Blatant Reality

So I just got back from seeing the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and I was far from impressed. In fact, I was downright disappointed. I mean, I thought it would be a better choice than “Role Models” but now I feel that I might have been wrong.

Anyways, before I get into the main point of the article, let me explain the movie a bit to you. The whole premise of this flick is that aliens have come to earth to exterminate the human race in order to save the place from us. So apart from being a massively environmental propaganda piece, it also took the time to take jabs at the Iraq war and the US military in general (no pun intended). In fact, the only bright spot in the whole movie was the fact that Keanu Reeves got a role where his emotionless acting style was actually put to good use.

Alright, so before I explain the economic lessons we may be able to learn from this horrible movie, let me set up the scene. At about halfway through the movie, the alien (Keanu Reeves) ends up at a Nobel Prize winner’s house and they are discussing the impending doom of the human race. Reeves’ character mentions that his own race had to band together in order to save their planet when it was on the brink of destruction. To this, the Nobel Prize winner replies that the human race should have the same right to change and save their planet (not from the aliens, mind you, but from ourselves). If the aliens destroy the human race, they will never have the chance to excel and save themselves.

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing but the basic gist of this whole conversation is that the most innovation, change, and action take place when a civilization is on the brink of destruction (Pop Culture Reference: This is why people like Al Gore are saying we only have five years to fix things).

So what’s the economic lesson? Think about it this way. If we look at the recent mortgage crisis, and the economy as the whole, one could compare it to the earth in the movie: there’s been some bad decisions made that have been detrimental to its health so something needs to be done. Obviously, the stock market tumble and business bankruptcies are comparable to the tipping point the aliens mention in the movie: choices need to be made now that will affect how things play out in the end.

Now the next comparison is where I will probably get some people mad at me. I think that the US Federal Government is like the aliens in the movie. These aliens come to earth wanting to save it just like the federal government did with its bailouts. And just like the aliens want to destroy the human race in an effort to save the world, the government bailouts greatly damaged our country’s free market and principles.

So instead of letting the threat of impending financial disaster beget innovation and change that would ultimately be beneficial, the government, just like the aliens in the movie, wanted a quick fix to the problem. By bailing out the market, the government has removed any need for businesses to innovate and change in order to stay alive. Instead, all will be able to continue their old (failing) practices which will most likely lead to market stagnation (Case in point: Just watch and see how much the Big Three actually change).

Now does Neo… err…I mean Keanu Reeves’ character decide to save the human race or just the world? Well this isn’t a spoiler blog so I guess you will just have to suffer through the movie to find out. However, I will say that, in relationship with my elaborate comparison above, I did like his choice a lot better than the US government’s.

Today, the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee Minority (aka Republicans) posted a full list of 650 International Scientists who have spoken out against the Man-Made Global Warming Theory. I didn’t take the time to go through and read about every single scientist in the 231 page report but I did skim through it and recognized several names.

For those of you who may be wondering why this is such a big deal, proponents of anthropological global warming state that there is a “consensus” of scientists out there. This list seems to shatter the whole “consensus” theory unless by “consensus” they mean that except the many dissenting scientist, all scientists agree that global warming is caused by man. If that is their definition of “consensus” then they are correct. However, whenever I have seen the whole consensus argument used, it seems like they mean that there is no legitimate dissenters among us “deniers.” Obviously, from the extensive list above, they are wrong.

Oh and one other thing, science isn’t ruled by consensus. Remember Copernicus?  Galileo? Yea, they were considered “deniers” in their own time.

Well it looks like the environmentalists have decided to steal some Christmas joy by denouncing the evils of energy-guzzling video game consoles. The console that makes it to the top of the ‘Naughty’ list is PS3 so don’t expect any gaia-fearing environmentalists to get one of those for their kids.
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This past Thursday, October 23, 2008, Dr. James Hansen came to the University of South Carolina to speak on his favorite topic, Man Made Global Warming. This event was sponsored by USC’s School of the Environment and is part of a series of talks on the environment and climate.

As one might expect, the place was packed with Hansen fans and the questions after the initial speech were very friendly towards his position. I was tempted to ask a question but that would have involved me not getting a videotaped response which wouldn’t have been worth it..

