Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Horner II: on global warming

More from Christopher Horner's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism...

I'm dividing this review into four parts: some lovely quotes on global cooling; his discussion of global warming and cooling (below); "the debate" including the tactics of those in the "consensus" view; and the political and economic responses.

Despite the frequent claims that the debate is settled, Horner argues that

The main hole in the "settled" theory of catastrophic Manmade global warming is that it is not catastrophic, manmade, or global (p. 65).

Horner continues by allowing that:

Yes, on average, the planet is getting warmer...mostly at night, in the winter, and at the North Pole...[but] not unprecedented...just emerged from something called the Little Ice Age...currently colder than it was during the well-established Medieval Warm Period....uncertain about the extent of the warming...to what extent is human activity responsible for the current warming? Probably very little. Many factors, including the volatile sun, can contribute to temperature change....We cannot even be sure that the Earth's warming is a bad thing [on net]... (p. 66)

Manmade greenhouse gases are a tiny fraction of one factor (p. 69).

Warming is happening, but it is slight, it is relative, and it is not "global" in that it is not warming everywhere (p. 70).

Don't most flora and fauna live in warmer areas...the same reason that 90% of Canadians are huddled near their southern border?...Finally, we need to ask whether warmer is necessarily worse...Cold is not only not pleasant, but it kills like heat rarely can (p. 74).

1 Comments:

At January 30, 2009 at 2:25 PM , Blogger Eric Schansberg said...

It's a good time-- at least for rhetorical purposes-- to talk about global warming, at least in the Midwest! ;-)

It was either that or a spate of articles I have an Darwin and evolution. But I'll wait until February to correspond with his 200th birthday.

 

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