Well I hope you all enjoyed your 60 minutes in the dark last Saturday because as far as I'm concerned it was truly metaphorical of the techonological dark age we are about to enter if the green movement get their way.
Before we start, let's get a few things clear. I'm not a global warming skeptic at least in the traditionally accepted sense of the term. I accept that climate change is happening and that we are in a warming period unlike any previous era. I also accept that the likely cause of this increased warming is human activity over the last 35000 years. Let's remember for a minute that the IPCC report on global warming states that the warming observed over the last 50 years is due to human activity and not that the warming observed is due to human activity over the last 50 years. The phrasing of the IPCC conclusion is incredibly precise and a simple change in the order of the words leads to a vastly different interpretation. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases don't just come from Range Rovers and Hummers but from a wide array of human activities some of which date back just a few hundred years such as electricity production and metal fabrication and some which date back thousands of years such as farming and alcohol production.
There are however a couple of questions which still need to be answered.
The first of these is the extent to which the currently observed climate changes are part of a natural phenomenon. Carbon dioxide and mean temperature data extracted from ice core samples over the last 400,000 years show a cyclical trend in warming and cooling periods. While the current warming period shows carbon dioxide concentrations much higher than expected for the observed temperature data, it still follows that at some future point, either far in the future as part of a natural process or much sooner as a result of human activity, an inflexion point will occur where cooling begins and an ice age beckons. After all, we have evidence of such ice ages as far back as the Cryogenian some 850 million years ago and even the Huronian some 2.7 billion years ago although the latter is merely hypothesized. It stands to reason, therefore, that with or without our help, the planet is able to go through a significant warming period and come out the other side without any harm done. In fact, it may be the case that the planet needs to go through this cycle of warming and cooling and may be just another natural phenomenon like the flipping of the poles or extinction level events, although this is just supposition on my part. As a corollary to that idea, we should really if only as a thought exercise look at adapting to life on a hotter and later colder earth because if this is part of some natural process, aided by us or not, then taking steps to make this planet comfortable for humans for another thousand years may result in the kind of drastic consequences that environmentalists are always going on about in terms of inaction.
The second question or problem as it were regarding the current climate change movement is the fact that, in the mainstream, the blame and/or responsibility for our current predicament is placed squarely on the shoulders of motorists. It seems that we should all abandon our SUVs and sportscars because we are killing the planet and instead choose bicycles and Toyta Priuses (or is that Prii) or worst of all the totally terrible and disgusting G-Wiz, best described by James May as the most stupid, useless and dangerous car ever to stalk the earth. After all the only thing that comes out of the back of a Prius is love and of course, smugness. Now, having said that I really do think that the idea of having a whopping great 4x4 when you live in suburban anywhere is ridiculous. My problem with the Prius brigade is a technological one. For as long as humans have existed, our technological progress has been inextricably linked to our ability and indeed our desire to go faster. The car is a defining invention in our collective history and has evolved to the point (at least in Europe) where you can sit in comfort in a vehicle capable of 100+ miles per hour with a range of up to 1000km with luxuries like sat nav and climate control. If we then have to go back to vehicles with a top speed of 40, a range of 60 miles and having to choose between headlights and windscreen wipers then we will have taken a massive technological leap backwards. This wouldn't be the first time such a leap has happened. After all back in the 1300s when people were developing the first matchlock muskets, the average archer could manage 12-15 rounds per minute with an accuracy of over 200 yards compared to 3 rounds every two minutes from the musket and accuracy about half that of the archer. The reason behind this change however was the need to go backward to go forward. An archer could take anything up to 10 or 15 years to train whereas a rifleman could be trained in mere days or weeks. I don't see this problem with automotive development, particularly with the release of the Honda Clarity, the world's first hydrogen fuelled car. This car at least provides the same range, cost and comfort as that which we are used to.
Another problem which I have with the Prius brigade, however, is what I suspect is a dishonest motive in targeting the car as the cause of climate change. I think that there are other factors involved in this environmentalist plot. One factor is most certainly money. Let's for a second look back to two years ago when swedish car manufacturer Koenigsegg introduced the CCX,R the world's first biofuel supercar. Now, where was the fanfare with Greenpeace holding up the CCXR as the poster boy of the green movement. Nowhere, is where, because at a pricetag of 840,000stg. it was hardly cheap. And that is the problem with the green movement. There is a pervasive hatred of anything expensive or luxurious regardless of how beneficial to the environment that product might be. After all when research showed that trains were more environmentally damaging than cars (per passenger by the way), the response from friends of the earth was not that people should drive more but that the greenest journey is one that isn't made at all. That one kind of speaks for itself.
The other problem with the Prius brigade which brings me back to the central topic of sitting in the dark for an hour (not that I did anyway) which is that there seems to be a veiled attempt at a Luddite movement under the guise of being green. All technology is suddenly starting to come under intense scrutiny for its greenness. Although the car has borne the brunt of neo-luddite invective, computers, mobile technology and even biotech and nanotech have come in for a bashing from these nutters.
