by Paul Taylor

Created on: January 21, 2009

GLOBAL WARMING STATUS

The global environmental regulatory systems, begun in earnest in the 20th Century, have often erred on the side of caution under the paternalistic maxim of "prudent avoidance" without complete science for the actual cause-and-effect of environmental impacts. Every personal and professional activity in your daily life involves some environmental regulation. Now, global warming theorists claim its cause and effect in every other known environmental issue global warming has become environmentalism's universal scapegoat and obsession. Over 600 global maladies have been attributed to global warming including such preposterous things as a Minneapolis bridge collapse and the Katrina disaster, and the decline of circumcision, brain size, cremations and Earth's rotation.

Predictably, environmentalists identify the sinister enemies of the environment as greedy corporations, property owners and the prosperous lifestyles of developed democracies. It starts with media access that promotes civic fear and misapprehension about environmental issues, and points to capitalist democracies as conspirators against you and our environment. Here, environmental activists become vital media assets, perceived as heroic saviors of the planet. This is the Alice-in-Wonderland area where the possible crisis becomes the probable, the suggestive becomes the conclusive, the accusation becomes evidence. The long-term cost-effective solutions to environmental problems derive from moderate centrist policies that do not attract radical activists, crisis-hungry media or political extremes.

From a broader perspective, and without a clear scientific consensus on the validity of such things as global warming, activists have hijacked political agendas in climatic doomsday scenarios that, if true, are the most apocalyptic so far. However, if false, the trendy global warming hysteria may be the final blow in the precipitous slide in legitimacy of environmental activism. Ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, environmentalists successfully defeated the expansion of nuclear power plants in the US that could have substantially reduced greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuel use impacts which those environmentalists now blame for global warming. Nuclear power plants emit no greenhouse gases zero carbon footprint. Nuclear power plants also reduce US dependence upon foreign oil.

There is a profound arrogance in the belief, without firm scientific proof, that human activity can significantly impact global climatic conditions. 95% of the sources of the predominant global warming gas carbon dioxide, which comprises only 0.03% of our atmosphere, are naturally occurring sources. Only 7% of greenhouse gases are CO2, while 70% are water vapor in the form of clouds.

Neither politics nor legal systems have been accountable consistently to the truths of environmental science. Environmental laws and regulations of any kind have the effect of incrementally limiting personal liberty and freedom, and of imposing severe, and often unnecessary, financial burdens on those who can least afford them.

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