Common sense and global warming


What the global warming skeptics are saying
Someone else has taken a close look. Emphasis added.

Klaus, a longtime skeptic of the claims for imminent global warming disaster, spoke of his meetings with other European leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. He said that during a private session of European leaders, not one expressed any public doubts about the seriousness of man-made global warming. Instead the discussions centered on trying to hammer out a joint European proposal in advance of the United Nations' Climate Change conference in Copenhagen this coming December. According to Klaus, the leaders were deciding between proposing cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 20, 30, 50, or 80 percent to be agreed upon at the Copenhagen meeting. Klaus pointed out that many politicians were discussing these more stringent targets "even though their own countries had not fulfilled their relatively modest Kyoto Protocol goals." Under the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union member states are supposed to cut their emissions by 8 percent below what they emitted in 1990.

Klaus also warned that powerful rent-seeking groups were riding the global warming alarmism bandwagon all the way to the bank. Rent-seeking occurs when individuals, firms, or organizations attempt to make money by manipulating the regulatory environment rather than by trade and production. Klaus cited firms and non-governmental groups that plan to profit from carbon rationing in the form of emissions permits trading and by deploying highly subsidized solar and wind energy projects.

Klaus confessed that he was puzzled by the environmentalist ideologues' approach to technological progress. They oppose the technological progress that free unregulated markets make possible. On the other hand, environmentalists want to mandate what they call clean technologies. "They want to operate technologies that have only one defect," said Klaus. "They have not been invented." Klaus added, "There is no known and economically feasible a way for an economy to survive on expensive unreliable clean green energy."

Klaus called into question the common notion of inter-generational equity—that the current generation should sacrifice now to benefit future generations. Should we have a preference for future generations over poor people today? Klaus ended by observing that environmentalist ideologues say that they want to "save the planet. The question is from what and for whom?"

Lindzen offered a few simple truths that "our side" often forgets. For example, skepticism about man-made global warming does not, by itself, make a good scientist. Nor does accepting global warming make one a poor scientist. Lindzen acknowledged that most of the atmospheric scientists he respects do endorse man-made global warming. He added, however, that most of their science is not actually about global warming.

Important reasons we should be debating.

Even more important reasons why we should keep the politicos out of the decision making.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - March 20, 2009 at 12:19 PM  Tag


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