This week's Ask a Scienceblogger Question involves an article in The National Review Online that was clearly written by a complete bloody moron. The question is this:
I read this article in the NRO, and the author actually made some interesting arguments. 'Basically,' he said, 'I am questioning the premise that [global warming] is a problem rather than an opportunity.' Does he have a point?
The author of the paper actually does have a point, but not much of one, and it does not justify his line of argument.
If the point that the author is trying to make is that global warming can create opportunities, he is correct. Global warming will certainly create opportunities - for some - and there will be people - a very, very few - who do very, very well for themselves as a result. That is simply because there is absolutely no situation that is so awful that nobody can figure out how to profit from it. That's simply human nature. When hurricane season is bad, Home Depot's profits go up - after all, people need to buy the materials to board up their houses. Did someone just commit a tripple axe murder on your front porch? No problem. Call Crime Scene Cleaners, and the mess will be taken care of.
The issue with global warming is not (or at least should not be) whether some people will be able to turn a profit from the mess. It should be whether it will be a good thing for most of the people on the planet. The answer there is a fairly clear-cut "no."
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Apart from your belief in your ability to spot a Moron when you see one have you actually got any reasoned arguments against the proposition. Or is the clear-cut "no" a Biblical truth that no one shall dare question?
English fella, what the hell? Global Warming will displace nearly a billion people due to rising water levels. As far as I know, that is bad. I don't give a shit if some idiot makes a fortune from sandbags.
Asking if global warming could possibly be good is a revealing question. It's like asking a Christian something like "did Mary climax when God impregnated her with Jesus?" The response reveals something about the emotional (as opposed to rational) nature of the beliefs that are held. To suggest that an environmental change brought about by mankind might be "good" is as much a blasphemy to ideological greens as suggesting something naughty about the immaculate conception might be to a devout Christian. To ideological greens, manmade means destructive and evil a priori.
If you ask the question and the response is rational-- even a rational "no"-- then you know you're dealing with a member of the "reality based community." If you ask the question and get ad hominem, get accused of being a "right winger," a "corporate shill," etc., you know you're dealing with someone whose beliefs are more religious than rational.
Personally I doubt that global warming would be good for us. I can't see that much good for humanity that could come from a shutdown of the gulf stream, desertification of the rain forest, or rising sea levels. But it doesn't make you a "bloody moron" to ask the question. To ask whether the effect of a pending change will be positive or negative is a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
I used to be a strong global warming skeptic. I'm not really anymore-- mostly as a result of studying things like complex systems simulation and understanding how such things actually work. But the main reason I was a skeptic for so long is that I could not seperate the science from the green religious pumping that the idea receives. Thus, I saw global warming as being a green equivalent of intelligent design apologetics-- a way to attempt to use science to push a religious narrative. Religious apologetics hits one of my "instant dismissal buttons."
To me, there are two seperate things. There is the rational environmental movement, which is basically a hygeine movement. We industrialized, which greatly increased our standard of living and greatly enhanced our knowledge of the universe. This was good. But in doing so we made lots of nasty wastes and created lots of harmful externalities. The way humans deal with such issues is to organize hygeine/reform movements that try to get people to clean up their act. This was done, and it's worked to some extent. Our air and water is now cleaner... but there's still more to be done. The problem certainly isn't solved yet.
This was all totally reasonable and I fully support it. Unfortunately, as history has demonstrated, hygeine movements tend to take on a life and mythology of their own and turn into religions.
The green religion is basically a secular version of the Judeo-Christian myth of the fall, original sin, and redemption. The original sin seems to be industrialization, which I call the "fall from thermodynamic grace." (The idea being that humanity was somehow "in balance" prior to this... whatever that means.) The Earth is anthropomorphized into some kind of feminine version of the angry God Jehovah, and she's going to punish us for our sin unless we redeem ourselves. How do we redeem ourselves? Well, in addition to giving up many of the benefits of industrialization, apparently spending 4X as much for food farmed with pre-1950s farming methods is going to somehow help... or something. I'm not really sure.
The green religion has about as much to do with real sustainability and solving real environmental problems as Focus on the Family has to do with... you know... helping actual real families with real problems that families face.
Adam, it's not the question that makes him a moron, it's his answer: Global warming is great. Granted, maybe it isn't really happening, and if it is there are strong reasons to doubt that humans have anything to do with it. But if the world is warming, I say "bravo."