No one believes in AGW. Not according to Forbes:
Much was written about the most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, which was held in Durban, South Africa November 28 through December 9 of this year. However, most commentators gave short shrift to the most important—in a sense, the only—outcome of the meeting. This was, of course, the agreement to hold yet another conference in yet another nice location (Qatar) about a year from now.
The Durban conference was the seventeenth conference of its kind. They have been held annually since 1995 in places such as Geneva (in July 1996) and Bali (in December 2007). Don’t hold your breath for one to be held in Newark, New Jersey, or Fargo, North Dakota.
Good one ! Even better...."I might believe that humans cause global warming when the next UN Climate Change Conference is held via SKYPE."
The meeting in Durban provided an opportunity for Progressives to make their latest argument that ordinary people should surrender their freedom and hand all money and power over to unelected, unaccountable “experts” like, well, the people at the conference. This is, of course, in order to “save the planet” from “climate change”. (The issue that had for years been called “global warming” was rebranded as “climate change” when the most recent decade’s worth of data proved uncooperative.)
I'm glad other people are starting to Beat The Dead Horse of "warming" vs. "change". It's been so lonely here, fighting that linguistics battle all alone for so many years....
First, let’s get the known and knowable facts out of the way. Is the climate changing? Yes. One feature of the manifested universe is the impermanence of all things. The climate has changed over time and will continue to change. Is the change good or bad? Like all change, it is both good and bad.
But, overall, is it good or bad? We can’t say. We don’t even have a conceptual framework that would allow us to answer that question, or even to adequately describe how the climate is changing. “Climate” is an abstraction, and all abstractions are untrue (or at least incomplete).
Is human activity causing the climate to change? We don’t know, and there is no way, even in principle, that we can know. It is difficult enough to determine the “what” of climate change. To determine the “why”, we would need to do controlled experiments. And, for this, we would need another planet, identical in every way to our own earth, which we could use as a “control”.
But wait! Isn’t the science “settled”, thus making anyone who questions the climate change “consensus” an anti-intellectual Luddite? No. Nothing in science is ever settled.
This statement is pure, undiluted greatness: Nothing in science is ever settled. That's why it is called science and not theology. "Settled Science" is a phrase created by someone's marketing department.
“Science” consists of nothing but theories that have not yet been disproved by evidence, but which, in principle, could be so disproved. Even Einstein’s theory of relativity, which has been validated by thousands of experiments and measurements over almost a century, was recently called into question by experiments involving neutrinos that appeared to travel faster than light.
If something is “settled”, it is not science. It is religious dogma, and an assault upon freedom of thought and inquiry.
Yeah. What he said. And one of the signs of religious dogma is an effort to prevent people from looking into the origins and fundamental truth of the dogma. Another is a casting out of heretics, say, shit-canning any editor willing to publish something skeptical of the dogma in a peer-reviewed journal. Or being willing to accept his resignation when he is shown the tools of the Inquisition.
But don’t the climate scientists’ computer models prove that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing climate change? No. First, no computer model can ever prove anything (see the definition of “science” given above). Second, we do not have the capability to model a system as complex as the earth.
The most any computer model can be is a useful tool. As it happens, all of the computer models that have been developed over the years by climate change proponents have already been invalidated by events that they did not accurately predict. For example, given the fast rising CO2 concentration in the earth’s atmosphere, global temperatures should have gone up much faster than they have over the past ten years. (And, it is not even clear that they have risen at all,)
But...but...but....THE EARTH IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A FEVER !!!!
So, we don’t know what is really happening to the earth’s “climate”. Even if we did, we could not be sure why it was happening. And, we have no way of knowing whether the change was good or bad for mankind as a whole.
But what of the Progressives’ argument that, because the effects of climate change are potentially so disastrous, we should surrender our freedom and move to a centrally planned world economy managed by experts, “just in case”?
This is known in Voodo Circles as the "Precautionary Principle". Just in case the planet really is warming, we should buy lots of carbon credits from Al Gore's companies, we should buy indulgences purchase the right to emit carbon through a cap and trade system, we should be required to purchase lots of machinery painted green, and insist that diesel tractors get 15 miles per gallon. All of which would enrich the Warmists and their donors. But still, we should be safe, right? Just in case?
