Useful Fools

The following was posted as a response to a typical wacko-environmentalist rant on Slashdot (www.slashdot.org). But it applies fairly well to a lot of the silliness that comes out in the global warming debate…

So read on….

1998 Warning to Humanity - Meaningless
The “Warning to Humanity” top scientists had very few climatologists in its ranks, so it is utterly and completely meaningless.

The Myth that we can make Major Changes
The problem is that environmentalists assume that we *can* change, and that we can do so in a beneficial way.

So let me throw just a couple of problems at you…

Complexity of the environment
1) You say the environment is too complex for us to understand the effects we are having on it. That is true. By your logic, that means that any action we take is just as likely to be beneficial or not, considering we don’t understand the consequences. So why should we choose the one that will cause massive economic dislocation, ultimately killing the millions of people who have such a marginal life right now that they can’t *afford* any diminuation in the economic situation.

Kyoto makes No Effective DIfference - According to Its Proponents
2) If you look at what the real scientists say (say, for example the IPCC report - and not the politician written summary, but the real thing), you will realize that the Kyoto recommendations, which are supposed to help with global warming, will, IF THE MODELS ARE RIGHT, make such a tiny change that it will be unmeasurable 100 years into the future.

To Make a Significant Change would be a Major Economic Disaster
3) If you look at how much change is reputedly needed to make a difference (again, assuming the models are correct), you would realize that Kyoto is just a Trojan horse… a way to get us used to economic sacrifice so that the REAL changes can be done - cutbacks of 30% or more on CO2 emissions which translate, with TODAYS technology, to massive economic disaster. Such a disaster would kill tens of millions of third and fourth world citizens.

In 1910 They Thought THey Knew the Future, Too!
4)Those who want to follow some plan of change are arrogant enough to believe that they can determine how mankind will behave for the next 100 years (the normal timeline for most scientists studying the issue). They were also that arrogant in the first decade of the 20th century. They thought they had the problems of government solved. Of course, since then there were a few unanticipated events like like World War I, World War II, the rise of communism (which resulted in the worst environmental damage of any system, along with 100,000,000 murders), the invention of the computer, powered airplanes, nuclear power and bombs, quantum theory, the relativity theories, electronics, Social Security, antibiotics, modern genetics, information theory,…. But I’m sure that you believe that things like this won’t happen this century, right? Or that minor things like how people really think and act won’t get in the way of our punitive solutions? Pardon me if I don’t take seriously those people who think they know enough to effect a solution to some vague issue (gasp, we are hurting poor mother earth), and if I am not willing to make economic sacrifices on behalf of their poorly considered ideas.

The West is Evil?
5) It is interesting that people who put out radical environmental rants tend to be anti-western. Usually this is because they haven’t taken a look at how *other* societies treat the environment - which is on average with considerably less respect than we in the west do. Oh, and every one of the inventions I mentioned above… took place in the evil west.

The Myth of the Stupid Consumer
6) The “vicious cycle of consumerism” is an unintended codeword for people exercising their economic freedoms. It is usually uttered by people who are sure they are smarter than these “consumers” - people who justify their beliefs by thinking that consumers are somehow deluded into making their choices by evil capitalist advertisers.

Modern Environmentalism Encourages Fools
Finally, let me comment that the rant (that this originally responded to) is a perfect example of what I find so objectionable about modern environmentalism: it encourages illogical people with little grasp of the facts and no grasp of history to act and speak as if they knew something.