Friday, 10 July 2009
That Pledge
Last night, the BBC news soberly reported that world leaders had pledged to limit the rise in world temperature to 2 degrees. I like to think that headlines like that will afford much innocent entertainment to future generations. What it actually means is that a few world leaders have made a meaningless and unenforcable non-commitment to limit 'greenhouse gas' emissions to the point where - if the anthropogenic model of global warming is correct, and IF the computer models run on that basis prove accurate - the rise in temperature (by when? against what base year?) can be expected to be less than 2 degrees. Well, we'll see... Here's an alternative scenario, which could save the politicians and all of us a lot of grief. A couple of years down the line, having managed to do very little - and faced with the prospect of destroying their own economies if they took the drastic measures proposed - the governments might take stock, begin to seek out the evidence (it's already there) that the world is actually cooling and say 'Hey look, the measures we've taken already have been much more effective than we expected, so we can scale this whole thing down.' This would seriously annoy the consensus scientists and the many others who stand to make huge amounts of money out of the global waming scare, but it would be very good news for the rest of us. On the other hand, governments might prove unable to resist the prospect of ever increasing taxation and state control opened up by such delusional projections as the latest 'pledge'.
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You've got to wonder how much of the taxation raised, with the appropriate pious expressions, to help fight global warming will be siphoned off for the politician's own pet projects or even used for military purposes
ReplyDeleteThoroughly agree -
ReplyDeletebut also would like to add that like 'plinth'; 'pledge' is a weird word. not sure I trust it.
That is very funny. I look forward to next year's pledge to limit tsunamis to once a decade. Perhaps it is just me after far too much blogging, but isn't it starting to become evident that the climate change debate will be resolved, not by consensus over scientific victors, but by the same force that took down the British Empire--boredom? Dotty true believers will be stupefying us at dinner parties about declining Antarctic ice levels long after we've all started wearing sweaters in July. Meanwhile, a younger generation of doomsdayers will move on to new alarmisms. Water looks promising. We're all going to die of thirst and nobody cares!!
ReplyDeleteIn a number of years we will all look back at this period and be astonished. But there is no way that this tax scheme will ever be dismantled even if global warming is proved to be a fraud. Once this Genie is out of the bottle there will be no putting it back. This tax will remain. The carbon tax is the real goal, it has nothing to do with saving the planet.
ReplyDeleteWould that readout be in centigarbon credits or faranwindfarmgrades. Ordering the world is strictly the job of monseigneur, not fifth rate world leaders including Berlo, the obligatory guinea hood.
ReplyDeleteCooling you say? cant see there being much money in that.
ReplyDeleteI'm turning to the view that the arguments against capital punishment for murderers might be a little better than those for, but I can see no decent argument against hanging the "the consensus scientists".
ReplyDelete