Some common-sense musings on global warming
Having very little respect for the trustworthiness of popular authority in general and the wisdom of the chattering classes in general, I don't pay much attention to what the popular press chooses to trumpet as "scientific consensus." So here are a couple of questions that have always loomed large in my mind whenever people carry on about how the world is going to end because of global warming.
See, it seems to me that we are vastly more capable of dealing with climate change than any previous generation. Just look at the air conditioning of Houston, for example, and how drastically that has changed the livability of the Texas Gulf Coast. So let's just think about a couple of things that -- if we had a remotely decent educational system -- every American would know perfectly well from his history classes.
1. Three or four hundred years ago it was so cold in England that the Thames froze solid, year after year after year. Now that's gotta mean that the average temperature back then was significantly lower -- not some measly one or two degrees -- than the temperature now. And the people of that time had unimaginably less in the way of resources to deal with cold weather than we do now.
Yet the human race survived, albeit with some difficulty. So if our ancestors could deal with that seriously cold period, don't you think we could handle it if the temperature dropped a few degrees? I'll admit that you could argue that it would still be rough; but then (a) I'd argue that the best way to minimize human suffering in the face of a new Ice Age would be to press ahead as rapidly as possible on the task of spreading the wealth the capitalism generates to as many people in the world as possible, and (b) global cooling was the official scary scientific consensus of thirty or forty years ago, not today.
2. Why is Greenland named Greenland? A hint: because when the Vikings found it, it was, um, green. Back in medieval times things were a lot warmer than they were during the Little Ice Age. You don't have to go look up the temperature records -- the Vikings thought Greenland was a great place to set up farms, and they had thriving communities there. How much warmer would the world have to get in order to make Greenland green again? And yet our medieval ancestors, with no air conditioning and none of the conveniences of modern technology, not only survived -- they thrived. So, now that we do have vastly greater resources to deal with climate problems...a couple of degrees is going to cause the world to come to an end?
You'll forgive me if I refuse to allow my common sense to be outvoted by the United Nations and the journalists of Newsweek.
posted by Ken Pierce @ 11:21 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
So I have two questions.
1. Are you willing to bet your kids lives on this?
2. What good does it do to deny it? Does it help reduce pollution, increase renewable energy - which would increase reliablilty in energy sources, increase understanding in sciences and education, help increase research into better cars, etc.?
Increasing renewable energy sources would help reduce pollution, increase energy reliability, reduce the need for more infrastructure.
Better carrs that aren't energy hogs would be less pollution and cheaper to run.
My friend,
I just want to make sure I understand you properly, and then I'll answer your two questions:
Are you saying that it doesn't matter whether global warming is really a problem or not, or whether anything we can do is really going to alter it -- we ought to just act as though it's true whether it is or not?
The answer to your first question is: Absolutely. I take a vastly bigger chance with my children's lives every time I put them into my car and drive them to the grocery store than I take by ignoring the "problem" of global warming. Over 40,000 Americans die each year in car crashes. But I bet you're willing to risk your children's lives rather than deciding that you and your kids are going to walk everywhere you go from now on.
Life is risk. You can't get rid of risk; you only swap one kind of risk for a different kind that you think you can manage better. On the list of things that may damage, devastate or outright end my kids' lives, global warming is w-a-a-a-y-y-y down there.
There are several different answers to your second question, but I don't know which one applies without knowing whether I've interpreted your position correctly. If you don't mind clarifying your position then I'll be happy to answer that second question.
My question about the risk to your kids was obviously a loaded question. You answered in terms of risk. I agree that getting in a car is way more risky than a lot of other things. This probably should have been my real question. Do you believe that leaving your kids a better world is important? Do you believe that given the current trends in the environmental, such as pollution, destruction of wild areas, lack of clean water, oil spills, will provide a better world or a worse world. That of course is also a loaded question. I know someone who believes passionately that we ought to be working towards a better environment not for ourselves, but for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. The decisions we make now will, yes, will impact them. I would like my great-great grandkids to be able to see full rich diverse ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest, Arctic wildlife, the Grand Canyon, giant redwoods, clean boundary waters in Minnesota. If we ignore global warming, if we ignore the environment and the damage humans are doing to it right now, this may not happen.
What I am saying about “why ignore global warming” is, that there are so many issues that surround global warming that could be solved by also solving global warming. If we look at things systemically, there are a lot of problems that can be resolved under the guise of global warming. Even if you don’t believe global warming is a problem, you need to look at things in a different way for other reasons.
Let’s take air pollution first. Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? When I visited there in 1988, it was so smoggy that we could not see across it. I was told it was due to coal burning power plants, and city pollution from as far away as California. It wasn’t always this way.
Carbon dioxide is one of a whole lot of pollutants that come from car exhaust, coal and gas burning power plants, to name only a few sources. China and Asia are fast becoming more polluted than some of the worst cities in America during the pre clean air act. America, especially places like Texas have terrible air quality, the Houston area has among the worst air quality in the country. By looking at and reducing air pollution, you get not only cleaner air, but a cleaner healthier environment. Even if you think global warming is a myth, or hoax, can you deny air pollution is a problem? What harm would it do to try and reduce air pollution, and carbon dioxide along with it?
