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You have to eat your greens we were always told when we were young. Some creative moms would offer you choices. Do you want them steamed, fresh in a salad, with melted cheese, perhaps? No, thank you, I don't want greens [cue kicking and screaming].
That's how I feel today. We have the choice of Obama, Clinton or McCain all pushing greens greens greens, and McCain's speech yesterday sealed it with a sloppy green kiss [Groan]. So take it anyway you want to take it, but you're gonna take it. Let's not confuse the big problem here—it's not just that this global warming business is a sham based on evidence that is contrary to what the by GW theorists actually lecture on. No, the real problem comes from the do-something virus that stems from the junk science that will result in a massive world-wide money and power grab with terrible consequences for the U.S. economy. Will the results from Cap 'n Trade™ do anything positive for the environment? Who knows, it may just as well do the opposite of what is hoped. Color me highly skeptical. But as sure as polar bears can swim it will put in place yet another big government bureaucracy to shuffle papers on carbon credits like currency. Meanwhile, I'm still wearing fleeces and my crabapple trees have still not flowered on May 13th. Warming... Really. Man made? Has anyone seen the images of the Chilean volcano? Is that man made. I'm rambling, but this has gone off the rails. I can't turn on the tele, radio, or open a single magazine without seeing over the top, predictable green marketing on every product from car sales, maid service, higher ed, dog food, and Barbie dolls. Roy Spencer at NRO today had a great deconstruction in Assault on Reason.
What worries me is the widespread misperception that we can do anything substantial about carbon emissions without seriously compromising economic growth. To be sure, forcing a reduction in CO2 emissions will help spur investment in new energy technologies. But so does a price tag of $126 for a barrel of oil. Finding a replacement for carbon-based energy will require a huge investment of wealth, and destroying wealth is not a very good first step toward that goal.
When the public finds out how much any legislation that punishes energy use is going to cost them, with no guarantee that anything we do will have a measurable impact on future climate, there will be a revolt just like the one now materializing in the U.K. and the EU. At some point, as they are faced with the stark reality that mankind’s requirement for an abundant source of energy cannot simply be legislated out of existence, the public will begin asking, “Just how sure are we that humans are causing global warming?”
And this is where the science establishment has, in my view, betrayed the public’s trust.
Even though there has never been a single scientific paper published that has ruled out natural variability for most of the warming we’ve seen since 1850, Big Science has managed to convince politicians and much of the public that the science is settled. Apparently, our addition of nine molecules of carbon dioxide to each 100,000 molecules of air over the last 150 years can now be blamed for anything and everything we choose. Hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, floods, glaciers flowing toward the sea…. all of these used to happen naturally, but no more.
The warming that allowed the Vikings to farm in Greenland 1,000 years ago was surely natural. But we are now told that warming in Greenland today is surely manmade. Glaciers retreating in western Canada have revealed evidence of previous forests, showing that warming and cooling cycles do indeed occur, even without SUVs. Yet the SUV is now the scapegoat for retreating glaciers.
McCain pointed to shrinking Arctic sea ice and collapsing Antarctic ice shelves as obvious evidence that humans are to blame, even though the sea ice did the same thing in the 1920s and 1930s, and those ice shelves must break off eventually, as new glacial ice flows toward the sea to take their place.
But McCain has made it clear that the science really does not matter anyway because, even if humans are not to blame for global warming, stopping carbon-dioxide emissions is the right thing to do. And if we had another choice for most of our energy needs, I might be willing to accept such a claim as harmless enough.
But carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth, and I have a difficult time calling something so fundamentally important a “pollutant.” Maybe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher now than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years. So what? I am increasingly convinced that its influence on climate pales in comparison to the influence that natural climate events like El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation have on regional climate. Indeed, most of the warming we’ve seen in the last century might well be due to these natural modes of climate variability alone.
Frankly, the best thing McCain can hope for is to lose and lose big. Because whoever puts this policy into play will be remembered for initiating the biggest train wreck since the Carter years.
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