Today in Global Warming
July 06, 2009
– Comments (46)
TGW (Today in Global Warming), the little brother of Today in Bad Government (a redundant name, I know), is about to take you on a ride.
Here are the rules: there are no rules, anything goes.
All Global Warming debate threads eventually end up roughly like this:
1. The blog author proposes that man made Global Warming is a sham.
2. Global Warming supporters incessantly post 16 paragraph rebuttals that they copy and paste from various enviornmental websites.
3. The skeptics respond by posting equally useless multi-page rebuttals that they copy and past from anti-global warming websites.
4. A name-calling competition erupts and everyone loses their cool.
5. The blog author excuses himself since it's obvious that none of the participants actually understands the evidence on either side, and any semblance of rational discussion left the building a long time ago.
Sometimes, the blogger gets so distressed over this ordeal, that he/she loses faith in humanity and disappears from the blogosphere forever.
So I'm not even going to attempt to control the debate. Do whatever it is you please after I exit stage left. I would rather watch a bunch of monkeys try to fornicate with a football than read the 46 links to some governmental study that you paste on my blog or the host of "green" bloggers that attack the sources of the information rather than the content itself.
However, if you do want to make it worth your time, here's a suggestion: pose one question or assertion to me at a time. Wait for my answer or follow up question. Then pose another. Be sure that you understand what it is you are linking to and have read it. If you haven't, don't bother. Tomorrow, if TBG chooses to bless you with a response, he will.
The OxFam Sham
TBG is open for business in Oxford for the OxFam briefing released today called Suffering the Science. Here is the pdf in all its glory. If you are a global warming skeptic, I can't implore you enough to read this. The NYT siad it "reinforces the notion that global warming will have a greater impact on poor countries."
The OxFam report replaces scientific data with interviews with farmers "everywhere." OxFam asserts that "farmers all over the world report that both the timing and the pattern of seasonal rains are changing dramatically.'" (p. 14) Do they have any data to back this up? Do they have any data to reflect the accuracy of their "survey of farmers?" Of course not.
It gets worse. Actual science is replaced by human interest stories, compelling the reader to feel sorry for these poor chaps that are suffering (supposedly because of evil businessmen):
Asked how she has adapted farming methods, she throws up her hands and replies: ‘We’ve stopped even adopting seasonal planting, because it’s so useless. Now we just try all the time. We used to plant in March and that would be it [finished]. Now we plant and plant again. We waste a lot of seeds that way, and our time and energy… Sometimes you feel like crying…’
I feel bad for the farmer interviewed, but I'm not going to base world wide sweeping policy decisions based on the testimony of a Ugandan coffee farmer. But hey, that's just me.
After a couple more interviews straight that remind me of the old Sally Struthers commercials, we get to the meat of the OxFam report: "To the Rich, The Advantage" is the ominous title of one chapter.
Now that's a novel statement! Was anyone here not aware that rich people have an advantage? It's a good thing we have so many government scientists! OxFam informs us that as of this writing 1 billion people are hungry! (p.16) Why, that's amazing! That means that 84% of the world's population is well fed! Compare that number to historical averages. I bet it's alot higher than it used to be. But OxFam doesn't want to focus on trends unless the trends favor their political agenda - Socialism.
EPA Suppresses Report
Speaking of political agendas, the EPA has censored a report from one of its own, Alan Carlin, a senior analyst with the EPA Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, who claims that the EPA's reports on global warming are political reports and not scientific reports. Surprise, surpise.
Logic Dictates Green Jobs Means Less Jobs
In this short 6 minute video, Professor Robert Murphy explains why it's actual theoretically impossible to increase employment with Green Jobs.
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Gary North Makes A Request
We'll end this blog here. Gary North is angry. TBG now obliges him by reprinting his entire article It's Not Just That Global Warming Is Fake. What Matters Is Why This Fakery Is Being Promoted per his request.
July 3, 2009
Global warming is based 100% on junk science. The most vocal promoters are not interested in the details of physical science. They are interested in two things: political control over the general public and the establishment of international socialism.
Junk Science vs. Real Science
For a detailed, footnoted, 12-page article, written by three scientists, two with Ph.D's from CalTech, click here.
This paper was sent to tens of thousands of natural scientists in the United States.
Over 31,000 scientists have put their reputations on the line and signed a politically incorrect petition opposing the 1997 Kyoto agreement or protocol. Here is a photocopy of a signed petition.
[Ed. note: photocopy available in the article]
Here is a letter from a former president of the National Academy of Sciences. He asks recipients of the petition to sign it.
Back in the 1970's, the bugaboo was the coming ice age, as this Time Magazine article promoted. Not to be outdone, Newsweek got on board. The article warned: "Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects." Want more examples? Click here.
It, too, was based on junk science. It, too, had the same solution: government control over the economy. The goal never changes: government management over the economy. The justification has changed. If the voters won't accept control over their lives on the basis of one brand of junk science, maybe they will accept another. As they used to say in the Nixon Administration: "Let's run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes."
Socialism's Last Stand
The global warming movement is not about global warming. It is about the creation of an international political control arrangement by which bureaucrats who favor socialism can gain control over the international economy.
This strategy was stated boldly by economist Robert Heilbroner in 1990. Heilbroner, the multi-millionaire socialist and author of the best-selling history of economic thought, The Worldly Philosophers, wrote the manifesto for these bureaucrats. He did this in an article, "Reflections: After Communism," published by The New Yorker (Sept. 10, 1990).
In this article, he made an astounding admission. He said that Ludwig von Mises had been right in 1920 in his article, "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth." Mises argued that without private ownership, central planners could not know what any resource is worth to consumers. With no capital market, the planners would be flying blind.
Heilbroner said that for 70 years, academic economists had either ignored this article or dismissed it without answering it. Then Heilbroner wrote these words: "Mises was right."
Heilbroner was one of these people. There is no reference to Mises in The Worldly Philosophers.
This admission was the preliminary section of Heilbroner's manifesto. He was cutting off all hope by socialists that there is a theoretically plausible response to Mises. The free market economy will always outproduce a socialist economy. Get used to it, he said.
Then, in the second section, he called on his socialist peers to get behind the ecology movement. Here, he said, is the best political means for promoting central planning, despite its inefficiency. In the name of ecology, he said, socialists can get a hearing from politicians and voters.
The article is not online. An abstract is. Here is the concluding thought of the abstract.
"The direction in which things are headed is some version of capitalism, whatever its title. In Eastern Europe, the new system is referred to as Not Socialism. Socialism may not continue as an important force now that Communism is finished. But another way of looking at socialism is as the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment. From this perspective, the long vista after Communism leads through capitalism into a still unexplored world that roust [must?] be safely attained and settled before it can be named."
Heilbroner did not care that a worldwide government-run economic planning system would not be called called socialism. He just wanted to see the system set up.
Heilbroner's peers got the message. That was what Kyoto was all about.
Conclusion
If you like poverty, inefficiency, and bureaucratic controls over the economy, and therefore control over your choices, the "climate change" movement is ideal.
If you want to subsidize China and India, neither of which will enforce the rules laid down by unelected international bureaucrats, this movement is for you.
If you want to pay more for less energy, there is no better way than to pass the cap and tax bill which the House has passed. It will be sent to the U.S. Senate next week.
The rest of us should oppose it.
I hereby authorize anyone to reprint this article or post it on any website, just so long as the text is not changed.
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David in Qatar
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