Thursday, November 16, 2006

Every silver lining has a cloud

However, the environmentalist case against engineering fixes for global warming does not rest on the underlying science. It has more to do with a view of science as the cause of the world’s problems, and not something that might provide a solution.
This quote comes from a provocative discussion on environmentalism and its reaction to potential technical solutions to climate change.

The article reviews some suggestions for cloud seeding to augment the feedback properties of clouds and other possibilities low-risk, cheap technical strategies for temperature stabilisation. Each of the techniques has funded, peer-reviewed research to support its claims. Would they work? We don't know. But that is not necessarily the point. What is instructive is the reaction of environmental groups to the possibility of such methods being used. Disinterest is an under-statement. In a reaction that reveals the true agenda of many groups, such technical suggestions are given short-shrift as they do not fit the prescribed anti-technology, anti-growth and anti-capitalist ideology such groups see as the paramount potential in their campaign on global warming.

So quick review: climate changes, always has, always will. Only now its not just changing, it is warming due to human interference that can only be suppressed by a non-carbon using society with no advertising (except for approved propaganda), no marketing (except prescribed social reform education), minimal consumption (except for important people who need to get to meetings), zero ecological footprint, and planning that is regulated, centralised and prescribed to conform to perfect equality, respect for all living things and harmonic balance.

We should all see this vision and accept its unquestioned correctness. Any science that counters this perspective is to be ignored and discounted as corrupt. No technical answers are to be considered as technology is the source of all the planet's clearly established ills that the suppression of global warming will eradicate.

I exaggerate (but not by much). Luckily, I remember enough of Orwell's 1984 to recognize doublespeak when it surfaces and hypocrisy when it manifests itself in the public arena.