Posted on 6/29/2007, 2:48:36 PM by ZGuy
Should conservatives give up the fight just as the tide is turning in their favor in the debate over global warming?
In the cover story of the June 25 National Review, software company CEO Jim Manzi wrote that conservatives should stop “denying” that humans are warming the planet and instead figure out how to use global warming to “peel off” 1 percent of the vote in the 2008 presidential election. Manzi claims that this strategy could represent a “principled stand” for a “clever candidate.”
But Manzi’s strategy, in fact, represents the snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory — and all for relatively few votes of uncertain, if any, political value.
Manzi says conservatives should believe in global warming, not because of “liberal scaremongering … but because of the underlying physics” — which he apparently doesn’t grasp in the least.
“All else being equal, the more carbon dioxide molecules we have in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets,” writes Manzi.
Wrong. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect.
Clouds and greenhouse gases (GHGs), like water vapor and carbon dioxide, absorb radiation of varying wavelengths emitted by the earth. Some of these absorption bands overlap. In a sense, clouds and the various GHGs “compete” to absorb the earth’s radiation. Because of this competition, the heat-trapping potentials of clouds and GHGs don’t simply add up in a linear fashion.
As explained in greater detail on the Department of Energy Web site, there is — and has been since before the industrial revolution — enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to absorb about 36 percent of the radiation emitted by the earth.
But because of the “competition” for the earth’s radiation from clouds and other GHGs, the heat-trapping contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect is reduced to about 12 percent.
“By itself, however, carbon dioxide is capable of trapping three times as much radiation as it actually does in the earth’s atmosphere,” the DOE said.
Adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, then, can do little to trap more of the earth’s radiation and so won’t contribute much to higher temperatures or more global warming.
No doubt this phenomenon explains, at least in part, why global temperatures can decline as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels steadily increase — as happened, for example, during the period from 1940 to 1975. And let’s not forget Antarctic ice core samples indicate that increases in global temperature have historically preceded increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide by hundreds of years.
Despite Manzi’s “all else being equal” qualification, the reality is that in the real world of radiation absorption by clouds and GHGs, all things are not equal. And why anyone should pretend to the contrary is not at all clear.
Manzi apparently has taken to heart Al Gore’s main message delivered to Congress on March 21, 2007 — that is, “There is no longer any serious debate over the basic points that make up the consensus on global warming.”
But despite Gore’s box-office success with “An Inconvenient Truth,” his related Oscar award and nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, his global-warming crusade that seems to have brought him back from the political junkyard, the public doesn’t buy his sort of junk science after being presented with alternative views.
In March, the prestigious debating society Intelligence Squared sponsored a debate on global warming in New York City. The proposition debate was, “Global warming is not a crisis.” While the vast majority of the audience thought global warming was a crisis before the debate, a survey taken after the debate showed that the audience had reversed its position.
In April, CNBC Squawk Box anchor Joe Kernen famously interviewed Gore acolytes Laurie David and singer Sheryl Crow, about global warming. In addition to refusing to respond to Kernen’s repeated questions about the underlying science of global warming, David contemptuously reiterated Gore’s mantra, “The debate is over.”
But the debate apparently is not over, at least according to the Squawk Box viewers who commented about the interview. Eighty percent of the viewer responses generated by the interview supported Kernen’s effort to delve into the science.
Keeping the debate alive is all the more important given that the political dynamic of the climate controversy is slowly and subtly starting to turn away from Gore-wrought hysteria.
When NASA head Michael Griffin stated on National Public Radio on May 31 that “I am not sure that it is fair to say that [global warming] is a problem we must wrestle with,” it was NASA’s climate-alarmist-in-chief, Jim Hansen, who looked foolish for criticizing Griffin — who holds a doctorate in aerospace engineering and master’s degrees in aerospace science, electrical engineering, applied physics, civil engineering and business administration — as being “ignorant.”
