Obo did a fine summary on Global Cooling, which is pretty much what I've always said, i.e.
1. There's no particularly compelling evidence that temperatures (or sea levels, for that matter) are rising.
2. Even if they are, there's no particular compelling evidence to say that CO2 emissions are causing this (water vapour is far more relevant because there is a lot more of it, for example, and clouds can either trap heat at the surface or reflect sunlight into space). And even if rising CO2 levels are the cause (rather than the effect) of rising temperatures (to the extent they are rising at all) there's nothing to say that this is "man made" (seeing as industry only accounts for a very small percentage of total CO2 emitted).
3. Neither is there any compelling evidence to suggest that if the earth is warming, the consequences will be bad for us. Sure, there'll be winners and losers, but seeing as most of the world's population inhabits a fairly narrow strip in the temperate regions, we'd all just have to migrate a bit further away from the equator. Think about it, people live in Alaska and in Jakarta, what sort of temperature difference is there between those two places? Like him, "I'm personally much more frightened of Global Cooling than I am of Global Warming."
4. The Bullshit detector point.
So what did he miss?
5. Even if there were proof of items 1, 2 and 3 and counter-proof of item 4, there is no proof to assume that we can do anything about it. Sure, we could go back to a peasant economy and forsake cars, central heating, cooking with gas, but who's to say that:
a) this would have a significant reduction in total emissions (you emit more CO2 walking than driving the same distance; wood and peat fires emit CO2 as well etc.), notwithstanding the collapse in living standards, or
b) that other countries would be daft enough to do the same?
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Obnoxio missed a very important bit
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4 comments:
That's about the size of it.
Inside that accountants body there is a conspiracy theorist dying to get out....
AFAICS, the new religion that is AGW is having two effects,one good and one bad. The good one is that it is flagging up the point that the non-renewable resources of the earth are, of necessity, finite and there is going to come a point, sooner or later, when they become prohibitively expensive to extract, so it might be a good idea, for the sake of everyone's wallets, to use them up a little more slowly. The bad one is that AGW, like all religions, has become a bandwagon on which all sorts of shysters have jumped and that the governments of the world have seized on it as an excuse to increase their taxation base and their control of the population. However, I'm sure 'twas ever thus, sigh.
D, ta.
EV, I work in tax, so I know for sure that it's all one massive great conspiracy.
B, true on both counts. I personally don't mind high fuel duties, which would do the trick. We don't need anything else.
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