The goal of this article is not to be a complete rebuttal to his speech but instead to point out some flaws I found in his argument. If you wish to watch the whole 45 minute long speech, it can be viewed here:

James Hansen Speech Part 1
James Hansen Speech Part 2
James Hansen Speech Part 3
James Hansen Speech Part 4
James Hansen Speech Part 5

Planet Temperature for the Past 65 Million Years

Dr. Hansen claims that that this drastic drop in temperature experienced around 50 million years ago was due to the drop in CO2 at the same time. However, there is another theory out there that would explain the drop in temperature. This theory, proposed by Nir Shaviv, takes into account the position of our planet in relation to the rest of the galaxy. Take a look:

“About 60 million years ago, the Sun with the Earth in company encountered that region, which was populated then as it is now by bright, short-lived stars. The Solar System came from the far side of the bright arm, as we see the Milky Way now. It emerged on the near side about 30 million years ago. There, the number of exploding stars was at a peak, and so was the intensity of cosmic rays generated by them.

 

“Shaviv adopted the Danish findings about the climatic effect of cosmic rays, and their capacity to chill the world by increasing the low cloud cover. In this interpretation, global temperatures fell between 60 and 30 million years ago and Antarctica acquired its ice sheet. As the Sagittarrius-Carina Arm receded, the cooling hesitated, and it would have reversed if the wanderers through the Galaxy had not run into an extra fragment of concentrated bright stars called the Orion Arm.

 

“Published in 2002, Shaviv’s analysis accounted not only for the most recent hothouse-to-icehouse transition but altogether for four major chilling events since animals first became conspicuous on the planet, a little over 500 million years ago.” (Svensmark, 136).

Much of the historical warming and cooling stated by Hansen in this section of his speech could be explained by this cosmic rays theory.

You can read a little bit more on the cosmic ray theory here or check out Henrik Svensmark’s book The Chilling Stars.

Arctic Summer Sea Ice

The problem that I have about this is that it leaves the viewer with the idea that there is less and less ice without stating the fact that even though more and more is melting in the summer, the past winter we are getting all of it come back. In fact, because of extremely cold temperatures last winter, the sea ice has expanded and gotten thicker in some areas.

Also, these measurements Hansen cites only go from 1979 to the present, a woefully short amount of time to declare that the sea ice is getting dangerously low in a historic perspective. Just look at historical accounts of early to mid 1900s captains navigating ice free northern waters.

Also, during his whole spiel on the arctic ice, he doesn’t really address Antarctica. The reason this is important is that Antarctica ice, as a whole, is growing and has grown roughly 5mm/year (Solomon, 41). In fact, during this period of warming, Antarctica is acting as a water sink that is actually contributing to lowering the sea level an estimated .08mm/year (Solomon, 41).

He didn’t even bother to acknowledge this fact or address this issue even though us “skeptics” often use this argument.

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Today Philip Stott, who I just discovered the other day, wrote about the fracturing that can be seen in the Green Church and compares it to the current state of the Protestant “church”. As I am sure anyone who has taken European history is aware, the Protestant church has broken off into many and multiple sects.

For the Protestants, this really isn’t a problem since there isn’t a need to have strength in numbers in order to change some political agenda. For the Green Church however, every fracture causes more and more dillution to their overall ‘green’ message.

According to Stott, there are currently eight different sects. Take a look:

1. The General, or Pragmatic, Greens [believe that there may be many different pathways to heaven, to that Green Utopia. Often shares buildings with the Church of England];
2. The Particular Greens [reject nuclear power as a path option - often converts from The Old Church of CND, which was strong in the 1960s and 1970s];
3. The Particular and Strict Greens [reject nuclear power absolutely, and hold to a closed communion table of locally-produced ‘organic’ produce];
4. The Peculiar and Pure Greens [reject nuclear power absolutely, and hold to a closed communion table of vegan, or even fruitarian, food];
5. The Primitive Greens [reject all economic growth, and hold to a strict communion table of living in, and with, Nature. Use earth closets and grey water];
6. The Trustafarian Greens [wealthy churches which view being Green as a Sunday life-style choice. Key Biblical text: "It is easier for a Prius to go through the streets of Kensington, than for a poor man to enter into the Green Utopia." (The Gospel According To Charles: 19:24)];
7. The Church of Malthus, sometimes called the ‘Creationologists’: [commune with animals and trees, and wish to reduce sinful humans to small relict, subsistence populations living with Nature. Key Biblical text: “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.” (The Other Gospel According To Thomas: 19:14)]; and finally,
8. The Greens of The Latterday World [It is too late! We are all doomed, and we will burn with the Earth at Armageddon].

Honestly, he may actually be appreciated there. Plus, in the UK he wouldn’t be advocating anything illegal like using “civil obedience” to stop coal plant construction because we all know how some environmentalists over here interpret “civil disobedience.” Honestly, these guys don’t need any more encouragement.

As you may have well heard, sunspot activity is almost nonexistent at the moment. These spots, along with the sun’s overall activity, have been attributed to having one of the strongest affects on earth’s climate. A lack of sunspots is often associated with colder periods and oftentimes, Ice Ages.

