Climate change is happening.
Of course it is. When was it ever not so?
It will be cooling at times and warming at others but for around 85% of all the time humans have been around we have lived in glacial conditions. Interglacials are the exceptions and not the rule. Yet humans have thrived. Not just by surviving the glacial times but by continuing to develop even during the glacials, Wasting time and energy and vast sums of money on trying to curb the emissions of carbon dioxide has been a blight on development for the last 3 decades. Just in Europe it has come at the expense of around 15 million jobs.
It essentially panders to the political and religious idea that “human development is inherently bad”. In that sense the “Green Movement” and the subsequent growth of enviro-fascism have taken the place of Marxist ideology. They have filled the vacuum left behind as the fall of Communism has spread. They didn’t begin that way. As local movements to clean up air and water and our immediate environments they performed a timely, neccessary and very useful function. But then they became ambitious. Local movements were hijacked by the marxists without a home. Former marxists in non-Communist countries needed a cause. They remained disaffected and had to find a new home. They now had to go Global. Local causes which were the strength of environmentalism were replaced by Global causes. Global causes were manufactured by inventing impending global catastrophes. All the disaster scenarios had to have growth and development (and by inference – capitalism) as the culprit. Not in Russia or China or other former Communist countries where they were too busy becoming entrepreneurs. And so the carbon dioxide myth took hold and and fossil fuels became the whipping boy.
This interglacial will end.
Fossil fuels and their continued and increased use (and there is enough gas for at least 1000 years) will be critical for human development as and when the next glacial comes along. It is only by adapting to whatever climate change occurs – not by trying to stop climate change – that the human condition will continue to improve.
It is better to build a roof than to try and stop the rain or the sunshine. But the global warming hierarchy will continue their posturing and their futile dances to try and control the climate.
Montreal Gazette:
Adapting to – not just fighting – climate change is taking the heat out of global warming talk
Efforts to curb global warming have quietly shifted as greenhouse gases inexorably rise.
The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It’s becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet’s wild weather.
It was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement last week of an ambitious plan to stave off New York City’s rising seas with flood gates, levees and more that brought this transition into full focus.
After years of losing the fight against rising global emissions of heat-trapping gases, governments around the world are emphasizing what a U.N. Foundation scientific report calls “managing the unavoidable.”
It’s called adaptation and it’s about as sexy but as necessary as insurance, experts say.
It’s also a message that once was taboo among climate activists such as former Vice-President Al Gore. ……
…. Now officials are merging efforts by emergency managers to prepare for natural disasters with those of officials focused on climate change. That greatly lessens the political debate about human-caused global warming, said University of Colorado science and disaster policy professor Roger Pielke Jr.
It also makes the issue more local than national or international.
“If you keep the discussion focused on impacts … I think it’s pretty easy to get people from all political persuasions,” said Pielke, who often has clashed with environmentalists over global warming. “It’s insurance. The good news is that we know insurance is going to pay off again.” …..
And even from New Zealand comes a commentary that when “even the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is no longer beating the drum. That’s when you know the cause is dead”.
National Business Review:
Global warming ends with a whimper
It’s a good news column today: the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has seriously down-rated the worry about global warming. That’s one less thing that need make us miserable.
The down rating is huge. Green co-leader Russel Norman in his speech to this month’s annual conference never once mentioned global warming. He busied himself instead taking potshots at John Key and the late Sir Robert Muldoon.
The Green Party did have a climate change conference the following week but Mr Norman’s keynote speech lacked any of the usual end-of-world prophecy and knee-jerk call to de-industrialise. His concern was the pedestrian one that New Zealand is failing to meet its international obligations.
There was no hellfire and no brimstone.
When Jeanette Fitzsimons was co-leader global warming was the greatest-ever threat to the planet. It dwarfed all other environmental worries. It was the granddaddy of them all. Global warming threatened to destroy the biosphere and Ms Fitzsimons was forever calling an urgent and radical reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. ……
….. But the shift on global warming with the Greens is significant. We are safe in concluding that they no longer regard global warming as the greatest threat to the planet. It would, I think, merit a mention in a leader’s annual speech to the Greens if it were. A fast-approaching environmental armageddon would be top of mind, not the constitutionality of parliamentary legislation, and not Peter Dunne’s emails.
So, hallelujah. The polar bears can continue to float about on their ice floes, millions of environmental refugees won’t wash up on our shores, malaria won’t be making an unwanted appearance in New Zealand any time soon, our beachfront properties are safe and there is no need to feel guilty driving past that bus stop.
It was always going to end with a whimper, not a bang. The scare was so big, so dominating, so accepted, that it could not be sustained. Unless, of course, it was true. It’s now not possible to maintain the huff and puff that the media and politics need to keep the headlines running. …..
……. They have been the first to shut up about it. The argument is no longer that global warming has “paused” for 17 years but rather that even the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is no longer beating the drum. That’s when you know the cause is dead.
After all, Mr Norman was still backing Marxism-Leninism long after Mikhail Gorbachev had given up on it.
The k2p blog 