‘Hey America’: ‘Wonky’ Climate Alarmism Coming at You

"Hey America! Are you ready to get wonky on global warming? After a year that started with fallout from the “Climategate” e-mail release, saw the cap-and-trade bill die in Congress, and ended with a gang of Republican climate skeptics winning House and Senate seats, global warming experts are going back to basics." - Darren Samuelsohn, "Climate PR Effort Heats Up," Politico, December 31, 2010.

And so we now know. "Environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers have renewed public relations efforts to put global warming plainly before Americans' eyes and also rebut opponents who say nothing is happening."

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What? Nothing is happening? Who said that? Didn't uber-alarmist James Hansen say the first rule of climate is that it changes–always has, always will. In his words:

"Climate is always changing. Climate would always fluctuate without any change of [man-made] climate forcing. The chaotic aspect of climate is an innate characteristic." (1)

Things are happening–sure. A lot of nature is at work, probably more than we now know about or can really appreciate. And man's influence on climate? We are trying to figure that out, but why does it have to be all bad? Is nature optimal? Didn't more climate scientists than want to admit it (Steve Schneider, et al.) sound the global cooling alarm several decades back? Why not chill and say that there is good and bad from man's influence on climate, to whatever extent it is happening. But thank goodness it is in the direction of warmer and wetter, not colder and drier…. And thank goodness we have that incredible bread machine called Capitalism to help tame the uncertainties of the future. Julian Simon lives!

Let's Debate!

Let's debate at the Rotary Clubs and at the universities and in all the public forums, Big Environmental. (Whether people show up is another matter, but this is your idea ….) Let's debate! That means having qualified persons on each side of the issue to debate the fundamental questions. How about this for a title: "The Human Influence on Climate: How Much (or Little), How Bad (or Good), and Politics." Let's educate the public on the physical science, such as:

• The weaknesses, not only strengths, of climate models;
• The importance and debate over feedback effects;
• The amount of warming and alternative explanations;
• The distribution of warming, diurnally and seasonally;
• The temperature/sea level effect of U.S. activism.

And on the economics:

• The benefits, not only costs, of a warmer, wetter world (natural or man-made)
• Energy density and relative energy costs (and related environmental requirements)
• Energy reliability versus intermittency
• The ‘perfect knowledge' assumption and the case for government intervention
• The ‘pretense of knowledge' and climate prediction
• The opportunity of 1.4 billion people without electricity to have the most scalable, economical, most reliable forms of energy.

And on the public policy/politics:

• Government failure versus market failure
• The global commons issue and political response to date on the climate issue
• Market adaptation versus political mitigation.

Conclusion Big Environment, Big Science–are you still interested? Do you really want to debate? Or do you want to just present the doom-and-gloom neo-Malthusian side and then try to sell wind and solar and pagan lifestyles as somehow good for us? Caveman not!

References:

(1) Hansen, "How Sensitive is the World's Climate? National Geographic Research & Exploration (9)2, 1993, p. 143. Appendix: Politico Piece, "CLIMATE PR EFFORT HEATS UP," Politico, December 31, 2010. Hey America! Are you ready to get wonky on global warming? Environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers have renewed public relations efforts to put global warming plainly before Americans’ eyes and also rebut opponents who say nothing is happening. "Folks are enraged about this, rightly so, and are looking for ways to educate," said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists...