The next person to mention "global warming" gets a thump right in the eye

[fpb]

It's snowing heavily under a driving wind. Winter is back, and according to the weatherman it will be around for the next few days.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As a historian, I have a different take on climate change. I know that it happens. Three centuries ago, the Thames and the lagoon of Venice would freeze solid and the locals would hold fairs there. But then, in the time of the Roman Empire, vineyards grew as far as Northamptonshire (archaeology confirms this), which is further north than they do now. Which is why I have severe doubts about the anthropogenic hypothesis. More important still, the way that climate change is being met is both disingenuous and monstrously dangerous. It is disingenuous because politicians are using it to impose all sorts of measures, especially but not exclusively taxation, which would never pass except for the collective ghost that haunts the imagination. Disingenuous, too, because climate change is always presented exclusively as a looming catastrophe, without any positive side (e.g., what about a possible northwards extension of the grain-bearing area, which would further increase the already formidable food potential of North America, northern Europe and Russia?). Hideously dangerous, because it encourages all kinds of behaviours that discourage the development of the global south. For instance, the emerging concept of "carbon footprint" discourages the free export of foodstuffs from Africa and Latin America, for which African and Latin American politicians have been pressing for decades in vain. The last thing we need is to discourage the development of poor countries. IN the case of China and India, their clout is such that they cannot be prevented from doing what they want; and that is, in my view, good news all told (although I am greatly concerned at the rise of ultra-nationalism in both countries). But do we really want Africa and the poorer parts of Latin America and Asia to carry on as they are?

That does not mean that we should not be fighting pollution; but as a goal in itself, not as part of what I regard as a millienaristic, apocalyptic pseudo-religious ideology.

Bravo

[lametiger.livejournal.com]

I consider myself a sensible environmentalist. We do need to look for alternate energy sources for sound economic reasons. We do need to reduce smog for sound health reasons. We do need to decrease our dependency on disposable items. But IMO to put so much emphasis on the faulty "carbon footprint" issue encourages those who see the holes in the anthropogenic-global-warming scenario to discount the valid concerns about our environment. Your final paragraph speaks well to what I have tried to point out to others, that crying wolf about global warming can lead to greater apathy about the environment, especially if the warming trend reverses itself, as I have no doubt it will at some point. And BTW, why are fuel cells touted as being part of a solution to "global warming" by their proponents? They certainly will help with the smog issues if they can be perfected, but they do produce water vapor, which is itself a greenhouse gas in the proper sense of a gas that helps to reduce heat escape to outer space.