I'm against most things the Greens say
about biotech, agriculture, genetics and medicine.
Much of it is provably false.
The Green movement is largely a movement that does not believe
in science and reason,
and often even explicitly rejects it.
I'm sceptical about their claims of looming apocalypse
due to climate change or population growth.
The threat of apocalypse due to
nuclear-armed communism
seemed real to me.
Apocalypse due to
nuclear-armed Islamism, or other future tyranny,
seems real to me.
Apocalypse due to peaceful consumerism seems far-fetched.
There might be climate change issues in the future,
but whether they will be apocalyptic I am not yet convinced.
We shall see.
I'm against almost everything the Greens say
about economics, trade, war, terror and international politics.
That's because it's just standard socialist nonsense.
I'm big into
preserving old buildings,
and preserving endangered species, but I'm afraid that
much of the other things the Greens campaign for leave me cold.
Many of the Green campaigns look to me
driven by a fear of wealth, science, technology and knowledge,
and a preference for mysticism, ignorance and
New Age mumbo-jumbo.
UK temperature
since 1659.
Are we simply warming up after the
Little Ice Age
(16th cent to 19th cent),
and returning to something like the
Medieval Warm Period
(10th cent to 14th cent),
or is it something more sinister?
Temperature in C from
Greenland ice core.
It does show a recent warming,
but one that started in the early 19th century,
and also a modest one compared to the
Medieval Warm Period,
which itself is modest compared to earlier historical warm periods.
Temperature in C from
Greenland ice core.
Years in AD along bottom axis.
Modern warming compared to
Medieval Warm Period.
Note however: The Medieval Warm Period may have been just a local event (in the North Atlantic region).
History of medicine
and its struggles against the superstition of religion.
The story continues today in its struggles against the superstition of the greens.
Le Carre's propaganda overdose
by Cristina Odone
- In defence of multinational pharmaceutical companies,
and their aid to the third world.
Comparison
by Alan Charles Kors
of the ban on cloning
with the ignorant
18th century ban on innoculation,
which ban was also maintained
by primitive, superstitious enemies of science and humanity,
in this case theologians rather than Greens.
Ronald Bailey
is good on defending science against the modern successors
to the medieval theologians.
I'm not opposed to
animal rights.
I would grant a sliding scale of rights to human unborn,
primates,
and higher animals.
But one must recognise that the use of animals in medicine
is a great social good, saving thousands (maybe millions)
of human lives.
(And, incidentally, animal lives
- where do you think vet treatments come from?)
What exactly can be done with animals can be debated in each case,
but it is an issue that should be resolved by
democratic debate, not by violence.
Vegetarianism and veganism make some moral sense,
but it's hard / impossible to fight evolution on this one.
Nature evolved us as animals (exploiters of plants)
and predators (exploiters of animals).
It's not our fault.
Not respecting this in
children
in particular
can be a form of child abuse.
Is it really happening?
I am not qualified to say if global warming is happening or not.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was,
and there are certainly
heavy-duty scientists behind it,
but it is funny how conveniently it meshes
with left-wing, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist ideology,
and westerners' post-religious need to feel guilty
about their fantastic prosperity and consumer riches.
It may be just a coincidence.
But it's quite an amazing coincidence.
How bad will it be?
It's not enough to say that changing the climate is scary. I agree.
It would be better not to do it.
But how bad will it really be?
Maybe it will just be a problem that we can adapt to,
and that can be reversed as technology (e.g. of cars) changes in the future.
We need to compare the cost of global warming with the cost of the solution,
and then make a rational decision as to which one is worse.
In particular, the proposed "solution"
to global warming seems to be to reduce development
and to keep the
third world
undeveloped (i.e. starving and poor).
It seems to me that is worse than global warming.
In short, if global warming is happening,
the greens need to tell us how we can be rich, developed,
consumerist, drive cars,
and still avoid global warming.
If the choice is between poverty and global warming, then
any sane person should choose global warming,
as the price we reluctantly have to pay for prosperity.
If the greens don't like that, they have to give us another choice.
The movie The Day After Tomorrow
hilariously makes my points for me.
They obviously felt that showing a slightly warmer planet would not be very scary,
so they claimed that
what would actually happen would be
global cooling.
