I’ve been skeptical of the alarmist version of anthropogenic global warming for some time now. The roots and basis of my skepticism are fleshed out in a much longer piece that’s still in the works, but all that can be set aside in favor of a short and practical discussion about the subject as it stands today.
Theory aside, history aside, domestic politics aside, the debate boils down to two simple points.
One – the models failed to predict the last decade and a half.
Two – there is no chance the proposed solution – restricting/rationing carbon emissions – will ever be accepted broadly enough to work.
First – the models. The leaked East Anglia emails noted this ‘unfortunate’ disconnect between hypothesis and reality. No matter how fancy the rhetoric, no matter how elaborate the analysis, no matter how certain those particular researchers are, if their understanding is insufficient to predict a decade and a half, then it’s not reasonable to expect that they can predict a century. Now, it is reasonable to claim one can predict a longer term trend without predicting short term variations. NOAA can tell us that certain conditions in the Pacific make a mild or severe winter more likely in the USA without having to predict what will happen on a given day or week. But, in that circumstance we can look at past performance to support the point. In the case of global climate prediction, we don’t have the same sort of performance history. Yes, a modeler can take conditions in 1950-60 and plug them into a model that predicts 1970-80 – BUT – that’s Monday morning quarterbacking, and we’d have to trust that his integrity is such that he wouldn’t look at the decade he wants to predict when building his model – AND – we’ve witnessed the cherry-picking of start and end points in AGW narratives too often to dismiss the possibility of bias.
The simplest and surest way to establish that the warmists’ prediction is probable and deserving of (incredibly expensive and destructive) action is for them to write a model – today – that accurately predicts the next two decades. They haven’t accomplished that yet – and that means they haven’t figured things out as well as they claim.
Next – the solution. The only solution in widespread discussion is a brute-force one: restricting carbon emissions by some taxation and/or regulatory mechanism. The problem is that carbon emissions are directly tied to energy production by existing methods, and that reducing those emissions requires either the use of lower-emitting sources of energy or simply making less energy.
Start with the former. The world gets much of its energy from coal, oil and natural gas. Natural gas makes less than coal, and increasing its use will mitigate emissions. But, we don’t need carbon rationing to make that happen, and in any case it still generates carbon. The non-carbon solutions include nuclear, hydropower, solar and wind. Up until the Fukushima accident, nuclear was an option for a handful of nations. Now? For better or worse, nuclear power’s off the table for a couple decades, I’d say. Hydropower? The enviros hate it, and it’s not a particularly portable or universally implementable option – and that’s before we even look at the economics. That takes us to the darlings of the enviros – solar and wind. Neither is gaining any real traction as a primary energy source, despite enormous subsidies and preferential treatment from government. Why? They’re simply not competitive from an economic basis. And, as governments go deeper into debt, the likelihood that those subsidies will continue shrinks. Simply put – they aren’t the answer, not today.
Now the latter. And here’s the real reason why rationing is not a solution. Energy is fundamental to our standards of living. Even as efforts and incentives to make everything more energy efficient continue, even as people think in a more energy-conscious fashion (fuel efficient cars, well insulated homes, energy star appliances), the use of energy in support of our lifestyles increases. Think of the number of electronic devices in a home today, vs in the 1950s. Think also of how many households have air conditioners today. Expand it to other energy-using things in your house. All these things make our lives better and more comfortable, and it goes beyond just the house. And, the nation’s population’s doubled in the last 60 years.
But, that’s just the USA. The same phenomenon took place in other parts of the world. Europe and Japan after the war, some other Pacific Rim nations more recently. And, and here’s the key point, it’s just now starting to happen in China and India, where 1/3 of the world’s 7 billion people live. Those nations will not accept carbon caps that will keep their people from rising up to a fraction of the standard of living that we here enjoy today, nor is it moral to ask them to. And, when other countries chart similar paths, the same thing will happen. Energy = life, and more energy = better life.
We can also think of it in the converse. Restricting energy in the fashion declared necessary by the warmists will doom billions to decades more of poverty and shorten the lives of countless millions. How can someone could justify such a monstrous outcome morally, especially since it hasn’t been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that catastrophic AGW is real?
Even if AGW is real and a real problem, carbon rationing will not be implemented in a global enough fashion to ameliorate it. The developing nations simply won’t sign up for it – and if they do, they won’t keep their promise. That’s pretty hard to dispute. In fact, I’d suggest that anyone who continues to insist on carbon rationing is either not thinking things through or stands to gain personally.
So, if AGW’s real, is humanity doomed? Nope – and that’s a topic for another day. A hint: Technology, ingenuity, time and “necessity is the mother of invention.”
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