Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Anthropology professor Wade Davis wants to declare war on global warming, comparing the battle against CO2 to military conflict in WW2.
Writing in The Globe and Mail, based in Toronto, Canada;
… Why have we not fully mobilized and declared war on global warming?
According to Rajendra Pachauri, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the climate crisis could be fully mitigated and the world’s economy transformed with an investment equivalent to 3 per cent of global GDP. By way of comparison, the United States devoted 40 per cent of its GDP to achieve military victory in the Second World War. Shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito, Calif., spat out Liberty ships at a rate of one a day for four years. Ford Motor Co. alone produced more industrial output than the entire country of Italy. Farm boys of 17, after seven months of training, were flying B-17 bombers over Germany. The U.S. and its allies recognized a mortal danger, reached an inescapable conclusion, and went to work. If climate change is the threat we now know it to be, why has the international response been so fundamentally tepid?
On my last day in Copenhagen, I put this question to Carter Roberts, head of the World Wildlife Fund. The situation, he suggested, comes down to four basic possibilities. If the scientists are wrong, and we do nothing, little changes. If they are wrong and we act, the worst that will happen will be an economic stimulus that will result in a cleaner environment, a more technologically integrated world and a healthier planet. If they are right, and we do nothing, the potential consequences are at best bad, at worst catastrophic, with scenarios so bleak as to defy the darkest imaginings of science fiction. If the scientific consensus holds, and we aggressively marshal our financial resources and technological brilliance to confront the challenge, we will be able to, for a relatively small investment, head off potential disaster and make for a better world. It was difficult to conjure a losing scenario, save that of inaction. …
Read: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/why-not-a-war-on-global-warming/article27550301/
Davis is wrong about wartime benefits to the economy. War stimulates the economy, in the same way that breaking all the windows in town stimulates business for glaziers. Some sectors of the economy do really well – at the expense of everyone else.
In a real war, defence is the overwhelming priority, so people don’t mind foregoing luxuries to keep their children safe. This is how alarmists want us all to think about global warming.
But wars are also the time of parasites and profiteers. Wars are when criminals who arrange corrupt deals with politicians wielding extraordinary wartime powers grow rich. Nobody has time to scrutinise government expenditure when the enemy is at the gates. An endless war against global warming would be, and in my opinion is, an unprecedented opportunity for the unscrupulous to plunder the wealth of ordinary people.
The truth is the world, or at least the Western world, is already pretty much on a wartime footing against global warming. People are getting fed up with the cost of it all, with the blazing hypocrisy of our jetset planetary saviours. They are also fed up with the fact the problems of global warming are largely imaginary, invented by fools and profiteers.
Tell him he’s already won.
The global temperature is shuddering at his moronity.. and has decided to retreat.
No, he’s not a moron, he knows where his bread is buttered.
complete dishonest BS. We are talking about screwing our own economy and giving the Chinese clear road ahead to taking over the world economy.
Obama has clearly stated this his “green” policies will make energy costs “skyrocket”.
If you are a well-healed university professor with academic tenure you may well feel totally unaffected by such a proposition. For the majority of people living in the real world the “worst that can happen” may well include losing their job their home, not having anywhere to live or having to choose between eating and heating.
Of course these people don’t have the thousands of dollars needed to fly around to climate conferences, staying in 3 star hotels on expense accounts.
Creating a $100bm per year slush fund with no accountability and beyond the jurisdiction of any court in the world. to fund a non elected world government, probably comes close to “the worst that could happen”.
3% Global GDP = US $2.3Trillion
US GDP in 2014 = U.S. $17Trillion
Since they are referring to the U.S. and 6 or 7 other players when they say “the western world”, and the remainder of the Western nations economies combined equals about 1/2 of the U.S., they are effectively saying the 3% GDP worldwide figure will be coming from the U.S. GDP or about 15-16% of the U.S. GDP
That would certainty fix us
I have an even easier way to “stimulate” the economy. Get 100,000 men to dig holes, and another 100,000 to fill them back in. Voila! Encomy stimulated, unemployment reduced and everyone is happy.
