Liberty Alone

There is a very regrettable trend to blame everything on global warming. This usually pays scant regard to science and has the added problem of making people skeptical of the real dangers of global warming.

Recently, global warming has been blamed for changes in the Arctic, however, it looks like this may not be the case, as The Register reports.

Basically, the global ecosystem is incredibly complex, we don’t understand large parts of it. Global warming does and will have some very real effects, but it is not the only possible, or even probable, cause.

I am aghast that Al Gore has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his propaganda piece ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. This is a film which contradicts the best available science and exaggerates grossly.

Johan Norberg is not impressed especially given Gore’s admission of exaggerating the facts for propaganda reasons.

I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it [global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are

Division of Labour points out that this New York Times article includes a small snippet at the end:

Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high.

So, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the high levels of retreating ice is due to the unusually high level of coverage at the moment?

Not what the NYT is reporting though, they’re just reporting it as another global warming story.

This is the sort of thing I’m worried about. It may turn out that the unusual expansion is due to climate change, but its hardly consistent with the picture they’re painting which seems more about being alarmist.

This is also why reviews, like the IPCC reports and the Copenhagen Consensus (to pick two, I’m sure there’s more) are important.

It seems to me there’s several groups lumped in as skeptics and deniers in the climate change debate (it is still a debate no matter what consensus has been declared).

There are those who deny flat out that climate change is occurring. These are truly deniers. The evidence is that the climate changes and that it is changing now. These people are living in cloud cuckoo land. They are also rather scarce, despite what people say.

The second group is those who agree that the climate is changing, but disagree that humans could have anything to do with it. They often ascribe other causes from cosmic rays to increased solar output. They have some science to back their statements that these other things affect the climate, but are swimming in the face of the evidence that humans contribute to climate change.

The last group is what I may call the rational skeptics. They acknowledge climate change, they acknowledge there is a human component to this which may be a majority of the cause. They also acknowledge that we don’t know enough about the other possible causes of climate change.
The big difference between this group and the climate change enthusiasts is that they don’t believe that it will be as bad as we’re told (especially as we’re told by alarmists like Al Gore) and they question the effectiveness and desirability of many of the proposed ’solutions’.

I count myself as being in the latter group. I oppose for instance higher purchase taxes on polluting cars. This does not tax pollution, it taxes big cars. It is founded in envy and perception. Tax emissions not big cars. A polluting car which does 10 miles a day will pollute less than an efficient car which does 100miles a day, its emissions which matter.
Also, many of the proposals coming out of the socialist green movement (and now the Tory green feudalist movement) would result in people becoming poorer whilst letting the rich continue doing what they like. Poorer people pollute more and suffer more from the effects of environmental damage. We should be helping people get richer - that comes through trade and liberalisation of economies, not through buying local and protecting economies or through forcing our labour standards upon other countries (for a lesson in what happens here look at the destruction of the Indian textiles industry by our imperial policy of doing just that).

Those of us in the last category, those of us who are concerned about the environment but don’t go along with the hysteria are not deniers, we are concerned about the environment and its effect on people, but we want calm thinking, not appeals to emotion and hysteria.

One of the things I really dislike about much of the green movement is its romanticism and aversion of technology.
On Wednesday, Femme de Resistance over at Forceful and Moderate posted on this subject with particular reference to James Lovelock.

Today I’ve come across a New York Times article (registration required - or Bug Me Not for a username and password) about Stewart Brand, one of the founding lights of environmentalism and his dislike of the romanticism which dominates much of the environmental movement.
Like Lovelock he espouses such heresies as advocating nuclear power and GM crops. This advocacy is the result of a long term involvement with technology and the environment. He organised the first hacker’s conference and has been involved in the technological counter culture for a long time. He sees technology not as a threat, but as a great tool which can be used to improve human lives and the environment.
One of his revelatory moments was the failure of the predictions of doom in the 1970s. He was convinced, like many others, that population growth would mean mass shortages of essentials, that commodity prices would soar and we’d see mass starvation across the world. None of this happened, and its a salient lesson for many of today’s doom mongers, humans are amazingly adaptable and we will come up with solutions to problems, often without realising it.

This is an incredibly positive view, we are not perfect, but we have amazing skills which we can use to solve all problems, not simply environmental ones. Technological advance, not romanticism, will be the solution to environmental problems.

Its a message we as LibDems should listen to. If we are serious about the environment we should be looking towards innovation and technology for solutions.

