Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Another Climate Change Alarmist Set Straight

Demand Carbon Cuts, demands Meara Nigro in a letter published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Here is my reply to her letter:

Our advanced industrial civilization, driven mainly by carbon fuels, has enabled us to protect ourselves from the ever-present threat of "extreme weather events, such as superstorms, floods, droughts, wildfires and heat waves" and other natural environment hazards inherent in non-human-altered nature. This is why climate-related deaths have decreased in industrialized countries by 98% over the past century and a half, even as life expectancies nearly doubled.

Our food supply is healthier and more plentiful, thanks to carbon fueled industrial agriculture. Famines from droughts are a thing of the past, thanks to carbon fueled transportation systems that can bring massive food shipments into drought-stricken regions from unaffected areas. Our climate-controlled homes are healthier thanks to carbon fueled electrification (we no longer cook and heat with open burning of wood or coal). We have clean, safe, fresh water at our fingertips, thanks to water purification plants and the pumps and other infrastructure driven by carbon fueled electrification. Ditto for clean illumination.

By all means, let's have rational pollution laws for cleaner industrialization, so long as those laws don't hamper fossil fuel energy production. But we should remember the huge, life-enhancing, human environment-improving benefits of fossil fuels. If the IPCC and their political allies had been around before the industrial revolution to meet the "challenge" of climate change "for the next generation," we'd still be living in grinding poverty, be at the mercy of nature's elements, beset with child mortality rates of 50%, and be dead at 40.

Rather than demonize "carbon pollution," we should lionize the fossil fuel industry as the heroes that they are, because Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet.

By the way, Meara, what "reductions in snow and ice" are you talking about? Global warming increases snow and ice-pack because warmer air holds more moisture, which leads to more precipitation, including more snow in colder regions. And as the Washington Post recently reported, Antarctic sea ice is at record levels since satellites started collecting data.

Related Reading:

Ho-Hum: Another "Expert" Panel Pedaling Climate Change Scientology

Fossil Fuels and Climate Change: Remember Life Before Them

Now, the World's Looters Target America for "Climate Injustice"

It is time to recognize environmentalism as a philosophy of guilt and sacrifice and to reject it in favor of a philosophy that proudly upholds the value of human life.—Kieth Lockitch

2 comments:

Mike Kevitt said...

Yeah but, how 'bout this.

Is more moisture in warmer air yielding more precipitation, including more snow in colder regions, enough to equal or offset more melting caused by warmer air?

Maybe your right, and maybe Antarctic (& Arctic)sea ice is at record levels.

Is sea ice the same as ice accumulated(ing)on permanent ice spreading over the whole polar regions, N. & S.?

Maybe sea ice is increasing as ice breaks off from shrinking permanent caps, and more snow from warmer air isn't enough to offset melting.

Environmentalists say ice caps are shrinking, so, shet down industry!

Anyway, how much must we worry about sea level even if we intensify industry & carbon emissions worldwide? Water takes up less space than ice. More moisture in the warmer air means less water in the oceans. Will large land areas disappear under the sea?

principled perspectives said...

Who knows? Nature has counter-balancing forces which are not very well understood. That's why the stall in global warming over the past 2 decades was unexpected, despite rising CO2 levels.

One thing is certain; without industrial energy, man will never be able to cope with nature's forces, whether the seas are rising, falling, or whatever.