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December 18, 2007

God, I miss the Soviets!

One thing about growing up during the Cold War, other than duck-and-cover drills, was having few illusions about the enemy, due in no small part their own honesty in declaring themselves as such. When Hollywood gave the villain a Russian accent, no Council on American-Soviet Relations was threatening lawsuits or boycotts.

The collapse of the USSR and the humiliation of communism in the face of liberty and capitalism didn't mean all those Marxist True Believers and camp followers gave up. It just meant they decided to pursue their interests in a different venue. AGW quoteThough, they seem to find being circumspect no longer necessary

The media obsession has been on the efforts of delegates at the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conference to craft an agreement for a climate treaty that would take effect after the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2011. [...]

A day earlier, however, a panel at the IPCC conference titled "A Global CO2 Tax" took a step that will have a more lasting impact than an empty agreement. It urged the U.N. to adopt taxes on carbon dioxide emissions that would be "legally binding to all nations."

And guess who would be hit the hardest? That's right, the tax, if levied, would put an especially high burden on the U.S.

"Finally, someone will pay for these costs" related to global warming, Othmar Schwank, a global warming busybody from Switzerland, told Sen. James Inhofe's office. [...]

The driving force of the environmental movement is not a cleaner planet — or a world that doesn't get too hot, in the case of the global warming issue — but a leftist, egalitarian urge to redistribute wealth. A CO2 tax does this and more, choking economic growth in the U.S. and punishing Americans for being the voracious consumers that we are.

Eco-activists have been so successful in distracting the public from their real intentions that they're becoming less guarded in discussing their ultimate goal.

"A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources," Emma Brindal, a "climate justice campaign coordinator" for Friends of the Earth Australia, wrote Wednesday on the Climate Action Network's blog.


We could easily dismiss li'l Miss Emma as a retread of the Castro/Che groupies of years gone by -- emotionally invested in showing their solidarity with the exotic Other. Then there's Mayer Hillman, a senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, who makes no bones about controlling people's lives
Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, says carbon rationing is the only way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people.

"When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it," he says. "This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not."


Scrape away some of the high-flown rhetoric of the acolytes of the Church of Anthropogenic Global warming and it is easy to see a coterie of fashionistas, retooled Marxists, doe-eyed relativists, unrepetant misanthropes and pragmatic authoritarians. Some wax poetically of "food sovereignty" and others are quite blatant in their hatred of modernity
Ultimately, the world’s population must be reduced - by 5.9 billion. But the 100million left, devoid of cars, planes, heaters and fertilisers will be a much smaller burden on the planet. What a happy place it will be!

The "Greens" are no more interested in clean air and water today than the Soviets were in liberty when they rolled tanks into Prague in 1968. We dismiss them as "silly" at our own peril.

(h/t DRJ at Patterico)

Posted by Darleen at December 18, 2007 12:53 AM

Comments

Can't argue the merits so attack the motives. Typical superficial rightist cant.

Posted by: Josh at December 18, 2007 08:37 AM

hey darleen,

While you're spinning your wheels pretending to know the ulterior motives of the greens (and by extension the vast majority of climatoligists who have studied global warming for a helluva lot longer than you've been blogging), why don't you dedicate some of that extra energy to the defense of the much-maligned Francisco Nava ?

Posted by: Brad at December 18, 2007 10:43 AM

Sorry Miz Darleen, your wrong. Greenhouse gases are a reality. Greenhouse build-up can be dealt with in the context of democratic processes. We are dealing with it now.

What makes you think greens arn't serious about lowering greenhouse gas build up? They have to live on the same planet you and I do.

Posted by: Carl W. Goss at December 20, 2007 12:53 PM

The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor. There is a whole helluva lot more of it than CO2. So, in order to really clamp down on the greenhouse effect, you would have to seriously reduce the amount of water vapor in the air. I guess we'll just have to drain a couple of oceans, but that's a small price to pay for feeling good about ourselves.

Mars has also been showing some small rise in mean temperature, tracking the small rise in the Earth's temperature. I guess we'll have to levy a carbon tax on Barsoom. Good luck getting John Carter on board with that.

The computer models used to predict the coming catastrophe can't properly emulate the actual past data. I'm not sure that makes them a good predictor of future behavior.

Posted by: Chris at December 20, 2007 03:11 PM

Thing is, Chris, as things are going now, if we do nothing, it is estimated that by the year 2100, the Earth will undergo an increase of 2 degrees C, with a rise in sea level of about 0.5 meters. A rise of 2 degrees may not
sound like much, except that the temperature during the last ice age was only 6 degrees colder than at present.
Furthermore, the rate of temperature change is likely to be faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years. Humans and ecosystems can adapt to slow climate changes. Rapid climate changes are harder to get used to. And they can be catastrophic.
And there's little doubt that CO2 build up has increased because of human activies connected with industrial processes.

Check out: Chemical Principles, Atkins and Jones, 1998 P 714. My old chem text.

Posted by: Carl W. Goss at December 22, 2007 08:36 AM

Who is predicting this rise? Mean temperatures have increased by 0.6 degrees C in this century. Apparently, this modest warming trend has stopped in the last few years, and may be declining. Why should the rate be faster, even if it were still increasing?

Extrapolating current data into infinity is not good science. That is what the bureaucrats and alarmists have been doing. Man may be having an effect on the climate, but until we know that for sure, and how much of an effect we have, doing nothing is precisely the best policy.

Posted by: Chris at December 23, 2007 05:14 AM

There's an intersting article in the NY Times concerning the appearance of tropical mosquitos in Italy. It's thought that continued warming in northern climes will bring with it tropical diseases. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/world/europe/23virus.html?hp

Must give us pause as Hamlet says......

Posted by: Carl W. Goss at December 23, 2007 09:15 AM

"The hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The [greenhouse-gas] hypothesis does not do this.” - Atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes*, former research director at the Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute

* who obviously is on the payroll of Exxon or somesuch...

Posted by: Fen at December 24, 2007 12:52 AM

Ooops. My bad. I forgot that the "science" is "settled". I will immediately turn myself in as a Heretic and report to MiniSci for re-education.

Posted by: Fen at December 24, 2007 12:56 AM