The movie thus
tacitly admits that:
Global warming may not be armageddon.
That's why they didn't show it - because it's not scary.
Global warming theory is rather new and speculative
- otherwise how could they get away with showing global cooling
and still be applauded by their fellow greens?
In truth,
scientists have difficulty predicting whether climate will
warm,
cool,
not change at all, or just change locally.
Why?
Because climate is practically the definition of a complex, chaotic system.
You can try to simulate such a system,
but you do not really know what will happen
short of trying it out.
Global warming theory is new and speculative, and
hardly has the same status in science as, say, the theory of evolution.
The lack of a track record of successful predictions:
To repeat, global warming theory is one of the more speculative theories of science.
There is a long history of
failed predictions
in this kind of field.
I am old enough to remember, for example,
the great fear in the 1970s
of the world population explosion.
The predictions made about this turn out to have been nonsense
(Europe, for example, is facing a population crash),
so it is hard to take the green doom-mongers seriously about a new topic.
I agree people should be cautious,
and I agree that we should be looking at new technology that impacts less on the environment.
But I'm just explaining why I'm not very worried so far.
If global warming is happening,
then technology, not rustic poverty, will be the answer:
If global warming is happening, the only solution that will
actually work
will be a technological one.
That is, new technology to stop (and reverse) global warming,
yet still let us be rich, own houses and drive cars.
No solution based on returning to rustic poverty will work.
The third world must become rich like us, and own
houses and cars like us.
It's up to us to invent technology to ensure that can happen without
ruining the environment. I'm sure we can do it.
Looking at the actual figures for average global temperature may give you a surprise.
The GISTEMP
figures at the
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
show average global temperature.
See table.
More here.
The head of GISS,
James Hansen,
is a leading global warming activist.
This makes one wonder whether global warming models have not influenced their figures -
especially since their figures are not raw data (see below).
It might be better to just have an organisation compiling figures
without being involved in activism.
Anyway, NASA GISTEMP first published results in 1981.
They give the following:
Average for 1951-80: 14.00 ° C.
1981: 14 + ("J-D") 0.39 = 14.39 ° C.
1982: 14.06 ° C.
1983: 14.32 ° C.
1984: 14.14 ° C.
1985: 14.11 ° C.
1986: 14.19 ° C.
1987: 14.34 ° C.
1988: 14.41 ° C.
1989: 14.27 ° C.
1990: 14.47 ° C.
1991: 14.42 ° C.
1992: 14.14 ° C.
1993: 14.17 ° C.
1994: 14.30 ° C.
1995: 14.44 ° C.
1996: 14.36 ° C.
1997: 14.38 ° C.
1998: 14.70 ° C.
1999: 14.42 ° C.
2000: 14.41 ° C.
2001: 14.56 ° C.
2002: 14.68 ° C.
2003: 14.65 ° C.
2004: 14.59 ° C.
2005: 14.77 ° C.
2006: 14.64 ° C.
2007: 14.74 ° C.
2008: 14.56 ° C.
2009: 14.71 ° C.
These look like simple temperature readings at the time,
but this is not the case.
All figures, past and present, are constantly adjusted according to some model.
See
here
how the temperature given for years in the past
used to be
different.
Anyway, let us plot the figures above.
The most dramatic way to plot the data would be with the narrowest Y-range:
But you could also of course graph it with a wider Y-range:
This plot is perfectly accurate too:
Average global temperature in ° C
since 1880.
Graphic from
here.
Data is
the Dec-Nov ("D-N") averages from NASA GISTEMP above.
At no point since 1880 did average global temperature
go down to 13 ° C
or up to 15 ° C.
Changing the Y-range
You can obviously mislead with the Y-range.
Set the Y-range too wide
(e.g. from 0 to 100 ° C)
and then
you would not notice even apocalyptic
warming or cooling.
But likewise, you can always pick a narrow Y-range to make any change look dramatic.
If there is any warming or cooling trend, no matter how modest,
a suitable narrowing of the Y-range can make it look dramatic.
For instance, if the above figures ran not from 14.0 to 14.8,
but rather from 14.00 to 14.08,
we could still make it look dramatic:
So is the actual temperature variation terrifying?
