Just another environmental issue?

Posted on 12 March 2012 by Scottish-Sceptic

I was reading the global warming news. Something had changed. There was no longer the string of academic papers being cited as evidence for … There was the usual rhetoric from this or that concerned person.
Then it struck me. It was just another environmental issue. This week those reporting on it will be going on about Global Warming, the next it will be how we should all be vegetarians, the next it will be nuclear … or the latest wind farm.
It’s just another topic. Something to fill in between day 2 and day 4 of the environmental week.
No doubt it will come back as the next heatwave hits, but realistically I think Gleick was the final kick in the goolies.
I’m not sure there are any real warmists left outwith the immediate climategate team. Not died in the wool, never discuss anything else, we are all doomed because this is the most important issue, blah blah, blah.
Global warming is just another environmental issue.
And, when it is relegated to its rightful place, as just another environmental issue. I wonder whether I shouldn’t also say that as just another environmental issue, I do wonder what we ought to be doing about the 1C warming we expect.
For a start, what would 1C warming do? We’ve not seen any tangible effects. But we’d expect something sometime. What are we most likely to see? Do we just live with it or do we have to do anything?
Obviously I’m not suggesting asking any of the scamsters, nor am I for a minute suggesting that government are already spending far too much on this.
… but there will come a point when I will have to confront the question: “Is it just another environmental concern”? Is it just something we can dismiss completely?
Obviously, it was not right to waste the trillions that was being syphoned off to the scamsters, obviously we’ve got a long way before public policy matches the current low priority being given it even by environmentalists. But neither is it right to do absolutely nothing. There are things like energy saving that would always seem a good idea. Perhaps there is even a case for some wind?

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4 Responses to Just another environmental issue?

  1. Garry says:
    13 March 2012 at 14:20

    “But neither is it right to do absolutely nothing. There are things like energy saving that would always seem a good idea. ”
    In the 50+ plus years I’ve been alive, I have seen exactly and precisely zero effect from the asserted ~1C increase in global temperature (and even that is a dubious number).
    Nothing, nada, zero.
    Saving energy has exactly the same status as saving on dish soap or jellybeans: too much is simply too much. But I would never ever think that my use of dish soap or jellybeans in any way deprives “future generations” of those consumables. Such thinking is gravely neurotic.
    I will say that one thing we can do in Scotland and America and everywhere is to demand that our governments immediately remove the useless environmental blight of windmills.

  2. Scottish Sceptic says:
    13 March 2012 at 15:32

    As a general principle we shouldn’t be wasteful is probably going to be right most of the time.
    But wind energy is wasteful. It costs more than conventional, so it is clearly wasteful.
    And yes. Not a nelly, nothing has been seen of the 1C increase … perhaps Arctic Ice, but even that is questionable.
    But just because the idiots who have been selling this rubbish are the most utterly deplorable bunch of fraudsters, that doesn’t mean that a 1C rise won’t have some effect. It may be good, it may be bad. It may be both good and bad in different areas or to different groups of people.
    But the fact that those so far involved have been the biggest liars cheaters, fraudsters involved in every kind of deception possible, is all the more reason we need to get some decent people to have a look at this. It could be good, it could be bad, I just think we shouldn’t act like ostriches, instead we should try and find out.

  3. TinyCO2 says:
    13 March 2012 at 20:36

    One of my favourite childhood programmes was Tomorrow’s World and what occurs to me is that progress is rarely planned. We can’t predict what technologies we’ll have in the future because we can’t predict eureka moments. We can’t foresee human fads and fashions either so we’re struggling to fill in the variables in a chaotic model… much like climate.
    Imagine a new construction material that is stronger than steel, lighter than balsa wood and can be cold moulded into any shape. Great vats of genetically modified spider silk combined with secret ingredient X revolutionise every industry on the planet from clothing to super tankers. Don’t build your house, pump it into a mould and 4 hours later it’s not just weather proof it’s bomb proof. Light as a feather it requires almost no foundations and when the floods come just cut the moorings and she’ll float to safety! Concrete gone. Steel gone. Cotton and nylon gone. Vehicles use a fraction of the energy. Combined with Buckminsterfullerene technology superconductors and nuclear fusion the World’s energy problems were solved overnight.
    Or maybe we’ll all have had computer chips installed and, bored with real life, we all move into a fantasy world called the Paytrix. The Paytrix can support a large numbers of humans without masses of food, energy or space. All well know credit cards accepted.
    Or maybe a mutated H5N1 will have wiped out 85% of the World’s population and global cooling schemes will have accidentally pushed us into the next ice age.
    When I worry about the future, I am most concerned about stagnation. Innovation has brought us a long way from many of the hazards that have blighted human existence. It has been driven by adversity and more recently consumerism. Environmentalists talk about having less, doing less, reverting to a simpler time. To do what? Without a fundamental change in human nature most people are ill equipped to lead a life of gentle meditation, fed by a few pulses and the joy of singing and story telling. We crave excitement, venal pleasures, challenges and stuff. Would Green austerity offer us any of that? Where will the new technologies come from in a make do and mend culture? Communism failed for a good reason.
    There was a recent ‘paper’ theorising that aliens will wipe us out because we’ve not looked after our planet but if there is life out there then habitable planets will be ten a penny. Lower life forms would be hardly worth documenting. But intelligent life? Surely that is the most interesting and outstanding thing to discover on a planet. Mankind isn’t special because we are made in God’s likeness but because we are capable of being interesting. If we stop inventing we revert to being just another animal with a predictable routine. Environmentalists don’t want us to be special and many see us as a nasty but treatable disease. I really can’t let them win or Gaia would lose her uniqueness.
    Mankind is a bit greedy and a bit careless but we’re doing ok. And if we accidentally wipe out most life including humans? Well Gaia will be ok. She’ll start again with insects or mice and in the blink of geological time there will be bio diversity by the truck load.
    So bring on a temperature rise. It will give mankind another chance to be creative.

  4. stefanthedenier says:
    15 March 2012 at 05:01

    Scotty, for wind needs baked beans. The only way to save the planet is: in overpopulated nations, ladies to keep their legs crossed. Cheers!

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