Trebla, your stimulus idea reminds me of Dr. Roy Spencer’s book Fundanomics: The Free Market, Simplified :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/roy-spencers-new-book/
Breaking all the windows in town would more likely result in the invention of polycarbonate as a bullet proof substitute for glass, so all the glaziers would be homeless too.
And those 17 year old farm hands were actually men; not boys.
Wasn’t Margaret Sanger an Anthropologist ??
Izzat like an apologist for humans ??
G
Well we once had a ‘ 30 years war ‘ so it has been tried before to outlast the enemy.
A war on climate change would of course preclude a war on poverty.
But when you are down a rat hole, one hole looks pretty much like another.
g
And Trebla, one man can fill holes at least twice as fast as another can dig them.
So you work life project will only create 150,000 jobs.
How many times does one have to repeat.
Increases in efficiency eliminates jobs. It does not create jobs.
g
Other than disruptive technologies of course.
Very well argued! Good post! My gut feeling from those I have spoken to, is that the majority of Brits think AGW is at best exaggerated, at worst just plain wrong!
Using my mother as a gauge, as she’s an obsessive consumer of “news” and an inveterate worrier: “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” is so far down the list of concerns as to be invisible. Ordinary people never DID believe the hype. Seems to be a small subset of the upper middle class who are indoctrinated by the NYT and NPR.
And most of the MSM in the UK, particularly the BBC.
Yale Climate Connections
Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
Partners include:
Thomson Reuters
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/partners
Check out who the Thomson part is and their connections to the MSM in Canada.
It’s only these fantasties that worry those folks. They have enough money, enough security, so they need to remove anything that looks even slightly threatening to them.
There are many corrupt governments in the world. But when they band together as the United Nations, all is pure.
At least 190 corrupt governments apparently.
g
As the saying goes, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” So let’s throw nearly 200 wrongs together and see how that works.
Frankly you know you are dealing with people who are profoundly stupid when they profess the aim of stopping climate change. They are so puffed up with self righteousness and a sense of their own importance that they think political actions can affect the fundamental behaviour of the ecosphere.
They call us ‘Deniers’ while pretending they can stop climate from changing when it has demonstrably done so since this plant acquired an atmosphere !
Formula for a super success story,
An Indian railway “engineer” Pachauri in charge ( former chair of IPCC)
Thats like having the president of your country an ex bus driver ! ( Venezuela)
Or the prime minister of your country a drama coach (Canada).
Or the president of your country a Saul Alinsky-certified socialist radical islamic-leaning community organizer. What a great idea that was…
‘Community organizer… ‘
.. anyone?’
What were those Eastern Canadians thinking?! PS. He also used to be a bouncer (i.e. bar security guard).
Or a community organizer (AKA rabble rouser).
It’s doubtful that the lot to which the economically illiterate writer belongs would have fought WWII. It is “we” I guess, though, cause he and other hangers-on keep referring to “we” in the remarks. So maybe “we” still would’ve. Instead, it would likely be a war like the one Vietnam or the one in Iraq, where the US government gives it a half-assed effort, declares it a quagmire, and bugs out even after it’s been won, leaving all those locals that trusted it or helped its military to be eaten by the wolves.
There can also be a “war on poverty” and a “war for poverty” ongoing, at the same time, by the same government, using other peoples’ money. We could only hope the latter has as abysmal results as the former in achieving its stated aims. Squandering funds? Well, that’s assured, but it may not actually succeed in creating the poverty that would result from the hare-brained schemes.
Interesting that Pachauri is already under some effort at rehabilitation, by ignoring his apparent assaults and batteries. Not the fibs about catastrophe; those were a feature emitting from this railroad engineer. He and ex-President Clinton must have some good times together.
Most of the intelligentsia were active supporters of Hitler, believing that his kind of command and control economy was the way to go. Putting “experts” such as themselves in charge of others has been their desire for centuries.
It wasn’t until Germany attacked Russia and the real communists, that they turned against Hitler.
Can’t miss: Mark Steyn testifying in front of Senate. http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/02/senate-hearing-data-or-dogma/
We’ve declared war on poverty, drugs, cancer–and lost them all. What is this guy thinking?
Don’t forget the war on terror, and the war on want.
Let’s just hope that they don’t announce any more wars against abstract concepts.