The UK newspaper Financial Times recently broke out of its self-imposed, long-standing tunnel vision in favor of climate alarmism in running an op-ed by Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, who questioned global-warming orthodoxy from science to politics in a piece entitled “What Is at Risk Is Not the Climate but Freedom.”
Finally, for all its alleged concerns about catastrophic global warming, what is the alarmist-friendly Democratic Congress doing about it? The answer is nothing.
Though the Senate passed an energy bill last week, it didn’t dare approach the question of mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It seems that burdening the economy because of Al Gore’s dubious science may, after all, be bad politics.
The more scientists research global climate, the more we learn how much they don’t know about it. The more alarmists talk, the more we realize that they don’t know what they’re talking about. The debate is over? We need it now more than ever.
Geez, just because Manzi decides GW is real doesn’t mean all Conservatives are going to change their minds about the fantasy. The author is an ass.
BINGO !
Clouds and greenhouse gases (GHGs), like water vapor and carbon dioxide, absorb radiation of varying wavelengths emitted by the earth. Some of these absorption bands overlap. In a sense, clouds and the various GHGs “compete” to absorb the earth’s radiation. Because of this competition, the heat-trapping potentials of clouds and GHGs don’t simply add up in a linear fashion.
As explained in greater detail on the Department of Energy Web site, there is — and has been since before the industrial revolution — enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to absorb about 36 percent of the radiation emitted by the earth.
But because of the “competition” for the earth’s radiation from clouds and other GHGs, the heat-trapping contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect is reduced to about 12 percent.
[i] “By itself, however, carbon dioxide is capable of trapping three times as much radiation as it actually does in the earth’s atmosphere,” the DOE said.
Adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, then, can do little to trap more of the earth’s radiation and so won’t contribute much to higher temperatures or more global warming. [/i]
CO2 is only 0.038% of the atmosphere and only 3.6 per cent of greenhouse gases.. Of that only 3.4 to 5% is man-made. CO2 as a result of man’s activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.
What part of “trace amounts” don’t they understand?
I’m the ass who wtote the article.
You can read my point-by-point reply to Steven Milloy’s attack piece on it from last week at Planet Gore on the National Review website here (part 1):
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjFiMDdiYzRmMjkzZGIyNjVjNjhkZDgzODMwYzU1ZTM=
and here (part 2):
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTE3NTliYTA4YTUzNjkzMzg4NzIzYzg5YjJhMWY2NDA=
My detailed reply to his latest article should be up on Planet Gore within th next day or so:
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/
Best,
Jim Manzi
And yet, one of the flagship publications of the conservative movement gave this "ass" their cover story. Nobody would have noticed it at all if it had been published in, say, Pat Buchanan's magazine (whatever it's called).
Global Warming...justification for buying a bigger boat.
Other References:
"Conservatives should stop denying that voters are retards and should instead figure out how to use a phony issue to peel-off one percent of the Oprah vote in the 2008 election. This clever strategy is what passes for principles at National Review."
Too bad history is no longer taught in the school system or perhaps some bright student would figure out that the air is cleaner now than it was in the days of coal fired heating (without the benefit of scrubbers), wood burning stoves and thousands of horses peeing and pooping on the streets of large cities like NYC.
Personally I think someone needs to investigate the possibility that us fiddling with the atmosphere and thinning the “pollution” has caused more heat from the sun to reach the earth.
Oh, by the way, it is almost the first of July and we’ve still to have an over 100 degree day here in Oklahoma. Lots of rain, thanks to GW? These people who think we control the weather are worse than stupid.
Review
The NR article is what will cause me to not renew my subscription. Sad really, that as a conservative I no longer subsribe to WS and now NR will be gone....
That the Earth has gotten warmer over the past 100 yers is not really disputable. It’s about .7 degrees Fahrenheit. However, since 1998, that is down .2 degrees.
It’s had up and down trends throughout the Earth’s history. Contemopaneous data seems to indicate that the medieval warm period was at least as warm as today and possibly warmer. It was followed by a major cooling in the Renaissance.
