Global Warming Hidden Agenda

A turning point occurred in the Global Warming debate last week. The leading credible opponent of Global Warming, Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, gave a Wall Street Journal editorial rebuttal of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, skewering Algore for overarguing his case.  He gave the view from the Right, that Global Warming is not yet proven.  His argument had its own inconvenient truth:  his scientific rigor and intellectual honesty led him to concur with many of the core facts of Algore's case.  Greenhouse gases are out or near historical record levels; temperature is at historical record levels; and more.  The last thin reed on which the Right hangs to avoid facing Global Warming, that This Could Be A Natural Uptick, is no longer tenable. 

Why then the continued resistance to Global Warming?  It has less to do with the facts and more to do with mistrust of the Left.

Before Liberalism became a four-letter word of American Politics, the left/right divide could be fashioned as: Conservatives think Liberals have bad policies; Liberals think conservatives are bad people (uncaring, etc.). Echoes of that dynamic resound through the Global Warming debate: Conservatives argue, the facts don't prove it; Liberals argue, you just don't get it, the Sky is Falling!  the Sky is Falling! We have to do something! 

Now, readers of this blog know I have gone from a Global Warming skeptic to a concerned citizen, but I am as concerned about the solution as the problem.  What is behind this dynamic between conservatives and liberals is a truism that came to us from the many -ism's of the 20th Century:  You can never trust the left. 

Conservatives believe behind the call to action on Global Warming is a hidden agenda of government intervention and control of the economy, perhaps to an unprecedented degree.  Michael Crichton, science fiction writer and anathema to the Left, has laid out the case persuasively that the Left uses fear to further their agenda.  Behind every Liberal fear is a government program, and after each such program is a legacy of waste, fraud and failure.  He starts by noting how the Apocalypse of the '70s was overpopulation leading to exhaustion of resources and starvation; whereas today we worry over obesity; or the Calamity of the '80s was Global Cooling, whereas today we sweat over Global Warming.  And he ends with the wreckage of Yellowstone under enlightened Liberal management.  The implication is obvious: beware of Liberals crying Wolf! Wolf! over a Big Issue.

A necessary digression into politics. 

Point:  Crichton is building his case on a foundation of deceit and disaster by the Left in the last century.  The would-be dictator always comes to power with claims of reform.  Then the pogroms and purges start.   Peruse the Black Book of Communism. Who killed the most innocents? is a way to measure various Marxist states.  Some say Stalin (20 million), some say Mao (65 million, with ritual cannibalism thrown in); but perhaps Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (2 million) get the prize, since whereas the number is relatively small, the percent is high: 30% of the population died in the Killing Fields of Cambodia.  (And with Marxists we see 2 million as 'small'! What a legacy of crimes ...) Many would throw Hitler in as well (6 million in the death camps; 50 million in the wars).  The Left protests, but he was of the Right!  But this is another lie.  Nazi stood for National Socialist; the Left created a Right in order to have throw Fascism into it, and concoct one example they could point to to obfuscate their crimes.  For our purposes, remember that Hitler was first elected, before he subverted the government and took absolute control. 

Counterpoint: But the Left will also object, that you cannot trust the Right! Especially a corrupt, crony government like W's!  Behind every promotion of, say, ethanol, will be a sweet kiss in the wallet of Big Agriculture in the form of subsidies that pick the pocket of the taxpayer and plunk a nice chunk of change into ADM or other agribusinesses. 

Conclusion:  The Political Center cannot trust either extreme to run the ship of state.  Isn't this the lesson taken to heart by our Founders when they put in checks and balances?  And isn't it the learning of the great Teddy Roosevelt, who used Government to provide a counter to Big Business? Unfortunately, his Progressive movement got out of control when it became the establishment policy after the New Deal, like it always does.  Perhaps the real lesson is trust nobody but set up a self-correcting system. 

Now, it is a bit much to paint environmentalists with the paintbrush of totalitarianism!  And as an newly-emboldened environmentalist I reject that comparison.  But the point is that many on the Right fear the call to action of Global Warming due to a legacy of Never Trust The Left. Their fear is no longer helpful to the debate over Global Warming, and is undermining a political consensus of what to do. 

It is now inevitable that the grumpy, recalcitrant holdouts of Global Warming will capitulate one by one, because they are primarily not politically motivated. They will change their opinion when confronted with sufficient evidence.  They simply fear their conclusions being hijacked by the untrustworthy politicos - of both ends of the spectrum.  We are soon to reach a scientific consensus of sorts on Global Warming. Such a scientific concurrence never arose in the earlier examples that Crichton cites.  As it should, the debate will now shift to: what to do about it?   

Comments

[rc]

I like to consider myself a rational, enlightened person (why not try to be intellectually honest and seek to discover proper principles and truth?). And I find liberal-leftists, most democrats, to be insane (at least emotionally dysfunctional, forever fighting "the man" and deluding themselves that they're morally superior). Unfortunately, our current alternative, the republicans, have become authoritarian, big government, big business, special interest catering, quasi-religious vote panderers who no longer even merit the distinction as the lesser-of-two-evils.

Oh yeah, I'm also an environmentalist. Yet we have "environmentalists" who shut down nuclear power in this country (with the result that we dam more rivers and build more coal and oil burning plants). Who ignore population density and growth as a root cause of environmental problems. And, who favor treaties such as Kyoto, which puts pressure on what little manufacturing remains in the US and developed world, and gives a pass to countries such as China with abysmal environmental regulation.

Left, Right; Lib, Con: these are labels for a false paradigm which only serves the corrupt status quo. This is the 21st century. For those who believe in basic first principles (freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas; individual liberty and free enterprise along with overrides for the common welfare -- avoidance of a tragedy of the commons), then all that remains is problem solving.

We desperately need a real alternative to the corrupt, institutionalized dem-repubs and their media cohorts. It's really come down to corruption and stupidity vs. integrity and reason.

[RG]

Now throw global diming into the mix. Is that what's kept the global warming from being worse? So we're to believe... next. And what about these hydrocarbons being so darn heavy... naturally wanting to seek the lowest possible place instead of wofting up into the firmament of heaven where we're told they lock in heat. That fact doesn't quite fit the story were told does it. Whatever. We'll not notice those pesky details and besides we'll all be dead soon enough.

BOttomline is its all fixable, that is if the colloquial "we" had the will. There's 900 years of coal in Montana alone that can be gasified using old proven technology and the carbon sequestered deep underground (if really necessary). We've (still) got the sun and more wind in the state of New Mexico alone than is needed to power the nation, even if oil were running out, which its not. Oil is most likely an abiotic by-product of core/mantle interaction and should be classified a rewnewable. But it won't be.

See at the core of all this.. the root cause of our shared trauma... these "scares" is a completely different (bi-partisan) agenda called "control". Its about setting the course for humanity on the planet through fear and intimdation.

The controllers, freemasonic control freaks mostly, who masquerade as republicans and democrats, are ready to take mankind into their "new world order"... The Age of Aquarius where if they good enough they'll become gods and we their mind controlled slaves. As they always have, they use the tools of their trade... fear and intimidation to corral the sheeple for the inevitable fleecing. Because, as Schaffer points out in this piece: http://lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer143.html
"keeping people perennially frightened is the most effective method of maintaining them in a huddled and obedient mass". So it goes... things change but they stay the same