Science was not a strong subject for me and I am certainly not qualified to pass judgment on the hard data and the cases for or against anthropomorphic (man-made) global warming.  Yet I also realize that most of the pundits that express such strong opinion on the subject know just as little about the science as I do.  The language used to describe the ‘opposition’ is the language of political and religious fanatics, not scientists.

Daniel Botkin makes this point well in  Absolute Certainty is Not Scientific, in the Wall Street Journal, 12/2/11.

I felt nostalgic for those times when even the greatest scientific minds admitted limits to what they knew. And when they recognized well that the key to the scientific method is that it is a way of knowing in which you can never completely prove that something is absolutely true. Instead, the important idea about the method is that any statement, to be scientific, must be open to disproof, and a way of knowing how to disprove it exists.

Therefore, “Period, end of story” is something a scientist can say—but it isn’t science.

Some scientists make “period, end of story” claims that human-induced global warming definitely, absolutely either is or isn’t happening. For me, the extreme limit of this attitude was expressed by economist Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, who wrote in his New York Times column in June, “Betraying the Planet” that “as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason—treason against the planet.” What had begun as a true scientific question with possibly major practical implications had become accepted as an infallible belief (or if you’re on the other side, an infallible disbelief), and any further questions were met, Joe-McCarthy style, “with me or agin me.”

Not only is it poor science to claim absolute truth, but it also leads to the kind of destructive and distrustful debate we’ve had in last decade about global warming. The history of science and technology suggests that such absolutism on both sides of a scientific debate doesn’t often lead to practical solutions.

HKO Comment:

Is there in fact a trend of Global warming?

Is the amount of global warming bad?

Is it predominantly caused by man?

Does the environmental ecosystem have any self correcting capabilities?

Will the solutions proposed have any measurable effects?

While I barely know which end of the test tube the cork goes into, it seems absurd that we could know the answers to these questions with any degree of certainty.  If global warming was so certain then why has ‘climate change’  been substituted?  Who determines if warming is bad? Haven’t more people died from cold extremes?  Exactly how much warming is bad?  Does anyone really know what the optimal temperature is? If we are so certain that man is causing this, then how do we explain previous periods of climate change when man’s global foot print was significantly smaller?

It appears that mixing politics and science is no more palatable than mixing religion with politics.  Politics pollutes them both.

Studying the financial bubbles we can see several common characteristics.

During the bubble inflation we see markets taken to an extreme by financial greed, but as Walter Sowell so appropriately metaphored on the housing bubble, “blaming the crash on greed is like blaming an airplane crash on gravity”; it is accurate but not very useful. We have had greed with us since the Garden of Eden.  Why does it only seem to rear its head to an extreme only every few years?

We see common sense dissolved in ‘new paradigms’, ‘permanently high plateaus’, ‘irreversible trends’, and ‘progressive thinking.’  Motivated by financial gain we believe whatever will support our belief in the unsupportable.

During the dot.com bubble we accepted billion dollar valuations of companies with no customers, no available products and only promising markets.  As 25 year old entrepreneurs became billionaires we believed that they were smart. There is this common aspect of bubbles that equates wealth with intelligence.  We want to believe that our new wealth is a reflection of our superior insight rather than mere luck.

When these bubbles burst and reality restores common sense we do not want to accept our own foolishness for buying into the speculative fever, we want to blame someone.  The geniuses who adorned the magazine covers as the faces of the bubbles either become villains or fade to obscurity.

In the distant past bubbles were fueled by individual greed buying into bad ideas, or at least good ideas taken to an extreme. But more recently bubbles have been enlarged by government policy.  Beyond just misguided monetary policy, the recent housing bubble was fueled by government policy that added to the demand for housing by pushing programs to help people buy homes who could not afford them.  By eliminating down payments and guaranteeing otherwise obviously risky loans the Government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac created one of the biggest bubbles seen to date.

The cover of Newsweek with the picture of Al Gore as “The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man” strikes me as a sign of a new bubble inflating. The subtitle “Al Gore’s new plan for the planet” is the hubris of bubbles.

We never seem to recognize bubbles when we are in the middle of them. They only seem visible when they burst.  Yet the new green industrial complex is growing with massive investments that seem guided more by wishful thinking and paranoia than common sense and reason.

From the administration’s stated belief that green energy will provide the jobs that will lift us out of massive unemployment and recession to the policies that will create the drive to capitalize on the new government direction, we now see massive investment into irrational markets.

Al Gore is the chairman of Generation Investment Management, an investment firm making capital investments in firms with potential to capitalize on the green movement and policies. He is also founder and chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection, an outfit promoting the green economy. With money from people interested in promoting the public interest of environmentalism, the Alliance for Climate Protection is spending $300 million to promote the lifestyle that will benefit the investments of Al’s firm.

To be sure others besides Al Gore are on Capitol Hill promoting climate bills that will financially benefit their own interests.  Members of the Bush administration were chastised for their oil interests and criticized for letting it influence their policy decisions.  But we are assured that those now promoting their financial interests in their preferred energy sector are altruistic.

Gore is the face of the green industrial complex, but there are many seeking to profit from their foresight and concern to help save the planet. Gore is a genius for getting public policy firms to advertise heavily to support the market for his investments. The best entrepreneurs from the previous bubbles were never able to get $175,000 to make speeches promoting their industry. Gore may be the first green billionaire.

As in previous bubbles skeptics are marginalized, often demonized. As in so many previous bubbles delusional certainty is hurled at skepticism and reason more like an offensive than a defensive weapon . Gore boldly claims, “The debate is over.”

Believers who do not know which end of the test tube the cork goes into post scientific articles to confirm their belief. Confirmation, not information, is the object of their reading.

As I read about the genius of Al Gore on the cover of Newsweek,  I recall the prophetic words of John Kenneth Galbraith in his book , “A Short History of Financial Bubbles,” .

“Genius is before the fall.”

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit our saviors arrive in 1,200 limousines and 140 private jets.

Can their arrogance be any more blinding?

Read in the UK Telegraph:

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

Do you remember the outrage when our auto executives took a private plane to DC for their hearing?  Where is the outrage for this fiasco?

George Will writes on Climate Gate in the Washington Post; The Climate -change travesty

Excerpt:

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama’s promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

Were their science as unassailable as they insist it is, and were the consensus as broad as they say it is, and were they as brave as they claim to be, they would not be “goaded” into intellectual corruption. Nor would they meretriciously bandy the word “deniers” to disparage skepticism that shocks communicants in the faith-based global warming community.

Cows are wicked polluters.  They emit methane through  belching and flatulence, which is by one common measurement 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide emitted by cars.

“Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat to and dairy to chicken, fish, eggs or a vegetable -based diet achieves more greenhouse -gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food.”

Or you can switch to kangaroos for your beef.    Kangaroo farts don’t contain methane.

From “Superfreakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Can you imagine the marketing campaign?