Climate change Holocaust

Ellen Goodman's Boston Globe comparison of global warming deniers to Holocaust deniers is old news in blogospheric terms, but since I don't much like being compared to Ahmadinejad, I'll comment here a bit.

First of all, few rational people deny it's warming in a statistical sense. While I've used this blog to illustrate that not all sites are warming, when you do the math, most are. To deny that means you deny observational science.

But that's not what most people are denying. They are denying the cause of the warming. After throwing her H bomb Ms. Goodman reaches that point later:

Try these numbers: Only 23 percent of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is due to humans, while 75 percent of college-educated Democrats believe it..

How does she explain the dichotomy? Why, with stock liberal hyperbole, of course!

This great divide comes from the science-be-damned-and-debunked attitude of the Bush administration and its favorite media outlets

Bingo, she's identified the problem. The liberals are far too quick to lapse into their schoolmaster mode, pointing the crooked finger at everyone and telling them to get in line. Given enough time it will happen every single time in every single debate about every single issue. It's an "our way or the highway" kind of tolerance.

Permit me generically boil it down. Too many on the right probably don't accept enough blame for their carbon footprint because they fear manipulation of the data by liberal socialists who want to take their hard-earned stuff. Too many on the left believe their carbon footprint is bigger than it is because they're liberal socialists who don't like the right and would love to teach them a lesson by taking their hard-earned stuff and giving it to somebody they feel is more deserving.

If that's right, it ain't right.

Sure, it's prudent to attempt a level of mitigation just in case we're partly to blame, but it must not be at the expense of our economy. For example I have no problem changing to new light bulbs or buying a hybrid since these things might also benefit my family, but until the science is precise enough to offer an exact percentage as to human contribution to the warming, it makes no sense to move to a teepee.

Realistically, if anthropogenic contribution could be measured at greater than say 80 percent the planet is doomed regardless of what we do, since carbon has a long half-life and we can't change the world's economic structure fast enough to avoid global turmoil or wars for oil. Similarly, if the human contribution is measured at less than say 5 percent, there's nothing much we can do, either, because that will mean the sun is blame.

Throwing around cheap ad-hominems or assinine comparisons simply adds nothing to the debate.

VIRGIN TERRITORY 2/10/07

Sir Richard Branson's idea is pretty cool. Entrepreneurial solutions are certainly far preferable to tight government control. The liberals won't like it because it takes away their ability to clamp behavioral restrictions on people like Mr. Branson and his large fleet of CO2 spewing jumbo jets.

Al Gore might publicly endorse the plan, but he's given us only 10 years to save the planet before we all roast so there may not be enough time. That's assuming ALL the recent warming can be blamed on America, er, sorry, humans.

But not only that, couldn't such a machine represent a possible threat in the wrong hands? Sucking too much CO2 from the atmosphere might not be very good, either, if such were possible.