Saturday, May 3, 2008

AGW discredits Environmentalists

One thing that really hacks me off about all the people who scream about 'Climate change' and 'Warming' and how it is all our fault for being human is how it discredits the rest of the environmentalist movement. Rather like the Animal Rights lobby does.

Being a one time member of an environmental conservation group, I left when the tree and bunnyhuggers moved in and started taking over, back in the 1980's. Now environmentalism has being further sidelined by being associated with Anthropogenic climate change.

To me, being an environmentalist is about cleaning up the environment; fighting the polluters and those who would create wastelands unfit for life if left unchecked. Reporting pollution incidents, observing the turn of the seasons, recycling etc. It's also about being able to live alongside wildlife without interfering with it overmuch. Having Black tailed Deer in my front yard, with Bald Eagles, Seals and Sea Lions happily feeding less than fifty metres from where I stand tickles me to bits. Having to be on one's toes in the woods in case one of the local Bears is around, making plenty of noise so they have time to avoid you, which is what they seem to prefer. Keeping tabs on whether a pod of Orcas is passing through the Narrows. Being able to take a stroll through unmanaged woodland down to my favourite fishing spot amuses me too.

Yes I shop in Supermarkets, and I'm aware most of the food I eat isn't raised in the wild. Then again, without the intensive farming methods and technologies developed over the past hundred years, half of humanity would have already starved to death. I'm not so sure that GM crops aren't such a bad idea, but my personal jury is still out on that one. We need more data, and groups of kids in breath masks and coveralls tearing up experimental crops aren't contributing to the debate, or any serious scientific endeavour.

I also drive a gasoline engined vehicle because other technology isn't mature enough or sufficiently developed to provide a workable alternative. Mass transit just can't cut it unless you live in a tightly packed urban environment. Besides, modern internal combustion engines are much cleaner than they were. The air by roads isn't the unbreathable soup it used to be, stinking of partially burned gasoline and diesel. We have far to go, but we have come a long way.

The AGW'ers, by associating themselves with the larger environmentalist movement and their misguided assertion that the minuscule contribution of mankind to atmospheric CO2 is alone responsible for climatic shifts, make the greater environmentalist movement look like a bunch of complete fools.

They make unproven assertions that CO2 is 'bad', causes increased global temperature and should be reduced. Not so, because it has been proven that atmospheric CO2 levels rise some years after global temperatures rise, making that claim of a direct causal link between CO2 levels and temperature increase utter garbage. They make statements that the ice caps are disappearing solely because of human activity without looking at the evidence from other eras. They say Polar Bears are dying out without looking at the updated population figures for Ursus Maritimus. They point to works of fiction like Al Gore's 'An inconvenient truth' and Hollywood blockbusters like 'The Day after Tomorrow' and say that huge climate driving phenomena like the Gulf Stream will shut down because of human influenced warming without an iota of understanding of basic High School physics. They ignore key environmental factors such as photosynthesis which requires CO2 to produce oxygen. They ignore things like Vulcanism, which can pump more 'pollutants' into the atmosphere in a day than mankind can in a century. The sun, currently not as active as in past years, is not currently putting out as much energy. There are factors like the Earth's magnetosphere, which regulates how much of the sun's energy gets into the upper atmosphere; deep ocean temperatures which act as a 'negative feedback' damper on excessive warming or cooling. They talk about 'peer reviewed' scientific papers which do not consider all these factors as a planetary gestalt.

Then they have a lobby which deliberately targets public figures who disagree with them, silencing them, or worse still, forcing them out of their jobs, threatening their friends, families and business associates if they don't do what they are told and shut up. The followers of the church of Anthropogenic climate change thus by association discredit anyone who is concerned about the environment. Because they claim to be 'true' environmentalists they divert attention from truly important issues like overfishing and pollution which do directly threaten the greater environment. I say they are anti-environmentalist for this very reason. I rest my case.

Rant over.

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