What this all means for our current Global Warming debate is this period of solar inactivity will allow us to observe the temperature changes while closely observing the sun’s involvment.

The Ulysses solar probe reports a 13% drop in temperature, a 20% drop in density, and a 30% drop-off in the sun`s magnetic field, marking this as the weakest period of solar wind on record (records go back to the 1960`s).

 

What does this mean? The Heliosphere is thinning, and thus will block fewer cosmic rays.  Heinrick Svensmark theorizes that an increase in cosmic rays reaching the Earth will drive cloud formation, increase the planet`s albedo, thus cooling it.

 

(…)

 

This will allow us to see if we are really in the throes of Anthropogenic Global Warming; if temperatures rise (and they haven`t since 1998) then factors other than solar activity are driving climate trends, if not then the greenhouse gas theory is falsified.

If it gets colder during this period of low sunspot doesn’t necessarily mean that the debate will be over. It will just lend more credence to those of us who believe Global Warming is more of a natural occurrence. The anthropological global warming people will just say that it would have gotten a lot colder if our greenhouse gases weren’t there. I can’t wait to see that day because, depending on how cold it gets, environmentalists will basically have to admit that our CO2 saved us from colder conditions in order to keep up their CO2 climate change ruse.

I don’t know what it is about Telegraph but the photos they pick to show how much trouble polar bears are in just aren’t working. Last time, they had a photo of a polar bear basically drowning in the downdraft of a helicopter. This time, it gets even better. Take a look at this beauty:

Besides the fact that this bear probably killed the photographer a second after he took this, its placement in this story is just wrong. See for yourself

Polar bears and other rare species are in danger of dying out, scientists fear, as latest figures show the Artic sea ice is at record lows.

 

Scientists from the World Wildlife Fund, who are recording the ice cover over the North Pole, said less ice is predicted in the Arctic this year than in any other.

Umm… Is it just me or do those look like trees in the background? I really don’t think trees grow on ice so this picture seems to contradict the whole ‘polar bears need ice’ argument. Wouldn’t it have been more fitting to have one of those classic pictures of polar bears clinging to a lone iceberg? I mean, this guy looks just fine and as I stated about, it seems to have already adapted to hunting on land.

So this article comes up in my Google RSS feed for “Global Warming” titled “Nine polar bears at risk of drowning in global warming meltdown” and included this picture:

You know what my first reaction to this picture was? That poor polar bear is going to drown. Why is it going to drown? Because the helicopter that was carrying the photographer is causing such a disturbance in the water the poor bear is going to barely be able to swim. See the waves around the polar bear and how its squinting? Yea, that’s caused by a helicopter that is in hover. Compare it with this picture (upper left corner)

It’s not global warming that’s going to kill this bear, it’s the media.

Oh, wait, don’t cry. Please don’t cry, media. You really shouldn’t worry to much about that because the good news is the polar bear population on a whole has doubled in the past four decades.

See? One polar bear, and even nine polar bears, are nothing really to worry about. Just consider this an example of Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory.

Yep, that’s right, researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens are looking into ways to convert trees into fuel. Why do they want to do this? Well, it seems that Georgia has a lot of trees.

Much of the UGA research aims to find ways to convert trees into fuel, however. With 24 million acres of trees in Georgia, more than any other states other than Alaska and Oregon, Georgia one day could become a major supplier of fuel for the nation’s cars and trucks, Adolphson said.

Now, since I am a conservative and thus I am supposed to be the big bad enemy of the environment, it would seem appropriate for me to not give a care about the trees. However, that’s not the case. One of the things that I enjoy when I visit Georgia is the fact that they have an abundance of trees. Atlanta has to be one of the greenest cities for its size which is due to the fact that builders seem to not clear cut a house lot but instead build around the preexisting trees.

Now if the researchers find a way to convert trees into fuel, will Georgia become a barren wasteland? Of course not, but just as in the case of getting ethanol from crops like corn, it gives an incentive for people to cut down trees. Could it potentially give people more incentives to care for the trees that they have because they will look at the trees on their land as assets? Possibly, but this will most likely not be the case for poorer nations where the clear cutting of forests is already prevalent.

I’m personally all for alternative energy as long as it is economically feasible (aka no massive subsidies) and doesn’t rely on using more agricultural land. At this point, the only biofuel that I am really excited about is Algae. It grows all year round, doesn’t need any freshwater, doesn’t take up agricultural land, and has the potential for enormous oil outputs. This, in my mind, should be our number one priority for research in the biofuel field.

And a final thought, what environmentalist will ever sign off on an alternative fuel that actually cuts down trees? Honestly, if they ever do that I will know for certain that they have completely lost their minds