05 March 2007

Oh, That's All Right Then

Drudge has posted links to two articles indicating that perhaps the science of anthropogenic global warming is not settled. First, a French scientist has recanted:
Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming....

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l'Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."
Second, English tv is going to show a documentary entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle, which argues that "global warming could be caused by increased solar activity such as a massive eruption" and that there is little historical correlation between average global temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels.

None of these skeptics ("deniers" in the politically correct parlance of the environmental left) take issue with the idea that the Earth has gotten warmer recently and might continue to warm. Nothing betrays the essentially political nature of the global warming hysterics that this; once it is shown that global warming is not our "fault" no one cares. What possible difference could that make if global warming was really a civilization-ending threat? That earthquakes and hurricanes aren't our fault doesn't stop us from preparing for them.

The best preparation for global warming is the best answer for almost all the problems that beset mankind: expand the global middle class as fast as we can. As environmentalism and its ugly stepchild, the global warming hysteria, are fundamentally anti-wealth, anti-bourgeios and anti-human, they are committed to preventing us from taking the steps we need to ensure a growing global middle class.

3 comments:

erp said...

A large self-sufficient middle class is the death knell of socialism.

Harry Eagar said...

Not in the past it wasn't. The countries with the largest middle classes voted socialist in the last century: Germany, Britain, France and, depending on what you think about FDR, even America.

erp said...

Sorry for the muddled comment. I believe it was class envy that led the middle class to vote in the socialists. They wanted the riches of the wealthy to be redistributed to them. What they learned was that it was their wealth that would be redistributed to the poor. Ergo the demise of the middle class which can't exist within a socialist state.