Has there been a recent discussion of global warming on this forum?
I believe that global warming is a real phenomenon, but that it is not caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emmisions. The best explanation I have found for climatic shifts is cyclical solar activity.
The real issue here is the collectivist agenda to gain more power in the name of environmentalism and saving us from false projections of disaster. It’s all about fear and state control, which is no surprise considering this has been the trend throughout history. At the upcoming climate conference in Cancun, Mexico staring in November 2010, the world’s industrialized nations will probably reach a binding agreement to cut emissions. World leaders will sign a treaty (without reading it) that will set up the bureaucratic structure of a new world government centered at the United Nations with power that trumps national sovereignty. Once the UN can regulate carbon dioxide, one of the four basic elements of life, as a “pollutant,” there is no area of human life off limits to regulation.
So, does anyone here agree with me? If you do believe in manmade global warming, why? It seems to me that most of the “scientific consensus” talk is pure propaganda. The IPCC is corrupt beyond belief, and all the mainstream films like An Inconvenient Truth are simply science fiction. The only places where I see support for manmand climate change is in governments, state/corporation run mainstream media, state-funded science academies, etc.
p.s. What did Rothbard think about global warming? What do the leading scholars at the Mises Institute think?
p.p.s. Man is destroying the environment in many other ways. Genetically-modified foods scare the hell out of me, as do all the chemicals and pharmeceutical drugs poisoning us. Naturally, the state finds little to be concerned about in these areas.
As for Rothbard, let’s remember that for most of the time he was alive, scientists and politicians were worried about “global cooling” - and it’s most of these same people who are pushing the AGW/manmade climate change theory.
ClimateGate should have ended the scam - it’s clear that most of the established science is make-believe - it comes from data sets that are totally “adjusted” and ill-maintained, and the science is conceived in a general atmosphere of duplicity.
Thanks for the reply! Now if I can only get some of my classmates at college to see the truth. I have been away from school for a year and a half, and during this time discovered the work of G. Edward Griffin, Freedom Force International, the Mises Institute, etc. I will be returing to school in the fall as a sophomore - from isolation back into a community full of close-minded activists who want to save the environment with a carbon tax. Do you have experience trying to convince people that global warming isn’t real, and that individual property rights in natural resources is the real solution to environmental problems? I have written a ten page position paper on global warming which I will try to publish and which I am sure will make me plenty of enemies. Should I even bother debating the activists, and instead focus on educating people who are less brainwashed?
Let’s just (for the sake of argument) assume that there exist externalities of carbon emmission (and other kinds of industrial processing byproducts) whose individual contributions are too small for anyone to want to attempt suit based on individual property, but whose cumulative effects can have adverse affects on wildlife and moderate changes to weather patterns and temperature ranges.
So what? Given the rate of advance associated with market economies, and the fact that the only ‘purpose’ of the world is to be of use to our ends (that is, it is only our purposes that exist, I am not trying to imply the world ‘itself’ has a purpose) - why should anyone care about useless wildlife or global climate affects? If economic calculation and social organizational processes are not hampered by stupid ideological factors (such as democratic statism, egalitarianism etc) then the ability of human beings to compensate and adapt to changed circumstances will almost certainly far outstrip anything these ‘environmentalists’ have ever considered.
I agree with you Liberte, except that one of the fears is that AGW could result in a positive feedback loop that destroys our ability to use the world for our ends. I’m not an environmentalist and I am not convinced that AGW is a concern (though I think many skeptics are perhaps skeptical for the wrong reasons), but the possibility is worrisome.
Quoted for truth. This is exactly how I see it. It’s just easier to adapt to something than to prevent it. The history of humankind shows this over and over again.
Same here. So I actually started looking at the science and literature of climate change. Likewise, I did the same for the skeptics. After reading many works in both camps, I have to say that the possibility of AGW being true as stated is about as likely as you being struck by a meteor. Don’t feel guilty about releasing CO2 into the air, and sleep well.
As with any event or catastrophe that might “kill us all” I get very worried at first. To calm my nerves I get right into the meat of the matter by studying and find out it’s just hyperbole and nonsense yet again.
