August 9, 2018
Dear Friends and Family,
Last week’s segment focused on the Advocates View of the Politics of Addressing Climate Change. Segment 10 is the counterpoint – The Skeptics View of the Politics in Addressing Climate Change. All of the excerpts for the skeptic view are from the book entitled The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming by Christopher C. Horner. This book was published in 2007 and makes frequent reference to the Kyoto Protocol. As background the following is a brief description of the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and it is extremely likely that human-made CO2 emissions have predominantly caused it. It was adopted on 12/11/1997 and entered into force on 2/16/2006. It puts the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they were historically responsible. The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. A second commitment period was agreed to in 2012 and is known as the Dona agreement. Thirty-seven counties have agreed to binding targets in the Dona agreement: the European Union (28 countries), Australia, Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Of the 37 countries with binding targets, 7 have ratified.
Interestingly, if one were to summarize the pure political objective of the Advocate viewpoint and then the advocate viewpoint by as seen by a skeptic they would be as follows:
Do they seem similar despite the seven-year difference?
The next segment will return to Climate Science, building on the Point and Counterpoint learnings of segment 4, utilizing different sources. The Advocate points will come from The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change (2014) by Robert Hanson. The Skeptics counterpoints will come from Climate Change, the Facts (2015) and a new edition Climate Change, the Facts (2017). Both editions contain numerous Climate Science essays by a variety of scientific authors.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Last week’s segment focused on the Advocates View of the Politics of Addressing Climate Change. Segment 10 is the counterpoint – The Skeptics View of the Politics in Addressing Climate Change. All of the excerpts for the skeptic view are from the book entitled The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming by Christopher C. Horner. This book was published in 2007 and makes frequent reference to the Kyoto Protocol. As background the following is a brief description of the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and it is extremely likely that human-made CO2 emissions have predominantly caused it. It was adopted on 12/11/1997 and entered into force on 2/16/2006. It puts the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they were historically responsible. The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. A second commitment period was agreed to in 2012 and is known as the Dona agreement. Thirty-seven counties have agreed to binding targets in the Dona agreement: the European Union (28 countries), Australia, Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Of the 37 countries with binding targets, 7 have ratified.
Interestingly, if one were to summarize the pure political objective of the Advocate viewpoint and then the advocate viewpoint by as seen by a skeptic they would be as follows:
- Advocate Political Objective: To make major social change throughout the world (A Marshall Plan for earth) using climate change as a leveraging vehicle (per Naomi Klein in 2014 – Segment 9).
- Skeptic’s View of the Advocates Political Objective per Christopher Horner in 2007: Using Climate Change to Drive a Global Governance Agenda (A focus of this segment’s excerpts).
Do they seem similar despite the seven-year difference?
The next segment will return to Climate Science, building on the Point and Counterpoint learnings of segment 4, utilizing different sources. The Advocate points will come from The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change (2014) by Robert Hanson. The Skeptics counterpoints will come from Climate Change, the Facts (2015) and a new edition Climate Change, the Facts (2017). Both editions contain numerous Climate Science essays by a variety of scientific authors.
Happy Learning,
Harley
CLIMATE CHANGE – SEGMENT 10
SKEPTIC VIEW: POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE SYNOPSIS - EXCERPTS
NOTE: All of the excerpts in this synopsis are from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (2007) by Christopher C. Horner
GLOBAL WARMING 101: The main hole in the "settled" theory of catastrophic Manmade global warming is that it is not catastrophic, Manmade, nor global. Yes, on average, the planet is getting warmer. This warming seems to be mostly in the winter and at the North Pole. In fact, the Southern Hemisphere as a whole seems not be experiencing any statistically significant warming. The current warming is not unprecedented. Climate always fluctuates. We have just emerged from something called the Little Ice Age, and so it's no wonder things are relatively warm. Evidence suggests it is currently colder than it was during the well-established Medieval Warm Period. To raise the global warming alarm, some advocates have cleverly tried to erase past climate fluctuations from the history books. We are very uncertain about the extent of the warming. It is impossible to actually take the temperature of the whole planet. Historical temperature data is tough to discern. Most claims are based on "proxy" measurements such as tree rings, ice-core samples, and knowledge of what crops thrived when and where.
