Friday, December 18, 2009

Interesting post about global warming

Over at Freedomain Radio. And so our global warming battle continues :D

This guy is not a climatologist. He is a politician, and his motives are questionable. Please, do not take this guy's word. Check out the scientific literature for yourself. In my non-expert opinion, from the evidence I have been exposed to, it appears undeniably true that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. That does not mean that other factors are not influencing climate. It does not even mean that humans are the primary driver of warming, but to flat out deny that humans have the potential to influence climate change is ridiculous. Practically all climatologists appear to agree that humans are contributing to global warming, but politicians and media spin that little statistic into a "consensus" on catastrophic global warming, which I have not seen any evidence for. There is no indication that most or all climatologists are "catastrophists."

It bothers me that many libertarians/market-anarchists/agorists are staunchly on the "global warming is a hoax" wagon. To people of other political persuasions it looks like they are manipulating the science to fit their world view. Maybe global warming IS a hoax, but it is a losing game to deny it in policy debates. If debating policy and philosophy, by trying to prove global warming proponents wrong you are already implicitly admitting to your opponent that the climate change policies being considered by governments around the world are the necessary actions for preventing catastrophe. There are other ways that a catastrophic warming could be combatted in a structure of legitimate property defense and voluntarism. Centrally-imposed caps on emissions are not the only solution. In other words, don't debate the science. Debate the solutions.

Furthermore, I would like to consider that emissions caps are not necessarily outside the realm of voluntarism and protection of property. If some people are putting carbon into the atmosphere, and it can be proven that that carbon is contributing to climate changes that will most probably cause some sort of undesirable condition or damage to people's businesses, properties, and lives... wouldn't it be ethical to impose some sort of class action suit against major carbon emitters to get them to reduce their emissions?

5 comments:

  1. Well, I don't know if it's a battle. At least I didn't intend it to become one. Nor do I want this blog to become a climate change debate blog.

    Still, I'm happy you're posting what you want on this topic and challenging many libertarians, and others, to think again about the issue.

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  2. FTR I was using 'battle' in a comical way.

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  3. I was using 'battle' in a comical way.

    I know.

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  4. I'm sure Cork isn't suggesting siding with most of the nonsensical solutions that have been proposed, but wouldn't it be nice if political ideologies like Libertarians would step back from the Rep/Dem bullshit and come up with unique solutions? On this particular issue (as with sadly many others), they seem to just default to siding with conservatives (because you borrow so heavily from conservative economics, I imagine).

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