Big Sky Cairn

When I recently went to the library to do some research into the climate fears of past decades, I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. Part of me was looking for historic validation of my skepticism. What I found - and poorly transcribed for you - fit the bill. I precedent. It wasn’t proof against catastrophic man-made global climate change - I don’t think such proof can exist for an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Instead, it was a comfort-zone for healthy skepticism rooted in history. If warnings of doom are not unique to this “crisis” - and past warnings of doom proved exaggerated - there is justification for doubt.

In a recent op-ed, Bozeman Senator Joe Balyeat put it much better than I did.

Those who are slow to embrace global warming doomsayers aren’t ignorant, they’re just skeptical. Consider my personal history. In the mid-1970s, in the course of a two-and-a-half-year, straight-A sprint through college, one class assignment was to write a paper and speech on Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb.” At the time, my religious, short-term, pessimistic world view fit in nicely with Ehrlich’s stark prediction of global calamity due to overpopulation. So I easily garnered an “A” for the paper, adding true-believer devotion to such Ehrlich predictions as these: England will not exist in the year 2000. Sixty-five million Americans will starve to death in the 1980s. By 1999 America’s population will drop to 22.6 million. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death, and Earth’s 5 billion population will starve back to 2 billion by 2025.

All of these predictions, of course, proved embarrassingly false, and I now live with a personal skepticism grounded in my own prior discredited beliefs.

I’ve since written two books documenting the errors of religious cult doomsday-ism. While most political liberals would applaud my efforts to expose the excesses of religious doomsayers, these same people excoriate my “stupidity” when I argue that similar healthy skepticism should also be applied to secular doomsayers; particularly when secular doomsayers can eventually perhaps add the power of intrusive government coercion to their social agenda.

If I’m skeptical even with respect to my own personal decisions, imagine how much more skeptical I am as a public official, when making decisions binding not just me, not just all my fellow Montanans, but future generations of Montanans as well. Before I subject them to massive new regulatory burdens and costly new government “solutions,” excuse me for being a little bit slow to drink the “global warming” Koolaid.

To those who’ve already imbibed the apocalyptic arguments, my question is this: What is your agenda, condescension or consensus? You can’t have both. If your goal is merely to have a partisan political hammer to pound against me, then keep pounding on the “global warming” theory. But if you truly want bipartisan cooperation to achieve a better future for us and our descendents, let me suggest an alternative message: sustainable energy use.

Some will challenge the comparisons between religion and science. Science, they will argue, operates on a different level from religion - to which I respond the frailty in either system is the human application. To them, I pose this question: what makes this crisis different from fears of an eminent ice age or Malthus-level overpopulation? Science has always given us catastrophic scenarios of doom - and to date, none have been true. What makes this one any different?

Kudos to Balyeat for having the guts to take a stand.

Some fun with numbers while I was putting together the data for Democrat tax increases. While looking for GDP numbers I came across the Department of Energy’s EIA Carbon Dioxide database which had some neat stuff.

While the US produces more CO2 than most, our CO2 emissions per $1000 USD are about average really. It is interesting to track the data over a period of time. The US in 1980 had a ration of .92 tons per/1,000 dollars, now we are at .54. It has been a slow steady decline, which is a good thing. China on the other hand has dipped as low as .52 tons/1000 dollars in 2002 and is now up to .63

Now a reason why someone other than me might care about these numbers, is that if we are going to talk energy sustainability it makes more sense to look at how energy efficient a country’s economy is rather than gross emissions. Of course larger, more productive economies are going to emit more CO2. Anyway, just a fun little speadsheet I found.

So let me see if I get this right Brad. What you’re saying is that the United States produced proportionally equal - or even less - CO2 in comparison to we produce?

In other words, the solution that would be best for the planet would be for the U.S. to redouble its productive output at the expense of China and other developing nations thereby transplanting high CO2 emission rates with low ones.

In other words, handicapping the American economy is actually counterproductive to global CO2 emissions?

Wow.

Something like that. I would say handicapping the largest economy that has steadily become more CO2 efficient for 20 years would be kinda counterproductive.

What is sort of funny and timely to me is Obama comments about 72 degree homes and SUVs. The US has been leading on reforming its energy economy long before Obama came along to tell us we are no more than huddled, ignorant masses clinging to guns with a steady handy on the thermostat.

I thought Joe really laid it out, personally, on this op-ed, especially with his admitting the errors of the “late great planet earth” and other apocalyptic visions he once bought off on.

And he laid out a rational reason to go forward with any economically viable plans for alternative and sustainable energy policies.

Really, it was an excellent article.

You may find this interesting as well..

http://www.jamesphogan.com/comments/index.php?id=21

Joe’s in good company. Here’s a list of scientists who believe that global warming is not caused anthropogenically.

Scientists with the last name starting with the letter “A”.

http://www.sondrak.com/index.php/weblog/tonights_kisp_fun_facts6/

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Nice website!!

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