Disingenuous debates

Recently Canada Free Press received an email from a reader who wondered why we had heretics such as Dr. Tim Ball writing about global warming when the whole argument was settled. In fact, the letter went on to say that:

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“Within the last 5 years, every major scientific society on the planet has gone on record saying essentially three things: 1) Humans are changing the climate, 2) It’s going to be a bad thing, not a good thing, and 3) We’d better do something about it quick. “Characteristic of the statements, the 2005 Joint Statement of U.S. National Academy of Science (NAS) and the U.K. Royal Society stated: “’The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action,’ and it called on world leaders to ‘acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing,’ and to ‘recognize that delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur a greater cost.’ “The 2006 statement from the American Association for the Advancement of Science ended with the admonition: ‘The (sic) growing torrent of information presents a clear message: we are already experiencing global climate change. It is time to muster the political will for concerted action.’” It should be noted that the first sentence in this writer’s letter to CFP is totally incorrect. Not every major scientific society on earth has made the statements so glibly ascribed to them as to forestall any further debate on the matter. Attached to this letter was a link to a video prepared by a high school teacher that purported to present all sides to the argument about anthropogenic global warming, so that people “could make up their own minds”. What was cute about the argument was that it sounded perfectly reasonable, given the information presented. But the problem with such admonitions is that while they sound reasonable, they are disingenuous. This teacher reduced the global warming argument into a simple matrix that anthropogenic global warming was either true or false and the result of acting or not acting on it could either be benign or harmful. So, for instance, if man-made global warming is true and we act on it, we’ll experience some economic discomfort, but we’ll save the planet. On the other hand if it is true and don’t act on it, we face a disaster. In the same token if man does not cause global warming and we don’t act on it, there are no economic consequences. And if man does not cause it and we act on it, then the only thing we suffer are a few economic woes. Uh-huh, and pigs fly! What this dishonest little gnome did not talk about in his overly simplistic video is that if we act on global warming and tax the living bejeezus out of anyone even thinking of leaving a carbon foot print, it won’t affect climate change one iota, as the world’s two largest emitters of carbon particulates, China and India will continue to be allowed to do what they’re now doing, namely pumping carbon into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates. Earth isn’t like a restaurant that has a smoking and a non-smoking section. If climate change is really caused by man, getting the developed world to cut emissions will do nothing to stop the supposed disaster if the developing world is freely dumping limitless quantities of carbon in the atmosphere. Or is this too complex for the true believers? If man-made global warming were really at the crisis stage that everyone claims it to be, then there would be no question that the entire world would cooperate in cutting back on carbon emissions. The very fact that less than half the world’s population is supposed to cut its climate emissions while the other two-thirds merrily continues pumping out the CO2 makes me very suspicious about the hidden agendas of guilty liberals that want to seize this opportunity to deconstruct democracy.