Comments

4 responses to “Environmentalism is an Anti-Bush Conspiracy”

1. 2004/11/05

   Clive

   Global warming?

   Personally, I’m still very skeptical of the whole issue of global warming. While it certainly makes a convenient stick with which to hit Bush, and he certainly needs belabouring in any way we can, I’m alarmed by the amount of conjecture and the broad margins for error.

   What we’re proposing doing is sacrificing 3% of Gross World Product for a century to avert an environmental catastrophe for which there’s little firm evidence.

   Personally, I think we should spend the money on the third world instead, and fund more research into the issue of climate change. Even if the worst doomsayers are right, we can wait a decade or two before doing anything about our carbon dioxide emissions. Besides, if we gave everyone in the third world proper access to medicines, sanitation and education (you can do quite a lot with $1,500,000,000,000 a year) we might raise the world’s productivity by enough that, even if we then ploughed resources into mitigating climiate change, we’d be better off in residual GWP terms, and have much improved the lot of people in the third world in the process.

   Given that the Earth has taken care of itself this long, even in the face of massive volcanic eruptions and what-have-you, I suspect it can regulate its way around our burning a few dinosaurs. People should be worrying more about what to do when there are no more left to burn.

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2. 2004/11/05

   Stephen Usher

   re: Global warming?

   Hmm.. indeed, the Earth has a very flexible biosphere. However, this doesn’t mean that any particular species will survive. It could mean that we’re cutting our own throat. Also, to put the current CO2 levels into perspective, they are about 1/3rd of the level they were at the end of the Cretaceous and have been falling pretty steadily ever since, but with a big drop at the beginning of the current ice age about 14 million years ago. It is thought that this was caused by the building of the Himallayas as high errosion rates draw down CO2 and deposit it in the oceans.

   This doesn’t mean that I believe the global warming stuff though.

   The current models aren’t brilliant, however, looking at the previous interglacial periods, the climate can switch from interglacial into full glacial conditions over as short a period as 10-50 years (from ice cores in Greenland). Perversely, often the switch back to a cold spell is preceeded by an increase in temperature and CO2 levels. Also, technically we are still in the middle of an ice age as it is defined as a period of Earth history during which there are perminent ice caps. Oh, and we are overdue for another switch into a cold period.

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3. 2004/11/05

   alecm

   re: Global warming?

   Global warming is arguable, certainly, but there is one matter upon which even an amateur like myself can speak quite definitively:

   Oil is a finite resource.

   Discuss?

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4. 2004/11/05

   Stephen Usher

   re: Global warming?

   Oh, indeed. So we should get our stakes on and think of using it in wiser and better ways.

   As for electricity production, wind and waves are fine but they’re variable and unreliable, mostly when you’d need them the most. Coal and oil/gas are finite and running out fast. That leaves the only tenable position currently is to use nuclear fission at least as a stop-gap until some other technology can be developed.

   I can see a bit energy crisis appearing long before any potential climate one. What’s more scarey is when the two combine. Just think of a world plunged back into an ice age with no fuel reserves to help mitigate it. Bye-bye civilisation and 99% of the human population within a matter of a few tens of years. It would only then take a small crisis and humans could well go extinct.

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