Charlie's Take on Global Warming

I get called a "denier" a great deal. The whole point of that term is to equate me with Holocaust deniers who are crackpots. These are ad hominem tactics, and the people who use them are predictably FUCKTARDS. But this does leave a question. Where do I stand on global warming?

First of all, I want to get one thing out of the way. I am not a climatologist. I'm not even a scientist. My qualifications in this area are probably equal to that of Al Gore who is not a scientist or a climatologist. What I can say is that I have received no money from any oil companies for the views I will express here.

I break the debate down into three parts. Here they be:

Q: Is global warming happening?

YES! I believe it. I see the pictures of melting glaciers. I see the stats they produce. We are approximately one degree warmer on average than we used to be. I do not deny this reality, so I am not a denier.

Q: Is it our fault?

I DON'T KNOW. No one has made an open and shut case that the current warming is anthropogenic. What we do know is that we have increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel burning. I am inclined to think that this would contribute to the warming. But there are other factors to consider such as solar activity, cloud formation, ocean currents, etc. I have tried to fathom all of these factors, and I have concluded that it is impossible to understand at this stage of our understanding. In the lack of understanding, we usually fill in the blanks with our prejudices, and if you hate Exxon, then anthropogenic warming is true. If you like Exxon and toilets that actually flush, then you are less inclined to feel guilty for driving that SUV.

Q: Are we utterly fucked?

TAKE A CHILL PILL. The reason libertarians like me part company with Mr. Gore is because we have heard this story before, and it was much ado about nothing. The debate is not over. Gore follows the familiar pattern of scaring the shit out of you and urging immediate action and dire consequences if you don't listen to him. But don't question what he says. Just shut up and get on board. FUCK THAT.

Back in the day, the hole in the ozone layer was the big crisis which necessitated immediate drastic action. It all turned out to be nothing. Then, there was Mad Cow Disease. I soiled my shorts on that one. I gave up Big Macs, but it was all bullshit hysterics.

My viewpoint fits exactly where the science is right now. I can hear some leftards snickering, but my assent to things is not all or nothing. If Mr. Gore turns out to be right, then I think all fossil fuels should be outlawed. Fuck cap-and-trade. Suddenly, this is where my leftist friends try to sound the moderate tone. We don't need to eliminate pollution. We can just cap it and build a new Enron style trading scheme around it. This is utter bullshit. You know the leftards are not serious because they don't believe the things they are saying. If they did, they would go for this drastic action.

Gore and Co. like to quote the "scientific consensus." This means nothing to me. This is because the scientific consensus has been dead wrong many times. When I argue with creationists, I don't use the "scientific consensus" argument. I use facts. I talk about geology and fossil findings and vestigial elements in our bodies to show that evolution is a fact. The global warming people do not argue like this. The moment they used the consensus line and said the debate was over I knew it was horseshit politics. The only thing I can liken it to was the Bush administration's WMD arguments for the invasion of Iraq. They cherry picked the data and rolled the dice. The global warming people cite polar bear deaths (an abused fact), record warm days, melting glaciers, etc. to bolster their argument. But what about record cool days or advancing antarctic ice sheets, or the fact that temperatures have not increased over the last decade despite an increase in carbon dioxide? Suddenly, global warming becomes an imperceptible "long term trend." You can't have it both ways. They are playing the "heads I win, tails you lose" game. They have established an unfalsifiable theory here. They exclude all evidence that does not support their conclusion.

The environment is a complex system, and we don't fully understand it. I know this because economics is a complex system that we do understand, and we can't figure that out either. The only proper attitude to have towards these systems is a loosely held skeptical empiricism. Mr. Gore never goes on about the impending collapse of Medicare or Social Security which takes simple math to understand. He also never goes on about killer asteroids that might be rare events but are almost certainly planet killers and make his global warming hysteria look like Chicken Little fiddling on the deck of the Titanic.

Based on what we know, the most catastrophic outcome of global warming will be some trouble for people with beachfront real estate on the order of a one to two foot rise in sea level. We do know from history that there have been much wider fluctuations in temperature with no ill effects except those pesky ice ages. That's when the glaciers push your beach house out to sea.

