“Why I do this”:
I have been an active environmentalist for almost my entire life. At age 16 I testified before a Congressional hearing in support of a proposed wilderness area in Utah. I worked to get the Clean Air Act passed, and worked for two summers as a wilderness ranger in New Mexico. I do all of my local transport and shopping by bicycle, and buy almost exclusively organic and free range food.
The reason I blog is because catastrophic global warming is junk science, used by unscrupulous people for unscrupulous political and financial purposes. It keeps environmentalists from doing anything useful, and provides progressives an excuse to push toward totalitarianism.
The global warming scam needs to be stopped. It has spiraled completely out of control, and no longer has any pretense of science behind the lies.
Pretty much, yeah.
My road to my current position was similar.
I started out believing in AGW and the CO2 does-all theory, but as new data came along, I had to abandon that (those pesky facts… they are so inconvenient at times.).
I still, based on the evidence, feel that human activity does have a temperature impact. However, the evidence shows that its from many different kinds of human activity (soot, for one. Farming, for another) not just CO2, and in fact, CO2 has a very minor role. So, I do think there is a combined effect, and it’s real, but it’s so small that we’ll never be sure. Looks to me like it’s, globally, a maximum of a quarter of a degree, and my best guess is it’s more akin to a tenth of a degree. In other words, far to small to matter, so therefor, nothing needs to be done.
Caveat: there is one way where a small temp increase *does* matter, and matters a lot, because there’s one aspect of climate that most evidence so far shows isn’t inherantly stable, but is rather a true tipping point, and in this instance, a small global temp increase, magnified in the arctic, could well be enough to avoid the tipping point that starts a new glacial era (for which we are already overdue).
So, I’m a “lurkwarmist” who sees no danger at all in the tiny temperature increase, but sees a possible enormous risk in doing anything to stop it.
I totally agree that the “catastrophic global warming” movement is a scam based on junk science. It’s alluring to some who want more government control, more taxes, and less freedom. The fact it’s bad science and what they propose would, at best, have no environmental effect matters not at all to them.
I agree with you, except I didn’t start off believing in AGW. I didn’t because of the CO2 issue. What really got me excited were the claims that CO2 was a pollutant “to the world”. Really? Because I was taught it was pretty helpful to plants, and I kind of like plants. They’re tasty sometimes next to a warm piece of meat, but mostly, I like how plants scrub the CO2 to make O2.
When people tell me we should reduce CO2, I equate it to arguing to reduce plants. That’s not fair. Because certain things produce too much CO2. For example private jets to Davos and multiple black Tahoe’s for ferrying people. Moderation is good for all things. But if some people don’t think the temperature rise from their activity is all too much; then why should I think the temperature rise from me breathing is a bad thing? oh, Oh… Well in that case, I don’t care much for their cause.
And that’s a shame, because pollution is bad, and much of it is manmade. Perhaps all the major pollution is over, and therefore, we can concentrate on things that are only pollutants to animals. I could possibly believe that if China clamped down harder of pictures of the air above their cities. Or if we could prevent all fuel barges from colliding in Texas. We haven’t solved those problems, so why bypass them and go for a molecule that is natural and healthy for much of life on earth?
What made me, at the time, an AGW believer was the graphs of temps going up mirroring CO2 going up (this was during 1998, before the rise stopped). This was flawed reasoning on my part – correlation is not causation. It also turned out to be bad data.
So I did what any sane person would do when confronted by reality turning out to be contrary to their belief; I changed my mind.
As for CO2 levels, we don’t even know for sure that human activity is increasing them. Yes, it’s going up, but, per ice core data, there has always been a 400 to 800 year lag between temp and CO2; temp goes up, THEN CO2 goes up (And this lag, BTW, is one of the prime things that invalidates the CO2-temp causal relationship claimed by AGW) so at least some of the increase we’re seeing now is the effect of the warming at the end of the little ice age.
I tend to view the classification of CO2 (without wich every plant on earth would die) as a pollutant as preposterous. One could actually make a better claim (including its greenhouse effect) that water (and water vapor) is a pollutant. But, that’d make sense to some. After all, quite a few of the delegates to a recent AGW conference did sign a petition calling for the banning of Di-hydrogen Monoxide….
I started out thinking “here we go again.” I have been subjected to so many Chicken Little panics in my lifetime that I’ve gotten pretty jaded. I figured the fad would die out in a few years. Again.
But, it persisted, and I decided I needed to set aside my cynicism and give it serious consideration, given the stakes. At first, I read the official storylines, and it seemed to hang together, and I was a few steps from accepting it. But, then I began pulling at the individual threads making up the fabric, and it started unraveling. Before long, I had in my hands just a ball of yarn. A narrative of threads, with little to no scientific or empirical backing.
After more than a decade of wading extensively through the material, I am now fully convinced that it is nothing more than superstitious nonsense of a pre-enlightenment mentality. The “scientists” pushing it are second-raters, or worse, who have turned the scientific method on its head, demanding that the burden of proof is not on them to establish their hypothesis, but on others to disprove it.
There is no adjective to describe how facile and anti-intellectual their “analyses” are. There is no bottom to the contempt I feel for them. I am just anxious now for the bottom to fall out, so that we can move on from this sorry episode in the hijacking of the mantle of “science” in the furtherance of political goals.
From the comments:
” Many Warmists don’t know that Anthony Watts used to be a Warmist and today drives an electric car and has solar and LED energy saver bulbs.”
Yes, he does. 🙂
Meanwhile, has Al Gore sold his mansion with the outdoor, gas-heated swimming pool in Tennessee, or is he flying his corporate jet in between mansions?
The full comment:
A short but concise piece stating your position. Many Warmists don’t know that Anthony Watts used to be a Warmist and today drives an electric car and has solar and LED energy saver bulbs. These alarmists think that sceptics don’t have children, like breathing in soot and are paid to risk the future of the planet which we all inhabit. Sheesh!
Your point dn-guy?
Nothing prevents him from having a point, except that he’s an idiot.
I tell ya, it’s a put-on. The joke’s on all of us and it’s lasted for years. dn-guy is really on the Right, probably a hardcore Libertarian, engaging in an over-the-top caricature of a Lefty. I view it as a sort of esoteric performance art. Notice the imperviousness to logic, reason, complete thesis demolition? A person who sincerely held the beliefs dn-guy espouses would take offense, or even attempt to baffle with bull dung. Instead, he laughs and starts a new thread.
This is what happens when you view the world through stereotypes passed down by your political leaders. Your world view has been formed by the same people who can’t design a website. What makes you think they will do any better characterizing their political opponents?
I’ve believed that global warming was nothing but a plot to crush individual liberty under the boot of socialism from the moment I first heard about it.
I’ve been using CFL bulbs for well over a decade, in selected fixtures that are on a lot. I used to buy beer in returnable bottles, before the brand I drink discontinued them. I think solar-powered calculators are cool.