THE AUDACITY OF HYPE
The Tennessee Gore family compound as seen from space. During daylight hours. While vacant.
When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing--they believe in anything.
-G.K. Chesterton
The sky is warming! The sky is warming!
Poor Al Gore. He had a speech booked at a lecture hall in Hell to scold the devil on runaway carbon emissions but had to cancel when it froze over. So he rescheduled at the next closest thing: Congress.
"The plann-itt has a fay-ver," Gore twanged last week before separate House and Senate panels on climate change in a textbook display of projection. It's the end of the world as Al knows it and he is far from fine. But he's not the only one. John Edwards, presidential dopeful and fellow Democratic philosopher-king, thinks global warming will "make world war look like heaven." Right. Whatever that's supposed to mean.
But why all the manufactured hysteria, and why now? Gore's been scaremongering on this issue going on two decades. In Earth in the Balance, first published back in '92, he wrote that "we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization," even going so far as to propose a "Global Marshall Plan."
But what if a tree is decomposing in the forest and no one's around to fear it, can you still get a million dollar grant to study all the ways it's destroying the planet?
For the majority of the earth's existence our climate has exhibited a temperature scale wholly incompatible with human life. We're now living in a time frame especially hospitable to our own existence (go figure), but from the planet's perspective (allowing that a planet can have a perspective) there is nothing especially remarkable about the relatively narrow temperature range that renders life possible.
Take the polar bear--and no, not the cuddly CGI variety made famous in the Goracle's recent Oscar winner (Best Supporting Factor in a Misleading Role?) The polar bear seems to have weathered extreme weather variations just fine over the previous millennia. Average temperatures during the Middle Ages were significantly warmer across the board than anything the global alarmists have their carbon neutral hemp boxers in such a twist over today. Were the sun's output to rise precipitously or fall off dramatically from what we in the 21st century consider "normative" levels, the plight of the We Care bear in the coal mine would be the least of our worries. Unless you're one of the growing legions of ecolytes in the Church of Al Gordo of Latter Day Senators, it already should be.
But if it is the politicization of science that has truly become inevitable then at the very least both sides of the argument should be provided equal time, rather than just the lefty columnist lockstep that ensures us "the debate is over." Funny, I guess I missed that one. Must have aired exclusively on Current TV.
Claiming that all scientists concur that we're carelessly heating up the world is a bit like saying all Hollywood actors agree that the War in Iraq is only about petroleum rights. Consensus over faulty assumptions is their stock in trade. (Interesting how the only article of faith the otherwise secular Left seems to agree on is that Big Oil is the root of all evil.)
If that neocrog Prometheus had just stolen a more sustainable source of energy from Mt. Olympus we wouldn't be in this position!
Meanwhile these same gliberal econauts minimize the danger of Islamic radicalism, a fatally proven threat that could at any time instantly vaporize a sizable portion of our citizenry; instead of the dread of a terrorist slow bleed strategy of sharia psoriasis they live in mortal fear of being slow boiled like the proverbial frog in the pot. If 24 were written by libs it would star Federal Agent Major Bore as he jets across the troposphere in his Gulfstream IV stopping at nothing--nothing!--to halt international thermostatism in its tracks. Of course, every episode would simulate a single year in the previous twenty four that the Fifth Horseman of the Apocolypse has been pounding his bongo drum of Impending Doom.
Science is by definition an unfinished debate, in that no hypothesis can ever be definitively proven, but only strengthened progressively with the addition of supportive and thoroughly tested and challenged evidence. The scientific method itself is rooted in skepticism. It's what makes the entire process of inquiry possible, how it can as a discipline exist apart from mere conjecture. So when someone instructs you that the debate's over, what they mean is that the door is closed, so stop jiggling the knobs lest the roof cave in on their preconceived worldview. Any scientist that tells you to stop doubting is no scientist at all. Just ask Galileo. He reminded the Catholic Church about the Copernican belief that the earth revolved around the sun and they answered debate's over, got it?
But if all the back and forth of the data miners and chart toppers is giving you a global case of MEGO, I really can't blame you. But just consider but one of the many points of contention upon which the entire non-debate pivots.
If temperatures are indeed gradually rising, then it stands to reason that either they are being driven by increasing CO2 levels or increasing CO2 levels are a trailing byproduct of rising temps. The Earth First! ("People Last!") crowd (more of a mob, really) would have you believe the former; that the approximately one degree centigrade increase over the last hundred years is just the tip of the fast-melting iceberg. So what they're saying is that they somehow averaged out all the varying temperatures recorded all over the planet, condensed them into a single number, and they expect us to believe that this century-long uno degree-o heat wave is actually greater than their observable margin of error? That's one kick-ass thermometer. Must be electric.
However, if instead the latter is true--a finding backed by at least a few more climatologists than the Stepford media cares to acknowledge (must not have gotten the memo about that whole debate thing being over), then the entire house of carbon credit cards collapses.
If not only do rising CO2 levels trail rising observed temperature trends--but that there exists between them a lag of potentially hundreds of years--then the truth may well be inconvenient after all. Inconvenient for whom, though, is the real question. We said debate's over! Stop debating!
