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02/11/2007 Archived Entry: "Global Warming"

GLOBAL WARMING: A DELUSIONAL BELIEF SYSTEM in which the victims acknowledge that it is impossible to accurately predict the weather next week, but advocate the use of violence on the basis of weather forecasts for the next century.

Silver here. The parasite class just loves global warming; it gives them yet another tool to plunder the productive class. This tool is especially fine because the plunder can be plausibly confined to the most productive workers in states where the apparatus of compulsion and coercion (aka government) is most effective, while leaving those states with unexploited natural resources free to develop until they are rich enough to be worth robbing.

The shrillness was up a notch this week, with Ellen Goodman demonstrating Godwin's Law with her claim that "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers." Richard Branson, who makes a lot of money spewing carbon dioxide into the air via Virgin Atlantic, has offered a $25 million prize to the first person to concoct a plausible scam scheme to remove one billion metric tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years.

The hubris of global warming fear mongers is remarkable. Climate is changing because it has always changed and always will. Climate change occurs on timescales that are long compared to human lifetimes, so most people can live in a comfortable illusion that climate is static. It is only an illusion; the earth has been much warmer and much, much colder many times in its history.

Global warming is a perfect example of what Anthony Campbell calls the Casaubon delusion, the tendency of the mind to search for all-inclusive answers. He points out that both religion AND science are susceptible. "The search for explanations is a normal and healthy function of the mind as a rule, but it can become abnormal and pathological if it is allowed to develop to excess. The problem arises when we push the desire for explanation too far, and impose our wishes on the world so as to make it conform to how we would like it to be." Sound familiar?

To think and talk seriously about global warming, much less propose the use of force (via regulations and taxes) or tinkering with the climate requires answers to a few basic questions:

Our climate is incredibly complex. We literally don't know what all the controls ARE. Galactic cosmic rays, moonlight reflections off foamy wave tops, supernova emission of protons so relativistic they have the momentum of a major-league fastball, changes in the structure of the geomagnetic field; there are recent papers in respectable, peer-reviewed journals showing how each of these "forcing functions" need to be considered by the climate models. Then there is the sun itself; we know that its output is not constant to within 1 part in 1000 over just a few years, much less a few centuries.

Against all of this uncertainty and ignorance our parasite class has somehow decided that CO2 is the one lever we can and must grasp. The hubris is stunning. Before attempting to regulate CO2, we need to answer the following questions, in order. An answer of "maybe" or "don't know" means we have no business trying to regulate CO2, or anything else in the name of climate control.

1) Is the climate warming? Answer: maybe. The data is contradictory and confusing, and it has been demonstrated that the "hockey stick" graphs endlessly publicized by global warming parasites were based on faulty methods, omissions, and careless work. See Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance (PDF). See also The M&M Project.

2) Is mankind the cause of the warming? Answer: maybe. There are strong counterexamples. The natural levels of CO2 have varied more in the past than they have in the past few centuries. The earth has been much warmer and very much colder. Vikings settled Greenland during a warm spell, and were driven out a few hundred years later when the climate cooled again, all long before the industrial age. Snowball earth may have lasted millions of years and nearly wiped out all life on the planet. It would be a good idea to avoid whatever caused THAT debacle.

3) Is the warming doing more harm than good? Answer: no one knows. If increasing CO2 delays the onset of the next ice age or prevents another snowball earth episode, global warming is a very good thing indeed.

4) Is our understanding of the climate sufficiently advanced so that we can confidently attempt to alter it without risking extremely serious unintended consequences? Answer: Certainly not! Our present state of knowledge would make deliberate tinkering with climate as ineffective and dangerous as letting a moron control the nuclear missile suitcase. (OK, bad metaphor, as we've already made THAT mistake.) In all probability nothing will happen to the climate; we are as unable to make deliberate change as we are to make unintentional changes. The risk for unintentional consequences, particularly for human economic and technical development, is still significant.

5) Are there more effective, safer ways to maintain the global climate close to the optimum for human health and well being? Answer: Huh? Most people clamoring for action on the climate believe human prosperity to be a bad thing. They want less people, more animals.

Answer 2: Humans are remarkably adaptive, occupying a wide range of ecological systems and local microclimates. The race survived ice ages in the past, and is presently coping with technological, economic, and social changes whose speed dwarfs anything the most hysterical global warming proponent can claim. We have more knowledge, technology, and wealth than our ancestors who manged to cope with really major climate change, such as ice ages. Human ingenuity and self interest will allow us to adapt to the coming climate changes even as we begin to understand their true causes. The primary objection to this approach is that it doesn't provide the parasite class with another excuse to rob, kill, and control.

The victims of global warming belief system consider CO2 controls a done deal. They are certainly the darling of most governments these days. Governments change. Climate changes. It is human action that changes governments, and human arrogance that leads some to think that there is anything helpful to be done about climate change. I have more confidence in the ability of free individuals and free markets to adapt to climate change than I have in ignorant government officials attempting to control the climate of the entire planet.

Posted by Silver @ 09:16 AM CST
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