Al Gore has spoken again. In a New York Times opinion piece, he attempts to defend his sinking climate change emergency position against mounting criticism. And fares poorly, I might add.
I have been amazed at the vast difference of popular opinion between other (particularly European) countries and those in the U.S. The street view here is that it is a con job, designed to part more working people from their money and pass it to entities favored by powerful political interests.
The evidence is not very definitive, even if you avoid looking outside. The last winter in the U.S. with this much snow was probably 1978. Who needs climate-gate emails when the weather does not cooperate. Climate is merely a scientific endeavor to assess the longer term patterns for weather. Some of that is very important for me, such as the prediction of El Nino conditions starting this past fall. I have to spend real money to buy enough forage for my animals for the winter… higher moisture will increase the growth of cool-season grasses, reducing the amount of hay my animals consume over the winter (anything fresh is preferred to dried hay). If I buy too little and run low before winter is over, I will be paying more for lower quality hay.
But even the climatologists don’t get it right over two years, but we have a ‘consensus’ of scientists that can tell us what will happen 100 years from now, and have laid it on thick. Sadly, much of the case was made using the worst case scenarios, and all that has done is create more skepticism.
I know first had that over the five hundred or so years between when Europeans traveled to the Americas and today, sea levels have risen feet. You don’t need expensive research equipment, just head out into the Gulf of Mexico on a diving trip and find submerged tree stumps 30 miles from shore.
Or do what I did… I built a dock out 200 ft. from shore. One significant obstacle to the effort was the remains for pine tree stumps under the sand where I was trying to set the vertical piers to support the walkway. Under a foot of sand were the remains of stumps, at a level below where oxygen penetrated, which slowed their decomposition greatly. When the Spanish sailed through, those were trees along the banks of the bay. Today, the beach is hundreds of feet further inland.
If this happened across 500 years without a mass acceleration over the last 50, then we certainly have time to determine what parts of the science is real (yes, there is some usable data there) and separate out the hype and politics. Once the scientists started hyping some of the results, making hockey-sticks out of thin facts, they attracted a political element that thought they could use this raised awareness to justify increased regulation of larger segments of human industry.
After all, additional regulation brings not only increased revenue from taxes, permit fees and licenses, but it requires a larger cadre of dedicated workers to enforce these new rules. And it will be no secret to these new bureaucrats which part is responsible for creating these new jobs, and thus why they need to vote a certain way to keep their jobs. I would call it politics 101, but I am sure the process preceded written history.
Finally, there is no feeling of emergency. Talk of tipping points generates yawns, and this winter is a fine example of why no one not already starry-eyed believes such blather. If the sea rose a foot, people would build larger seawalls and truck in more sand from the main land. We already cited what happened with a half-foot rise per-century of 500 years…. during that time Florida went from colony of Spain populated with a few missions to the fourth-largest state.
Credibility is what is lacking here. Scientific (and some not-so-scientific ones) ideas were sensationalized into science-fiction movies with huge waves crashing and gargantuan storms ruining large, populous portions of the country. We all saw Star Wars, and The Terminator… they had great graphics too, and a fun plot you could get into by suspending disbelief. Not so with this stuff, it is unbelievable to the vast majority.
Not to be confused with ending foreign dependence on oil, or reducing all dependence on oil. People already believe this. Here in Texas, there are vast amounts of Wind Power currently undeveloped only because they are waiting for completion of a larger mainline to move the electricity from the sparsely populated areas in West Texas where it is being made to the more populous Eastern and Northern parts of the state where it is needed. No one needs to wake up on that one, it just need to run to completion.
Biofuels are becoming a large force. Whether the climate goes up or down, or does nether, we are well served by broadening our inventories of energy sources, for many reasons, including security.
I suspect this winter has killed all chance of a massive cap’n trade or carbon tax solution being implemented here. Hey, they haven’t got past arguing about health care. Nothing will happen next year, it is an election year, and unless things change a lot, the chances of progressive solutions winning more congressional seats are pretty diminished. You can hear that in the shrillness of arguments like one from Nancy Pelosi “A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes.” A Who What?
For further thought, read my post from before the election (Oct. 10, 2008) where I predicted Barack O’Bama would be as successful as Jiminy Carter at his presidency.