Is it merely a coincidence that the secular Left has latched onto this cause with more intense quasi-religious fervor than found on the set of the 700 Club?
The unofficial religion of this new environmentalism (key word: mental) is a realization on the neo-Marxist Left that communism's biggest PR misstep was in attempting to banish the Almighty from public life lest it compete with the almighty State. But worship of the perpetually angry gods of Mother Earth can readily fill that void while simultaneously providing ample justification for the triumphant return of Big Government to reassert its grip over virtually every facet of our daily lives. The impulse to control, the will to power never truly lessens; it just changes with the times. The earth is cooling! Ice age! Ice age! Wait, now it's warming! Heat wave! Heat wave!
Gee fellas, you're finally starting to get it. The planet tends to do that kind of thing. Maybe we don't actually live in The Best Damn Shorts Weather Ever, but just got lucky in the whole Holocenic sense. When even the co-founder of Greenpeace thinks you've gone over the deep end ecologically, don't you think its time to reassess your assumptions and rein in the crazy just a bit?
In any event, us permitting Al Gore to ordain himself as our self-anointed guru of Gaia would be akin to the Senate confirming Sean Penn as Secretary of Defense. When confronted with reports of his own massive public utility consumption Gore countered that he lives a "carbon neutral life" by obtaining "offsets" to compensate for his gargantuan energy use. You know, like after the time he accidentally left the guest cottage helipad lights on all month, he footed the bill for a third party to blow up a third world electrical grid in order to make up for it. I'm a man who seeks balance, lectures the Lecturer-in-Chief. If I decide I want a steak, I'll happily pay you not to have one. I buhlieve that's mah responsibility as a co-steward of the plann-itt.
Just like they say at the annual Sierra Club meetings in Aspen: think globally, act vocally.
A very necessary and timely rebuttlal titled the Great Global Warming Swindle -- or as it's been repackaged in Deutschland, Fahrenheit Nein Danke -- has been making the rounds in the public sphere since first airing in the UK. It should be included with every sale of Big Al's rubber-stamped Hollywood imprimaturn-back-the-clockumentary; the one salient difference being that it actually makes an ounce of sense. Apparently that much-touted scientific consensus isn't quite as solid as the Ain't Easy Being Greens would have us believe.
True, we're stuck with another Clash of the Polemics, but it does seem to be the height of fashion lately. My propaganda's true, your propaganda's bunk. The New York Times said Fox News is full of it. So there. We contort, you deride.
If you fear being branded an infidel, don't worry. If your name isn't Mohammed, chances are you already have been.
Either way don't be too surprised if The Man Who Won The Popular Vote ultimately descends so far into his own ecomania that to set the example for all of us he has himself recycled, all 200+ carbon based cardio-free pounds. Just think how many starving polar bears that could feed.
Nahhh... that's not believable either. Sounds like too much of a "risky scheme." What is believable, however, is that it's eminently more likely that solar activity is what primarily drives climate change, just as it has for the millions of years prior to the invention of the smokestack, rather than human propelled carbon dioxide emissions from the previous hundred. Of course, like Al I'm no scientist, but then neither am I mad.
If this makes me a New Holocaust That Hasn't Happened Yet (But Just Might) denier, then so be it. It's the hollow cause that I'm actually afraid of. See, I've gotten pretty used to industrial civilization and I'd prefer to keep it if that's alright. If you've witnessed how the other half lives then you'd know it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Give warming a chance, Al. A few of us could still use some.
Stop global warming, destroy the Sun!
When we are faced with abject stupidity there are very few things one can actually do.
Posted by
Anonymous |
27 March, 2007
Buck,
I think your just bias because Anchorage is having the coldest winter in 50 years ;)
Posted by
Anonymous |
28 March, 2007
This is a great retort to the Gore-man! And, as always, you sense of humor is most enjoyable!
Posted by
Anonymous |
28 March, 2007
Oh Buck! How can you throw "cold" water on the man who invented the inter net!
A&N
Posted by
Anonymous |
28 March, 2007
A wonderful post on this nonsense! I'm just waiting for the sun to be federally regulated. After all, we must keep the citizens distracted from what's really going on.
It's a conspiracy, I tell you. A conspiracy! heh
Posted by
Anonymous |
28 March, 2007
I guess the "better safe than sorry" attitude towards terrorism doesn't apply to the environment then? Hey - you fight for the right to prefer to drive a hummer over eating, but what REALLY is the harm in trying to "save" an environment, even if it doesn't need saving?
Posted by
Anonymous |
28 March, 2007
"What REALLY is the harm in trying to "save" an environment, even if it doesn't need saving?"
Yes, I agree. And what's wrong with trying to get a new butt cuz your old one has a crack in it?
Posted by
Anonymous |
28 March, 2007
This was great, Buck. Keep 'em coming.
Posted by
Anonymous |
29 March, 2007
I guess the "better safe than sorry" attitude towards terrorism doesn't apply to the environment then? Hey - you fight for the right to prefer to drive a hummer over eating, but what REALLY is the harm in trying to "save" an environment, even if it doesn't need saving?
