Here is an example in an op-ed in The Balitmore Sun today, focused on what else, but climate change:
If 1.4 degrees gets us a soon-to-be-ice-free Arctic and nearly nonstop extreme weather worldwide, what will 11 degrees bring us?You hear that? Seeking to end disease, reduce war and increase wealth "don't make sense" unless the government adopts some crash effort on reducing emissions. Nothing else matters.
Well, it's safe to say AIDS would be the least of our worries in such a world. We could even find a cure for AIDS — eliminate the disease completely — and it wouldn't matter in a world 11 degrees warmer. We could cure cancer itself and it wouldn't matter. Instead of good health, we'll have the nightmare of chronic food shortages, persistent new diseases like malaria and dengue fever spread across North America, and untold misery and death from heat waves in cities like St. Louis, where high temperatures could be well over 100 degrees 25 days every summer.
Withdrawal from Iraq? What does it matter? We could disband the Pentagon completely and end all wars everywhere, and it wouldn't matter with 11 degrees. We wouldn't have peace. Violence, instead, would be our daily fare: violent weather, violent ecological upheaval, violence to our civilization.
The economy? An envoy from God himself could bestow jobs on every worker and forgive all debt — from credit cards to the federal budget deficit. But it would be no good with 11 degrees. Wall Street will be under several feet of water, and our commercial infrastructure — harbors, bridges, airports, rails — will literally bake, erode, buckle and break.
Of course I'm not opposed to our nation's current efforts to end disease, reduce war and increase wealth. It's just that the policies don't make sense without a simultaneous national effort to avoid 11 degrees.
What would such a crash effort involve according to some prominent single-issue advocates in the environmental community?
At Grist, Dave Roberts explains that sharp emissions reductions "would require substantial institutional reform and possibly even a period of economic contraction." And Joe Romm explains of climate change, "It is indeed humanity’s self-destruction. We must pay any price or bear any burden to stop it."
In one of Andy Revkin's email chains yesterday, I tried to draw out Dave Roberts and Joe Romm to specify more clearly what they meant by "economic contraction" and "bear any price." Although the discussion was certainly cordial, neither was forthcoming with a direct reply.
Romm went so far as to argue that of course no one argues for economic contraction (apparently not reading Roberts' post or The Climate Fix;-). Of course he'd say that and Roberts would avoid answering -- single-issue advocates who argue that nothing else matters (including human suffering) except mounting a major response to their issue sound absolutely nuts.
5 comments:
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Eleven degrees is the rough equivalent of the Reichstag fire. An extreme threat justifies extreme power for the "savior."
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With the AGW/AGCC/"climate disruption" agenda, it is known that the Earth system is incompletely and, apparently, insufficiently characterized. The "consensus" should refrain from prematurely terminating the scientific process.
With the high level of uncertainty that exists, people should take care not to become advocates of exploitation, especially through redistributive and retributive change (i.e. "social justice"), but also through fraudulent exploitation. People are not so ignorant that they do not recognize the historical abuses that were justified through authority and appeals to emotion.
"AIDS, Iraq, Economy, all distractions from our top priority of abating climate change." How's that sentence sit with you? If instead these people phrased their outlook in terms of "top priority" instead of "any price," would it mean anything different, policy wise?
Latest word is British police have seized computers belonging to a British skeptic blogger, and the US DoJ has issued 'freeze' orders to three blogs, including climateaudit.com, to preserve files created around the time of the Climategate I release.
I mean, speaking of Reichstag fires, and all...using police state tactics to prosecute the disclosure of what should be public information smacks of the jackboot. After all, if nothing else matters, totalitarianism is the logical next step.
Anyone who thinks 11.0 degrees by way of CO2 is something worth worrying about has way too much time on their hands. People who seriously propose this sort of scenario as basis for policy or no more serious than UFO believers.
The Grist comment,along with Romm's, only reflects the sad outcome from obsession on CO2 on the human mind. Were any of those guys ever serious in a realistic way?
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