There are two things to fear from climate change.
Firstly the changes in the environment and the effects they have. This is what most people focus on.
Secondly the political uses to which fear of climate change is being put. This is far more worrying to me, much of the rhetoric is centred around authoritarianism.

Too much of the debate on climate change is focused upon hysteria and bad science in the media. The debate is framed as ‘greens’ vs ‘deniers’. This polarises the debate and prevents good science, which flourishes upon vigorous debate and the falsification of models.

A classic example is the IPCC report which says that climate change is driven by human action, but has also reduced its estimates of the effects of climate change. The press report this as being final and we’re all doomed, something which the report does not claim.
It is a scientific report, it is not final, it is not certain. The evidence is still being collected, new models are being developed, the science is not finished, it never is. The effects may be more or less than those the report suggests, but the latest evidence as presented by the report suggests smaller effects than were previously thought of.
The media, and the green movement however will not countenance any scientific debate. Witness the fuss over the AEI offering money for scientists to write essays on climate change policy and studies of what models are effective. This could run counter to the received wisdom, so was jumped upon as Exxon Mobil offering money to scientists to deny climate change (the fact that this is not what was asked and that Exxon Mobil didn’t appear to have had any influence in this is apparently besides the point). You are now not allowed to criticise the received wisdom of catastrophy.

Scarily, the green movement doesn’t even seem to take notice of the content of reports like the IPCC’s report. Localism is a great cry of the greens, anti-globalisation is their staple, and anti-technology rhetoric is common. Both the IPCC and Stern however report that the best scenario is to increase the amount of globalisation and innovation whilst a regression to localism would in fact produce worse climate change.
This doesn’t stop the green movement claiming the opposite however. Ideology seems to be trumping science.

So many suggestions for solutions rest upon collectivist principles of state control and authoritarianism. For our own good naturally. This is a dangerous trend, for us as well as the environment. The collectivist states in the past have had the worst effect on the environment and state intervention through restrictions led to the popularity of SUVs in the US - a measure to help the environment ended up harming it.

Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ has been lauded as a great film, yet its scientific basis is suspect at best. Peer review played no part. Yet there is no criticism of it because of that.
Greenpeace is not criticised for hiring scientists to promote its views, why should other organisations be criticised for that? Its not as though other scientists will not review the research and criticise it.
It reminds me of Galileo. He made some claims which went against received wisdom and he was persecuted, however he was correct. Others have made claims against the received wisdom and they were disproved and lie mostly forgotten.

We desperately need sensible debate about the science and the policy, for the planets sake and for our own sakes and those of our children.
Climate change does present a massive challenge, but hysteria, one-sidedness and hyperbole do not help, only sensible debate can.

We must not let concern for the environment or fear of climate change lead us to authoritarianism in the same way concern about poverty did with socialism, or the way this government is attempting to with fear of terrorism. We must stand by our freedom and liberty and promote good environmental measures which are compatible with them.

Green liberalism is about sensible debate and refusing to give up our freedoms whilst sharing a concern for the environment. It is not about caving in to fear and repression. We must develop a truly liberal response to climate change, one which leaves people free to act and live their lives without repression and without fear.

I always feel when I post something like this that I should say that I do not deny the reality of climate change, even if I am sceptical about many of the more alarmist claims (often made by people who stand to gain in some way from people’s fear). So, for the record: The climate of the earth is changing. It is warming. Part of this is due to human action and we can and should do something to mitigate the effects we have and reduce the amount of climate changing pollution we emit (but in a liberal, non-coercive way with no political motive behind government actions).

Now that’s out of the way, I see that there have been calls in the US to censor sceptical scientists, there have even been suggestions for Nuremburg style trials for them (admittedly from the more lunatic end of the green movement - but aired on national television).
This is extremely troubling. Science works through debate and research. When you stifle debate you stifle progress and can hold onto potentially damaging beliefs.
To combat sceptics you should conduct your own research and submit that to peer review and review their work - are there any problems with the methodology? Are their conclusions supported by the evidence?
And when you do your research, do your best to remain unbiased- if you want a particular result then you will see it in the results (this of course goes for both sides of the debate).

The blog post I link to above does seem somewhat partisan, but the essential points - the outrage at the censorship - hold whatever your view on climate change. (A quick google throws some light on his position - it is claimed he was hired to directly attack climate change science - he was also one of the main people in the infamous ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’ campaign - not a particularly unbiased source you might say).

Censorship is bad, censorship in science even more so, and on an issue as important as climate change, we cannot risk this course of action. We need good knowledge of the science, away from the political posturing of any group. Science should lead policy in this case, and that goes for alarmists and deniers.