The harm comes when resources are diverted and/or restricted, in the name of "preserving the environment", in ways that impose a far greater socioeconomic cost to civilization than the benefits derived from such "protection".
Concern for the environment is facilitated by prosperity ... for as we have seen in many places, protecting the environment is a low priority when one is wondering where their next meal is coming from ... and it is the most prosperous nations that have been the most innovative in cleaning up the messes of civilization.
The biggest problems with Gore et. al. are
1> Their justification for mandating severe changes in individual behavior and capabilities is even less concrete than the case for Saddam having WMD's, to use a popular example.
2> They persist in proposing top-down, "ex-spurt"-driven, legislated (or litigated) one-or -a-very-few-sizes-fits-all solutions ... ignorant of the limitations that rear their ugly head when a few academics attempt the solving of problems that have 300 million -- let alone 6 billion -- variables at a minimum, and must be solved in a sustainable manner for years and years.
Compare this state-of-affairs with that pinnacle of technological achievement -- the Apollo moon landings, where the spacecraft/launch vehicles only had to work around a dozen times, for a few days each time at most. My stepfather-in-law worked on those launch vehicles as an engineer ... and he has told me stories of just how non-sustainable (and corner-cutting) that effort was.
It took a national effort to find the solutions to get us to the moon ... what makes us think that a relative few "ex-spurts" commissioned by Gore et. al. can come up with a few solutions that have to work BILLIONS of times ... for years.
Instead, we need those 300 million/6 billion "variables" to be in the loop, to find solutions that will work for them, with only limited expert guidance. That's called the free market.
3> However, Gore et. al. don't want to wait for -- and often do not trust -- the free market to sort out the best solutions ... they want A solution, NOW, even if they don't know anywhere near enough about the problem to give a solution that works for you ... and that solution, or perhaps another, that works for me.
4> Their proposals often ignore or gloss over the state-of-the-art, and/or the laws of physics, in their idealism.
I know something about this ... I design advanced-technology batteries and charging systems for a living, so I am aware of the limitations of EV's and hybrids today. Solutions that work around those limitations will come sooner, and at lower cost, will come faster and more economically through free-market efforts than they will by attempts to repeal the laws of physics via legislation.
Why is Gore et. al. missing all this? Because their ideology colors their judgment. Too often, their thinking makes them look like watermelons ... green on the outside, red on the inside ... and as a result, they are leading us down the road to poverty and environmental degredation, instead of to a sustainable future.
Posted by
Rich Casebolt |
29 March, 2007
you are a gifted and entertaining writer, not to mention you make good sense. I do feel that we need to do what we can to clean up the environment and try to get off middle eastern oil, but proclaiming the planet doomed and scaring the devil out of little kids is ridiculous and right down wrong.
Posted by
Anonymous |
30 March, 2007
Too much CO2, plant some trees - too bloody simple for the morons. Trees love CO2, and we love oxygen - debate over!
Posted by
Joanne |
07 April, 2007
Oh, leave it to these people to cut themselves with Occam's Razor, Joanne. How about "giant artificial 'trees' to filter carbon dioxide out of the air, a bizarre 'solar shade' created by a trillion flying saucers that lower Earth's temperature, and a scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky."
Global Warming "Solutions"
Posted by
BUCK SARGENT |
07 April, 2007
He is risen! Have a great Resurrections Sunday, Buck and Family!
A&N
Posted by
Anonymous |
08 April, 2007
You still alive?
Posted by
T. F. Boggs |
11 April, 2007
Hey man. Sorry it has been so long since I commented, but I'm guessing you haven't missed me.
I'm wondering how you feel about this. Is it going to affect you and if not do you care. Personally, I feel like anyone who signs up should be prepared for such eventualities, especially with the current administration in charge.
I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts.
My best wishes to you and your family,
PT
Posted by
Praguetwin |
11 April, 2007
Read your blog recently, you've done a good job. Here's a reference site I've used when blogging about CO2 and GWing. You may find it useful.
Cheers!
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/Index.jsp
Posted by
Anonymous |
06 May, 2007
Where and how are you Buck. We definitely are missing your words on this blog and your comments elsewhere. We worry and care. We need you Buck.
Posted by
Anonymous |
07 May, 2007
Okay Buck what's the deal? Still sore from getting passed over for the Blooker blog prize (whatever the hell that is!).
Seriously man come back any time.
Posted by
Anonymous |
15 May, 2007
Sure do miss you, Buck.
Posted by
Anonymous |
15 June, 2007
Buck Sargeant,
My name is Kerry and I am a CBS News intern in New York. I am working with a producer on a story about young people using blogs/youtube to protest or advocate the Iraq war. We are looking for a soldier blogger who would be willing to talk about reasons why he posts, new military restrictions on blogs, etc.
If you could give me a call ASAP that would be so great. The number here is 212-975-2086. Please ask for Kerry or Deborah. Thanks
Posted by
Anonymous |
29 June, 2007
The only thing I question in your global warming rant is your calling the "Earth First" bunch a "mob". A mob has leaders, they are not a mob, but a herd, milling about aimlessly without sense or direction.
old lance corporal
Posted by
Anonymous |
27 November, 2007
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