And… the war on hurt feelings and low self esteem, indefatigablefrog. We seem to have lost those wars, too.
What we REALLY need is a war on war!
Brilliant, Trebla! Warriors for peace!
Ah, I misread you: “…the war on rant.” Makes one wonder what kind of wars we need in this world!
Right, then. An irrelevant old pervert leading the charge, and with a carbon footprint the size of Wyoming.
Which one ? there seem to be a lot of them
This coming from the same people who will bitch and bellyache about defence spending.
There is no such thing any more as “defense” spending. It’s all offense, all the time. We’re the biggest warmongers in the history of history. You can abolish the military as far as I’m concerned and maintain a Coast Guard and militia within the borders.
Another troll with no concept of history or reality.
Do you know what they call people who don’t fight back? Slaves.
Have you ever heard of the Mongol Horde, The Roman Empire?, Alexander the Great? The Huns? Nazi Germany? All of Europe during the 100 years was? the 30 years war? The list goes on and on. The USA honestly trying to help oppressed citizens under thumb of oppressive dictators is not even in the same playing field. While the means of providing help may be misdirected, it is not the sinister ‘warmongering’ you claim.
localherog2, I agree.
And MarkW, I agree with you as well. My question is, fight “back”? It’s quite Orwellian to invade other people’s countries and call it fighting “back” at them.
The quickest way to stop terrorism is to quit scr3wing around in other people’s countries. No one can give you freedom from oppressors. If anyone liberates you from an oppressor, without your learning how to stand up and — as MarkW notes — fight back for yourself, you will simply bow to the next oppressor.
But how we do love thinking of ourselves as the Rescuers, and them as the grateful little people.
Anyone know how many recording sites provide the temp trends for the land mass of the entire earth?
Someone told me 20,000 with most in urban areas – surely that can’t be right ? Statistics are one thing conjuring out of thin air is quite something else.
…An endless war against global warming would be, and in my opinion is, an unprecedented opportunity for the unscrupulous to plunder the wealth of ordinary people….
Which is why Davis is proposing it, I suppose…
War is a mechanism to bankrupt countries.
From Wiki
So it took Britain the major economy of the 19th century 100 years to pay for the Napoleonic Wars, only to get back into debt in the Great War, I doubt if WWII has been completely paid for yet
I think it finally got paid off last year? do remember seeing something in the media
No debt emitted by governments ever gets repaid these days. Hence, a reduction in the growth rate is a cut. Or sleight of hand becomes savings. See eg Clinton with the social security fakery. It in truth cannot be paid or the house of debt tumbles.
The Brits ran up a HUGE debt invading many distant lands during the 19th century and had more than one war, too, during their empire-building mania.
We (Brits) also sent Africans to America. (We “Brits” invented “concentration camps”) We also sent many Africans to their deaths overboard ships because there was not enough food and water for the journey. That fact wrenches my guts! Amazing Grace! (No disrespect to any African or African American who reads here).
The only thing worse than fighting a war, is losing one.
Comparing AGW to WW2 is the next illogical step from believing in AGW in the first place.
+1, excellent!
Of course if his war is successful and the enemy (CO2) is utterly destroyed there will no anthropology left for this clown to study.
I found the warmists four choices perplexing. If the warmist scientists are wrong and we do nothing the funds freed up help save lives and get people out of poverty. If the warmist scientists are wrong and we spend a truckload in a futile attempt to solve a non problem the wonderful growth that the world has experienced over the last 100 years will go in reverse and poor people again will be deprived of the opportunity to get out of poverty. The money is not cost less, it has a real impact on GDP. If the same scientists are right and we do nothing at least by not having squandered our money to not make any difference we may in the future have the funds and the wherewithal to adapt. If the same scientists are right and we take action we are still stuffed. Even under their own assumptions we will never be able to cut emissions sufficiently to make a difference and have no funds in the future to adapt.
All these scenarios suggest doing nothing and keeping your powder dry just in case. The warmists scenario means impoverish the current generation and we are all going to fry anyway. If we’re all doomed I’d rather party.