I agree that human beings could adapt to the types of externalities Liberte mentioned, although I wouldn’t call wildlife useless at least in the sense that humans can use other animals as a resource.
I am concerned about the global warming issue because it demonstrates how economic calculation and social organizational processes are currently hampered by stupid ideological factors. Specifically, there is a conspiracy of very rich, very stupid collectivists controlling the power centers of Western society who want to create a world in which people are either wiped out to prevent “overpopulation” or microchipped and enslaved. Environmentalist rhetoric is one of their main strategies of generating fear and obtaining control.
Furthermore, I am concerned about human impacts on the environment because environmental factors are the leading cause of chronic illness in humans. In other words, some externalities are killing us. Diseases like cancer, alzheimers, MS, ALS, parkinsons, and autism, and chronic symptoms of fatigue, headaches, arthritis, and depression are all caused by how we interact with the environment. Genetically modified foods are now part of the standard Americad diet, so most Americans are now constantly consuming foreign substances that promote allergy and disease. Manmade chemicals are now an unavoidable part of the environment, so thousands of people unknowingly suffer from chemical sensitivities that cause debilitating symptoms.
I wish I were like Liberte and didn’t care about the future, because then most of this wouldn’t matter. But even if you only care about about yourself in this lifetime, you should care about the environment because chances are you will suffer from environmental illness, if you don’t already.
“Current CO2 levels are low compared with Earth’s history…”
"“Indeed Scott, there is ample evidence of both warmer and cooler temperatures with very varied atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over geological history…”
"Throughout geological history we are not aware of any period when ghgs were lower than current, almost always higher and yet there have been both warmer and colder periods when ghgs were considerably higher. This tells us that CO2 levels at least triple and likely a full order of magnitude greater than today’s could not avert major glaciations. There is no evidence, anywhere, of atmospheric CO2 levels causing temperature change, only reacting to it."
“Either way there is no known methane risk, any more than there is one from CO2 – it is just the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis but lacks empirical support.”
"We do not have sufficient knowledge of sources to accurately determine anthropogenic effect on methane levels and it is not understood why they seemed to be rising and why the rise petered out while human exposition and release of natural gas was increasing. "
the above info was told to me by someone calling themselves barry hearn at junkscience.com.
i guess that is there real name. i dont know. but from what i understand this person is saying that tempratures have been quite a bit higher than they are now. and the gasses that are often said to cause these changes have been in much higher concentrations than they currently are… without any human alteration.
if global tempratures do start to increase well beyond what they are now it would be scary but apparently (if the science is true and accurate) it happened before without any of mankinds interference or activities.
I’ve never been convinced of global warming being a purely man-made phenomenon. I’m much more inclined to believe it’s Sunspots and part of a natural climatic cycle. However, even if the earth is warming up for whatever reason, humans have a remarkable tendency to adapt. I regard environmentalists as a movement the Marxists adopted after the collapse of the ussr; all they did was swap the red flags for green ones and modified the language a bit.
Afterall, instead of violent revolution, why not get the bourgeoisie to guilt themselves into slavery?
GM was made very political. That’s why I try to differenciate (if this is a right word) facts by myself and my own critical thinking skills. However, I am not an expert, I am even not a scientist (climatologist). So why should I leave this issue to my own “opinion” and personal belief only? Same would be with theory of Evolution. Most of us are not biologists, but do anyone here really thinks, that it “may be true” rather than accept the scientific fact and trust science? For example:
“Oh, we may evolved, but my stupidity and ignorance doesn’t let me even think about this nonsense that we came from monkeys, that’s disgusting” - or something similar.
So why should this be different with GM? Just because it is made political? Evolutionary theory was also made political once (darwinism etc.) it has got bad reputation, especially when organized religion saw, that they are losing their credibility. Even now we have folks from intelligent design camps telling us nonsense when they try to do their “science”, or have to say… ignore real science when it doesn’t support their dogma. It’s still political in some sense.
I trust climatologists, I trust experts and so called, mainstream scientists, in spite of the fact that they are often government funded. As long as they do real science I don’t care much. I don’t have any choice. Many “antagonists of GM” are very often just quacks (despite their libertarianism) or simply ignorant on the issue and take facts from their asses.
Evidence suggests, that it’s anthropogenic global warming, though, I am still skeptical and wouldn’t say, that I am 100 percent sure.
That’s my opinion after reading many articles on this issue.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism is great. Besides showing that global warming, or climate change, is nonsense it shows that the environmentalist movement is just a socialist movement, and the policies they support and push contradict themselves.
You have to understand why global warming was made very political. Most people think about the politics of global warming in terms of Republicans opposing cap-and-trade. The real political maneuvering is going on behind the scenes, where world leaders are jockying for position in new global political structures. Maurice Strong, one of the United Nations most powerful bureaucrats for the past forty years, symbolizes the push for global governance in the name of environmentalism. He was the head of the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio which led to the Kyoto treaty, where he said:
“The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.”
He has also said, “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.” He made his money in big oil and couldn’t care less about the environment - all he wants is a world government run by the UN.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of world communism, is another collectivist who has jumped on the bandwagon of environmentalism to secure his next position of power. He has started an organization called the International Green Cross, and said in 1992: “I believe that the new world order will not be fully realized unless the United Nations and its Security Council create structures … authorized to impose sanctions and make use of other measures of compulsion.”
Once the AGW myth gained steam, even “real scientists” were pressured consciously or subconsciously to validate the theory. Much of the so called real science is based on computer models, which seem scientific but are incredibly innacurate due to biased inputs that can never reflect all the variables in reality.
Also, I think evolutionary theory is still political - some atheists treat Darwin almost like a god, and think evolution is completely true and infallible. I think that many parts of the theory are true, valid, and useful, but it is unrealistic to think we have uncovered the entire truth about evolution. I think we’re still scratching the surface.
Wow, there’s a lot of bad science on this thread. I’d advise all of you to read responses to your arguments before siding against most of the world’s experts.
I’m struck by the reliance of most libertarian critics, such as Indur Goklany, who debates Adler here, on consequentialist benefit-cost arguments in favor of climate inaction. As Adler says, it seems odd to find libertarians saying that it’s OK, for example, to completely wipe out the property of Pacific Island nations, on the basis that there will be a net social benefit for the world as a whole from doing so.
I’ve got to agree with him. Adler discusses the issue at length here.
Cork, I don’t think the government is capable, as an institution, of eliminating more rights violations than it causes.
So yes, government solutions will do more harm than they cause - and don’t say that avoiding government solutions comes at the expense of the minority - those government solutions will just perpetuate the institution that does everything at the expense of the minority.
And your shrugging off of the cost-benefit just begs the question. If the alternatives are to largely end industrial civilization, and still be plagued by climate change to the same degree as if we kept doing things as-is, then we don’t have the situation whereby some islands are wiped out in one course but not the other.
I read the John Quiggin post, and it seems like he is saying libertarians should support cap-and-trade because it is a property-rights based solution. This is a ridiculous assertion, seeing as cap-and-trade is basically a way to tax carbon emissions. Libertarians oppose taxation because it contradicts the non-agression principle - it is theft. The government should not be able to force people to pay money (give up their property) in order to emit carbon.
I don’t believe humans have any impact on climate change, but I’ll assume that they do for the sake of argument. Even if carbon emmission did cause global warming and property damage, there would be no way to achieve justice. It would be impossible to figure out exaclty whose emissions caused the warming that resulted in the rising sea levels that destroyed someone’s house. In fact, since every person breathes out carbon dioxide and has a “carbon footprint,” every individual on the planet would have to compensate every person whose property was damaged by global warming. What ends up happening is a collectivist’s dream - governments decide who to steal from in order to compensate whoever they decide deserves it.
It seems clear that the global warming myth is an effective strategy to achieve government control. Even Adler admits that in a perfect world we would have an “international tribunal” to enforce “cross-national property rights violations.” This is exactly what UN leaders and other powerful collectivists are trying to create, but they don’t want to do it to protect our property. They want to do it to enslave us.
