Wednesday, November 15, 2006
THE BEAUTY OF GLOBAL WARMING
A leftist view on global warming:
The beauty of global warming is it is something that every single person can directly and easily address. We cause it directly as individuals. We can therefore fix it.
We can’t stop invasions or terrorism but we can stop global warming.
To which Currency Lad sensibly replies:
Individual action will have no effect whatsoever on global warming.
Whereas individual action has, in fact, stopped quite a few terrorists; consider the case of shoe bomber Richard Reid, for example. As for controlling the weather ... ever tried stopping rain? Or starting it? Not so simple, my friends. An individual’s efforts to “fix” global warming—or any global (or local) weather phenomenon—is mostly an illustration of said individual’s insane belief that he or she somehow is able to influence events not at all subject to their control.
Let’s say you buy a Prius. Net effect on global climate: zero. Let’s say your entire family moves into a cave and begins living on discarded pizza crusts your children harvest from bins under cover of darkness. Net effect on global climate: zero. Let’s say an entire industrialised nation is taken out of the equation. Net effect? Zero:
Two percent.
That’s how much of the world’s man-made CO2 Canada produces. Most Canadians don’t know that. We are, as the saying goes, the proverbial “drop in the bucket."
So, now that you know the truth, consider this: What would happen if Canada were never to produce another man-made CO2 molecule ever again?
If every man, woman and child never exhaled again and therefore never produced anymore hated CO2, what would be the effect?
What would happen if all Canadians just disappeared and therefore all that hated machinery and technology that makes survival through a Canadian winter possible, just sat idle? No cars driving around, no need to heat homes or turn on lights. No more plants and factories. What would the effect on the global climate be?
Absolutely nothing at all.
New Zealand produces only 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions; shut that nation down, and you’d witness a reduction in greenhouse emissions of just one-fifth of one percent. Beginning to get an idea now of how impossibly demented is the notion of an individual influencing global warming? (Hypocritical environmental activists are aware of this; that’s why they fly everywhere.) Hilariously, the Kyoto Protocol requires that clean little New Zealand hands over billions to (of all places) Russia for its enviro sins.
We’re living in crazy times. Ponder this the next time an apocalyptic greenoid mentions the “hottest [month, year, whatever] in recorded history”; that “recorded history” (the last 200 years, at best) represents just 0.000004% or so of the planet’s entire 4.6 billion year existence.
UPDATE. Bolt commenter Peter F.:
The poll conducted on Ch7’s website is interesting. 65% of respondents say the current cold snap is a result of Growbull Wormening. I have to agree. 2 days ago it was hot, today is cold and in two days time it will be hot again. I guess you would have to say the climate has changed three times in six days. The end is nigh. The time has approached to select the breeding pairs to survive and begin the new millenium.