Glenn Reynolds has generally been pretty good on the politics and the hypocrisy of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crowd.
But yesterday he posted praise of an award offered by Richard Branson and Al Gore which explicitly argues that AGW is a "real and a clear and present danger to life on Earth" - a claim which is false, or at least merely hypothesized and as yet COMPLETELY UNPROVEN.
Peter Hitchens, IMHO, had a much better "read" of Gore and Branson's PR move on a BBC-TV show yesterday - (itr's 5.5 minutes in): Hitchens argues that the award is hypocritical BS.
Hitchens said - and I paraphrase:
Awards like the generous one Branson offered can - and have in the past - spurred beneficial results. But maybe if instead of offering an award to find a way to sequester 1 BILLION pounds of CO2 per year, he offered an award to someone who could experimentally PROVE that man-made CO2 is causing the present general warming trend, (and that it is NOT like the many MANY ones which have occurred throughout all of geo-history), then I think he would be doing something really constructive. Proof would end the political debate and force humanity to take some action.
I remind everyone that - as Hitchens pointed out - consenus to a particular hypothesis is NOT proof. FACT: Consensus regarding The Big Bang Theory - or String Theory - does NOT prove it. These are popular working HYPOTHESES which explain a lot, but not everything. And when scientists observe data which contradict the theory, then they abandon the theory - consensus disintegrates. REPEAT: CONSENSUS IS NOT PROOF.
In fact, there is a counter-argument that flies in the face of the AGW crowd, and it comes with EXPERIMENTAL PROOF: Specifically that COSMIC RAYS (CR) - which cause water vapor formation in the atmosphere - may actually be causing the present climate change, and also (by extension) be chiefly responsible for all previous waves of global climate change throughout geo-history. (It has been PROVEN that water vapor - WV - is a much more important factor in GW than CO2, which is relatively a weak factor, especially compared to WV.)
The fact that CR cause GW is very bad news for Leftists like Gore, because if global climate change is NOT caused by humans - particularly Western, industrialist capitalist/consumerist ones - then he and his comrades don't have a big excuse to raise taxes, pick winners & losers in the marketplace, and generally boss people around "for the common good." Which is REALLY why they LOVE AGW, and have been so vociferously and hysterically demagoguing the issue of late.
BTW: if we really want to sequester more atmospheric CO2, then there are a few simple and natural ways:
If Branson is really serious he can send me a check AT ONCE. I'm waiting, Richard. Just drop me a line in the comments section of this post. Heh.
But yesterday he posted praise of an award offered by Richard Branson and Al Gore which explicitly argues that AGW is a "real and a clear and present danger to life on Earth" - a claim which is false, or at least merely hypothesized and as yet COMPLETELY UNPROVEN.
Peter Hitchens, IMHO, had a much better "read" of Gore and Branson's PR move on a BBC-TV show yesterday - (itr's 5.5 minutes in): Hitchens argues that the award is hypocritical BS.
Hitchens said - and I paraphrase:
"If Branson was REALLY serious that AGW was caused by CO2, and that it is a threat to life on Earth, then he would shut down his airlines tommorow. That he doesn't, proves Branson is not serious - and shouldn't be taken seriously."I CONCUR.
Awards like the generous one Branson offered can - and have in the past - spurred beneficial results. But maybe if instead of offering an award to find a way to sequester 1 BILLION pounds of CO2 per year, he offered an award to someone who could experimentally PROVE that man-made CO2 is causing the present general warming trend, (and that it is NOT like the many MANY ones which have occurred throughout all of geo-history), then I think he would be doing something really constructive. Proof would end the political debate and force humanity to take some action.
I remind everyone that - as Hitchens pointed out - consenus to a particular hypothesis is NOT proof. FACT: Consensus regarding The Big Bang Theory - or String Theory - does NOT prove it. These are popular working HYPOTHESES which explain a lot, but not everything. And when scientists observe data which contradict the theory, then they abandon the theory - consensus disintegrates. REPEAT: CONSENSUS IS NOT PROOF.
In fact, there is a counter-argument that flies in the face of the AGW crowd, and it comes with EXPERIMENTAL PROOF: Specifically that COSMIC RAYS (CR) - which cause water vapor formation in the atmosphere - may actually be causing the present climate change, and also (by extension) be chiefly responsible for all previous waves of global climate change throughout geo-history. (It has been PROVEN that water vapor - WV - is a much more important factor in GW than CO2, which is relatively a weak factor, especially compared to WV.)
The fact that CR cause GW is very bad news for Leftists like Gore, because if global climate change is NOT caused by humans - particularly Western, industrialist capitalist/consumerist ones - then he and his comrades don't have a big excuse to raise taxes, pick winners & losers in the marketplace, and generally boss people around "for the common good." Which is REALLY why they LOVE AGW, and have been so vociferously and hysterically demagoguing the issue of late.
BTW: if we really want to sequester more atmospheric CO2, then there are a few simple and natural ways:
These are serious and readily achievable projects which require NO NEW TECHNOLOGY. It's happening on a small scale already: Niger is greening their desert. This can be expanded, and go global.
- (1) we can cut down as many OLD TREES as we can - and replace them with saplings; old trees are MUCH LESS EFFICIENT at sequestering CO2 than new/young tress. We can start by harvesting old trees in the AMAZON RAIN FOREST, and use the wood to build housing for the world's poor.
- (2) We can pay HALLIBURTON - the world's largest builder of water treatment plants - to build HUMONGOUS desalinization plants on the coast of Africa and pump the water into Africa's desserts and make them bloom with CO2-binding agriculture which produces fruits and grains to feed the world's poor and hungry people.
- (3) We can plant ONE TRILLION trees a year all over the rest of the world - fruit trees of every type, and then we can harvest the fruit to feed the world's poor.
If Branson is really serious he can send me a check AT ONCE. I'm waiting, Richard. Just drop me a line in the comments section of this post. Heh.
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