Tuesday 3 July 2007

I Only Ask

Al Gore jets into town again. Perhaps someone out there will deign to answer a few questions, which I sincerely only ask.

First, doesn’t the reduction of CO2 emissions have a long history as a solution in search of a problem, having been held up in the 1970s as the answer to “global cooling”?

Secondly, isn’t it odd that that answer, regardless of the question, always entails either destroying or refusing to restore high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs for the working class; always entails preventing people of modest means from travelling; and always entails bullying the non-white peoples of the poor world out of using their natural resources to develop economically exactly as we did, so that they, too, need no longer watch their women and children die as a result of the smoke from indoor fires?

And thirdly, why are the same people who care so much about global warming so hostile to nuclear power, also a source of high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs for the working class, as well as independence from London-loving Arab princes’ oil and London-based Russian oligarchs’ gas? Of course, I’ve answered my own question there.

But even so, I only ask. Will anyone condescend to answer?

6 comments:

  1. Yeah. Come on Al Gore, we all know you're reading this blog. Everyone else is, after all. Why so silent?

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  2. Well, you are, for a start. Just as I expected, no answers from you people, just ad hominem abuse. You're used to nothing except being agreed with and told how clever you are (when in fact you were just very expensively educated - not the same thing at all), so, when anyone dares to question you, ad hominem abuse is all that you are capable of.

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  3. "First, doesn’t the reduction of CO2 emissions have a long history as a solution in search of a problem, having been held up in the 1970s as the answer to “global cooling”?"

    No. See the wikipedia article on global cooling for an overview (it provides sources for all claims). Basically: 1) Global cooling was never more than a conjecture, a conjecture which was given more weight by the media than by climate scientists because it sounded cool. 2) CO2 was never in the frame as the culprit for global cooling. Aerosols were considered a potential factor, as were oscillations in the earth's orbit.


    Your second question: It's not odd at all. It's not a coincidence that 20th/21st century life is reliant on burning fossil fuels - we developed this way of living because we had access to fossil fuels, and we used it. Reducing our use of fossil fuels will mean a change in our way of life. This means we won't be able to employ people in smoke-belching factories. We won't be able to have masses of people blasted across the sky by petrochemicals. And if the people of the poor world use the same energy sources we did, they run the risk of catastrophic climate change - which will disproportionately impact the areas where they live. Yes, that seems massively unfair, but it's not a conspiracy, it's chemistry.

    Thirdly: In relation to the above, clearly alternative, cleaner, energy sources are desirable. It's a mistake, however, to think that nuclear is the only alternative, or that being anti-nuclear means being pro-oil and gas. People can consistently believe in the need to reduce CO2 emissions and oppose nuclear energy: far from answering your own question you've created a self-serving false dichotomy.

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  4. "People can consistently believe in the need to reduce CO2 emissions and oppose nuclear energy"

    Of course they can. But what do they really propose instead? Wind turbines? Solar panels? In other words, a massively diminished quality of life for most people. Though not for themselves, of course.

    Which leads into all the other questions. Why don't they want the working class to have high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs? Why don't they want people of modest means to be able to travel? Why are they so hostile to the developing world's mostly non-white peoples' use of their natural resources in order to escape the hoorific manner of life that most of today's Weterners' ancestors also endured for thousnads of years?

    And by what bizarre stretch of the imagination are such people on the Left? Is it just because they also happen to believe in abortion of demand, or in same-sex "marriage", or that fathers are nothing more than sperm banks and cash machines? Or is it just because, in those and similar causes, they have taken over the Labour Party?

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  5. "Which leads into all the other questions. Why don't they want the working class to have high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs?..."

    Environmentalists are not in the grip of a pathological hatred of the poor. They want to avoid catastrophic climate change. They believe the risks attached to unchecked CO2 emissions are too great - massive populaton migration, widespread desertification, water crises, famine, etc. They believe the long-term negatives of increased CO2 production outweigh the short-term economic gains. In particular, their models show that the costs of catastrophic climate change will fall disproportionately upon the poor, particularly in the developing world.

    You might disagree with all of this. But characterising their position as some bizarre attempt at class warfare does you no favours. Better to a) show that the risk is smaller than they say or b) argue that the economic benefits of increased CO2 emissions outweigh the costs.

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  6. I saw Gore being interviewed by John Snow on C4 News last night.

    "Do you think George Bush is wrong not to sign up to Kyoto" was as tough as the questioning got. He could have been Princess Di.

    As regards Mous's & the "editors" of Wkipedia attempts to airbrush the global cooling scare out of history see this from Jerry Pournelle:

    "I actually took the picture used on Stephen Schneider's Genesis Strategy cover at a AAAS meeting: it shows him and Margaret Meade. She was then President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Stephen got her endorsement for the book (and her picture for the inside book cover picture) to show the consensus on the coming disasters. There were AAAS sessions. Gus Spaeth, then Chairman of a White House Council, gave a speech which included dangers of reglaciation of the US (he was concerned that the glaciers would spread stored nuclear waste). You will not remember those days, but I do. We were doomed, and Ice and Overpopulation were part of the National Malaise that was bringing in The Era of Limits."

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