“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”
“Let pure reason, not totalitarian prejudice, hold sway once more in the groves of academe, the corridors of power and the public square!”
The emotionalization and politicization of the physical science of climate change has inspired the formation of a new international organization, The Global Climate Intelligence Group. This intellectual endeavor follows a petition from more than 500 climate specialists in the European Climate Declaration to the secretary general of the United Nations to reject the hysteria from children and others proclaiming doom.…
In his book (p. 178), Andrew Dessler defines adaptation as “responding to the negative impacts of climate change.” The proper definition is to anticipate and adapt to climate change, to capitalize on the positives and to mitigate the negatives.
This series on Andrew Dessler’s Introduction to Modern Climate Change has urged better and fairer treatment of the non-alarmist side of the climate debate for the author’s 3rd edition (in process).
Part I, “Suggestions for More Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Less Advocacy,” documented how this science text was an advocacy book and failed the scholarship standard of presenting opposing views fairly for consideration. Some contentious areas of debate were ignored and others caricatured. Professor Dessler is revealed to be a deep ecologist in that “when it comes to climate, change is bad.…
“Using ethanol for vehicle fuel is hardly a new practice. In fact, ethanol has been used for fuel for more than 100 years. A USDA report noted, ‘The use of alcohol as an automobile fuel dates back to the first modern internal combustion engine, the Otto Cycle (1876), which used alcohol as well as gasoline. Henry Ford designed the Model T (1908) to use alcohol, gasoline, or any mixture of them.'”
In September 1995, the Cato Institute published Policy Analysis No. 241 by then associate policy analyst at Cato, James Bovard. “Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study in Corporate Welfare” is at once eye-opening and infuriating. ADM was not only the “most prominent” but also the “most arrogant” recipient of special government (read taxpayer/consumer) favor in the U.S. Only Ken Lay’s Enron, on a much broader basis, could rival ADM chair Dwayne Andreas.…