Critics will cite the precautionary principle. Better safe than sorry. But this makes no sense whatsoever. If we followed this principle the way we are with global warming, we wouldn't have AC electricity in our homes, natural gas in our stoves, or even drive on the highways. When you consider that you live in a potential firebomb and ride in high speed missiles on the highways and in the air capable of killing you, you have to ask yourself a question. What is an acceptable risk?

We accept the risks when we consider that the consequences of not taking those risks would be much worse. Riding in motor vehicles is dangerous, but when they pull you from the wreckage of a car, they are going to transport you to your next destination in another motorized vehicle. The alternative is to stay put and die waiting for the next horse and buggy. So, let's look at the alternatives we have in the global warming debate:

1. A rise in sea level accompanied by adverse weather.

2. The end of industrial civilization.

Which do you think will have the bigger impact on your quality of life? Critics will say that industrial civilization does not have to end. We can just switch to solar and wind. This is ludicrous. Such relatively free energy would be had right now because this is how capitalism works. Solar and wind are at best supplemental energy sources. You might be able to charge a cellphone with a solar panel, but these energy sources are not going to power the civilization we have. Nuclear is a relatively clean alternative, but the green people have already bedeviled that option into oblivion. On the horizon, I can see nuclear fusion as the best option. But we don't have it yet, and I don't see us getting it if we kill industrial civilization for the sake of the tree huggers.

The reality is that Al Gore was in need of a public issue to ride on for the sake of his personal ego. He took this one because no one else was talking about it, and he blew it all out of proportion. This is what politicians do. They find a constituency, play to their unfounded fears, and ride the wave, baby. Later on, it becomes embarrassing when the fact checking begins, and we see the lies and the distortions. The scientific community already knows about these lies and distortions, but they are keeping their mouths shut. Correcting Al Gore on the facts would serve to undercut the message, so they let the fool ramble on which undercuts science in the long haul.

As a skeptical empiricist, I deal with probabilities. It is probable that global warming could result in catastrophic consequences, but we need more evidence than the certain catastrophe that would occur as a result of these schemes meant to correct the first problem. And before we do that, we need to establish in a more concrete way the impact of human activity on climate. We could end up taking a cure for a problem we didn't create. So, what is the cure?

The answer to all of these problems is nuclear fusion. We need the power of the sun harnessed here on earth. Our next step in civilization is this energy source. This is the future. While the climatologists are telling us we are going to hell in a handbasket, it will be the physicists and the engineers who change this story. This is the antidote to scientific pessimism. It is technological optimism. Yet, I suspect there will be some alarmist telling us how "dangerous" this new technology is. He will probably have a movie, too.

All of this cuts down to the psychology of the environmentalists. Environmentalism is a religion. This is opposed to conservationism which sought to preserve areas of natural beauty for aesthetic reasons. The fact is that most Americans are conservationists. The irony is that these conservationist folks actually live in rural wilderness areas while the environmentalists are overwhelmingly urban. The fact is that urban areas are nasty with pollution, and these city dwellers feel some guilt about their lifestyles. So, they recycle plastic bottles and newspapers and tell people in Alaska they can't drive SUV's anymore.

There are environmentalists on the right except they aren't called environmentalists. They are called outdoorsmen, and they love to hunt, fish, and live in log cabins in the woods. They hate being preached at by city folks about "sustainability" when they see their outdoor areas exploited to fill the consumption needs of urban tree huggers. These Ted Nugent types love nature, but they don't worship it. They don't see Mother Nature as some angry deity that they must appease with carbon offsets. Lefty enviros are overwhelmingly urban and coastal and live in high proximity to beachfront real estate. So, they want Jethro to stop driving his Jeep out in Montana, so they don't get flooded out of their homes or wiped out in a hurricane. Pretty damn stupid.

As for libertarians, we like both cities and rural areas. They represent commerce and freedom. The ideal for us would be to live in the woods but still make city money. Thanks to the internet, this is possible. But that is another subject for another essay.

The thing that will end the global warming hysteria will be the discovery of new facts. This is what ended the previous hysterias. You learn new things and realize you were wrong. Or to quote Al Gore from Earth in the Balance, "In Patagonia, hunters now report finding blind rabbits; fishermen catch blind salmon." This was the evidence for ozone depletion. It was bullshit. As for global warming, new facts will shed light on current bullshit. I'm willing to wait for those facts.

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