More of My Kyoto Thoughts
Based on a comment I made at Dust My Broom...
A major problem I have with the whole Kyoto backing crowd is that they automatically assume several things... firstly, that the current global warming trend is definitely man-made. Secondly, they assume that, if the earth is indeed warming, it is inherently A BAD THING.
Sure, a change in climate may alter how we do things for a generation or two, and may affect weather patterns... but then again, so did the mini-Ice Age they had in the 1600-1700's.
My point is this... WE HAVE A CONSTANTLY CHANGING PLANET, with it's own life cycles that we have barely scratched the surface of understanding. I'm all for ensuring that we cut down on our pollutants... we should be taking good care of this planet, which I believe God has entrusted us with. And if you don't believe in God, then we should be taking care of it simply because it's the only one we've got... you're wrong, but your entitled to your view. ;-)
But to say that we're drasticly altering our planet with man-made global warming is pure BUNK... first of all, there's no way to prove that it's not just the natural life cycle of our planet, and secondly, the left assumes that a change in climate is inherently a bad thing.
Global warming may cause us to change how we live for a generation or two, but we've been there before, and we dealt with it... but it won't cause a mass extintion like the left would have us believe.
But, of course, that's an "Inconvient Truth" for the enviro-lobby... you know, they need to keep their jobs somehow, now that we've already saved the whales, saved the Giant Panda, and banned CFC's...
Now that I've gone and said that... calling all pro-Kyoto lefties!!! Let the flames begin! Please watch your language... I'd love to keep your posts for all to see, but I'll have to toast them should they contain "uneducated" language. ;-)
A major problem I have with the whole Kyoto backing crowd is that they automatically assume several things... firstly, that the current global warming trend is definitely man-made. Secondly, they assume that, if the earth is indeed warming, it is inherently A BAD THING.
Sure, a change in climate may alter how we do things for a generation or two, and may affect weather patterns... but then again, so did the mini-Ice Age they had in the 1600-1700's.
My point is this... WE HAVE A CONSTANTLY CHANGING PLANET, with it's own life cycles that we have barely scratched the surface of understanding. I'm all for ensuring that we cut down on our pollutants... we should be taking good care of this planet, which I believe God has entrusted us with. And if you don't believe in God, then we should be taking care of it simply because it's the only one we've got... you're wrong, but your entitled to your view. ;-)
But to say that we're drasticly altering our planet with man-made global warming is pure BUNK... first of all, there's no way to prove that it's not just the natural life cycle of our planet, and secondly, the left assumes that a change in climate is inherently a bad thing.
Global warming may cause us to change how we live for a generation or two, but we've been there before, and we dealt with it... but it won't cause a mass extintion like the left would have us believe.
But, of course, that's an "Inconvient Truth" for the enviro-lobby... you know, they need to keep their jobs somehow, now that we've already saved the whales, saved the Giant Panda, and banned CFC's...
Now that I've gone and said that... calling all pro-Kyoto lefties!!! Let the flames begin! Please watch your language... I'd love to keep your posts for all to see, but I'll have to toast them should they contain "uneducated" language. ;-)
posted by Christian Conservative @ 1:38 p.m.
7 Comments:
At Tue Jul 11, 04:55:00 p.m. EDT,
Lord Kitchener's Own said…
Well, I doubt this could be called a "flame", but I will disagree.
First, let me state that my disagreement should be viewed as a defence of climate change, not Kyoto, which you confuse a little in your post I think (though not deliberately, I'm sure). There's not a person on the planet who thinks Kyoto will stop climate change. The debate, it seems to me, is now between people who think that Kyoto's main problem is that it won't do ENOUGH to combat climate change, and those who believe it's a waste of time, because, well, "what climate change?" (or, yeah I see the climate change, but it doesn't worry me). Conservatives use "Kyoto" to attack "climate change" because one is a flawed means of tackling a growing global problem, and the other is a widely accepted, scientifically validated growing global problem. It's hard to come out and say "we shouldn't fight climate change, because there's no such thing as climate change" because, well, most people will stop listening to you at that point. But it's easy to attack KYOTO, point to its flaws, say "we need to fight climate change, but not this way" and if you manage to kill Kyoto, to simply not bother to come up with an alternative plan, because you really never believed that climate change is a problem anyway. Now, I commend your posting for being right up front, and declaring that you're not worried about climate change, so I'm not talking about you here.
I do find it classic though to hear Tories attacking Kyoto. Because minutes later, there's Tory Minister Ambrose explaining that the Tory government has NOT pulled out of Kyoto, is committed to Kyoto, and has simply realized that with 6 years to go, nothing can be done to meet our targets, so we'll come up with a whole other plan (eventually) that also won't meet the targets, but will have the advantage of not fighting climate change at all, while we fix a bunch of other environmental problems (hopefully) to distract people from our ignoring of climate change, until it starts getting cooler again....". Again, this isn't you. You come right out and say you don't believe (or aren't worried about) climate change, and I commend you for that. Heck, I'm impressed by ANYONE who can take any stand to the ideological right of George W. Bush, especially on the environment, so "let your freak flag fly" I say.
Anyway, your basic premise seems to be that "lefties" are making two "assumptions". 1) the recent changes in the global climate are caused by human activity, and 2) this is a bad thing, and we should do something about it. I'll skip right over those assuptions being premised on evidence gathered by research scientists, that the vast majority of the scientific community is in agreement with those assumptions, and that even George W. Bush and Stephen Harper claim to believe these two things, because I'm pretty sure you don't care.
But an argument I think you might agree with is this: Don't "right wingers" on your side of the argument every bit as much make assumptions? I think they just make the opposite assumptions. You assume that 1) the recent changes in global climate are NOT caused by human activity, and 2) even if they are, so what?
