Buchanan on Global Warming

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Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Fash »

Sorry, it's not as if we haven't covered this topic enough...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/staticarti ... 58279.html
The scaremongers are not always wrong. The Trojans should have listened to Cassandra. But history shows that the scaremongers are usually wrong.

Parson Malthus predicted mass starvation 250 years ago, as the population was growing geometrically, doubling each generation, while agricultural production was going arithmetically, by 2 percent or so a year. But today, with perhaps 1 percent of our population in full-time food production, we are the best-fed and fattest 300 million people on Earth.

Karl Marx was proven dead wrong about the immiseration of the masses under capitalism and the coming revolution in the industrial West, though they still have hopes at Harvard.

Neville Chute's "On the Beach" proved as fictional as "Dr. Strangelove" and "Seven Days in May." Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" never exploded. It fizzled when the Birth Dearth followed the Baby Boom.

"The Crash of '79" never happened. Instead, we got Ronald Reagan and record prosperity. The Club of Rome notwithstanding, we did not run out of oil. The world did not end in Y2K, when we crossed the millennium, as some had prophesied. "Nuclear winter," where we were all going to freeze to death after the soot from Reagan's nuclear war blotted out the sun, didn't quite happen. Rather, the Soviet Empire gave up the ghost.

Is then global warming – a steady rise in the temperature of the Earth to where the polar ice caps melt, oceans rise 23 feet, cities sink into the sea and horrendous hurricanes devastate the land – an imminent and mortal danger?

Put me down as a disbeliever.

Like the panics of bygone eras, this one has the aspect of yet another re-enactment of the Big Con. The huckster arrives in town, tells all the rubes that disaster impends for them and their families, but says there may be one last chance they can be saved – but it will take a lot of money. And the folks should go about collecting it, right now.

This, it seems to me, is what the global-warming scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, from which China and India were exempt, the United States was to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels, which could not be done without inducing a new Depression and reducing the standard of living of the American people. So, we ignored Kyoto – and how have we suffered? The Europeans who signed on also largely ignored it. How have they suffered?

We are told global warming was responsible for the hurricane summer of Katrina and Rita that devastated Texas, Mississippi and New Orleans. Yet Dr. William Gray, perhaps the nation's foremost expert on hurricanes, says he and his most experienced colleagues believe humans have little impact on global warming and global warming cannot explain the frequency or ferocity of hurricanes. After all, we had more hurricanes in the first half of the 20th century than in the last 50 years, as global warming was taking place.

"We're brainwashing our children," says Gray. "They're going to the Gore movie ('An Inconvenient Truth') and being fed all this. It's ridiculous. ... We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realize how foolish it was."

Gray does concede that for a scholar to question global warming can put his next federal grant in mortal peril.

While modest warming has taken place, there is no conclusive evidence human beings are responsible, no conclusive evidence Earth's temperature is rising dangerously or will reach intolerable levels and no conclusive evidence that warming will do more harm than good.

The glaciers may be receding, but the polar bear population is growing, alarmingly in some Canadian Indian villages. Though more people on our planet of 6 billion may die of heat, estimates are that many more may be spared death from the cold. The Arctic ice cap may be shrinking, but that may mean year-round passage through northern Canadian waters from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the immense resources of the Arctic made more accessible to man. Why else did Vladimir Putin's boys make their dash to claim the pole?

The mammoth government we have today is a result of politicians rushing to solve "crises" by creating and empowering new federal agencies.

Whether it's hunger, poverty or homelessness, in the end, the poor are always with us, but now we have something else always with us: scores of thousands of federal bureaucrats and armies of academics to study the problem and assess the progress, with all their pay and benefits provided by our tax dollars.

