Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Climate skepticism 101

The most preposterous part of the climate change madness that has infected governments throughout the developed world (the fastest developing undeveloped nations -- India and China -- have no use for this nonsense) is the lack of cost-benefit analysis. The Monk took the ridiculous carbon footprint analysis at Carbonfootprint.com and learned that as a somewhat lower than average carbon emitter among Americans (I don't drive even 8000 miles per year), he'd have to cut his carbon footprint by 90% to meet the organization's baseline average that would ward off climate change.

I'm not living in a box and sleeping under pelts in winter in the ludicrous hope that what I'm doing will save the world.

Seriously, there is no climate model in existence that accurately replicates the behavior of the world's climate for any period of time -- the world warms, it cools. The overwhelming majority of climate change is related to the Sun's activity. In the early 1970s Paul Ehrlich and his followers warned of a coming ice age, now he and his ilk warn of a man-made overheating of the world. This is simply bunk.

But it's fashionable bunk and when some belief is fashionable, those who haven't adopted it are the ones who are wrong. After all, the "majority" has spoken -- despite manipulation of evidence (hockey stick graph), politicization of science (the IPCC) and rampant demagoguery (two words: Al Gore). So the ends justify the means, you gotta crack some eggs to make an omelette, blah blah blah. Why examine effectiveness, cost-benefit ratio, or even need for the action? After all, the best part of the climate change mandates will be to cripple the US economy and restrain capitalism -- a definite goal of the environmental movement since Rachel Carson wrote that mendacious travesty that started the whole thing more than 40 years ago.

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