believe it or not, i'm not a global-warming denier; rather, i'd call myself a healthy skeptic.
not just because of the recent exposures of shoddy science, cover-ups, conflicts of interest and outright fraud within the movement.
and not just because the movement's disciples keep moving the goalposts as the planet stubbornly refuses to warm on schedule per their vaunted computer models (thus requiring the awkward branding shift from global "warming" to global "climate change").
and not even because of all the high-living fat cats at the top of the movement
preaching austerity to the rest of us as they position themselves to reap huge fortunes from the carbon-offset schemes they've devised to save us from ourselves.
no, my skepticism goes beyond all that--in fact,
a wall street journal article from back in february summed up my feelings on the subject in a couple well-written paragraphs:
We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.
Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change--as it always has.
as it always has.
oh, and speaking of "solar variability", get this: scientists who had up until very recently been convinced we were heading into a period of intense solar activity have--as scientists frequently do--
suddenly changed their tune.
According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.
and how did the sun's "inactivity" affect us here on earth back in the 17th century? glad you asked, because i was curious about that too.
Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as...
wait for it--here it comes...
the "Little Ice Age."
got that, folks? according to the scientists over here, the planet's warming--unless, of course, the scientists over there are right, in which case we're about to get our collective asses frozen off.
see where i'm going with this?
* * * * *
whenever i'm drawn into a discussion with a global-warming fanatic, i always end it with some variation of the following:
"ok, hotshot, i've just appointed you king of the world, given you carte blanche. solve global warming--you've got 5...4...3...2..."
and, of course, they can't.
because what it comes down to is this: the world is not gonna give up its cars, its chemicals and its concrete. no civilization in the history of humanity has ever voluntarily regressed, and we're not going to, either.
and despite all the pie-in-the-sky bullshit to the contrary, there isn't a green option on the horizon with even a snowball's chance in hell of supplanting oil and/or coal in our lifetime.
is mankind a cancer on the planet? are we fouling our own nest to the point of engineering our own extinction? yeah, and yeah.
so let's expend our energies on mitigating our impact where it's practical--like accelerating the development of green technologies, curbing the birth rates of the third-worlders and maybe cleaning up the oceans, for instance--and leave the weather to the gods where it belongs, ok?