If you complain about all their crazy debt fueled spending for transfer payments and stuff people otherwise would not create and the consequences to come, these same people will give the crappy quip, “In the long run we’re all dead.” Har har. Good one, m’lord. Here though the long, long, run is all that seemingly matters to them. I know, both = more control, consistency be damned. Just sayin. The fifth option is to accelerate development and progress and do all possible to get settlements off this rock for humans, animals, and plants (desirable ones I hope), cause it perishes in any case sooner or later.
David, this my be the most likely scenario. Spend trillions on alternative energy, skyrocket the cost of energy (energy, the life blood of every economy) and keep millions in the third world poor while at the same time contributing to global economic collapse and global war.
Brilliant analysis, David S. As the old saying goes, when rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it. Don’t you just marvel at the care and compassion these warmist show for future generations yet unborn while blithly ignoring the plight of hundreds of thousand of refugees fleeing the scouirge of war right now.
Anthropology professor Wade Davis wants to declare war on global warming, comparing the battle against CO2 to military conflict in WW2.
if it cost only that much in time, trouble, and human lives, I might even be for that.
During a war, people who make up lies and spread disinformation about the enemy are rounded up and unceremoniously shot.
You have this backwards. During the war, people people who “make up lies and spread disinformation about the enemy” are usually rewarded. They are only shot afterwards, and only if their side lost.
oh something NO media picked up on..
Maurice strong died on Nov 28th
best news I had heard in ages.
Yep, he’s gone but no one knows where. http://canadafreepress.com/article/77101
The only way to make a “rational” analogy between WW2 and stopping man made global warming would be for Germany, Italy and Japan to have never existed and WW1 to have never happened. Such would have all been modeled, the population duped into believing the models were correct and that a war had to ~somehow~ be fought anyway.
So… it all comes down to that stupidly trite four pane window, the one that was used to introduce a new generation to the Poisoned Precautionary Principle (PPP) and served up with the euphoric dash of “Eureka!” … and suggestible persons are led to believe that this is a new idea and throughout human history we’ve been making all the important decisions by shooting craps or just going with the desires of greedy industrialists and tyrants, and not some evolving risk/reward ratio.
Since PPP is a “zero-tolerance” idea where “cost is no object” and can be illustrated by drawing on any handy four-pane window it is trite enough to be used to argue in favor of anything — including the extermination of Jews — it is with great relief that we see it used here to (merely) push a scam where the human race must drop everything to concentrate on this one scenario. By assigning infinite harm to so-called Global Warming it is easy to see that you must immediately quit your day job to join the Rainbow Warriors.
Here is the PPP in action. Note how by removing all doubt as to whether something is an issue at all (which is the cornerstone of risk assessment) one is left with a trite four pane window, and can lead others down the Garden Path to justifying any means. It also helps to have a strong belief in Keynesian economics, a poison principle where anything, even wasteful, pointless and harmful things, can justified because of the presumed economic stimulus they would create.
His comparison is misleading and his logic is faulty, because he minimizes the consequences of another Great Depression.
He says that the Global Depression in box False-Yes would make the Great Depression of the 30s look like a cakewalk. Based on what we know about the Great Depression, this means we would face an economic catastrophe, but also the political, social, environmental and health catastrophes he refers to. NO, I don’t believe that sea levels would rise 20 feet, but we already know that people are not very careful about the environment when they are worried about where their next meal is coming from – you can see this in Third World countries.
AND, don’t forget that the Great Depression resulted in the rise of the Nazis and ended only with WW2. So in the False-Yes box, we would have everything in the True-No box, PLUS we would have wasted trillions of dollars on a false premise (money that could have been spent actually improving the lot of the poor), PLUS we could look forward to another world war (more massive loss of life).
The reason why WWII ended the depression in the US was that Roosevelt was forced to eliminate most of the regulations that had been hampering business recovery for over a decade.
That video is only terrifying in the context of his sales tactics. I’ll bet he sells extended warranties for a car dealer.
Of course, you can build exactly the same risk analysis (I shudder to call it that) using any other eschatological (scatological?) scenario; an asteroid strike, pandemic disease (airborne Ebola for example), nuclear war, etc.
There’s really no shortage of imaginable catastrophes. Why is this one more important than any of the others? We have not been shown evidence (and I use that word very strictly) it is any more likely to occur than the others, in fact the risk of pandemic (anthropogenic or natural) is obviously greater than the risk of catastrophic climate change in my opinion.