And ther ehave been a few direction changes since 1900. Until 1910, it seems, we were having a cooling trend. From then until about 1940, it warmed. From then until sometime in the 1970s, it cooled again, so much so that some scientists were warning of an impending global Ice Age. Then it started warming again, until about 1998, when it blipped down a bit.
That this is anything more than nature playing out the way it does is extremely disputable. Yet that is the central tenet of the “global warming” lobby. That, and that the warming trend is a disaster.
Never mind that there are notcieable benefits, such as a longer growing season.
Maybe that’s what they object to.
>I’m the ass who wtote the article.<
Ok, you made me read your rebuttal. IMHO, you aren’t an ass.
That said, ethically I can’t see using the same brainwashing detergent the lefties are using on John Q Public to get votes. Climate change has been a part of our world since the beginning. We’re in a warming trend (although elsewhere on this forum there’s an article sounding the warning we’re all gonna FREEZE) at the moment. Al Gore hysterics aside, there is no way to prove man has anything beyond a minuscule effect on the process.
We’re being played, and the prize our opponents are seeking is nothing new.
My general position is that although CO2 may effect temperature, it is vastly overwhelmed by other factors. Just as pissing in the ocean raises the sea level, but so what?
2nd, I don’t think warming is necessairily bad.
3rd, I think you fail to understand the human condition, and the real motivation behind the environmentalists. For most of humanity, people have set out to control others. The general concepts of “liberalism” (classicly speaking) sought to change that. Although, it has been difficult. We have had communism, for example, where the elite have tried to control the actions of everyone else.
That is what environmentalism is. Sure, there might be some legitimate go gooders, but by and large this movement is about control. It’s about limiting human freedom and possibilities. Thus, if it were to be implemented in any way under the control of the environmentalists, the long term consequences would assuredly be disastrous.
That is why we need to be 100% sure before we let our guard down against these people.
Thanks.
Look, I’m as skeptical as anyone on here about the motivations of the eco-lobby. There are clearly a ton of people who are using this as a hobby-horse to try to seize control of the economy. Let’s all agree to that.
Further, there is no way to demonstrate from the temperature record that the current warming trend is man-made. Let’s all agree to that.
But, for reasons I go into detail on in my article, it is true that more CO2 will increase temperature. We just have no real idea how much. That is, this is a risk. We can manage it at low cost, without the insane idea of capping carbon emissions, which would be a terrible idea for everybody.
The way to win this debate - and we should all be clear that Clinton, Obama, Edwards and MCCAIN are proposing a cap-and-trade system for the US - is not to let the advocates of this policy argue with a straw man of “there is no global warming”, but instead to focus on the tangible costs vs. benefits of cap-and-trade.
This is always ow consrevatives win political debates about taxes: stay practical and get voters to ask themselves “What do I pay (hint: thousands of dollars per year per family) and what do I get (hint: a foreign aid program for people who might live in Africa and Asia a hundred years from now plus an incredibly over-priced insurance program against an unquantifiably small risk to America in the 22nd century)?
Best,
Jim Manzi
>But, for reasons I go into detail on in my article, it is true that more CO2 will increase temperature. We just have no real idea how much. That is, this is a risk. We can manage it at low cost, without the insane idea of capping carbon emissions, which would be a terrible idea for everybody.<
My stance is a bit different from yours, in that I don’t see a cost-benefit of any size to capping CO2 emissions. Water vapor is a far bigger determinant of surface temperature, because it’s a more effective greenhouse gas. I think we should agree that the climate is changing (and if it ever stops, we’re in a heap ‘o trouble), and then, we should agree that conservation in its own right is simple good stewardship of the planet.
And, let’s not forget the effect of the biggest determinant of “global” warming.
The Sun and its cycles.
Here is the author's point and it is valid.
But Manzi’s strategy, in fact, represents the snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory — and all for relatively few votes of uncertain, if any, political value.
Only fools believe in man made climate change; cooling or warming.
Follow the money.....
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