Tim Probert, Power Engineering International
What do Sarah Palin, Vaclav Klaus and Nigel Lawson all have in common? All right wing politicians? Yep. Now what about Jeremy Clarkson, Melanie Phillips? Right wing commentators? Indeed. Now what about Irish airline magnate Michael O’Leary? What do they all have in common? Yes, you guessed it - they are all climate change deniers!
Why is that most, if not all, deniers of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) tend to be conservatives? Is it because it they are naturally resistant to change? Or it because they have vested interests to protect?
Palin is (in)famous for her ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’ slogan. Lawson is one of the architects of the UK’s experiments with free market fundamentalism in the 1980s. Clarkson is the UK’s self-styled chief ‘petrolhead’. And of course, O’Leary’s Ryanair flies hundreds of aircraft all over Europe every day.
Acting on climate change involves some pretty fundamental shifts in behaviour abhorrent to any remaining believers in the free market. Environmental taxes and regulations rather get in their way. So who can blame them for a little denial here and there?
August 20th, 2009 at 9:44 AM
This is not helpful. There are a lot of “deniers” w/ impressive scientific credentials. I call them skeptics, like Galileo. Blaming man for global warming is akin to blaming virgins for erupting volcanos.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:03 AM
Anyone who drives a car/truck, powerboat, rides a train/plane, operates a gas powered lawnmower, power tools, has an air conditioned home, watches TV, etc. has a vested interest in the AGW debate! I don’t know about those mentioned by Mr. Probert, but I don’t accept AGW for one simple reason - I’ve never seen any data that indicates that recent temperatures are any higher than those experienced in the past (Greenland was certainly greener and warmer during the time of the Vikings, for example). Presumably, Mr. Probert is in the AGW camp and believes that the U.S. must use environmental taxes and regulations to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. News Flash: It won’t make any difference world-wide. China, India, and other parts of the developing world will guarantee - yes guarantee - that carbon dioxide levels will increase for the foreseeable future. The U.S., by dramatically reducing its use of fossil fuels which essentially increases the supply, would ensure that globally, fossil fuels would remain the lowest cost option for transportaion and power generation needs.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:17 AM
Let’s not forget the 31,000 scientists who haven’t drunk the AGW Cool-Aid (Google or Bing “Heartland Institute”) The “big lie” is really working here; i.e. if a lie is broadcast often enough it will be believed, especially when academic scientists are co-opted by grant money to justify this foregone conclusion while Chicken Little politicos and their financial backers see an economic opportunity to commercialize vaporous carbon credits.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:32 AM
The problem is, while you may have found hidden motives for those who mentioned, there are many out there, including many scientists, where those hidden motives will be extremely hard to find or, in other words, they have none. I don’t think denigrating the naysayers is very helpful. As long as the science is not clear (and the critics really have some good scientific arguments), a war of words will not move us forward. Rather, better science is needed to settle this ongoing discussion.
August 20th, 2009 at 10:59 AM
I recently sent this note to my two US Senators asking them to vote against Cap and Trade.
\"The so called \"case is closed\" science that Al Gore et al utilize with their ridiculous castigation of CO2 in their Global Warming BS extravaganza is a bunch of garbage! Please stop voting based on popular opinion wind direction, and, for the sake of the country\’s future, vote instead based on common sense and good conscience!
I encourage you to do the same.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:40 AM
Sunspot activity has been declining since 1992. New measurements validate previous ones.
Similar low sunspot activityoccurred during the so called Maunder Minimum when the earths’s temperature dropped significantly. The information can be found in recent publications of EOS magazine of the American Geophysical Union.
Anthropogenic factors may not suprescede astronomical ones.
Let us keep in mind that much money is at stake for those who make a living of climate cahnge issue including Nobelist Gore.
By the way, which of the twenty or so climate models or combinations thereof should we use? The models fail to predict the temp distribution measured in the past. What makes us so sure that the models can predict the future?
Cloud cover is an important factor that impacts the models but is not well understood.
Observations>>>model>>prediction>>>fit prediction? NO? wrong model back to the drawing board.
Watch the Sun baby.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:53 PM
I wonder if any of these climate change skeptics can honestly name a single peer reviewed paper published in a scientific journal to support the denier hypotheses. I think not. We’re all entitled to our personal opinions and jaded by our own biases, but the body of scientific evidence is in . . . and like it or not, climate change is very real; its causes well established (if not entirely understood) by the vast majority scientist around the globe.
When your doctor advises you quit smoking cigarettes, that smoking causes cancer, heart disease and a host of other potential threats to your health and wellbeing, who are you going to believe? Your family physician or tobacco industry funded studies that claim there’s no connection?
August 20th, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Actually it appears that CO2 increases follows global warming, not the other way around. I am a big advocate of prudent use of our resources which requires increased efficiency. All of this Anthropogenic Global Warming “solutions” do nothing to improve efficiency and in fact cause much worse efficiency besides further bloating the government regulators. Look what CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) will do the efficiency of the average fossil power plant - cut the output by 30% or more. If NSR (New Source Review) and massive restrictions on new plants weren’t hanging over power companies’ heads, they would have already modernized many plants and replaced others. I have no problem with holding the line on emissions or even reducing them but the rush to lower efficiency is backwards thinking.
August 21st, 2009 at 1:25 AM
Not sure I buy the ‘clean coal is inefficient therefore we shouldn’t bother’ argument. The IEA projects IGCC + CCS efficiency at 50-55%, which is 15-20% higher than the average efficiency of the existing US coal fired fleet and a significant improvement over even the most advanced supercritical plant.
China will go big for IGCC and anyone betting against them bringing down the cost is a brave man.
August 24th, 2009 at 6:02 AM
“If the US leads, China will follow.” Nobelist and prize winner film maker Al Gore
So not to worry mate. Al said it. Follow him
September 1st, 2009 at 2:55 AM
Or, perhaps, vice versa if the flat-earthers have their way.