In 1783, William Pitt warned the British Parliament about the dangers of those who would reflexively employ “necessity” as an argument in favor of their preferences. “Necessity,” Pitt exclaimed, “is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves!” These are wise words indeed. But in a purely Machiavellian sense, the tactic is also a risky one. Those who shout “or else!” tend to be left in the role of the boy who cried wolf if their apocalypse fails to turn up on time.
The environmental Left has long neglected Pitt’s admonition and is starting to pay the price. Having careered wantonly from “global cooling” to “global warming” to “climate change,” the greenies eventually settled on the rather dramatic “global climate chaos,” a neatly eschatological term that has the delicious benefit of being so vague as to be unfalsifiable. For years now we have been told that this week, or month, or year — or conference, or junket — is our last chance to save the world.
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Such an approach is rapidly losing its efficacy. What the global downturn has done for prioritization, science is doing for perspective. Enter Andreas Schmittner, a professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Schmittner headed up a major study recently published in Science and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, which baldly concludes that the sort of doomsday scenario readily thrown around by the scaremongers is simply not rooted in reality. Following publication, Schmittner put his findings succinctly in an interview with TheAustralian: “very large changes” — of the sort we have grown to love hearing about from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — “can be ruled out [and] we have some room to breathe and time to figure out solutions to the problem.” (According to the study, that “problem” doesn’t seem to be too heinous, either. The international target is to keep temperature rises within 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century, by which point CO2 concentrations are expected to approximately double; Schmittner predicts that the probable outcome of doubling CO2 concentrations would be between 1.7 degrees Celsius and 2.6 degrees Celsius, not the 3–4 degree change predicted by the IPCC.)
Science has an established history of running new studies only when they significantly add to or contradict previously published work. While Schmittner is very clearly not arguing that global warming isn’t happening, nor that mankind does not play a role in changing the earth’s climate, there is simply no way to read the report without concluding that the apocalyptic narrative is dead in the water.
This determination is, in part, based upon the study’s less cynically selected frame of reference. “Many previous climate sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate data, especially on a global scale,” the research concludes, echoing a key and ever-present criticism leveled at alarmism. Put in layman’s terms, the conclusion is that if the climate were really so sensitive to change that doubled CO2 could yield cataclysmic warming, then, conversely, the low levels of carbon in the atmosphere 21,000 years ago should have precipitated a planet sufficiently icebound to extinguish all life. It didn’t.
The analysis would be compelling if an altruistic urge to forestall environmental disaster were the only motive driving the Greenist AGHG regulation project. It is not; it is not even the primary driver. Power and money are the primary drivers. From Wall Street financiers eager to create a shadow economy of emission permits as essential to human activity as capital is now, to politicians looking to peddle to the highest bidders their influence over the regulatory scheme, to investors seeking government subsidies sufficient to guarantee a profit come what may, to the "developing world" lobbying for $100 billion annual compensation payments, the interests pushing for the continued progress of the Greenist AGHG agenda are vast and inexorable. "Science" dropped out of the equation long ago.
If you leave the door open one inch, the greenies declare victory and up the ante. No "study" is convincing if it leaves any doubt that this is a hoax. The mere act of taking this hoax seriously is an invitation to more of the same.
MikeB: To sum up what you are attempting to say: Because William Pitt lived at a time when Americans owned slaves, we have to ignore the study that found that AGHG will not cause significant warming in the next century and accept the arguments of your fellow travelers that we give up our economic freedom out of the necessity of saving the planet from the evils of a naturally occurring gas going from .03% of the atmosphere to .04% (levels that are much lower than at other times in the history of the earth)
You don't bother to refute the truth of the statement that demagogues have always used arguments of "necessity" to gain the power to control their fellow human beings. You don't bother to refute the soundness of the study...you don't even bother to find out what William Pitt's opinion of slavery was!
Based on your posts you seem to believe that free market capitalism and the burning of fossil fuels are the evils of our time...equivalent to slavery of the 18th and 19th centuries...so by your own logic, nothing you say matters because you live at a time when Americans are burning fossil fuels and enjoying the fruits of their property and labor.
The end is near! Doomsday, apocalypse. The science is settled.
We must urgently regulate the climate to save the planet. We have scientific proof that mankind has the capability to regulate and control the climate - mankind must reverse climate change to avoid imminent catastrophe...at all costs.
Really? I'm not losing any sleep over this. There's far higher priorities facing us as a nation. For example, fiscal armageddon.
Gee MikeB,
You mean it doesn’t have anything to do with decade-long cycles of shifting ocean currents (Arctic Oscillation) like NASA scientists concluded in 2007?? External Link
And of course it isn’t a result of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the 60-70 year-long Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) flipping into their positive warm modes (PDO in 1978 and AMO in 1995), which brings warm water to northern latitudes!
And those oscillating currents can’t be driven by changes in solar irradiance (you know, that giant fusion reactor you see every morning when you look up into the sky), can they? [sarc]
Being that the satellite record is only about 30 years old, we only have anecdotal information, but there is evidence that Arctic ice extent declined severely from the 1920s to the 1940s. External Link
The link takes you to an article with a headline: 'Record-setting' change in warming Arctic: report. But then describes the record using data collected since 1979. Sorry Charlie, that doesn't cut it. You couldn't come to much of a conclusion about the climate, world wide, by studying data over 32 years in one polar region.
Besides, has anyone considered how beneficial a warmer planet might be for humans?
@MikeB
How do 114 or so scientists cram all their stuff into a mere 167 page report? Seriously, all of these "authors"? Or maybe a laundry list of those on the public teat making sure their publication list keeps up with the grant requirements.
Others have already jumped on Mike B in sufficient numbers, but I cannot resist pointing out that the foundations of the science of thermodynamics, especially regarding the nature of heat, were being laid roughly contemporaneously with the time of William Pitt. It seems to me equally silly to disregard Pitt's remarks about necessity as being compromised by the nature of his times as it would be to disavow the observations of Count Rumford or Joseph Black, more or less contemporaries of Pitt, upon the nature of heat because of the coexistence of the institution of slavery with their investigations into the physical meaning of "warming".
By your reasoning, anybody who lived and played out their career in a sub-Utopian society has nothing relevant or wise to add to the conversation. By my rough measurement, that means nobody has anything to say.
Really, Mike? That's the best you can do? "He lived a long time ago before people were perfect, so he's not relevant"?
The climate of the earth changes and fluctuates. It happens. We adapt.
Would it be a good idea to cut some emissions and clean up? Almost certainly. Not because great apocalyptic visions, but because no one wants to live in a cosmic dustbin. Do we need to trash the economy (further) and set up insane levels of regulation and oversight to prevent "climate chaos"? Of course not... and Pitt is relevant in pointing out the real motive behind the scaremongering.
Most every single human, since Og said to Gog, "Wow! It's cold outside" has been absolutely sure that they are living at the pinnacle of information and technology. Yet, everyone who comes after always thinks them stupid. It's called progress, and it doesn't mean what Liberals say it means. All they are about is stopping progress, through sheer destruction, if possible.
I think we will continue to discover and produce, once we get rid of Mike B, relaxok, and their ilk. After all, they want to be rid of us.
Some time ago, I became disenchanted with the environmental movement when it gave itself away to some degree; the blights of the chestnut tree that were causing the chestnut tree species to verge on extinction, and the elm blight that has killed off nearly every elm tree in America dropped behind the plight, for Heaven's sake, of the spotted owl and the snail darter. It was obvious that the death of two entire species of trees was nothing against the campaign to oppose industrial logging and large hydroelectric projects.
In the meantime, two of the best-loved species in America have quietly, unnoticed by environmentalists and ignored where perceived, gone the way of the dodo bird. How many Elm Streets and Chestnut Streets are there in America?
Thanks a lot, environmentalists. You didn't help very much to combat the blights. I guess those snail darters had too compelling a need.
The author appears to fall into the "trap" set by the warmists - he talks about "carbon" in the atmosphere. Of course, carbon is black and sooty, and it sounds more ominous than some odorless, tasteless gas, so that is why the warmists use that terminology.
When we drink a glass of water, do we say we are ingesting a nice cold glass of "Hydrogen"? Or that we are taking a drink of "Oxygen"?
"Carbon" is not supposedly warming the climate. "Carbon Dioxide", or "CO2" is the correct terminology to use when referring to the "Greenhouse" gas.
I can only imagine the rage rising in liberals and greenies that the anti-science neanderthal conservatives just won't submit. After all, all of the 100's of thousands of climate scientist agree. Well, 90% of them, anyway. Soon to read 80% and then 70% . . . 10%. And William Pitt was no climate scientist so who cares what he had to say. Not long before someone digs up a quote by Benjamin Franklin to counter.
Here is my unprovable prediction/scenario - much like the climate hysterics: The US gas, oil and coal resources are opened up and freely expoited. The US economy rapidly improves exponentially. The ME becomes irrelevant. The private sector in the US and Canada start investing in more renewable energy sources (including nuclear - though maybe not technically renewable). Incredible break throughs come from this uncoerced and gov't free investment. No disaster ever occurs. 90% of climate scientists say "See. Told you so."
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