Global warming alchemy
The International Panel on Climate Change used flawed statistical analysis methods to create the “hockey stick” model which has formed the basis of global warming fears according to a group of statistical experts.
I’m not surprised. The alarmism over global climate change far outpaces the science.
Consider this: before taking actions to negate global warming and its effects there must be answers to the below four questions:
1. Is the climate warming outside of the range of normal variation?
2. If so, is the climate change due to man’s influence?
3. Is the net effect of the climate change more negative than positive?
4. Is there a reasonable expectation that the recommended changes will reverse the negative effects without introducing more negative effects?
We need a “yes” answer to all four questions before taking any actions or we risk either wasting money or making the situation worse. Yet, so far we can’t even agree that the answer to the first question is “yes” and already there are many people ready to vault past all the others and spring into action.
If this is in fact “science” then by all means lets approach global warming scientifically. Instead the science we’ve seen thus far bears more resemblance to the “science” of alchemy.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Bob, you address the need to answer questions “before taking action to negate global warming.” Even though I’m not as much a skeptic of the issue of climate change as you, my environmentally considered actions are generally taken when I know that other actions will negate quality of life in some way. Technological change designed to cause our choices as consumers to generate less and less harmful output–whether in the form of carbon dioxide, dioxins, mercury, or lead–strikes me as a good goal in itself. Research and development of this sort serves as its own economic engine.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:31 am
It’s interesting that you would mention the reduction of mercury as a goal. One of the current fads is the replacement of incandescent light bulbs with fluourescent ones so as to reduce energy consumption and thus “greenhouse emissions.” An unintended consequence is the increase in the presence of mercury in the home and in landfills, since the new bulbs contain mercury that the old bulbs did not.
Look, I’m perfectly willing to concede that there are important reasons to reduce the consumption of foreign oil–one of the most important is to remove cash flow from a dangerous region of the world which harbors a disproportionate number of the West’s enemies. However, to hold global warming up as the most prominent reason means that when it goes away because of better science all the rest of the “good” reasons for reducing oil consumption fall by the wayside. To me it’s like “weapons of mass destruction.” So much of the justification for the war in Iraq was that one thing, which overshadowed so many other more important reasons. A friend who was on the Democratic staff of the House Armed Services Committee said to me of WMD during the runup to the war in 2002: “Right war, right enemy, right time . . . wrong reason.” He was very prescient.
Finally, the idea that such research is “its own economic engine” is true if and only if the focus is on efficiency. If fewer inputs can be used to create the same or greater outputs then then the economic engine is spurred. That’s why, for example, ethanol is a horrible idea–it is less energy efficient, and thus less economically efficient than petroleum. I’ll leave the economic analysis to someon like Martin Kennedy to better explain.
March 15th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
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