"Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." – Mark Twain
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while Congress is in session" – Mark Twain
Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier advances despite global warming –
headline from Associated Press article, June 15, 2009.
(Natacha Pisarenko/AP photo)
On November 6, The Market Oracle posted Robert Murphy's lengthy article, "Freaking Out over Global Warming," a review of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's book Super Freakonomics
The whole argument in the book and in the review seems to be centered on the science and economics of climate change.
Unfortunately, climate change isn't about science. Climate change quit being about science almost from the beginning.
Climate change is about raw, naked, unabashed political power.
Climate change isn't, and has never been, about economics either.
Proponents of raw, naked, unabashed political power don't care about science or about economics.
Originally, the climate changers began howling about the Coming Ice Age. First a frozen global hell was proclaimed, and then the proclaimers went looking for "science" to prove their proclamations. They had books to sell and interviews to do and power to accumulate and careers to build and reputations to make and egos to inflate.
When the time of the Coming Ice Age came and went and nothing froze over they turned the thermometer upside down. No more Coming Ice Age. Coming Global Warming.
But it still was never really science. The "scientific consensus" was built on scientific conjecture and flawed computer modeling and government bribe money and true believer's wishful thinking and the virulent human-hating of the environmental messiahs.
A "scientific consensus" is not science. "Consensus" is a political word. Politicians reach "Consensus." Scientists reach "factual conclusions" based on evidence, no matter what the politicians or the opportunists or the true believers want them to reach.
Cherry picking scientific data is not science. Cherry picking is political. Yes, the other side, the warming deniers, can also be charged with cherry picking evidence to prove that man-made climate change is bogus. But that just strengthens the argument; cherry picking, no matter who does it, or why it's done, is 
not science. It's still just politics.
Once any issue becomes politicized its no longer about that issue. It's then all about politics, and politics is always about power.
Government healthcare isn't about health, it's about power. The drug war isn't about drugs, it's about power. The government takeover of banking and lending institutions isn't about the economy, it's about power. Environmentalism isn't about the environment, it's about power.
Capitalism has won in every successful country in the world except in America where it's maligned and attacked and crippled. Our society, in ways it never should have been, has become deeply politicized, which means it's not about freedom and markets and trade and prosperity, it's about power.
And it's also why libertarians should be worried about the Libertarian Party. Is it really about libertarianism, or is it really just all about the Party?
The only way to ever know if anything is true about climate change is to totally divorce the science from everyone and everything that could possibly benefit from it in any way.
And it's also true about everything else that's been politicized.
Today we can merge Mark Twain's two amusing quotes:
"When power-mad politicians pretend they can do anything about the weather no man's life, liberty, or property is safe."
Get the latest libertarian news from the All Libertarian All The Time news source:
The Libertarian News Examiner.
Comments
"Government healthcare isn't about health, it's about power. The drug war isn't about drugs, it's about power. The government takeover of banking and lending institutions isn't about the economy, it's about power. Environmentalism isn't about the environment, it's about power."
You're committing a logical fallacy with this statement. Just because there are those that would use these things for power, it does not follow that this is *all* these things are used for, or that power is their raison d'et.
All of these things have a legitimate reason for being, else there would be no moral authority for those who seek power to leverage.
Garry, while your passion is admirable, your command of the science is less impressive. Just as an example, climate scientists never 'howled' about a coming ice age. A handful of magazines in the 70s ran a story speculating on the idea. You've been taken in by a zombie lie; a lie that won't die no matter how often it is dispatched. In this case, it's a lie kept on life support by exactly those whose motivations you erroneously ascribe to climatologists: power and money for the energy industry. Clean energy, greater efficiency, and/or conservation of existing fossil fuels translates into lower earnings for those businesses.
In short, there was no consensus on a coming ice age among climatologists in the 70s, regardless of what popular magazines may have written. There is a strong consensus on anthropogenic global warming today. The data on the NASA GISS temperature record is clear; unless you think NASA is also in on some kind of global conspiracy.
"The data on the NASA GISS temperature record is clear; unless you think NASA is also in on some kind of global conspiracy."
Hansen is a NASA man and he is some sort of head case/banger.
The climate temperature records are clearly biased but what do they show?
Temperatures are in abeyance, since 1998, we were all told that the rise was run away and could not be halted unless we stopped pumping vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere - Wrong, the CO2 ppm has risen but no real correlating increase in temps, explain that Mr. Andrew.
There is no 'consensus' of AGW amongst the scientific community. The science shows the globe is cooling, the ice in the Arctic is recovering since 2007, the ice sheet in Antarctica is growing and has been for the last 30 years. If you reside in the USA - anecdotal evidence shows temperatures dived recently and there is reasonable expectation winter 2009/2010 will be v cold.
No, the Alarmists have lost the argument and have been doing so for a number of y
To Mr. Anderson:
If energy companies are fighting the climate change hysteria, why does Exxon-Mobil support a carbon tax?
“There is a strong consensus on anthropogenic global warming today.”???
Fact: Of the 2000 scientists who signed the UN IPCC Summary Report, only 62 reviewed the critical chapter 9. Of these, only 7 were independent of their government and only 1 endorsed the most significant statement. Global warming politics hinges on one signature!
You may also want to check out the Global Warming Petition Project where 31,478 American scientists agree that there is “no convincing evidence” that global warming is a problem or caused by man.
Consensus? Hah!
Like Garry says, “consensus” is a political word, used to deceive the ignorant masses.
"All of these things have a legitimate reason for being, else there would be no moral authority for those who seek power to leverage."
Seeking tyrannical power over others is a "legitimate reason"; it is just *wrong*.
Steven Andrew may be a very bright young man, but as a well informed older man, I can tell him that the "Coming Ice Age" was much more than a few magazines.
The difference however, is that people had enough sense back then, that we weren't ready to destroy our own society for a theory.
Scientific "consensus" has always been wrong, and if the masses had any real scientific education, this one would have never gotten as far as the last one.
Scientific consensus is, in fact, important.
Actually, science is a collection of observations and theories - a theory being a model that best accounts for the observations.
New observations can break theories, and human ingenuity can produce better theories.
Whenever a new theory comes along, it needs to gain acceptance. Relativity won scientific consensus by predicting the bending of light around the sun. There's still some people who deny relativity, and the scientific consensus is that they're crackpots.
The evidence for relativity is much stronger than the evidence for man-made global warming. Still, scientific consensus carries well-deserved weight. And the way to battle it is with counter-observations or theories. Political punditry won't do it.
It's also true that GW has become politicized with big-government solutions. Political punditry can be useful in attacking those proposals, but not in attacking the science.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!