This is where the analysis fails; it doesn’t compare the relative risks of other events of equal magnitude. It doesn’t even mention the other existential risks faced by humanity. What about an ice age? Even a “little” ice age such as occurred only 400 years ago? With a world population rapidly approaching 9 billion, a repetition of the Maunder Minimum would be devastating, far worse than a two degree increase in average global temperature and the concomitant increase in food production coupled with reduced needs for heating.
The essence of this argument is we should spend money to arrest global warming “because”; no real reason is given other than the possibility of impending doom, which is not eliminated by the action proposed. We should also tell all of our friends and neighbors to do the same. How many of your friends and neighbors would agree the planet should spend a $trillion/year to prevent an asteroid strike? It’s statistically inevitable one will occur someday. We can say the same about the next ice age.
I can think of quite a few more entertaining ways to spend time and energy myself. Catering to paranoids quivering in fear of the closet monster is not one of them. It would be much cheaper to wrap all of them in bubble pack, toss them in a steel reinforced concrete bunker with a TV set an feed them through a straw. It’s the only way we’ll keep them “safe”.
Why not hold alarmists to their catastrophist predictions? If they really and truly believe the world is really and truly going to bake to death by 2100, they should be going much farther than this: they need to be demanding that we shut down Western economies ASAP, ban any production of CO2 whatsoever, and prepare our military forces to attack anyone who allows coal power plants to operate, or any other source of manmade CO2, etc. etc.
Call their bluff, in other words. Do you REALLY believe the world is going to end over CO2? Then why are you fooling around with carbon markets, windmills, and COP-infinity circuses? Why should we take you seriously when you do not seriously believe it yourselves?
“they need to be demanding that we shut down Western economies ASAP”
THAT … they will never do because their agenda is based on the slowly boiled frog analogy,
An Inconvenient Truth: There is no evidence whatsoever that CO2 is having ANY deleterious effect on the environment, food production, or the comfort and productivity of human beings. Quite the contrary, in fact–and it has bee ever thus.
You think for one minute the REAL “smart money” don’t know that? Read “Forbes!”
Yes. Why not! After all, the war on poverty and the war on drugs have been oh, so successful.
Don’t forget the war on terrorism too. So glad we put a stop to that!
Terrorists will kill you if you don’t kill them first.
Global warming and CO2 are actually beneficial.
I always love that there always needs to be a “czar” for a problem.
Didn’t anyone check history about how badly the czars ruled?
Yes, but I can’t say the Commie’s did any better.
It may happen that global warming/climate change will hang around in some shape or form for many decades however these things are only symptoms of a root ailment and that takes a different type of observer, researcher or whatever level of interest a person approaches the matter. It may happen that people will start to drift away from this website leaving only citation warfare between academics but that has been the trajectory anyway.
It is handy to use the contrived notion of global warming to highlight the actual problem which has gone untouched for a number of centuries however academics are simply not familiar with the exposure of such a cherished narrative even though it has been highly corrosive and disruptive for humanity .
“Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.” Newton
It means a person is allowed to apply experimental analogies such as a greenhouse and carbon dioxide and elevate it without any restrictions to planetary climate (Universal qualities) just as the fall of an apple could be scaled up to the motions of planets by removing the limits between analogies and Universal conclusions. Such a drastic correlation is going to lead to drastic conclusions and that is the intellectual atmosphere we are presently stuck with.
When all is said and done there will still be planetary climate to consider using a proper research foundations and beginning with planetary comparisons and the common traits which actually determine what a planet’s climate is. It only depends on how quickly researchers set aside the greenhouse nightmare and start to model climate using a few basic inputs in order to restore climate studies to an enjoyable pursuit as it once was.
“An endless war against global warming would be, and in my opinion is, an unprecedented opportunity for the unscrupulous to plunder the wealth of ordinary people.”
And the climate would still win!
Sure, why not a “war on global warming”, since they are already waging a war against truth, science, and basic democratic principles. What better way to further their goal of shutting down the opposition, of subverting free speech, while at the same time “rallying the troops” and encouraging new ones to sign up? Good plan.