Yesterday, I had a post on the latest doom-and-gloom climate change report by a group called the International Climate Change Taskforce. The report basically states that we are already nearing the point of no return with respect to global warming. Armageddon is just around the corner, unless of course we radically transform our greedy and thoughtless world economy from the ground up. Today, Tim Worstall has a TechCentralStation piece taking a deeper look into this report, and suffice to say, he’s less than impressed:
“Another day, another report on global warming and climate change. (Sigh). This one is called “Meeting the Climate Challenge” from the self-appointed International Climate Change Taskforce and has been organized by The Institute for Public Policy Research (UK), The Center for American Progress (USA) and The Australia Institute (guess). Amongst the panel members we have from the US Senator Olympia Snowe; from the UK Stephen Byers MP (this is the man who when Transport Secretary deliberately bankrupted the private railroad system to replace it with a state-run system which costs three times as much and performs worse) and Jonathan Porritt (Founder of Friends of the Earth and here proudly described as Vice-President of the Socialist Environment Resources Association); and, as Scientific Adviser, Dr Rajendra K Pachauri who is, as we know, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. No, I’m sorry, there are no prizes for guessing what their view of the matter is. Everything is terrible, getting worse and we all die Tuesday week unless we abolish capitalism.”
He summarizes their approach here:
“We have decided to take an arbitrary number, 2 oC, set the baseline at the bottom of the Little Ice Age, immediately after the Maunder Minimum, mix in every scare story we can think of to scare the fecal matter out of you rubes and if you don’t listen carefully to us important people we’ll hold our breaths until we turn blue. (We might also note that no one, no one at all, thinks that human influence on the climate started in 1750 AD. Try 8,000 BC with the invention of agriculture.) This is then used to design a system whereby the US and Australia, while not part of the Kyoto mess, agree to voluntarily meet the targets (think Sen. McCain here) and so usher in the brave new world where luminaries are again allowed to ventilate. . . . . Allow me just to recapitulate this argument. A modest number of the international great and the good get together to bemoan the way the world is running to rack and ruin, identifying the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (and not coincidentally, the beginning of capitalism) as when our forefathers began to cause our problems, come up with a series of recommendations on how to reduce carbon emissions, lots of international action, international aid, international spending, international regulation, in short, lots for the international great and good to do, and in the process they take no position on nuclear energy? None at all? Not even a “Tsk, tsk, that will allow capitalism to survive?” Sheesh. Who cares what they think?”
Do yourself a favor and read it all. And see here, here and here for more recent climate change news. And above all, relax and put away your umbrellas, because the sky still seems to be intact.