Let’s take a look at cars and oil usage of cars. You may or may not agree with peak oil and the Overton window, but in the long run, oil drives the economy, pun intended. As oil increases, so does the cost of transportation, not only of families, but of anything else that has to move. By increasing the mileage of cars, trucks, and other oil burning vehicles, you reduce those costs – in the long run. The lame excuse that this costs money is, in my opinion, a shallow and short sighted argument. Research costs money, yes, but car makers are researching a lot of other things, why not research better mileage cars, and lower emission engines. The reason my American car makers are hurting is they have missed the boat when it comes to better gas mileage, they continue to make and advertise gas guzzlers. Toyota is killing them with more efficient cars.
Let’s take a look at the energy infrastructure. I am going to identify a few things here, so bear with me. First a centralized infrastructure is a potential terrorist target. Remember a few years ago when there was a black out that impacted several states? If we looked at the energy infrastructure and decided it needed to change for that reason and that reason alone, you would get a more decentralized system. In an extreme example of this, and I think this would be a good goal to strive for, to have every house, every commercial building have it’s own solar panel supplying at least a portion of the needed electricity. Think about this for a minute. I don’t know if your electricity has ever gone out, but mine has. It has gone out for several hours at a time, especially during thunderstorms. Recently on the next block a contractor cut a major electric line, and that block was without electricity for several days. If each house had a solar panel, they would have had at least enough electricity to run their refrigerators, and maybe a few lights. Ok, you say, but really, what about the cost? In the long run, the only cost is installation, and in the long run, it is cheaper then paying high electric rates. This will help the economy since a new industry is created – more jobs all the way around. I would imagine this would appeal to your libertarian tendencies, unless of course you are the pro-big oil/big business type libertarian.
But but but, you say that solar doesn’t work when it is raining, and in many parts of the world. In fact they do. Solar both passive and active has been shown to work very well in places like Minnesota, and Vermont. How much better would it be in Texas or Louisiana? A secondary battery backup system can store the needed electricity very well. Solar also reduced peak electricity use – during those very hot days when everyone wants to run their air conditioning and pool pumps.
Now let’s switch over to some smaller things. What harm does it do you to change your light bulbs to low wattage compact fluorescent? What harm does it do to reduce your personal load on energy use? A few dollars up front and a lower electric bill in the long run. I reduced my electric bill nearly 15 percent by switching to them. Here are the numbers – you figure it out for yourself. I switched 15 light bulbs from 60 watts to 7 watts. The 60 watts used a total of 900 watts per hour, the 7 watts use a total of 105 – an 89% drop. Of course since I am still running other things like refrigerator, TVs etc, my electric bill did not go down by 89%. Oh, yeah, since my house is an older house, I was standard light bulbs we lasting about 2 months on average. I haven’t replaced a single compact fluorescent in over a year.
All of the above things are things identified with global warming. All of the above things are also things that should be done for other reasons. But if you also deny pollution is a problem, and think the energy infrastructure isn’t a terrorist target, and lower energy bills bad for individual families, then, well, don’t do anything.
Correction, comment regarding cars, and oil, should not have read "overton window", but "Hubbert peak theory."
I think I'm going to respond with a new post. It's going to have more to do with the Global Warming propaganda machine than with you personally, by the way -- though I tease you some by pulling your own arguments out of context and tossing them into some unflattering juxtapositions -- so don't take my attitude toward the professional Global Warming propagandists as being the same as my attitude toward you.
See, I still can't even tell what you're asking me to support, exactly. Are you saying that these goals like reduced energy consumption and better gas mileage, are things we should all prefer as individuals? Or are you saying that the government should step in and start forcing us to act as though we preferred them, whether we actually do or not? Because, if you're not pushing for the government to start using global warming as an excuse for legislation and regulation, then I don't think we have much to disagree about -- other than the fact that you seem rather myopically concerned with inconveniences to be suffered by us wealthy Americans, and appear either ignorant of, or unmoved by, the desperate fate of the poverty-stricken people of the Third -- which is to say, non-industrialized -- World. But even that may just be a misunderstanding on my part.
Just to try to explain what I mean about how you're focused on things that seem very provincial to me, here's one way in which you describe what you mean by "making the world a better place":
I would like my great-great grandkids to be able to see full rich diverse ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest, Arctic wildlife, the Grand Canyon, giant redwoods, clean boundary waters in Minnesota.
But if you ask me what I mean when I talk about making the world a better place, I would start with the orphans I know in Kazakhstan, where orphans' life expectancy after getting pushed out of the orphanage used to be low-twenties but has now started to improve as the Kazakh economy -- which is driven by its immense resources in fossil fuels -- has ramped up. And then maybe I'd look at the thousands of children who die in Africa each year because their homes don't have electricity. If fossil-fuel-driven power plants were to spring up all over Africa, so that Africa's poor children could stop dying of smoke inhalation (from indoor cooking fires) and dysentery (since they have no hot water) and digestive parasites and bacteria (since they have no refrigerators in which to keep food)...well, that's what I think of when I think about making the world a "better place." It weighs quite a bit higher on my scale of values than do biodiversity and the quality of American sightseeing vacations.
But that's not to imply that you don't care about African children -- only that when you say, "What harm does it do to try to stop global warming?" I think first of Africa's poor while you seem to think of America's privileged. (But by all means correct that impression if it isn't an accurate one.)
2. What good does it do to deny it? Does it help reduce pollution, increase renewable energy - which would increase reliablilty in energy sources, increase understanding in sciences and education, help increase research into better cars, etc.?
Answer:
Ignoring global warming is good for the republicans politics.
Easy as 1,2,3.
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