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Monday, June 30, 2008

Scare Tactics, Global Warming, and Socialism

The next time a liberal proclaims that the right will scare you about this or about that, just remember the global warming debate. If ever one side used scare tactics in order to affect change it is the left and global warming. If you listen to any supporter of global warming, then the planet is about to melt from overheating. Furthermore, every single natural disaster, change in weather pattern, or fire is always the result of global warming to many global warming supporters. After they are done scaring everyone in sight, they begin the long and painstaking process of demonizing anyone that still doesn't believe in the religion of global warming.

Furthermore, after many supporters are through blaming global warming for everything short of the Kennedy assassination, they begin their laundry list of solutions. All of these solutions are socialistic, government control, and full of new mandates and requirements. Of course, this is all natural. If the sky is literally about to fall and we are about to face a lifetime of melting heat, we can't wait for the free market to fix things. This is the nefarious game that alarmists play. I can't tell if they believe their own hype or if in fact, this is the only way they can revolutionize our society into a clone of Europe.

It's of course standard operating procedures for any debate. If you have the facts on your side, that's what you argue. If you don't, you attack and marginalize the other side. In the global warming debate, try is the proponents will, there is no consensus. If there is no consensus, then drastic action is not necessary. Thus, if your agenda is drastic action, you need to demonize and marginalize anyone that disagrees. That's exactly what an alarmist will do whenever they come across anyone that disagrees. Anyone that still doesn't believe in global warming is standing in the way of science. Any scientist that questions global warming is a kook and someone bought and paid for by the oil companies.

That's exactly what we have with this piece in Salon. Of course, it is appropriately entitled

Anti Science Conservatives Must Be Stopped

Here are some of the most relevant parts.


June 30, 2008 Conservatives put on a spectacular display of scientific ignorance this month in the U.S. Senate. During the debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would regulate carbon dioxide by setting a cap on emissions and allowing emitters to trade carbon allowances, most Republican senators questioned the reality of human-caused climate change or ignored the climate threat entirely and repeated the talking point that the bill would raise gasoline and electricity prices. It was as if they had been locked in an isolation booth for the past decade. Let's go to the highlights.

Now, let's remember that Lieberman/Warner would have set up mandates to force companies to use more eco friendly energy sources. So, here again, we have the link between anyone that doesn't believe in global warming and socialistic government control solutions. The piece continues...


Conservatives sure are good at staying on message, even one that has no basis in fact. None of their scientific or technological claims is true and most of the economic claims are a wild exaggeration based on studies funded by fossil fuel companies. This may be a defining moment for humanity according to the world's increasingly desperate climate scientists, but to many conservatives it's apparently just another moment to score political points at the expense of future generations.

It's a terrifying thought. If the science of the last few years and the painful reality of a changing climate haven't persuaded the conservative movement of the dire nature of human-caused global warming, I can't imagine what chain of catastrophes would. We've already had record-breaking droughts, heat waves, wildfires, deluges, super storms and flooding at home and abroad -- just as climate science predicted. And we've had far more loss of ice from Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic Sea than anyone expected.

...

The global warming deniers and delayers managed to squash the Lieberman-Warner bill, although its authors promise it will be back next year. Even so, the policies needed to avert catastrophic climate change require so much effort and so much political consensus that conservatives can probably block them. The truth is, the bill would not have put the nation on a path to avert catastrophe. The science has already moved far past the legislation. We can no longer base our efforts to tackle climate change on hopes of reducing our own emissions at some point in the future or on letting others reduce emissions for us.

..

To avert disaster, we need to cut carbon emissions in the transportation sector some 60-80 percent by 2050. How high would the price of gasoline have to be? It would have to exceed $10 a gallon. Yet a serious price for a carbon emission allowance of even $400 per metric ton (which is three times the current price for carbon in the European Trading Scheme) would raise the price of gasoline only $1 a gallon. That price for carbon and that boost in gasoline prices is almost certainly a non-starter in this country.

...

But if we hold off today on government action, we will almost guarantee the need for extreme and intrusive government action in the future. Only Big Government can relocate tens of millions of citizens, build massive levees and mandate harsh and rapid reductions in certain kinds of energy. Peak oil prices, which we haven't prepared for, will make today's gas prices look like a Costco bargain. On a planet reeling from global warming and desertification, we will have billions more people to feed. We will be rationing food, all right. And water. And arable land. Most of our meaningless national political fights will be replaced by a very meaningful global fight for survival.