Alarmists proclaim the 1990s as the "hottest decade," point to the infamous "Hockey Stick" graph of temperature reconstructions melded onto actual temperature measurements. It turns out that the '90s not only fail to live up to the "hottest" title, but it coincided with the closure of hundreds of measuring stations (including many in the former Soviet Union as their priorities turned to more pressing domestic matters such as collapse of an empire). If you shut down measuring stations in the cold parts of the world, your average temperatures will go up. It turns out that the 1990s temperature increase track nicely with these closures.
INCREASING GOVERNMENT CONTROL: There is little doubt that environmentalists throughout modern history have instilled fear over one looming "crisis" or another with the aim of increasing government control over things big and small. They see state control as a good thing in its self and pursue it aggressively and by any means necessary, because individual liberty is inherently dangerous in their eyes. The intellectual community almost automatically favors any expansion of government power so long as it is advertised as a way to protect individuals from big bad corporations, relieve poverty, protect the environment, or promote 'equality'. Increasingly, each of these elements is present in more environmentalist rhetoric. If you want real power, you need to dictate acceptable energy supplies and consumption by claiming it is necessary in order to save the human race. Then you're talking about control over the whole economy.
ALARMISTS ACTIVITIES: The greens' argued before the Supreme Court in November 2006, to have carbon dioxide declared a "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act on the basis of "global warming." To obtain this result the court must agree that this ubiquitous, odorless, colorless and benign gas, the overwhelming majority of which is produced by Mother Nature including by human exhalation, "endangers public health or welfare." This then requires establishing a "National Ambient Air Quality Standard" regulating atmospheric concentration of CO2 at some level to purportedly cure global warming such that the U.S. cripples our economy by using a law never intended for rationing energy to do just that.
In November 2000, Europe sought to gut Kyoto’s plain language which states that CO2 sinks shall be used to meet the commitments. Sinks are forestry that absorb CO2 to produce oxygen through photosynthesis and other land-use practices capturing or not releasing GHGs. UN and EU eco-preachers proclaimed that to accept such unchecked use of trees to absorb GHGs would be to “destroy the environmental integrity of the agreement.” The irrational fear of trees as a threat greater than global warming continues to unfold.
THE TOP TEN “GLOBAL WARMING” MYTHS
A QUESTION TO PONDER: The satellite data as of September 2006 suggests virtually no warming in the Southern Hemisphere: 0.05 degrees C per decade since the records began in the 1970s. One radical thesis is that CO2 concentrations may not be the primary factor affecting temperature. The Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, and the land less developed (paved). Paved cities are hotter than grassy fields. That factor might make explaining the differences in temperature – or at least the measured temperature – between the top of the planet and the bottom. If global warming is caused by CO2, it seems it would be equal to the Southern Hemisphere’s warming of 0.05 degrees per decade, while the Northern Hemisphere seems to be experiencing a regional warming of 0.2 degrees C.
THE SCARE TACTICS: If you’re going to give up your freedoms, your conveniences, and your affordable energy to them, they need to scare you. Every bad thing that’s already happening becomes the fault of Manmade global warming. After assigning blame, it is necessary to promise you that things will get much, much worse. Hurricanes will get stronger and more frequent. Everything that hasn’t melted will. The tides will rise, drowning or cities. Where there is a heart-wrenching tale, it is told and blamed on Man.
In 2006, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a paper by an interdisciplinary team of experts. Their three main points were:
THE COST OF THE ALARMIST AGENDA: Carbon suppression policies are a horribly inefficient way to curb air pollution – which is not the same thing as greenhouse gases. For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that Kyoto-level restrictions on CO2 emission from power plants would cost $77 billion but achieve only $6 billion worth of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission pollution reductions. It would be far less costly to utilities, ratepayers, and the local economies to target the NOx and SO2 – which are actually pollutants – directly and not use “global warming” as an excuse.