Cal Coolidge said that when you see 10 troubles coming up the road toward you, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, because nine of them will fall into the ditch before they get to you. And so it will be with global warming, if we don't sell out America to the hucksters who would save us.
It's totally rare for me to agree with this guy, but in this case I do.
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Funkmasterr »

Someone capable of conveying the point much better than I can. I am guessing this thread is gonna get vicious pretty quick.
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Animale »

<shrug> Buchanan is a political analyst. I tend to believe Ph.D.'s who specialize in climatology over the opinion of a political analyst whether or not climate change is happening or whether it is man-made. But that's just me, you know, I listen to the experts on things rather than folks with opinions that have no facts from the actual field to back it up.

I find it interesting that he brought up the starvation/food production point actually. The thing that "saved" us from massive starvation was the Haber-Bosch process, which converts nitrogen in the air to ammonia for fertilizer. This has allowed us to feed the world up until now, but it only came about on an industrial scale from Germany government investing a massive amount of money to investigate and create it during the lead up into world war one (ammonia was also a primary ingredient of the high explosives of the time, as well as Germany's reliance on external food sources due to poor fields). Now, saying that we averted a worldwide calamity due to another country's huge investment into research and development and then saying that we should completely ignore trying to solve this problem by investing into R&D is the height of blindness.

Of course, I would bet that Buchanan doesn't actually know that a chemical process derived from government funding of basic research was the main driving force behind the solution of his initial point. The thing is, we have an opportunity to develop our own technologies to solve this problem (solar and/or fusion), but only if we invest in it. Saying "it'll fix itself" (which is what I read from this piece) is ignoring what actually happened to solve it in the past. Germany saw a problem, knew that there could be a technological solution, and spent money to investigate and solve the problem. We are at the second point in that (well, Buchanan is at the first point still), hopefully we will do the third - we sure aren't doing enough now.

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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Nick »

Animale wrote:<shrug> Buchanan is a political analyst. I tend to believe Ph.D.'s who specialize in climatology over the opinion of a political analyst whether or not climate change is happening or whether it is man-made. But that's just me, you know, I listen to the experts on things rather than folks with opinions that have no facts from the actual field to back it up.
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Xyun »

This, it seems to me, is what the war on terrorism scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.
fixed.
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Sylvus »

I can't help but wonder if some people are so vehemently against the Global Warming camp just because of Al Gore's involvement. While "green" issues are typically not the bailiwick of the right, do you think that there is a stronger knee-jerk reaction because it was Al Gore who was involved with An Inconvenient Truth and not, say, Bono or Ed Begley Jr. or some unknown movie producer?

Global Warming is happening (the only issue open to debate is to what degree humans have/are impacting it). Too much reliance on conventional sources of energy have proven costly financially, diplomatically and environmentally. The ideas that "Al Gore" put forth in that movie are going to happen, though perhaps not in the same timetable put forth in the movie. To that end, why are people so against the idea of Global Warming? Taking steps to prevent what may or may not be inevitable seems like a good idea to me. If "Al Gore" is wrong, but we take his advice, what will we be left with? A cleaner planet? Less reliance on foreign oil? Trees and animals and fresh air for our descendants? Florida not submerged in seawater? If "he" is right, but we don't take his advice, what happens then? We're fucked!

I don't know, I kind of view it like I do the story of Jesus Christ. I can't say one way or the other whether it's true or not (and I lean towards "not"), and the only way I'll ever know for certain is if it is. Whether the both of them are mythological fairytales or not, they both provide a good guideline for living our lives that will end up with a greater net benefit for humanity than not following them. What's the big deal?
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Arborealus »

An amazing piece of logic by Mr Buchanan:

Some people made predictions that were inaccurate, therefore no prediction should ever be of any real concern and anyone who predicts anything with potentially dire consequences is a scaremongering huckster.

Why would he support an Anti-ballistic missile shield? There are no missiles flying right now...
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Aabidano »

Sylvus wrote:...Too much reliance on conventional sources of energy have proven costly financially, diplomatically and environmentally...
That's the root of the issue for me. I keep recalling the "Save the rainforests so we don't run out of oxygen" cry of a few years back.

I don't disagree with the concept of global warming, it's beside the point though.
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Somali »

Sylvus wrote: Global Warming is happening (the only issue open to debate is to what degree humans have/are impacting it).
Actually I have a few other questions to posit in addition to your own.
Is global warming bad?