There you have it everyone. Long ago, the global warming debate stopped being about science. In fact, for as long as I have been familiar with it the global warming debate has been about the nature of our economic system. Those that believe in global warming as a religion also believe in socialism and government control as a solution. The rest of us feel the free market is equipped to handle whatever environmental problems our society has.

Beware of the global warming alarmist argument because you can be sure it will be followed immediately by centralized government, more mandates, and more regulations. After all if the planet is about to melt us all, we have no choice.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've read this post backwards and forwards, and I can't find a single sentence anywhere in it that refutes or even attempts to refute global warming. Talk about preaching to the converted. Shouldn't there be a fact hiding in here somewhere? Anywhere?

This notion that the free market is some kind of magic wand that just makes the world a better place is really pretty odd. Philosophically, it's based on the assumption that people are rational decision makers who, y'know, make sense. Which is not really true. In this particular case, I don't even understand how it's supposed to work. Survival does not have a monetary value. Quality of life does not have a monetary value. How is a free market going to achieve such things?

Meanwhile, the global warming debate isn't about science, because within the scientific community, there's no debate. The debate has moved on to what, if anything, to do about it.

Anonymous said...

I try to keep an open mind - which is pretty easy to do on global warming because there's plenty of information available to demonstrate conclusively that there remains A LARGE SCIENTIFIC DEBATE on this issue. The problem is that the people saying there is NO debate uniformly advocate socialist-style, anti-capitalist, anti-globization political solutions. It's as though they were actually motivated by a political agenda rather than any scientific basis. Hmm. . .

When global warming alarmist and marxist activists are no longer the same exact set of people, I'll give their arguments a reconsideration. But that'll only happen when the Earth freezes over. Literally.

Anonymous said...

I'll start taking the climate change scaremongers seriously when I see Al Gore seriously addressing his own carbon footprint.

mike volpe said...

Anon,

with all due respect, I didn't know that I needed one. This post wasn't about whether or not the free market is best. I have written many posts about why the free market is always best. That is beside the point.

This post is about scaring people, and about dishonestly turning a scientific debate into a referendum on our society.

If you think that socialism works best, I can debate that however, I want global warming proponents to be honest about their intentions.

It is disingenuous for global warming proponents to dismiss any dissent on the issue as nonsense and then turn around and propose all sorts of socialistic solutions. If you are in favor of socialism just say so, don't hide in some sort of scare tactic on global warming.

There is absolutely a global warming debate. Only true believers believe there is no debate and they dismiss all signs of debate. For every study that says there is global warming I can find you just as many that say there isn't. It is just a flat out lie to say that there is no debate.

Anonymous said...

Politicians treat voters like children on the AGW issue by offering the only two options they want us to have: Cap and Trade or Carbon Tax. What about the third way - listen to the science? There is no experimental evidence to support CO2 and AGW, or we would have seen it. Alarmists built the house of cards decades ago and the entire derivative 'research' since then has no scientific foundation. Demand debate and see what the environmental lobby groups say. As I understand it, the theory of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows: Active sun → enhanced magnetic field = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less heat reflected → warmer climate. Inactive sun → reduced magnetic field = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more heat reflected → colder climate. That is how the bulk of climate change might work, modulated by sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.

Anonymous said...

You really need to think about economic theory for a while and learn how strategies work or the invisible hand of Adam Smith will come up and slap you on the back of the head.

Think about this. The Democrats are buying food locally for the Denver canonation. That means some organic vegetables will cost someone a lot of money. If they relied on market forces, the cheapest food, no matter where it comes from, would have the smallest per unit carbon footprint. Maybe burn less gasohol and starve fewer Mexicans. ...But then it is really all about optics after all.

Anonymous said...

Puh-leeze people! Alarmism over climatic change mitigation, ie; learn how to adapt, or if yolike evolve to the circumstances at hand.

The global climate has NEVER been static, google these historic history markers as evidence.

1)The Medievel Optimum.
The last global warming period that allowed europe to flourish, and led the Vikings to name what is a frozen wasteland "Greenland".

2)'The little Ice
Age." Which killed off same said Vikings because they would adapt as their "heathen" co-inhabitants, the Inuit did.

The weather pattern that caused mass starvation in europe and eventually was the catalyst for The French Revolution.

At different times in the existence of this rock we call Earth it has been little more than a block of ice. It has also been one big blob of magma.

It is ironic to me that the "Green" movement has decided to ignore the "Nature" of the planet upon which we all live.