Global Warming: Alternative Views

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Sticky T, but yes, it does, because it frames the issue in the wrong fashion. It is political, for instance citing 500 scientists who doubt one or more claims from global warming alarmists is basically taking the results and/or publicly stated opinions on a few specific issues and conflating it to a rejection of anthropogenic global warming. That piece was strongly attacked by some on the list, it is distortion.

Solutions are not found by ad hominem attacks be it these or the pernicious term GW denier. All that is a stupid distraction and it allows bad policy to be enacted (e.g. biofuel subsidies, selective and punitive emission caps and failure to entertain environmental engineering projects).

The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level. - Al Gore, in a statement that I think is marginally less annoying than that website; it is a question of balancing environmental protections, human development and economics that should be informed by apolitical scientific facts, guided by the practical limitations and in a manner that satisfies the economic cost-benefit. Put self interested emitters in one side and deep green misanthropes on the other; any consensual solutions will only be found in between.
 
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"because it frames the issue in the wrong fashion. It is political, for instance citing 500 scientists who doubt one or more claims from global warming alarmists is basically taking the results and/or publicly stated opinions on a few specific issues and conflating it to a rejection of anthropogenic global warming. That piece was strongly attacked by some on the list, it is distortion."


What is the distortion?

"It frames the issue in a wrong fashion."

What does that mean?

Not in lock step with Al Gore???
 
the iron horse said:
"because it frames the issue in the wrong fashion. It is political, for instance citing 500 scientists who doubt one or more claims from global warming alarmists is basically taking the results and/or publicly stated opinions on a few specific issues and conflating it to a rejection of anthropogenic global warming. That piece was strongly attacked by some on the list, it is distortion."


What is the distortion?

"It frames the issue in a wrong fashion."

What does that mean?

Not in lock step with Al Gore???
I mean that it makes it look like 500 climate scientists think that anthropogenic global warming isn't happening even though they may think it is the case based on the evidence.
 
Heres a radical alternative view
Peak Oil is a “distraction” and global warming? Well, global warming will take care of itself.

It’s the bottom line, stupid.

Amory Lovins makes these arguments, (without actually calling you stupid, and with a breathtaking whirlwind of statistics that he has — miraculously — cached in his brain) in the course of explaining why the energy source of the future is clean and limitless.

Because it’s no energy at all.

Lovins, the winner of the 2007 Leadership Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics and the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, calls it “radical efficiency.” He’s used it to transform Wal-Mart from an environmental villain into a pioneering green innovator, improving its bottom line substantially in the process. He’s applied it to the U.S. military to save lives on convoy lines (a very important bottom line), since the safest way to transport fuel in a war zone is to eliminate the need to transport all that fuel. Lovins and the team at the Rocky Mountain Institute have applied radical efficiency to help redesign more than $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors.

Here’s the trick of radical efficiency: Math.

“Efficiency,” Lovins told an audience at Popular Mechanics’ Breakthrough Conference today at the Hearst Tower in New York City, “is cheaper than fuel.”

Saved money is earned money, which is why Lovins works with corporations to improve their bottom lines by radically improving energy efficiency with simple, and very available, technology and techniques. Once one company has converted, others follow.

In the case of Wal-Mart, the largest corporation in the world’s “demand pull” is inspiring its suppliers to improve their energy efficiency — by virtue of that age-old motivation, the economic survival instinct. In the case of microchip manufacturers, when one learns to make a chip more cheaply by saving energy in production, the others must follow.

Which is why peak oil doesn’t matter. If oil runs out next year, or in the next decade, that will matter less than the rise of competitive sources of energy in the marketplace. Petroleum will go the way of whale oil, which in 1850 was the world’s fifth largest industry, Lovins said. That powerful industry lasted precisely until coal-based oils provided a cheaper alternative to the common lighting fuel. You don’t hear much about whale oil anymore.

“Whalers were astounded,” Lovins said, “when they ran out of customers before they ran out of whales.”

He sees the same irrelevance in global warming, at least as a catalyst to inspire a change in the fuels burned by the world’s economic engine. He sees efforts to persuade federal governments and international bodies to set limits on carbon dioxide as misguided. China, currently the world’s top polluter of greenhouse gases, will persuade itself to go green because it makes economic sense, and provides a competitive advantage, he said.

Unless, that is, U.S. business, with a little help from Lovins, does first.

“Corporations rule the world,” Lovins said. “How would you have them do it?”
http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/10/10/why-global-warming-and-peak-oil-are-irrelevant/7706/

Saving the world without eco-collectivism :up:
 
This looks like one of those sites for people who've already formed an opinion, and who are looking for something to back it up with.
 
Irvine511 said:
it amazes me the lengths to which people go in order to absolve themselves from the guilt of driving SUVs.
To require absolution one needs to feel guilt; which is the main reason for people to tune out the green left.
 
Here’s the trick of radical efficiency: Math.

Well fuckity. I'm screwed then. :sad:

:wink:


I figure even if you don't believe in global warming you have to be a fool not to realise all the polluting humans do isn't great for anything, including us, so finding better (less destructive, less polluting) ways of doing things is positive.
 
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from your listed article
We must remember that it is the Sun that determines our seasons, and thusly has a greater impact upon the climate than we could ever even try to achieve.
Ignoring that it is the tilt of the Earths axis that causes seasonality on Earth. This misunderstanding with misplaced justification from papers dealing with other planets with different and unknown dynamics really makes that article useless (or worse than useless in some ways). But what can you expect when
Andrew Marshall is a 19 year old political science student at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia (BC).
I wonder what geoscience and climate science units are part of the degree his is yet to complete.

I agree with the attitude towards the green movement, but stupidity is no substitute for evidence based scepticism.
 
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