Can we effect a notable impact on global warming without financial risk that would endanger our people's way of life?

If global warming is in fact a cycle, will said actions modify the natural cycle in ways which could be more cataclysmic than global warming itself? Acceleration of the cooling cycle, endanger food sources etc...

If not cyclical, we still have risks associated with potential mass production of newer energy methods. Understanding the affect in a small scale model is different than understanding the complete ramifications of the new methods in a worldwide environment.

My View: I'm all for new technology that does neat stuff. Neat + New = Grrrrrreat! However, I would prefer us not to make hasty decisions about our next big technological advancements because we were rushed into finding a solution as fast as possible because the world was going to end. Perhaps if the world really was going to end, I would feel differently about the haste with which we try for various solutions, but I'm not entirely sold on global warming as a manmade event, nor am I entirely sold on it as a world ending event (at least within the next few centuries). Perhaps if I had waterfront property in Florida I'd be a little more worried, /shrug On the note of sealevel rise... I've never seen 23ft as a publicized number. Did he pull that out of his ass or did someone actually say that? I could have sworn the numbers I've seen from the "OMG the world is ending" groups were in inches or occassionally a few feet within the foreseeable future.
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Funkmasterr »

Nicely put, somali.

That is a pretty close representation of how I feel about it too. When you talk about taking steps to combat global warming, assuming that it is being rapidly increased by man, you aren't just talking about a small problem you have to toss a little bit of money at..

You are talking about a HUGE global issue that would cost un thinkable amounts of money and cooperation of the entire world (or damn close) to really fix the issue (let's face it, even if we got better, China is way larger and with all the factories is a much bigger contributor than probably the U.S. and all of Europe..)

This is why I want to see some stronger evidence that we are really speeding things up by any noticeable amount. If we can indeed prove (or at least close) that we are in fact having as large an effect as I am talking about, and that there will be massive (end-world) effects on us if we don't make a change, then we can start talking about what needs to be done.

But tell me, being as China and all of the factories there are probably hands down the largest contributor to this issue, and also keeping in mind that their entire economy basically depends on these factories and the things that are exported from them, how receptive to change do you think they will be? Especially when they dislike the U.S. so much that if we tried to lead by example they might just not budge to spite us.

I mean, I just think that a lot of people are looking at this issue as a whole with tunnel vision, and we all need to open our eyes and really look at all aspects of the issue with much more solid evidence/theories (temperature measurements and water levels from the past 100-150 years can't prove much for a planet that has been around for billions..)
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Nick »

Funkmasterr wrote: But tell me, being as China and all of the factories there are probably hands down the largest contributor to this issue
Guess again.
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Re: Buchanan on Global Warming

Post by Somali »

Nick wrote:
Funkmasterr wrote: But tell me, being as China and all of the factories there are probably hands down the largest contributor to this issue
Guess again.
True Nick. Right now Studies show that the US is definitely ahead of China in the production of "potential" environmental impact from CO2 emissions. I would not disregard China when it comes to enforcing regulations though. They are growing very rapidly, and there is some dissension as to whether the data gathered from China is wholly accurate. Honestly it wouldn't matter to me if the skewed the data or not. With that many people and the rapid industrialization of their country, they will become the prime contributer in the future its simply a matter of time.

That was somewhat of an offshoot of my post though.
Here is an extremely slanted view presented from the LOL at Man having an affect crowd.
Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.
Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!
Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor).
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossi ... _data.html
He has his sources at the bottom of the page if you are interested at all.
I've also seen sources that say the number is much larger, at which point people like this guy say that the increases that are being quoted are for a small subset of the anthropogenic sources. IE 28% rise in Greenhouse Gases means that for one of the Anthro sources that makes up the .28% has increased by 28%, making the overall change in the greenhouse gases negligible.
The real answer is probably some middle ground between the two extremes, but even then I don't know that we have an accurate view of what is happening or why because of how polarized the argument is.
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