead-zones, etc.).
Within our historically normal climate patterns there was always a range of chaotic weather, producing occasional catastrophe, but now our own disruption of that natural pattern causes more severe and more frequent extremes.
As long as we take prehistoric carbon out of the layers of the earth, and pour 32 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly into the modern sky, we’ll see more energy in the air and oceans causing extremes of all kinds, and more acidity in the sea. The fact that we cause these effects must be firmly emphasized.
Second, at the risk of being labeled a “conspiracy theorist,” allow me to point out (as was firmly recognized by Teddy Roosevelt, Adam Smith, and many other notables across human history) that “capital organizes.”
The controlling interests in our society have not yet decided it is to their private advantage to shift from filthy ancient sunlight to the clean modern stuff. The immensely profitable fossil energy industry is subsidized – according to a recent presidential speech – to the tune of $4 billion annually… that’s pretty rich music.
However beneficial renewables will be to our United States and health and well-being for ourselves and our progeny, there is a substantial transition cost for all those firms that continue to regard these resources as competition. Their formidable lobbying power ensures that the feeble attempts to subsidize renewables will continue to be sporadic, unpredictable and anemic. We may also expect the campaign of misinformation, concealment, and discredit to endure long past the tipping point.
Exxon-Mobil and its ilk are quite well organized, and not for altruistic public benefit. If we logical, critically thinking and imaginative humans want to see our national security and political sovereignty preserved, and if we want to defend ourselves and our posterity against the lethal ravages that fossil fuels inflict upon the biosphere and the economy, we had best get organized.
Nuke tech is not an option. All currently operating and genuinely planned commercial nuclear fission energy technology is prohibitively expensive when all the costs are accounted for – mining, refining, construction, insuring, waste containment, facility lifespan, decommissioning – and, given natural disasters, human error and sabotage/terrorism potential, it’s clearly proven to be inherently dangerous to the biosphere just to operate.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is safe, clean, proven technology, and modern energy storage systems make it viable. Harvesting modern sunshine is much cleaner and safer (and cheaper in the long run) than sucking and digging up filthy prehistoric sunshine, dragging it dangerously all over the planet, burning it up, and pouring 32 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly into the modern sky. Only bribery keeps that toxic filth marketable.
Bribery is predictably at the roots of all the deepest evils in American politics, and the CU v FEC and McCutcheon rulings is a boatload of fertilizer for those roots.
In 2012, all the elections for president, house and senate cost about $6.2 billion ($21 per American), and ExxonMobil, by itself, profited $44.8 billion that year alone. That means ExxonMobil, all by itself, could have bought all the federal elections in the country with just 14% of its 2012 PROFITS!
If ideas based on logic and sanity are to have a chance in this game (the stakes of which could not be higher), we must stop the bribery.
If money to be regarded in law as Free Speech, then the elite few and their corporate objects will scream through bullhorns while the voice of the People is reduced to a smothered and gasping whisper.
Want improvement? Ban bribery in all its forms. That’s the most important and central issue that controls all others. As long as cash reigns as king, we’ll be slaves to greed and cowardice.
It is clear that, as any lost human civilization before, the current one is as future blind if not more. There appears to be a collective self destruct sub-conscious operating in homo-sapiens entrenched firmly in its ignorance and hubris. Radical reforms in education with firm focus on ecology and environment from the primary level would, perhaps, bear positive results in the next 20-30 years. But then it could be quite late in the day to conserve and preserve much of what we covet today.