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: The risks of climate change policy – poverty and coercive wealth redistribution – outweigh the risks that might be expected as climate continues to change. Bjorn Lomborg correctly asks why would anyone propose spending twice as much money as would address, and in great part solve, the world’s existing problems, such as unsafe drinking water, real pollution, mosquito-borne diseases, and AIDS, in order to do nothing? The answer has everything to do with the real environmentalist agenda, and nothing to do with “climate change.” This is about international relations, this is about economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world. Kyoto was about hobbling America’s economy to give Socialist Europe a fighting chance. When considering European cries about Kyoto, it is critical to remember that the dream of the environmentalists is global governance. French president Jacques Chirac is blessed with the virtue of forthrightness. At the infamous Hague talks, Chirac called the Kyoto Protocol “the first component of an authentic global governance.” There it is. Kyoto is the tool by which the Chirac’s of the world can finally get some control over us unruly Americans.
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
SKEPTIC VIEW: POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE SYNOPSIS - EXCERPTS
NOTE: All of the excerpts in this synopsis are from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (2007) by Christopher C. Horner
GLOBAL WARMING 101: The main hole in the "settled" theory of catastrophic Manmade global warming is that it is not catastrophic, Manmade, nor global. Yes, on average, the planet is getting warmer. This warming seems to be mostly in the winter and at the North Pole. In fact, the Southern Hemisphere as a whole seems not be experiencing any statistically significant warming. The current warming is not unprecedented. Climate always fluctuates. We have just emerged from something called the Little Ice Age, and so it's no wonder things are relatively warm. Evidence suggests it is currently colder than it was during the well-established Medieval Warm Period. To raise the global warming alarm, some advocates have cleverly tried to erase past climate fluctuations from the history books. We are very uncertain about the extent of the warming. It is impossible to actually take the temperature of the whole planet. Historical temperature data is tough to discern. Most claims are based on "proxy" measurements such as tree rings, ice-core samples, and knowledge of what crops thrived when and where.
Alarmists proclaim the 1990s as the "hottest decade," point to the infamous "Hockey Stick" graph of temperature reconstructions melded onto actual temperature measurements. It turns out that the '90s not only fail to live up to the "hottest" title, but it coincided with the closure of hundreds of measuring stations (including many in the former Soviet Union as their priorities turned to more pressing domestic matters such as collapse of an empire). If you shut down measuring stations in the cold parts of the world, your average temperatures will go up. It turns out that the 1990s temperature increase track nicely with these closures.
INCREASING GOVERNMENT CONTROL: There is little doubt that environmentalists throughout modern history have instilled fear over one looming "crisis" or another with the aim of increasing government control over things big and small. They see state control as a good thing in its self and pursue it aggressively and by any means necessary, because individual liberty is inherently dangerous in their eyes. The intellectual community almost automatically favors any expansion of government power so long as it is advertised as a way to protect individuals from big bad corporations, relieve poverty, protect the environment, or promote 'equality'. Increasingly, each of these elements is present in more environmentalist rhetoric. If you want real power, you need to dictate acceptable energy supplies and consumption by claiming it is necessary in order to save the human race. Then you're talking about control over the whole economy.
ALARMISTS ACTIVITIES: The greens' argued before the Supreme Court in November 2006, to have carbon dioxide declared a "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act on the basis of "global warming." To obtain this result the court must agree that this ubiquitous, odorless, colorless and benign gas, the overwhelming majority of which is produced by Mother Nature including by human exhalation, "endangers public health or welfare." This then requires establishing a "National Ambient Air Quality Standard" regulating atmospheric concentration of CO2 at some level to purportedly cure global warming such that the U.S. cripples our economy by using a law never intended for rationing energy to do just that.
In November 2000, Europe sought to gut Kyoto’s plain language which states that CO2 sinks shall be used to meet the commitments. Sinks are forestry that absorb CO2 to produce oxygen through photosynthesis and other land-use practices capturing or not releasing GHGs. UN and EU eco-preachers proclaimed that to accept such unchecked use of trees to absorb GHGs would be to “destroy the environmental integrity of the agreement.” The irrational fear of trees as a threat greater than global warming continues to unfold.
THE TOP TEN “GLOBAL WARMING” MYTHS
- IT’S HOT IN HERE: Present temperatures are warm if you compare today to, say, the 1970s, or to the Little Ice Age. Select many other baselines, for example compared to the 1930s, or 1000 A.D., or 1998 and it is presently cool.
