THE GREENIE NONSENSE AGAIN

PID has a discussion of vested interests and global warming. The global warming mania has in my view been unparallelled in the Western world for the way it has politicized and corrupted what were once regarded as "hard" sciences. The public cannot rely on any authority for truth and objectivity these days. Perhaps that's a good thing. Skepticism of authority made the Protestant Reformation, after all.

The situation has got so bad that the White House is now having to insist that normal scientific criteria be applied to politically-relevant scientific judgments -- and the scientists are resisting! They are so politicized that they are rejecting science itself!

The first global warming scare: "A marked climate change has taken place in a number of areas around the polar circle" claims a publication by The Royal Society (UK). "In the last two years more than two thousand square miles of ice-sheet covering the Greenland Sea have completely disappeared between latitudes 74 and 80 degrees north." The big freeze, which for centuries had transformed the region into an impenetrable shield of ice, clearly seems to have lost out to warmer temperatures in no time at all. Even in central Europe the report records alarming signs of a sudden warming of the climate: All rivers whose source lies in the high mountains have flooded vast areas because of the meltwater from snowfields and glaciers." The statements just quoted above were written on 20 November 1817. See also point 3 here

One of the biggest dangers to endangered species is the U.S. Endangered Species Act -- which in theory protects endangered species but which in fact discourages conservation. Yet another example of government coercion being counterproductive.

Wallace of Big Gold Dog is a Texas oilman and he has emailed me about geologist Demming's claim that there are still big oil reserves in the ground. He makes the point that while Demming is right and there is a lot of oil still in the ground, recovering it will gradually get more costly. He is right. Recovery costs are clearly the ONLY limiting factor on oil production -- but oil-derived motor fuel is still about half the price of industrial alcohol (the major alternative motor-fuel) so we are a fair way from that ceiling. Note that, because of high taxes, much of the world already pays heaps more for their fuel than Americans do so even a big rise in prices could be absorbed with little problem over time.

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