Climate Realism in Oz
A new book skeptical of global warming has been published with fanfare in Australia and is due to be published here soon. It is Heaven+Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science by Ian Plimer, and the fanfare (positive and negative) was assessed in a recent column in the Australian:
A tale of two worlds
by Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian, May 18, 2009 [here]
On Tuesday afternoon in Sydney last week, a handful of demonstrators gathered outside Abbey Bookshop in York Street. The target of their wrath was Ian Plimer, author of Heaven+Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science. A few of the young and ideological asked Plimer whether he had a sense of shame and guilt for promoting a line of argument that will destroy the planet.
The next day, and another world away, I followed the line of semi-trailers and utes snaking along the F1 freeway exiting at a small town two hours north of Sydney’s skyscrapers. Locals gathered that evening at a local pub in East Maitland to listen – yes, listen – to Plimer. There was no ideology, no howls of derision. Just a bunch of inquiring minds, people listening intently for an hour, many asking intelligent questions for almost an hour more. In the space of a day and a night, a tale unfolded of the gaping disconnect between the inner city moralisers and those whose livelihoods will be most harmed by policies concocted with the best of intentions by city dwellers aimed at addressing climate change. …
The comments following Albrechtsen’s piece are also interesting (at last count there were 144 but the number has undoubtedly increased). Some of the arguments presented are worthwhile, but some are rehashed jumbles of faulty logic.
For instance, some accuse the author of acting in his own self-interest. Indeed Albrechtsen’s quotes an Australian journalist making that charge:
On ABC Lateline Business, journalist Ticky Fullerton suggested he was “a greenhouse heretic”. “Is this scepticism genuine or is it about economic self-interest?” she asked.
Of course, Ticky herself is PAID to fling charges of “heresy” on TV. She doesn’t journalize for free, and is certainly aware that the more outlandish her claims, the more money she is likely to make.
Everybody who goes to work does so to gain personal reward. There is nothing unusual or immoral about that. We don’t fault Ticky for earning a living. We might fault her for her funny name, but not for acting in her own economic self-interest.
The Oil Cartel is alleged to be funding those who refuse to accept global warming alarmist dogmatism. However, it is in the self-interest of the Oil Cartel to drive oil prices up. Cheap oil is a bane to profits. They have nothing to gain (and much to lose) by quelling fears about climate change. The charge that climate realists are tools of the Oil Cartel is thus spurious and illogical, an insult to intelligence. Conspiracy theorists are not generally credited for their logic or intelligence, though.
Another common complaint is that anthropogenic global warming MIGHT happen in the foreseeable future, and therefore we should do something about it now, just in case. This is often referred to as the Precautionary Principle. However, the same folks who make this argument vote for command-and-control central government, i.e. socialism, when history teaches us that socialism has failed tragically in every instance. One would think that taking precautions against a KNOWN evil might be first order of business for a precautionist, but instead they embrace whole system failure with ardor.
There are those who weep and moan that folks like author Plimmer are problematical because their dissent disturbs the unity of groupthink. We must all think alike or else nothing useful can be accomplished. And yet, these are the same people who rush to demonstrations and other forms of dissent, who howl and parade down the avenue carrying signs expressing their lack of agreement, and who even advocate civil disobedience to promote their dissenting agenda.
Such rabble-rouser advocates (and I’m thinking of Al Gore and James Hansen now) want it both ways. They want riots to fuel their dissent but are aghast and distraught that anyone else might so much as utter a word (or write a book) that expresses dissent against their climate alarmism.
By the best measures (satellite sensors measuring troposphere and sea surface temperatures) global temperatures have been falling since 1998. Last Winter global temps fell to levels not seen since the 1970’s. That’s from NASA reports, and NASA, like the rest of the government, is deeply invested in scaring the populace for reasons of control and extracting exorbitant taxes. Yet they have to report the actual findings — any fraud on NASA’s part would be quickly detected and they would be penalized for it.
Warmer is better anyway. Note that most of human race lives in warm climes. Warmer means longer growing seasons, more rain, more bio-productivity, more biodiversity. Compare the tropics to the tundra — which is more productive and has more species per acre? The warmest place in the US, the Imperial Valley, is also the most productive agriculturally.
The Earth is definitely in the midst of the Ice Ages — we live in a temporary interglacial period, one sure to be followed by 100,000 years of deep cold with continental ice sheets a mile thick. We know this because the deep and long glacial periods have happened like clockwork 18 times over the last 1.8 million years.
If we are going to take precautions against debilitating climate change, then we ought to be looking for ways to forestall the coming return of deep-freeze, snowball Earth conditions. Warmer we can handle and even prosper in. Colder is bad news for civilization and life as we know it.
At any rate, look for Ian Plimer’s book, Heaven+Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science, to be on the shelves here soon. That’s a prediction you can count on.
