Global warming
The Earth’s certainly been warmer than usual lately, enough so that I believe all the worry about consequences to be entirely justified. But it’s not at all clear to me that the global warming is caused by human activities. Yes, there are such things as greenhouse gases and we’ve been generating them, but there are lots of forces that affect climate, and I’m concerned that we’re just picking one to the exclusion of all others.
We humans unfortunately like to do that kind of thing, because it lets us believe that we can control things more than we actually can. For instance, when Ronald Reagan ran for U.S. president, he seized on the doctrine of supply-side economics because it would allow him to cut taxes, reduce the deficit, and increase spending — simultaneously. It didn’t work. The economic forces quoted by supply-siders do exist, but so do others.
If we want to put the brakes on global warming it is crucial that we understand what’s causing it. If we assume that the problem is greenhouse gases and we’re wrong, we may expend enormous efforts to reduce greenhouse gases only to have global warming gallop on unchecked — while we avoid dealing with the consequences because we believe we’re solving the problem at the source.
Some people have remarked that it’s not just the Earth that’s experiencing global warming, that other planets in our solar system that have atmospheres are experiencing the same thing. If that’s accurate, then global warming is almost certainly caused by conditions external to the Earth. For one person’s writing on this, with links to various sources, see this. I can’t vouch for any of it, but then nobody should vouch for the simplistic assumption that global warming is being caused by human-generated greenhouse gases. Climate is a very complex thing, just like economics, but certain people, like politicians (not just the publicly elected ones, but also those who maneuver their way into heading up non-governmental organizations), find it convenient to pretend that they have all the answers. Reaganomics didn’t work, and now one of the loudest voices in the greenhouse-gases-are-evil establishment is someone else who’s had a run at the U.S. presidency, Al Gore. Mr. Gore likes to act as though he’s a scientist, but he’s no more a scientist than Mr. Reagan was an economist, and he falsely claims that all the scientists agree on what’s behind global warming.
We humans unfortunately like to do that kind of thing, because it lets us believe that we can control things more than we actually can. For instance, when Ronald Reagan ran for U.S. president, he seized on the doctrine of supply-side economics because it would allow him to cut taxes, reduce the deficit, and increase spending — simultaneously. It didn’t work. The economic forces quoted by supply-siders do exist, but so do others.
If we want to put the brakes on global warming it is crucial that we understand what’s causing it. If we assume that the problem is greenhouse gases and we’re wrong, we may expend enormous efforts to reduce greenhouse gases only to have global warming gallop on unchecked — while we avoid dealing with the consequences because we believe we’re solving the problem at the source.
Some people have remarked that it’s not just the Earth that’s experiencing global warming, that other planets in our solar system that have atmospheres are experiencing the same thing. If that’s accurate, then global warming is almost certainly caused by conditions external to the Earth. For one person’s writing on this, with links to various sources, see this. I can’t vouch for any of it, but then nobody should vouch for the simplistic assumption that global warming is being caused by human-generated greenhouse gases. Climate is a very complex thing, just like economics, but certain people, like politicians (not just the publicly elected ones, but also those who maneuver their way into heading up non-governmental organizations), find it convenient to pretend that they have all the answers. Reaganomics didn’t work, and now one of the loudest voices in the greenhouse-gases-are-evil establishment is someone else who’s had a run at the U.S. presidency, Al Gore. Mr. Gore likes to act as though he’s a scientist, but he’s no more a scientist than Mr. Reagan was an economist, and he falsely claims that all the scientists agree on what’s behind global warming.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home