This might be a first.
I just now flipped the channel to CBC’s ‘Politics’ with Don Newman. And who is he interviewing? Ross McKitrick of IPCC global warming ‘hockey stick’ debunking fame. The discussion is about the Fraser Institute’s review of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) on climate change. See the whole interview here (starts 17.5 minutes in - it'll be on the web for a week).
The Fraser Institute’s review, entitled Independent Summary for Policymakers, is a more detailed summary than the IPCC's and is, naturally, less alarmist.
Found your blog through a link from the Western Standard forum. Good work!
ReplyDeleteMy skepticism about the Global Warming hysteria dates back to my days studying the coming Ice Age in climatology classes in the early 1970s. AGW is a religion and I am definitely a non-believer.
But it's interesting thinking about the psychology of those who have embraced this religion.
The assumptions people make about new things reflect the way they have learned to view the world.
The underlying assumption behind all the GW hysteria is that we are victims, helpless to adapt, unable to cope with anything different. Whether change is positive or negative depends very much on how we cope with it, which is deeply connected to how we view it, which in turn is deeply connected to whether we see ourselves as victims or survivors.
But there is such a cult of victimhood in our society today that we fail to recognize and challenge that state of mind. Things are changing? Deal with it. When coal mines in Alberta shut down 40 years ago, the town adapted, and people moved on. Coal mines in the Maritimes shut down and people sit with their hands out, “victims” of real life. We won’t be victims of “climate change” (as if there is anything called “climate stasis") unless we choose to be. Adapt or move, or perish if you choose. But recognize the choices, choose well, and own the consequences.
Personally I hope the world is getting warmer, and that CO2 concentrations are rising. We will feed more people, enjoy more precipitation (since 2/3 of the earth is covered with water, how can there be LESS moisture when evaporation increases?) and maybe we can get rid of some of the ice pollution that is disfiguring the landscape. Particularly my driveway…
Thanks. Like you, I've been following this stuff for many years.
ReplyDeleteI like to keep an open mind, but given some of the recent results on solar effects and cloud formation, I'll be very surprised if anthropogenic GHG's turn out to be the dominant climate driver.
Your 'victimhood' theory is interesting. I think that the 'believers' also include those who are devoted to the notion that humans alone are responsible the 'sorry' condition of the world. Any theory that points in that direction is to be favoured and promoted over any other. And many are Gaeia-worshippers who think that it would be just wonderful if humanity didn't exist at all (except perhaps in small numbers in our former wild, hunter-gatherer, close to nature state).
Sadly, based on recent media-induced hysteria, the environmentalists appear to have waged a massive, well-coordinated and highly successful propaganda campaign.
True about the successful campaign. Part of the theology of global warming is that we mortals have a predisposition to thinking things are our fault, or our credit, when in fact they just 'happened'. So if you can manage to create a coherent theory that explains why people SHOULD feel guilty about something that they were not causally related to, a lot of folks would take you up on it. It happened to me with the global cooling thing 30-some years ago.
ReplyDeleteFool me twice, shame on me.