Friday, February 08, 2008

The Gods Must Be Crazy

A fine essay for those who believe that the Global Warming Religion is carved in stone:


Today, we have "Gods" walking among us that seem to know how an infinite system will turn out in the future, because they are armed with the idols that are known as models. They are given credit for things that have not occurred and, in all likelihood, will not occur. Why? It is because what is occurring now has occurred before. This first colder than normal year worldwide is one of the signs that we are getting ready to go back to a colder cycle, on the order of 15-20 years. That this is happening seems to be hidden or erased from any trace in the minds of these folks. Amazing isn’t it? Facts of the past are discarded in one-sided arguments.


I have no doubt that mankind is adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. What I don't accept is that our puny presence on this planet overwhelms all the forces on Earth that determine our climate--let alone how the Sun impacts our climate. Maybe we do have such a huge impact. But we don't really know.

And that uncertainty means that I don't think we need to cripple our economy to solve what is not proven to be a problem or within our power to cure if it is a problem. There is an inconvenient truth about the so-called solutions to our supposed problem that the fanatics advocate (from the first link):


And the questions I have asked myself perhaps explain why I am a skeptic not only and if we simply ask ourselves the questions below, we can all understand why I am a skeptic not only to the results you claim inevitable, but your true motives. Consider: Where have we seen this before in history, those new ideas, utopian if you will, on how mankind, or a group of men, will control the destiny of all, for the good of all men? The problem with many of us today is we refuse to recognize this aspect of the situation.


Indeed. Why are the solutions all so familiar? State control of the economy and our lives for the sake of this grand goal of stopping global warming before the seas rise and engulf our shores and kill off the polar bears. As if we have the power to command the seas! But they will try! Oh yes, they will try. Whether we like it or not, the logic of saving us from our own folly means that liberty and capitalism must be sacrificed (Tip to NRO):


There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. It is not that liberal democracy cannot react once it sees a threat, for example, the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency. If governments can recognise a financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why are they unable to do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? Quite simply our system is seen to live and breathe by the present economic system; the problem is that living and breathing within the confines of the world ecological systems is contrary to the activity of progress and development as defined within liberal democracy.

The Chinese decision on shopping bags is authoritarian and contrasts with the voluntary non-effective solutions put forward in most Western democracies. We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions. It is not that we do not tolerate such decisions in the very heart of our society, in wide range of enterprises from corporate empires to emergency and intensive care units. If we do not act urgently we may find we have chosen total liberty rather than life.


Liberal democracy and private property rights should be tossed aside if need be? But they know best! They're scientists! Incapable of bias, they are. Incapable of error. Incapable of doing any wrong. Incapable of leaving any factor out. Incapable of any modesty about their predictive powers, bolstered in their faith by their fellow believers who enforce orthodoxy.

The arrogance is just appalling. And few have the guts to stand up to the global-warming groupthink that is so afraid of debate or questions that they bully dissenting voices into silence. Too many are afraid of defying the trend. For those who have better things to do in life than hang on every article on the topic, it is easier to agree with the intolerent global warmers than to ask basic questions that are met with scorn and ridicule and even accusations and threats. This is science? Only as Lysenko would understand it.

Should the planet start cooling, you can be sure that the scolds who tell us to stop eating meat or driving cars or using too much toilet paper will not turn around and tell us to eat steak, turn up the heat and drive fast, or attend to our hygiene without worry, all for the sake of the planet. No, the solutions will remain painfully familiar even as the problem changes 180 degrees. When you are building socialism, you have to break a few incandescent light bulbs, eh?

All I want is a reasonable debate on the scope of the problem, what we can do, the cost of halting or slowing global warming as opposed to coping with higher temperatures. And if I'm really, really lucky I'd like to know just what is the ideal temperature of our planet? Why is the temperature of twenty years ago the gold standard of habitability? Shoot, if the ideal temperature is lower than it was 20-30 years ago, shouldn't we be trying to reduce the global temperature?

Ah hell, I'll be tried and convicted (but surely not burned at the stake) as a global warming denier before the mass hysteria gripping our elites collapses. I used to think the mental health issues of the global warming fanatics should not be my problem. But if crazy becomes normal for the gods, what chance do I have?

Never let it be said that nobody expects the Gorean Inquisition.