Saving the Planet without Losing our Freedoms

(Written December 6, 2014)

Global warming is a controversial topic in which seemingly few people can apply reason.

Undoubtedly the earth has warmed and cooled repeatedly over the epochs.
The question now is threefold:

1.  Do humans cause global warming?

2.  Will it result in a runaway greenhouse effect?  Some other disaster?
3.  Can humans stop global warming or mitigate its effects (stop disaster)?

Here are the three answers.

1.  Humans cause global warming, but no one can demonstrate how much.  It might be a lot, or too little to consider.  Myriad factors influence the earth's climate.  No unbiased computer models have made clear and accurate predictions.  Every planet in the solar system has experienced global warming since measurements began, due to the increase in the sun's heat output.

2.  After four billion years of earth history, catastrophic climate changes have repeatedly occurred, the most famous of which brought about the extinction of dinosaurs.  A meteor, compounded by centuries of continuous volcanic eruption, caused enormous disruption of the climate, but did not result in the runaway greenhouse effect that incinerates the planet Venus to this day.  If a massive meteor and thousands of years of volcanic eruptions did not cause a runaway greenhouse effect, it is almost inconceivable that humans can cause that effect,

3.  If one proposes that humans can stop global warming, then logic would imply that exempting China and India from those efforts would be counterproductive.  Yet we are exempting them.  China and India account for two-thirds of the planet's population, and a huge portion of its pollution.  Every time a factory closes in the Americas and Europe, that production is moved to China or India, where the same industrial output occurs, but with much more pollution.  It would cause less pollution to close factories in Asia and move the production to the west, but that is not going to happen.  China and India refuse to reduce their pollution.

The best hope of reducing pollution is to increase innovation, which has already resulted in lowered pollution in the West.

The worst hope of reducing pollution is to empower the government while disempowering individuals.  Government is inherently wasteful, and its motives are not for a cleaner planet, but for more political power.

Few advocates of lowered greenhouse gases advocate limited government.  Advocates of bigger government have effectively used global warming as their pretext, which is why companies like Solyndra fail, and Westinghouse succeeds.

Disempowering the USA while empowering its enemies will not result in a better planet.

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