Lots of Questions Before I Buy Global Warming

At my office we have a guy who has bought into the Global Warming idea hook, line, and sinker. He is not rabid about it, like most liberals, but he does think I am the stereotypical conservative march-in-lockstep fool who just wants to make more money and doesn't care about the environment. This I found out when we disagreed about a local politician, "Light Bulb" Lloyd Levine, who wants to outlaw the incandescent light bulb in the state of California. My colleague thought that was a fine idea because we need to combat global warming.

I don't know whether all lefties believe that conservatives don't buy global warming on rational reasons or not. The dogma of global warming is so pervasive in our culture any more that I think they just scratch their heads and look at us like loon's for even considering questioning it. Everywhere you turn, you see statements about steps we need to take, not "in case global warming is going on," but rather "because global warming is happening and this will help stop it." It is bizarre how something so controversial is treated as fact. Here, then, are my thoughts on global warming. I'm willing to take it seriously, but here is why I don't today.

1) Who is pushing the agenda? All my life the Left has been pushing out various stories about how humankind is ruining the earth, whether it be from overpopulation; a hole in the ozone layer; global cooling; or fossil fuels and global warming. None of the problems they've described in my lifetime has ever turned out to be any kind of real threat, and all have caused people I know to take dramatic and costly actions to prevent them. In the case of overpopulation, I myself bought into it and did not consider having more than two children until after I learned to distrust the left. Overpopulation has never been a problem, it turns out. So right out of the gate, I distrust the sources.

2) Is the globe really warming at all? Most scientists seem to think "yes". Not all do. And of course many bought into the whole "global cooling / coming ice age" propaganda a decade ago. So I'm just not sure.


3) How much is it warming? I'm no scientist, but I am skeptical that scientists can accurately determine the exact average temperatures from tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, as they would need to do for accurate comparisons to today's temperatures. And the global warming propaganda has been so forcefully (and successfully) pushed onto the public that the average guy seems to think the average global temperatures will rise 10 degrees or much more in the next decade or two. Scientists I've read about, on the other hand, have speculated that it could be close to one degree over the next century.


4) Is the warming (assuming it's real) a problem? What will be the damage caused by global warming if it's real? Depending on who you listen to, the seas may rise 20 feet and wipe out the entire eastern seaboard within 20 years, or they might rise a few inches in the next century. So how real is the threat that the coastal cities of the U.S. would be submerged? With convincing evidence that this was imminent, it would obviously make sense to take steps to either protect the cities, relocate the citizens, or prevent the flooding. No one would disagree with this in light of such evidence. Today, however, this evidence is not clear.

5) Assuming the warming is real and a problem, what are the causes? If global warming is happening but will have no impact, then who really cares what causes it? In other words, up until this point if we can answer "no" to any of the first four questions, then further discussion of any kind is pointless. If, however, it is happening and is going to become a serious problem, then we obviously must ask, "how can we stop it?" And to answer that question we must know what its causes are. Is it happening because of something humankind is doing? Or is it a natural cycle the planet is going through? Global warming evangelists claim that there is irrefutable evidence that CO2 gases (you know, what comes out of your mouth whenever you exhale) are the prime cause of global warming, and that the prime source of said gases are the Industrial Revolution. Our penchant for burning fossil fuels and other unclean natural resources is putting all kinds of CO2 into the atmosphere, and this is creating a greenhouse effect that is trapping more heat close to the earth. Now there is no doubt that we have increased emissions into the atmosphere in the past hundred years. The question is, what have the effects of that been, and can they be conclusively linked to global warming (assuming it's real)?

6) Assuming we know the cause(s), is there anything we can do to stop it? If the answer is definitely "yes" to #5 (and that answer is far from clear today), then we have to turn toward planning ahead. These plans could involve adapting coastal cities to higher sea levels; moving people out of those areas; or working to reverse the warming conditions and thus head off the catastrophe.

The interesting thing to me is that, in all of this evangelism that has gone on in the past couple of years, no one is suggesting cities take steps to begin relocating people, or change building codes to keep new construction away from coastal areas, etc. All anyone ever talks about is reducing auto emissions and using less electricity or electricity from cleaner sources. Why? To me it proves the point that the agenda, here, really is to cut back on industrial pollution, and global warming is a cannard that enviromental activists are using to get that agenda pushed through. In fact, given the hypocrisy so rampant by so many of the activists (e.g. flying to events on chartered jets instead of on commercial flights), you could make the case that the real agenda is even more insidious than that (e.g. Communism).

In any event, one thing everyone seems to agree on but that no one ever talks about is that even if we were to do all the things environmental activists are proposing, tomorrow, the impact against global warming would be less than a half a degree 100 years from now. To me you might as well say "it's unstoppable."

7) Assuming we could stop it, what are the costs of doing so? Environmental activists complain about virtually every aspect of American life, from driving in cars to turning on too many lights in our homes. They seem to think we'd be better off living in 19th century conditions. Since no one believes that is reasonable, we instead are pushed to spend money on "cleaner" or more efficient items in our lives, such as electric/hybrid cars and flourescent light bulbs; and government is pushed to increase regulations in most industries (read: liberal / big government) to make heavier use of clean energy sources such as wind power, solar, hydro, etc. instead of coal and fossil fuels. Interestingly, nuclear power has always been safe and extremely effective at producing electricity cleanly, yet is still not embraced by the environmental activists who protested against it two decades ago. Why is that? Getting back to point #1, I don't trust them or their stated agenda.

Encouraging people to make use of cleaner technologies is certainly positive for the environment, and we all want that. The problem arises when people and companies weigh the costs of implementing such technologies versus the return and decide against it. Because this happens all the time, the environmental activists press for the government regulation that forces them to comply with these ideas. "Light Bulb Lloyd" Levine, for example, in his defense of the proposed law to ban incandescent light bulbs in California, was confronted with the fact that these new flourescent light bulbs have been available for years by Doug Macintyre, a radio talk show host. Levine acknowledged this and said that since we have not had the new bulbs being embraced as readily as we need to (because they cost much more than regular bulbs), we needed to make it a law. This, ladies and gentlemen, is textbook liberal philosophy.

8) Is the problem big enough, and are the costs reasonable enough, to justify spending the necessary money to stop it? The costs will obviously be huge to convert power plants; phase out regular light bulbs; phase out gasoline-driven automobiles; etc. (there are many more areas that would also need to be addressed). So would it be worth it? Who knows? Fighting the battle would without question consume vast resources of this country. We have a large and well-established economy that might be able to survive the hit. But remember that there are a large number of third-world countries that are just beginning their own industrial revolutions, and they certainly aren't going to risk the progress they are beginning to have by adopting all these environmental protections. So where would that leave us? We make all these big, expensive changes and we're still nowhere.


Summary
The bottom line is not that I am against making any of these changes. As a Christian I agree that we have a duty to be good stewards of God's handiwork, and that means taking care of our environment. However, as far as I can tell, there are still way too many questions lying out there unanswered to say so conclusively that we ought to be making such changes that are so risky for our economy and may have very little, if any, impact on the problem (if it exists and if we're the cause of it).

As far as I can tell, the only thing that 99% of scientists agree on is point #1, that the earth is, in fact, warming. Beyond that (i.e. how much, how fast), everyone argues. Given that that question is just the first in more than a half-dozen that I think we need to answer in the affirmative before we take serious action, and that I haven't been convinced of the left's answers to those questions yet, there's a long way to go before I hop onto the global warming bandwagon.