Do they really want to combat global warming?

Commentary

Oct. 31, 2012

By John Seiler

Nowadays, almost anything that happens is blamed on “global warming.” Or its more recent euphemism, “climate change.”

On his blog, Al Gore just wrote:

“For many, Hurricane Sandy may prove to be a similar event: a time when the climate crisis—which is often sequestered to the far reaches of our everyday awareness became a reality….

“Scientists tell us that by continually dumping 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every single day, we are altering the environment in which all storms develop. As the oceans and atmosphere continue to warm, storms are becoming more energetic and powerful. Hurricane Sandy, and the Nashville flood, were reminders of just that. Other climate-related catastrophes around the world have carried the same message to hundreds of millions.

“Sandy was also affected by other symptoms of the climate crisis. As the hurricane approached the East Coast, it gathered strength from abnormally warm coastal waters. At the same time, Sandy’s storm surge was worsened by a century of sea level rise. Scientists tell us that if we do not reduce our emissions, these problems will only grow worse.

“Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather.”

But he’s not serious. Consider California’s AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. By 2020, just a little over seven years away, it’s supposed to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent. California is 2 percent of the global economy. So AB 32, assuming it works as advertised, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the entire globe by just 0.5 percent.

In his recent autobiography, “Total Recall,” by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ex-governor says that AB 32 will inspire countries all over the world to imitate California. But that hasn’t happened. And it’s not likely to happen.

Even if the world adopted a global AB 32, greenhouse emissions would drop by 25 percent across the earth, not 75 percent, 90 percent, or 100 percent.

If Gore, Arnold, President Obama, Gov. Jerry Brown and other global warming — or climate change — alarmists are serious, they would call for much more serious actions. Basically, they should call for shutting down the globe’s entire industrial economy. Conditions would have to return to before the industrial revolution began about 1780 with the “dark satanic mills” that William Blake railed against in his poem, “The New Jeruslaem.”

Luddism

We would need a new Luddite movement wrecking the machines of industrial modernity. The United States would have to destroy all non-green machines — which would be about 95 percent of them, including cars. Maybe then Brown’s high-speed choo-choo would become cost effective.

Then the United States would have to order the rest of the world to do the same to every machine on the planet, going to war if necessary. China is happy to sell America solar panels to reduce greenhouse gases. But there’s no way it’s going to impose Luddism on itself as the country continues to pull tens of millions of people each year out of agricultural poverty by giving them jobs in industrial cities. If China stopped its industrial growth, the ChiCom leadership would face vast social unrest, something they know from their past can kill tens of millions of Chinese and overthrow governments.

Attacking other large industrial countries would be difficult because nine countries have nuclear weapons. And when you have nukes, it’s hard to mess with you. Here’s list of the estimated upper limits of nuke numbers:

USA: 8,000

Russia: 10,000

United Kingdom: 225

France: 300

China: 240

Israel: 200

Pakistan: 110

India: 100

North Korea: <10

Of the four BRIC developing industrial countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — three have nukes. Brazil doesn’t, but could develop them within months.

So there are two possibilities:

1. Man-caused global warming/climate change doesn’t exist, so don’t worry about it.

2. Man-caused global warming/climate change does exist, but nothing can be done about it because Russia, China, India, Brazil and other countries aren’t going to reduce their industrial development to make Arnold, Jerry, Al and Barack happy. There’s nothing that anyone can do to change that, so don’t worry about it.

As we always have, humans will adapt to whatever happens.