No Worries About Climate Change? Horsefeathers!

My fellow blogger, Bob Evans, apparently was left slack-jawed upon reading a recent post of mine suggesting that we appeal to business interests to help save the environment. From what I gather, Bob believes that we should "protect" the environment but that the urge to "save the environment" is "silly." Also, he says, that by not ratcheting down the hype "we'll end up doing terrible damage."That terrible damage, as Bob has Viscount Monckton of Brenchley explain, includes foisting more pain and suffering on the hungry of the Third World and wrecking what remains of the free-market economy.

Here, I need to confess that I hadn't heard of the viscount. I thought that maybe Viscount Monckton was the name Groucho Marx used in At The Circus. Turns out that was J. Cheever Loophole.

What made my jaw drop, aside from finding out that Viscount Monckton didn't have brothers named Chico and Harpo, was that Bob quoted this pompous windbag. More about him (the viscount) in a moment.

What kept my jaw down was Bob's assertion that "unsubstantiated or merely anecdotal claims of massive, man-made climate change are everywhere." Yes, they are. But I'm hoping that he's not counting among those claimants Professor John Holdren, of Harvard University (and director of the Woods Hole Research Center and from 2005 to 2008 president and chair of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), who states: "Compared to natural changes over the past 10,000 years, the spike in concentrations of CO₂ & CH4 in the past 250 years is extraordinary. We know humans are responsible for the CO₂ spike because fossil CO₂ lacks carbon-14, and the drop in atmospheric C-14 from the fossil-CO₂ additions is measurable." That's not exactly an off-the-cuff unsubstantiated claim.

Neither is a statement from American Physical Society:

Ironically, Viscount Monckton wraps himself in the mantle of credibility by stating that the APS published his article mocking climate change and that his paper was peer-reviewed. His peers at the APS say it was not. There are other organizations, as well, that come to the same conclusions: that the climate is changing due to human industrial activity and that inaction will lead to devastating consequences. Presumably, Bob is not counting as making unsubstantiated or anecdotal claims reports from the Union of Concerned Scientists, The American Meteorological Society (AMS), Royal Meteorological Society (U.K.), and the World Meteorological Organization.

Later in his strawman, Bob goes to great lengths to argue that businesses can make a positive impact on the environment and make a profit at the same time. It was a familiar argument to me--familiar because I've been saying the same thing all along, most recently in a Nov. 3 entry about Kohl's Department Stores. I also cited Wal-Mart's use of carbon metrics in my previous two blogs. The citations, in case I wasn't clear, were meant to be affirming, not damning, of Wal-Mart.

On the subject of cap-and-trade programs, which seem to be one of the central veins running through the viscount's apoplectic rantings: I'm no big fan, either. I think cap-and-trades are vulnerable to abuse. Also, as I've stated in previous blogs, I find a reliance on carbon offsetting as off-putting. A recently published paper from Professor Barry G. Rabe, University of Michigan, is worth a read on the problems with cap-and-trade.

Lastly, what my colleague, Bob, and the viscount want to do is put into one bucket all those who believe that climate change is real and that human activity is--at least partly--to blame. Collectively, they say, this bucketful will heap more suffering on the hungry of the Third World. In truth, there's a great diversity of opinions among environmentalists. Indeed, Bob, counts himself among them. Personally, I have serious issues with a reliance on biofuels, carbon trading, and other matters. And I've been to the Third World and held suffering, hungry children amid the smoke of wood-burning fires that are thick enough to choke a horse (if one could be found)--children who would be better off having a modern coal-burning plant in town.

What I'm saying is that it's possible to be swayed by the arguments that suggest climate change is real and take countermeasures without throwing the baby out with the bathwater (regardless of either's mercury content). I think a problem with environmental movements in the past--get ready to drop that jaw--is that proponents were looking for perfect solutions.