- THE 1990s WERE THE HOTTEST DECADE ON RECORD: The National Academy of Sciences debunked this claim in 2006.
- THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: CO2 CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING: The most common effort to dodge an actual debate over the causes of global warming is to claim that we had the debate, it is over, and there is “consensus.”
- CLIMATE WAS STABLE UNTIL MAN CAME ALONG: Swallowing this whopper requires burning every basic history and science text.
- CLIMATE CHANGE IS RAISING THE SEA LEVELS: Even the distorted IPCC refutes such breathless claims, finding no statistically significant change in the rate of increase over the past century.
- THE GLACERS ARE MELTING: The glacial retreat we read about is selective. Glaciers are also advancing all over, including lonely glaciers nearby their more popular retreating neighbors.
- CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE GREATEST THREAT TO THE WORLD’S POOR: Weather remains one of the greatest challenges to the poor. Climate change adds nothing to that calculus, however.
- “GLOBAL WARMING” MEANS MORE FREQUENT, MORE SEVERE STORMS: Here again even the IPCC doesn’t support this.
- “GLOBAL WARMING” PROPOSALS ARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT: Europe’s environment commissioner admitted that Kyoto is “about competition, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide.”
- THE U.S. IS GOING IT ALONE ON KYOTO AND “GLOBAL WARMING”: Nonsense. The U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol’s energy rationing scheme along with 155 other countries. Kyoto is a European treaty with one dozen others.
A QUESTION TO PONDER: The satellite data as of September 2006 suggests virtually no warming in the Southern Hemisphere: 0.05 degrees C per decade since the records began in the 1970s. One radical thesis is that CO2 concentrations may not be the primary factor affecting temperature. The Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, and the land less developed (paved). Paved cities are hotter than grassy fields. That factor might make explaining the differences in temperature – or at least the measured temperature – between the top of the planet and the bottom. If global warming is caused by CO2, it seems it would be equal to the Southern Hemisphere’s warming of 0.05 degrees per decade, while the Northern Hemisphere seems to be experiencing a regional warming of 0.2 degrees C.
THE SCARE TACTICS: If you’re going to give up your freedoms, your conveniences, and your affordable energy to them, they need to scare you. Every bad thing that’s already happening becomes the fault of Manmade global warming. After assigning blame, it is necessary to promise you that things will get much, much worse. Hurricanes will get stronger and more frequent. Everything that hasn’t melted will. The tides will rise, drowning or cities. Where there is a heart-wrenching tale, it is told and blamed on Man.
In 2006, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a paper by an interdisciplinary team of experts. Their three main points were:
- There is no established connection between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes.
- Any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small and within the context of observed natural variability.
- The politics of linking hurricanes to global warming threatens to undermine support for legitimate climate research and could result in ineffective hurricane policies.
THE COST OF THE ALARMIST AGENDA: Carbon suppression policies are a horribly inefficient way to curb air pollution – which is not the same thing as greenhouse gases. For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that Kyoto-level restrictions on CO2 emission from power plants would cost $77 billion but achieve only $6 billion worth of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission pollution reductions. It would be far less costly to utilities, ratepayers, and the local economies to target the NOx and SO2 – which are actually pollutants – directly and not use “global warming” as an excuse.
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: The risks of climate change policy – poverty and coercive wealth redistribution – outweigh the risks that might be expected as climate continues to change. Bjorn Lomborg correctly asks why would anyone propose spending twice as much money as would address, and in great part solve, the world’s existing problems, such as unsafe drinking water, real pollution, mosquito-borne diseases, and AIDS, in order to do nothing? The answer has everything to do with the real environmentalist agenda, and nothing to do with “climate change.” This is about international relations, this is about economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world. Kyoto was about hobbling America’s economy to give Socialist Europe a fighting chance. When considering European cries about Kyoto, it is critical to remember that the dream of the environmentalists is global governance. French president Jacques Chirac is blessed with the virtue of forthrightness. At the infamous Hague talks, Chirac called the Kyoto Protocol “the first component of an authentic global governance.” There it is. Kyoto is the tool by which the Chirac’s of the world can finally get some control over us unruly Americans.
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 10_cc_long_skeptic_political_view_--_seement_10.pdf |