Two points about this: first, it’s not going to happen. The Progressives will have to content themselves with extracting a few billion dollars per year from taxpayers to fund cushy “research” and “advocacy” jobs, and to hold climate change conferences like the one that just concluded in Durban. Second, the climate change advocates obviously don’t believe in climate change themselves.
My favorite proof is that the Warmists still drive cars, fly in planes, plug in computers, travel about from place to place, and use electricity. This guy apparently has some other evidence:
You can’t necessarily tell what people are truly committed to from what they say. However, you can always tell what they are truly committed to by how they negotiate. If someone really wants to do something, they will react to a suggestion by engaging it. They will “work with” the suggestion, trying to see how it can help them do what they say they want to do. If someone says that they want to do something but they really have some other agenda, they will respond to a suggestion with an instant, “Yes, but…”
Like, when an employee asks to hop in his car and drive to another factory to pick up a wicket or a sprocket that he must have to prevent a shipment from being late. I point out that he can rob a wicket or a sprocket from another unit. Then he mentions some paperwork that need to go to the other factory. I point out the scanner on my desk which is capable of sending the paperwork over. Then he leaves in a huff and goes back to work.
He just wanted to drive to the other factory. Listen to the radio on the way. Get out of the heat. Flirt with the ladies at the other shop. The wickets, sprockets, and paperwork were an excuse.
The climate change crowd has been
frantically “yes, butting” geoengineering, which involves using technology to
control the climate directly. Their efforts in this regard would be hilarious if the stakes in terms of money and freedom were not so high.
It is obvious that even if “climate change” is happening, and even if it is a bad thing, it is not going to be reversed by reducing CO2 emissions. Despite decades of climate change conferences, protocols, and agreements, fossil fuel use has been rising rapidly as people all over the world have adopted free market economics as a way of escaping poverty. So, if anything at all is going to be done about climate change, it will have to be done by “
geoengineering”.
Geoengineering is a far more logical response to “global warming” than are efforts to curb CO2 emissions. First of all, geoengineering does not require that our assumption that it is man-made CO2 emissions that are causing the problem be correct. It would work regardless of what was “really” causing global temperatures to rise. Second, there are geoengineering approaches that could cool the earth at a cost of a few billion dollars per year, rather than tens of trillions of dollars per year. And, third, geoengineering does not require that the people of the world surrender their personal and economic freedom.
You can hear them in the background now, can't you? If we can change the earth's temperature at all, using nothing more than some water and a few miles of Wal-Mart water hose, how will we ever properly punish the capitalists? How will we make money off non-warming scam? And most important, how will we retain our incredibly annoying air of self-righteousness?
Given that geoengineering has the potential to actually do something about the climate change “problem”, the reaction of the climate change crowd to it has been illuminating. They have gone all-out to stop geoengineering experiments from being conducted, and they are doing everything they can to prevent geoengineering from even being discussed.
You're damn right they're going to try to prevent it from being discussed. Wouldn't you? Especially if it meant no more trips to Copenhagen, Kyoto, Durban, Bali or even Newark, New Jersey? They won't even have the money to go to the Motel 6 in Yazoo City. Think of the downfall....
Climate change proponents
recently mounted a desperate effort to stop an experiment in Britain designed to spray 40 gallons of pure water into the upper atmosphere (the so-called
SPICE project). Thus far, they have managed to delay the test, and they are arguing that even if the experiment goes ahead, the results should not be made public.
We've been down this road before, with the "Hide the decline" emails from East Anglia U. There are certain things that the peasants and serfs shouldn't be allowed to see. Science gets rather unsettled afterwards.
The Progressives are well aware that their opposition to geoengineering experiments exposes their entire game, which is all about money, power, and central-planning control of people’s lives, and has nothing to do with concern about the earth. Unfortunately (for them), they have no choice. Geoengineering solutions might actually work, but they do not require that Progressives be given taxpayer money to hold lavish conferences in lovely places like Durban, South Africa.
They really do fly to South Africa to discuss how to reduce carbon emissions. I don't care who you are, you've gotta admit it. That's funny.
