What Global Warming Consensus?
Veeeerrrrrry interesting:
Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
More evidence for a lack of consensus on climate change. As I’ve said before, even if we were significantly affecting the climate in some way, it’s such a complex system that we have no clue what affects various proposed policies might actually have. And since such policies are typically estimated to impoverish humanity to the tune of trillions and trillions of dollars and necessarily require the initiation of force against individuals, there is absolutely no way–no way–to morally justify any action by government to ‘fix’ the climate (I should specify–the government should take no positive action; the government most certainly should take the negative action of immediately abandoning all publicly owned property and ceasing all taxation, regulation, and other coercion, which would not only do wonders to help the environment but would allow economic growth and productivity on an unimaginable scale).
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Comments
Comment from Darren
Time: July 19, 2008, 4:17 pm
Absolutely. So many people forget that government scientists make their living by ‘discovering’ things that the government needs to take action to correct. And academics get more attention for their work if it’s scary and threatening.
As for the tragedy of the commons, that only occurs with (by definition) property that is owned in common. If the government was not there to use its guns to prevent private ownership of certain ‘commons’ like bodies of water, air space, all those national and state parks, etc, all those things would be privately owned and would remain in much better condition since the owner would not want his property to lose value (not to mention the vast improvements in productivity, growth, and resource conservation that would result from market forces acting on things like water and public land).
Comment from Ben
Time: August 6, 2008, 3:46 pm
The climate has already changed. There is no point in preventing something that already happened. The point is learning to control the environment to be something that we want it to be. Farmers do not grow crops on wildland. They prepare it. We should prepare the earth to suit our needs.
Comment from Joey
Time: July 19, 2008, 3:53 pm
Fantastic find Darren!
The whole global warming scare has even got the most skeptical of audiences devoted to it. Those audiences that have no problem critically thinking about mystical claims, but don’t touch the global warming because Gov’t paid scientists says global warming is there.
I could care less about whether global warming is real or not. If it is real and due to pollution, then shouldn’t people want to get rid of the biggest polluter of all: the State? Of course that’s never even brought up in these debates. It’s like the supposed problem of the commons. If there is a POTC, then having a State around only compounds the problem rather than fixing it.
It just boggles the mind how people run around in circles with pointless shit while ignoring the root of the problem.