Now, I suppose you're correct that the planet is complex enough a system that no one can ever know everything about, so we can never be certain that recent climate change is man-made, no matter how much quicker or more extreme it is than other climate change examples from the past, or how many scientists say it's so, or how many times that pinko George W. Bush talks about the need to fight global warming. Granted.
But let's look at those assumptions for a moment again. Let's leave aside the "human caused or not" thing, because, frankly, who cares? If you believe climate change is a problem, it doesn't really matter whether it's our fault or not, and if you don't believe it's a problem, well, again, who cares? So, on to whether climate change will, or will not cause serious damage to the planet. For me, it's pretty easy to figure out what side of the debate I'm on here. Not only do I have the vast majority of the scientific community, and the Canadian and American (conservative) governments on my side, but logic too, I think. Because, frankly, on the one extreme, if you're right, and we fight global warming even though we don't need to, we'll have decreased our dependency on fossil fuels, cleaned up the environment some, and probably developed all kinds of great new sources of energy, and technologies to save even more energy. So, if we follow my lead, and it turns out you're right about global warming, the planet's better off.
On the other hand, if I'm right, and we follow YOUR lead, well, worst case scenario 100 years from now Florida is underwater (along with most other coastal areas), several species have been destroyed, and a couple of hundred million people are living in refugee camps (plus a bunch of other stuff, I won't mention, but you get the point...). So, overall, I'll stick with Rona Ambrose, Stephen Harper and George W. Bush here in wacky left-land, and keep believing that climate change is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with, despite the fact that all I have to go on is the consensus of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, and the majority of the world's governments (including many that didn't ratify Kyoto). The only difference between me and the others is, I'm not just talking. I actually expect something to be done about it.
At Tue Jul 11, 05:03:00 p.m. EDT,
Christian Conservative said…
Well said LKO... I may not agree with everything you said, but it does leave a few things to ponder.
Thanks for the input.
(now why can't we all just discuss issues more like this?)
At Tue Jul 11, 05:15:00 p.m. EDT,
Zorpheous said…
CC, (not to be confused with the other CC)
I would like to make something clear, I do not think the Kyoto Accord is good or even prefect set of protocals. In fact they are deeply flawed in many areas. Having said that, the Accord is better than what we have right now, which is nothing. Anyways, I just mention this because since it is I who has been most vocal over at DMB, I would want you be accused of placing and inacquirate label on me ;-)
Unfortinately I am definately argueing that we humans are responcible for the effects that we have on the environment, but to what degree is not know. Unfortinately this is not the view that is presented of the people who are doing the leading edge research into global climatic change. The anti-global warming crowd would like you to believe this, but if you actually took the time to read the research that is being done, you would learn that this is far from the truth.
Tune into my blog over the course of then next few weeks, I am going to start releasing a lot of the background research I have done over the last year, and it includes the pros and con arguments and why certain ones are wrong and why.
At Tue Jul 11, 05:30:00 p.m. EDT,
Christian Conservative said…
Muchos gracias Zorpheous! I will try to do that.
(and please, no one flame me if I got that Spanish wrong!!!)
At Tue Jul 11, 11:52:00 p.m. EDT,
Zorpheous said…
CC, I never nit pick about peoples spelling in English, I think I would be even less like to do so in Spanish.
Dirk, part of the problem is with the lack of peer review of the research papers, on both sides of the isle. The one huge stink that people make about the global warming crowd is the mistakes that were made in the MBH 1998 and 1999 papers (the hockey stick) whuch was mmore to do with statistical analysis methods used in historical climate reconstruction. Unfortinately people use this to point to modern data sets and claim that these data sets are invalid as well. And since people still refernce the articles from 98 and 99 it causes problems, and yet people still like to reference the research paper that Darcy at Dust my broom refered to today, which is even more inaquirate MBH analysis methods. The problem boils to global climate change has now taken on a political element and these political elements are twisting the facts.
At Wed Jul 12, 01:46:00 p.m. EDT,
Christian Conservative said…
I finally got fed up with all the support out there for Kyoto, so I started to do some digging. Here are a few "Inconvient Truths" for Mr. Gore, et. al.
New Study Decimates Kyoto Pillar
Damaging though these studies have been to the credibility of the human-induced climate change hypothesis, a highly technical paper published in the prominent British journal Energy and Environment at the end of October 2003 may very well be its final coup de grâce. The paper's authors, Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre and University of Guelph, Ontario economics professor Ross McKitrick, demonstrate convincingly that the well-known "Mann Hockey Stick", one of Kyoto's fundamental scientific pillars, is based on flawed calculations, incorrect data and a biased selection of climate records.
From EnviroTruth.org
Just do a Google search on this... "MBH98 kyoto". Yikes.
Or how about this? A list of scientists (including some heavy names from Canada) who DISPUTE THE SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION OF KYOTO... "Some of the Many Experts Who Contest Kyoto's Scientific Foundation".
Wow... how's this for a partial list?
Dr. Chris Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario - focuses on underlying physics/math to complex climate systems
Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA
Dr. Tim Patterson Professor - Dept of Earth Sciences (Paleoclimatology) - Carleton University, Ottawa
Dr. Sallie Baliunas Astrophysicist - Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics - specialist in understanding the Sun/climate connection
Dr. Roger Peilke Professor and Colorado State Climatologist; Current President of the American Association of State Climatologists
Dr. Gary D. Sharp Scientific Director, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, California
I, perhaps like you, had no idea of how much debate there really is on the foundations upon which Kyoto was built. I knew there was some, but had no idea on how vast it really was.
More to come... I think I've found a new subject of interest...
At Wed Jul 12, 02:03:00 p.m. EDT,
Christian Conservative said…
By the way, thanks for getting me started there AB Cons.
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