I always ignored the debate on climate change. Mainly by 3 reasons: Both sides on the debate are fundamentalist and gigantic noise machines (making it difficult to assess reality). It is a complex problem (made even more problematic because of the propaganda machines). My view on how the world should be organized would reduce carbon emissions as a side effect (so I really don’t need to have an opinion on the subject – I am “in favor” of less carbon emissions): In fact I would probably side in many issues with the more radical green factions (extreme localism, end of free trade, end of globalization, massive energy efficiency, public transport, renewables, …). In the “opposite” direction, the only point that I commented on, was on the “science” of climate prediction. Predicting the future is the domain of astrology.
A few days ago I noticed that I was incurring in a big mistake: Copenhagen might really be important. Not because of the problem at hand, but because of the changes that it might entail.
So, what is Copenhagen? I don’t have a complete and total opinion, but the “smoking gun” points in two directions: A mechanism for banks to profit (a.k.a. the privatization of the atmosphere). About this I recommend reading the blog Naked Capitalism (a popular blog maintained by a very moderate and thoughtful left-of-centre American lady – who believes in anthropogenic GW and has a strong environmental background). I mainly recommend Woman Who Invented Credit Default Swaps is One of the Key Architects of Carbon Derivatives (if you know what CDSs are – financial instruments that were in the core of the current meltdown – you might be scared) or Head of California’s Cap and Trade Offsets Program: Cap and Trade Won’t Work for Climate, It’s a Scam. You might want to read This article about VAT fraud in the EU with Carbon offsets (note the source: The Guardian). So your dear Copenhagen might end up being yet another source of pollution, inequity and fraud.
You might want to spend 10 minutes with this video (from AGW believers):
The other argument that I have read (In this case I have nothing more to offer than “insight” and “speculation”) is that Copenhagen is another attempt (after the failure of the WTO Doha rounds) to make force emergent countries to “bend over”. No facts to offer here, only insights from sources I trust… Until, this surfaced: Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak.
From where I stand, Copenhagen might do more harm than good.
My involvement with this has been little, but being a skeptic of predicative “science” and of predictions of temperature change in particular, putss me at odds with the community of “informed” citizens. If you go to a AGW forum and just question this small issue of prediction, the immediate reaction will be personal offense, you will be called all names possible. You will immediately be labeled as “anti-green”, a “cancer”. The AGW side is clearly riddled with intolerance, totalitarianism and blindness. The rationality and science are nothing more than a facade. Behind it one can find lots of people with a dogmatic, fundamentalist perspective of the world. “Science” is not more about creative inquiry, healthy skepticism or rational and free exchange of ideas. It has become a cover for authoritarian dogma – the exact opposite of what science should be. When totalitarianism hides behind what should be one of the most open and rational forms of human existence, if becomes pretty clear that we live in dark times.
What terrorism is to conservatives, AGW is to progressives: a source of fear. A source of irrationality and fundamentalism.
