It was a glorious 66º yesterday in the Twin Cities, the first time we have seen that temperature in five long months. Today and the rest of the week will be rain(maybe even a little mixed snow) and temps in the 40s. Oh well, at least it's not the foot or more of snow that's being reported across northern Minnesota today. That can stay up there, thank you very much. What better topic for a chilly and rainy April day than my favorite bit of dumbassery: Global Warming oops, climate change?
I'm a heretic skeptic when it comes to the issue of climate change, particularly man-made climate change. British politician Nigel Lawson has a great opinion piece in the Daily Mail that matches my thinking on the subject and has the line of the day as far as I'm concerned:
For many of them, green is the new red.
Yes indeed. Here it is in context:
There may be a political explanation for this. With the collapse of Marxism and, to all intents and purposes, of other forms of socialism too, those who dislike capitalism and its foremost exemplar, the United States, with equal passion, have been obliged to find a new creed.
For many of them, green is the new red. And those who wish to order us how to run our lives, faced with the uncomfortable evidence that economic prosperity is more likely to be achieved by less government intervention rather than more, naturally welcome the emergence of a new licence to intrude, to interfere, to tax and to regulate: all in the great cause of saving the planet from the alleged horrors of global warming.
But there is something much more fundamental at work. I suspect that it is no accident that it is in Europe that eco-fundamentalism in general and global warming absolutism in particular has found its most fertile soil. For it is Europe that has become the most secular society in the world, where the traditional religions have the weakest hold.
Yet people still feel the need for the comfort and higher values that religion can provide; and it is the quasi-religion of green alarmism, of which the global warming issue is the most striking example, which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as little short of sacrilege.
Or as a scheme to redistribute wealth from developed countries to corrupt dictators in the third world developing countries. Or as a foil for disturbed leftist fantasies. Climate change has something to offer to just about anyone who wants it. That's the...er, cool thing about climate change; It's flexible that way. I like that line though; green is the new red. Heheh.
Like Lawson, I think it's sensible to continue to research climate in general, and to do things that save energy that make sense anyway. Artificially raising the cost of fossil fuels to make alternative sources more feasible does not make sense. The same goes for burning food by turning it into ethanol. We're already distorting our economy over an effect that is poorly understand and may not exist at all. With the current crop of candidates for president I'm not very optimistic about that getting better any time soon. All three are for either a carbon tax or a cap and trade scheme, both of which will be a nice little transfer of wealth and economic control to some lobbyists' customers.
Maybe the unpredicted global cooling of the last year will bring people back to their senses, but I don't know. Perhaps if we get a couple more under our belt people will wake up. The hysteria is deeply entrenched in both the media and our political leadership though, not to mention a good chunk of the general population. It might be too late by that time.
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