Science, Art, and Coffee

So have you seen that new global warming commercial that likens the concept to a runaway train barreling toward a little girl? Sickening scaremongering at its worst, I gotta say. So why is it the the crisis du jour? This article called “The History of the Global Warming Scare” has some interesting insights. Some excerpts:

The hypothesis of man-made global warming has existed since the 1880s. It was an obscure scientific hypothesis that burning fossil fuels would increase CO2 in the air to enhance the greenhouse effect and thus cause global warming. Before the 1980s this hypothesis was usually regarded as a curiosity because the nineteenth century calculations indicated that mean global temperature should have risen more than 1°C by 1940, and it had not. Then, in 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher) became Prime Minister of the UK, and she elevated the hypothesis to the status of a major international policy issue.
[…]
On face value global warming is an environmental issue. Many environmentalists joined the bandwagon. Governments were offering money and the public were concerned at global warming. Any environmental issue which could be linked to global warming was said to be involved in the matter. But the environmentalist interest was aroused by the impact of the issue. Contrary to common belief, environmentalists did not raise awareness of global warming, they responded to it. Simply, environmentalist organisations were part of the general public and decided to use the issue when it became useful to them.
[…]
A rational assessment of appropriate policies would include cost/benefit analysis, but imagined risk is not rational. All the proposed responses to the imagined risk of man-made global warming would increase starvation and poverty while inhibiting economic development throughout the entire world. And CO2 emissions would not be reduced and may be increased. In practice, politicians are accepting the predictions of climate models as being predictions of the future, and they are acting to change that future. This is similar to the behaviour of people who believe horoscope predictions of future harm so they avoid situations where that harm could happen.

It seems to me, though, that even if the entire world were to quit emitting carbon dioxide all at once — cold turkey — any results wouldn’t be immediately evident, just like slamming the brakes on a speeding train won’t cause it to stop on a dime. So the little girl in the commercial would probably end up splattered on the front grille, either way!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS