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COMMENTARY
December 3, 2005
Global cool
You have to laugh -- at the people gathered for the climate change summit in Montreal, and their running dogs in the media. They are deeply invested in the idea that a human-compounded global climate disaster, which only they can understand, can be prevented only if the world’s taxpayers surrender money and power on a planetary scale, to the care and feeding of themselves and their kind. The only thing they can’t agree on, is what this impending disaster will be. Global warming? Ice age? Inundation? Drought? Glut? Famine? Or all of the above?The chief publicity stunt this year was performed by Nature, the weekly magazine that was once the world’s most distinguished science publication (and together with Science, the U.S. weekly, probably still is). It was in the form of a big paper on Atlantic thermohaline circulation. Read: what if the Gulf Stream slows down? Eh? Eh? The authors’ conclusions were modest. The magazine’s own published news commentaries were coy. An embargoed press release was suggestive. The linked website article bordered on promiscuous. And the world’s media have now duly reported: “Mini ice age!” Or, “Ice age!” Given the timing, and a memory of the big teasing refereed papers Nature published to coincide with previous global climate conferences, it looked to this jaded old hack like a classic set-up. J’accuse! Nature’s editors knew exactly what they were stoking. So far as I can see, Nature magazine has been sliding into an ideological chant since John Maddox retired from the editorship almost a decade ago. Not that he was above a little entertaining sensationalism from time to time, nor that he should have been. He went on many scientific vendettas. But he indulged scepticism, not credulity. He had what every scientist and journalist alike most need, a sensitive "bullshit indicator" -- an ability to be irritated by voguery and self-interest, and in Maddox’s own case, a solid grasp of the proposition that the world’s leading scientific organ must resist the proliferation of junk science. Meanwhile, the Kyoto Agreement -- the stick with which the international bureaucratic left has been beating an anti-American tattoo for many years now -- has fallen to pieces. This is what makes it so necessary for its supporters to suggest the sky is falling, instead. Look out for more big climate scare stories, coming to a newspaper near you. Do not expect them to be coherent. Kyoto is now being disowned by one European state after another -- on grounds it is utterly impractical, and seriously counter-productive -- led by the little England of Tony Blair, that is about to fire up the coal generators again, in the face of looming power shortages. The politicians have hardly resolved to get out of the environmental regulation business. But neither have they suddenly decided to advance the heat death of the universe, instead. They just need to spread their bureaucracies in a way that will contribute less to the strangulation of their tax bases. They still buy into the possibility that human acts might be contributing to a global warming trend that either is or is not happening, on a time scale that might be short, medium, or long. They just realize that if something must be done about greenhouse gas emissions, there have got to be more intelligent ways to do it, than by suppressing economic activity throughout the Western world. And there are. They consist mostly of getting the bureaucracies out of the way of technological innovation. Which could mean, for instance, letting oil prices soar to levels where competing methods of generating heat, light, and motion kick in, of their own free market accord. Just in case you were curious about the big picture, carbon dioxide levels remain significantly below their average for the last 100 million years, at least on this planet. And I’ll tell you a little secret. Plants love the stuff, trees especially. The more you give them, the faster they grow. This is one of several elementary facts, the suppression of which was at the heart of the Kyoto climate scares. For were the CO2 levels rising, a solution would be, “let a million arbours bud”. That was among the U.S. suggestions, for how to actually reduce CO2 accumulations. It wasn’t acceptable to the Kyotans, who insisted on turning out the lights instead. Which is how Kyoto defeated itself. And will continue to defeat itself. These people will not give up, however. There is too much money and power to be grabbed. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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