“Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish And Short”
"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."
(Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651)
What may well be one of Thomas Hobbes' most recognizable quotes - even to those who don't know that Hobbes coined the phrase - came to mind when I read this piece in today's Wall Street Journal. In it, John R. Christy, a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC, figuratively renounces his 'share' of the Nobel Peace Prize. Then he, quite literally, denounces the global warming alarmists like Al Gore and his fellow travelers. It is brutally direct.
There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming — around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)
It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days.
Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"
I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer……..……..Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon emissions and could replace about 10% of the world's energy sources with non-CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 — roughly equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections, the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by about 0.2 ?176 degrees Fahrenheit per century. It's a dent.
But what is the economic and human price, and what is it worth given the scientific uncertainty?
My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."
Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me.
I would urge you to read the entire thing. It really is an important piece. As more and more scientists are beginning to speak out against the thuggish attempts to shut off debate by demonizing and intimidating dissenters.
Many of the "solutions" being touted by the true believers are fraudulent, worthless or even harmful to the planet. I have been collecting articles that show that here on this site for quite some time. Many of the "carbon offsets" being sold by unscrupulous operators reduce humans in developing countries into little more than serfs performing on human hamster wheels. All so people with gargantuan carbon footprints like Al Gore can continue to justify their conspicuous consumption. Rainforests are being burned to the ground, orangutans killed, people enslaved. Worse, the poorest countries will soon see starvation as food is diverted to fuel production. There is real and lasting environmental and human damage being done in the name of fighting global warming. It is time to stop it before the damage is irreversible. It is not in the West's best interests to condemn others to that solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short life in search of a pointless "solution" that will not work anyway.
(Hat Tip to Matthew Sheffield at NewsBusters for the link to this.)
Energy, Environment, Junk Science | Gaius Thursday, 1 November , 2007
By Vmaximus, Thursday, 1 November , 2007 @ 1:31 pm
He is right about the prediction. I live in Fla, and I think it was last year they had a hurricane predicted to hit us in the 7 day forecast. I told my family we were golden. Guaranteed not to hit us. It went elsewhere and we were fine. If they cannot predict a storm that they can see coming a week ahead, how in the world can they predict the weather 100 years from now! It is also amusing to look at Dr Gray’s predictions every year. (not to mention his revised predictions 1/2 way thru the season, talk about cheating!)
By kevin kildow, Thursday, 1 November , 2007 @ 5:36 pm
Not being well versed in the subject, I will not comment on the veracity pro or con of the UN panel member’s comments. I would, however, like to take exception to the fallacious logic that can conflate efforts to fight global warming and Al Gore with “rainforests being burned to the ground, orangutans killed and people enslaved”, as if this is his goal, or the goal of those concerned about the melting of the ice cap and glaciers and what those ecological changes might mean for humanity as a whole. This is not a right or left issue, so when raising the specter of demonization or intimidation when discussing this issue I would take care to make sure that my own house is in order…
By Gaius, Thursday, 1 November , 2007 @ 6:08 pm
Then perhaps you should look for some of the posts that detail those things - what is happening outside of the self-actualizing echo chamber might surprise you.
By kevin kildow, Thursday, 1 November , 2007 @ 7:11 pm
In addition to my not being able to verify specific scientific claims due to my not being a climatologist - I also had no idea what “self-actualizing” meant.
Come on - admit it, ya’ll didn’t either. I’m here to help. According to The Oxford English Dictionary:
“self-actualization: noun, the realization or fulfillment of one’s talents and potentialities, esp. considered as a drive or need present in everyone.”
Probably not what Gaius had in mind.
They don’t list the adjective form used in the post of Gaius’s above - but English is an organic growing language…
I know - unnecessarily snarky, but terms like “self-actualizing or -ation” drive me crazy and I think distract from the main point.
To give him his due - “echo chamber” I think gets it right. Literally.
Both the left and the right live in their own worlds on certain issues and my point was simply that the denunciation of the “demonizing and intimidating of dissenters” as expressed in Blue Crab’s post was immediately and lazily undercut by his hyperbolic condemnation of Al Gore and seemingly anyone who might disagree by accusing them of burning rainforests, killing orangutans and enslaving people to advance their agenda. Pretty severe charges no? Educate me on these specific charges if you can - but I think they are highly overblown.
I don’t know what the coming climate changes will do, nor according to the post does the distinguished member of the UN panel (it was kind of his point) - but this kind of rhetorical and demagogic dialogue does nothing to help our understanding - and even more importantly, the ability to have a rational discussion concerning the differences of opinion.
Can we take a deep breath and realize that we’re not actually enemies on this issue?
By Gaius, Thursday, 1 November , 2007 @ 7:29 pm
That should have been self-congratulatory, you’re quite correct that it was used improperly. Comments are more spontaneous.
Seriously, read a lot of the posts under the “environmental” or “energy” categories. I rather doubt you’ll be very pleased with a lot of them - or with the people pushing many of them.
By MikeO, Friday, 2 November , 2007 @ 10:38 am
1. Self-actualizing is the present participle form of self-actualize. It is not an adjective. This form can modify nouns like “echo chamber.” As for usage, it was absolutely correctly used in the derogatory sense that the denizens of the anthropogenic global warming echo chamber are reaching or have reached the limits of their diminished intellectual potential.
Self-actualization describes a man’s purpose once all of his physical needs are fulfilled. When I first heard of it, I thought of it as surveying horizons and pushing them outward to know as much as there is to know. For too many, though, potential ends with the flat declaration that all they see is all there is to know.
Anyone willing to get snarky over grammar and usage should have a better grasp of the language.
2. The anthropogenic global warming is responsible for the burning of rainforests, the destruction of orangutans, and forcing people to remain in subsistence poverty. It does not require hyperbole or logical fallacy to follow that:
a. Anthropogenic global warming adherents presume a [faulty] causal relationship under which rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere produce global warming.
b. Human activity produces carbon dioxide and releases it into the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels results in increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
c. The call to “DO SOMETHING!” (from VP Gore and others) about global warming has produced policy changes in governments across the world that have led to green fuel initiatives. One of these changes is the establishment of government subsidy programs that create an otherwise economically unsustainable ethanol industry.
d. The drive to cash-in on government ethanol subsidies has made it profitable for producers to destroy rainforests to create farmland for corn and sugar cane, to destroy orangutan habitats to create oil palm orchards, and to plant corn and sugar cane instead of food crops that could be used to feed the hungry.
VP Gore jets around the world spouting his prophecies of anthropogenic global warming’s scary effects. He makes films about it. He wins awards. This spouting spurs the actions that lead to the dire consequences documented by Gaius at this site.
This is the LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. The blame for these consequences is correctly assigned to the people responsible for triggering the events that led to these consequences. The alternative would be for VP Gore not to use demagoguery to trigger these events. The only uncertainty is whether the rainforests were burned, the orangutans killed, and the starving left unfed for other reasons. I would please like to hear what those other reasons are.
One other thing: The body count of collectivism puts me in serious doubt of whether these consequences were, in fact, unintended.
For anyone who wants to argue that we “cannot really know” whether the chain of OBSERVED events link anthropogenic global warming hysteria to the consequences of diminished rainforests, dead orangutans, and starving people or whether it is “more complicated than that”: How about applying some of that healthy skepticism to anthropogenic global warming hysteria for once?