The Radicals Are Back, Now Wielding the Environment

Charles KrauthammerRather than bow before this arrogation, let’s take useful steps that aren’t destructive.

By Charles Krauthammer

I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier. I’m a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can’t be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems — from ocean currents to cloud formation — that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Green is the New RedYet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. “The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity,” warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”

Read the rest of this piece at Star Tribune.

4 Responses to The Radicals Are Back, Now Wielding the Environment

  1. Belacqua Jones June 3, 2008 at 7:48 am #

    All too often we find ourselves hoisted by the petard of our buzz words. “Democracy” is an example of this phenomenon. If ever there was a word that has been abused and misused, it is that.

    The problem is that the drones are constantly misinterpreting its meaning. Lincoln wasn’t serious when he spoke of “government for the people, by the people, of the people” at Gettysburg. It was pure spin. The Civil War was growing increasingly unpopular and Lincoln saw the speech as a way to rally the public.

    Our democracy is the democracy of a Republic of paneled men’s club where leather lounge chairs embrace somnolent old men who doze their days away while their servants drive the unwashed mob from its doors with clubs and cudgels.

    Ours is the democracy of fine brandy aged for decades in oaken barrels. It is not the harsh, strident “democracy of uncut moonshine”.

    It is our mission as a free country to destroy illegal stills the moment they appear. We didn’t overthrow Mossadegh in Iran or Arbenz in Guatemala or Allende in Chile because they were Marxists, which they were. We overthrew them because they were bootlegging shine.

    Now we have Chavez and Morales to deal with. I don’t understand why the ignorant peasants of Latin America insist on setting up their illegal stills of democracy. Were it not for the historical amnesia of our citizens, we’d have the same problems.

    This amnesia is what makes us such a badass nation. There can be no guilt over past misdeeds if you can’t remember them, and without guilt, there can be no redemption.

    Thanks to our poor memory we are able to continue along our imperial path to ruin, while our old men doze in their leather loungers secure in their belief that they are the center of the universe while outside the doors of their club the mob increases in size and the servants grow weary of cracking heads.

    A literate society is one that is exposed to unsettling and dangerous ideas. Here, again, America has a track record of which it can be proud as we have produced a generation of functional illiterates who prefer the mundane images that dance across their screens to the harshness of black print on a white page. One never turns off a television because an idea has caused one to stop and think, but one will sure as hell do so with a book!

    Without language the angry songs of the rebel are reduced to inarticulate screams and incoherent lyrics. Because they lack the language to analyze they are forced into a state of apathy.

    Another writer describes the benefits of our functional illiteracy when he says:
    Because protest in America has become more symbolic than effective, those in
    power can afford to ignore it. Even when the participation in protest is
    great, it is of short duration; it does not cause serious economic or political
    disruption, and it does not pose a real threat to the established
    orthodoxy. After a few hours of peaceful marching, the people pack up and
    go back to their lives and everything remains as it was before they came.
    Effective protest causes economic and political disruption… God forbid Americans ever figure that out.

    Your admirer,
    Belacqua Jones

  2. Jay June 5, 2008 at 7:12 am #

    The Emperor has no clothes

  3. Rob N. Hood June 16, 2008 at 8:41 am #

    “There is no such thing as an independent press in America, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of us who dares to write our honesty and truth, and if we did, we know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

    “I am paid a lot of money for keeping my honesty out of the paper I am connected with. Others are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honesty and truth to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone.

    “The business of the New York journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon; to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools and vessels for rich men behind the scenes. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
    John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune.
    ————————————————————————-
    “We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with.”
    Richard M. Cohen, Senior Producer of CBS political news.

    “We in the press like to say we’re honest brokers of information and it’s just not true. The press does have an agenda.”
    Bernard Goldberg, as quoted by Harry Stein in the June 13-19, 1992 TV Guide.
    ————————————————————————-
    “The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen….At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”
    New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922
    ————————————————————————-
    “Let me control a peoples currency and I care not who makes their laws.”
    Meyer Nathaniel Rothschild in a speech to a gathering of world bankers February 12, 1912. The following year, the USA subscribed to the ‘services’ of the newly incorporated Federal Reserve, headed by Mr. Rothschild.

  4. Randy Dutton March 5, 2009 at 5:07 pm #

    Before condeming CO2:
    540 million years ago CO2 was 7000ppm (when land animals appeared).

    170 million years ago CO2 was 1700ppm (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth)

    250 years ago CO2 was 250ppm (after Little Ice Age)

    Currently, because of man, CO2 is 385ppm.

    Plant life dies at 150-180ppm through asphyxiation.

    CO2 is a finite resource. Nature has been sequestering it underground for 540 million years. At the rate of decrease over the last 170 million years, Earth would have hit 150ppm in about 10 million years. Odd as it may seem, man had inadvertently increased the life essential CO2 concentrations, and if we were to disappear today, the added CO2 probably adds another 10 million years to plant life on Earth. However, politicians have a goal to bury CO2 and make it unavailable to nature at an accelerated rate. Thus, we may yet find a way to kill off most of the planet’s plant life, thus ending the 3rd atmosphere.

    Meanwhile the Obama Administration and most of the press focus on the wrong components.

    N2O, which has no carbon, is 296 times worse than CO2, and 3% of fertilizer for corn to make ethanol is emitted into the air as N2O.

    Will N2O be regulated?
    And if so, how will the rising cost of food across the globe be mitigated?

    CH4 (methane) is emitted from rotting wood and is 22X worse than CO2.

    Will that be regulated? And will methane receive equal penalties for unequal effect?

    H2 (hydrogen) in the atmosphere combines with hydroxyls (-OH) and removes OH from the air. Hydroxyls normally combine with free methane to remove it. A hydrogen economy may actually increase the longevity of methane in the air, thus increasing Global Warming Gas effect.

    Will the EPA control hydrogen as a GWG?

    Burning wood reduces the amount of methane released but increases CO2 over letting it rot which releases much more methane and less CO2. Methane oxidizes in about 9 years to CO2.

    Will the EPA promote burning scrap wood as a means of decreasing the overall GW effect?

    I grow trees. Agricultural growth rate has increased 30+% because of the increase of CO2 in the past 250 years. It is projected to increase further with any continued rise of CO2.

    Is the Administration trying to reduce CO2 to preindustrial 250ppm?
    To what CO2 level is the Administration promoting as an outcome?
    Does the Administration realize that we would lose the 30% agricultural gain and thus cause massive STARVATION across the planet?
    And is the Administration aware of what happens when global concentrations drop to about 150ppm? We all DIE.

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