Or surprisingly small?
In the correct chart,
the climate change scientists are worried by the absolute size of the variation,
and we should certainly take that seriously.
But the modest size of the variation may still come as a surprise to people
seeing this for the first time.
The last decade
There was a record high in 1998, and since then temperature has stayed around this level
rather than rising further.
So no matter how you plot the last decade, it doesn't look like much change.
Whether with a narrow Y-range:
So is it worrying?
The climate change scientists are worried that temperature has stayed at the record 1998 level,
and we should certainly take that seriously.
But the lack of any rise in the past decade
may still come as a surprise to people seeing this for the first time.
Natural disasters
There is a claim that natural disasters are getting worse because of climate change.
There is very little evidence for this.
Obama asserts that climate change
is already causing disasters:
"the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. ...
Rising sea levels threaten every coastline.
More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.
More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive.
On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees."
The evidence for all these confident assertions is
pretty weak.
Some data in response to Obama's UN speech above
notes that deaths from storms, floods and droughts have not increased.
If the Greens lie about this, it is hard to totally trust them on more opaque topics
such as temperature and sea level.
Review of the book
makes a great point about how the left used to want people to be prosperous:
"It was not that long ago that the main complaint of left wing critics of the American economy was that it produced poverty and appalling social conditions. "Capitalism" was simply a code word for the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer.
... while the original critique was flawed, the sentiment was one of generating wealth for average Americans. Even as late as 1962 .. this sentiment still dominated left wing politics. How things have changed.
Today, the political left is "green" and their main complaint is not that capitalism produces poverty. They know capitalism produces affluence. And they oppose it. Americans, they complain, consume "too much" and need to make do with less, because the planet is threatened ... Global warming is only the latest of their concerns, having replaced the completely discredited 'population bomb' threatened in the late 1960s. And their proposed solutions .. are truly frightening. The old left proposals did not produce affluence, but the new "green" proposals will surely accomplish their goal of impoverishing people".
The radical green worldview is profoundly depressing.
It says that to save the planet,
people in the West must live
guiltier, thriftier, poorer lives.
That we should feel guilty about what we have.
And that bringing the third world up to western standards of living may be impossible.
Much of it sounds like an old-fashioned, guilt-ridden religion.
So what's the alternative?
The wonderful alternative to green poverty
is that we use our fantastic human brains,
and our ever-improving science and technology,
to make the entire world rich and comfortable like us,
while preserving (and even improving) the planet.
I'm sure we can do it.
Science, democracy and capitalism will save both the planet and the third world.
In favour of capitalism
- Enjoy wealth. Stop making people feel guilty about it.
Let's make everybody wealthy!
Low-cost airlines have liberated the ordinary people of the West.
At last, the lower middle-class can visit the Continent too.
Or go to New York at least once in their lives.
It is not just rich people like Al Gore and Prince Charles
that can do this now.
"no one was putting forward a positive case for the social benefits of increased mobility.
The particular debate [on airports and airlines]
was mired in a false opposition between the economic case (put forward by government and business) and supposed environmental collapse (put forward by green campaigners). There is more to transport and travel than these competing alternatives.
Flying is a freedom millions have only recently been able to afford.
... lower fares and faster transport ultimately give people more time and money to do the things that matter. The majority continue to vote with their feet by taking flights .. while they can still afford to."
"Crush a Third World Economic Development Movement. One of the most pressing threats facing our environment is rising income in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A generation ago these proud little dark people were happily frolicking in the rain forest, foraging for organic foods amid the wonders of nature. Today, corrupted by wealth, they are demanding environmentally hazardous consumer goods like cars and air conditioning and malaria medicine. You can do your part to stop this dangerous consumerism trend by supporting environmentally progressive leaders like Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe, and their programs for sustainable low-impact ecolabor camps."
Theodore Dalrymple
has a nice line on how green theory is both
incredibly speculative (with a weak track record so far of successful predictions)
and yet incredibly arrogant (it almost wants its critics banned or
prosecuted):
"though Monbiot
says that it is uncertain that anything we do now will make any difference, he nevertheless proposes that every human being on the earth follow his prescriptions."
Since 1995.
