Posted by
Takeadair on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 8:12:54 PM
Per Happy Jake
Has anyone read Michael Crichton's "State of Fear"? Yes, I realize it's a Science Fiction novel, and written to be an engaging story (which it is, by the way.) However, a few points from that book bear noting.
1. Crichton is not a world-renowned conservative. At best he's apolitical.
2. Crichton (as he does in all his novels) uses real science and applies it to a "what would happen if" motif. Specifically, in this book, he spends a lot of time debunking just about every Global Warming model at one point showing that the globe was probably warmer in the 1600s than it is now.
3. Even if you don't read the novel for the science, read the authors notes at the end. In it Crichton makes very plain the point he's trying to make: Scientists are people. They are driven by the same motives that drive everyone else. If you are paid to find a particular conclusion, you'll find it, even if you have to use really flimsy evidence. In the modern political climate, scientists get a lot more money and publication if they lock-step with the Global Warming mantra.
Someone mentioned Galileo and Copernicus as scientists who bucked the conventional wisdom and were proven right. It was the same story then as now, if you don't go along with the conformists, your professional life is ended. There's only a few scientists who speak up against global warming, because there's only a few who are brave enough to go against the grain. What the global warming debate lacks is any real debate. We can't predict the weather for tomorrow, how can we expect to predict it 100 years from now? More to the point, presuming Global Warming exists and there's anything at all we can do about it (the latter of which I seriously doubt) how do we know what the effects are going to be when we can't even say what the effects of it are now (presuming there are any).
Of course, the Global Warming alarmists screamed loudly that the record high 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season was proof of disastrous global warming. But did you know that those same people claimed that the exceptionally QUIET 2006 season was ALSO caused by global warming? (Apparently, dust from the Sahara seeded the clouds and made them lose their energy before they could become dangerous storms). Record hot summers are caused by global warming, just as are record cold winters. (I'm not making this up, folks).
A few facts about the politics of global warming:
1. As I alluded to: any disastrous natural event recently has been attributed by someone to global warming. Heat, cold, high storm seasons, low storm seasons, drought, flooding, etc. If I'm not wrong (and I may be, so take this with a grain of salt) that includes the Christmas 2004 Tsunami.
2. The Kyoto treaty was written to specificaly target the United States. The other countries that are affected by it were already, because of their long stagnant economies, at or very near the levels of "greenhouse gases" they needed to get to. Germany, because it had just been reunified with the communist (and heavy polluter) East Germany in 1989, was actually already BELOW the 1990 levels of pollution in 2000.
3. The other "Major Polluters" like China, India and some African and southeast Asian nations are exempt from the treaty because they are "developing economies." This despite the fact that they produce far more pollution per capita than the US (and China and India having much larger populations than the US, contribute far more polution to the world than we do.) The framers of Kyoto know that the treaty would ruin the economy of any major polluter that tried to implement it. That's why they exempt the poor countries. So who gets to carry the burden? Us. (Oh, by the way, that's why when Bush un-signed the treaty, everyone called it dead. Without us, no one is affected and nothing happens.)
4. Best case scenario if Kyoto is implemented (as seen by the Environmentalists): The impending disaster caused by global warming is delayed for ten years. Yes, I said 10, ten, one-zero, diez, decem, the number between 9 and 11. One decade. That's it. We completely ruin the US economy, turn us into a third-world country, and all we get out of it is 10 lousy years.
Do we need to reduce polution? Sure. Less polution is always good. But we have to do it in such a way that it will actually benefit us. Ten more years isn't a benefit, it's a delay.