At the end of the day, we should all be doing our bit to help the planet, because its the only one we've got (that we know of). At the same time though, we shouldn't be taken in by all the misdirection out there forcing us down a particular lifestyle choice like vegetarianism or primitivism because we are afraid of the consequences or because of guilt over what we have done. The climate change question is still open and although the IPCC has concluded the likelihood of anthropogenic climate change as the cause of current global warming, the matter is not sealed and every day we are researching new causes, new technologies and new treatments for this problem. I'll leave the last word on this topic to Gerald Broflovski whose advice to his son Kyle in South Park should be heeded by anyone who feels guilty about killing the planet the next time they tuck into a cheeseburger:
Before we start, let's get a few things clear. I'm not a global warming skeptic at least in the traditionally accepted sense of the term. I accept that climate change is happening and that we are in a warming period unlike any previous era. I also accept that the likely cause of this increased warming is human activity over the last 35000 years. Let's remember for a minute that the IPCC report on global warming states that the warming observed over the last 50 years is due to human activity and not that the warming observed is due to human activity over the last 50 years. The phrasing of the IPCC conclusion is incredibly precise and a simple change in the order of the words leads to a vastly different interpretation. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases don't just come from Range Rovers and Hummers but from a wide array of human activities some of which date back just a few hundred years such as electricity production and metal fabrication and some which date back thousands of years such as farming and alcohol production.
There are however a couple of questions which still need to be answered.
The first of these is the extent to which the currently observed climate changes are part of a natural phenomenon. Carbon dioxide and mean temperature data extracted from ice core samples over the last 400,000 years show a cyclical trend in warming and cooling periods. While the current warming period shows carbon dioxide concentrations much higher than expected for the observed temperature data, it still follows that at some future point, either far in the future as part of a natural process or much sooner as a result of human activity, an inflexion point will occur where cooling begins and an ice age beckons. After all, we have evidence of such ice ages as far back as the Cryogenian some 850 million years ago and even the Huronian some 2.7 billion years ago although the latter is merely hypothesized. It stands to reason, therefore, that with or without our help, the planet is able to go through a significant warming period and come out the other side without any harm done. In fact, it may be the case that the planet needs to go through this cycle of warming and cooling and may be just another natural phenomenon like the flipping of the poles or extinction level events, although this is just supposition on my part. As a corollary to that idea, we should really if only as a thought exercise look at adapting to life on a hotter and later colder earth because if this is part of some natural process, aided by us or not, then taking steps to make this planet comfortable for humans for another thousand years may result in the kind of drastic consequences that environmentalists are always going on about in terms of inaction.
The second question or problem as it were regarding the current climate change movement is the fact that, in the mainstream, the blame and/or responsibility for our current predicament is placed squarely on the shoulders of motorists. It seems that we should all abandon our SUVs and sportscars because we are killing the planet and instead choose bicycles and Toyta Priuses (or is that Prii) or worst of all the totally terrible and disgusting G-Wiz, best described by James May as the most stupid, useless and dangerous car ever to stalk the earth. After all the only thing that comes out of the back of a Prius is love and of course, smugness. Now, having said that I really do think that the idea of having a whopping great 4x4 when you live in suburban anywhere is ridiculous. My problem with the Prius brigade is a technological one. For as long as humans have existed, our technological progress has been inextricably linked to our ability and indeed our desire to go faster. The car is a defining invention in our collective history and has evolved to the point (at least in Europe) where you can sit in comfort in a vehicle capable of 100+ miles per hour with a range of up to 1000km with luxuries like sat nav and climate control. If we then have to go back to vehicles with a top speed of 40, a range of 60 miles and having to choose between headlights and windscreen wipers then we will have taken a massive technological leap backwards. This wouldn't be the first time such a leap has happened. After all back in the 1300s when people were developing the first matchlock muskets, the average archer could manage 12-15 rounds per minute with an accuracy of over 200 yards compared to 3 rounds every two minutes from the musket and accuracy about half that of the archer. The reason behind this change however was the need to go backward to go forward. An archer could take anything up to 10 or 15 years to train whereas a rifleman could be trained in mere days or weeks. I don't see this problem with automotive development, particularly with the release of the Honda Clarity, the world's first hydrogen fuelled car. This car at least provides the same range, cost and comfort as that which we are used to.
Another problem which I have with the Prius brigade, however, is what I suspect is a dishonest motive in targeting the car as the cause of climate change. I think that there are other factors involved in this environmentalist plot. One factor is most certainly money. Let's for a second look back to two years ago when swedish car manufacturer Koenigsegg introduced the CCX,R the world's first biofuel supercar. Now, where was the fanfare with Greenpeace holding up the CCXR as the poster boy of the green movement. Nowhere, is where, because at a pricetag of 840,000stg. it was hardly cheap. And that is the problem with the green movement. There is a pervasive hatred of anything expensive or luxurious regardless of how beneficial to the environment that product might be. After all when research showed that trains were more environmentally damaging than cars (per passenger by the way), the response from friends of the earth was not that people should drive more but that the greenest journey is one that isn't made at all. That one kind of speaks for itself.
The other problem with the Prius brigade which brings me back to the central topic of sitting in the dark for an hour (not that I did anyway) which is that there seems to be a veiled attempt at a Luddite movement under the guise of being green. All technology is suddenly starting to come under intense scrutiny for its greenness. Although the car has borne the brunt of neo-luddite invective, computers, mobile technology and even biotech and nanotech have come in for a bashing from these nutters.
At the end of the day, we should all be doing our bit to help the planet, because its the only one we've got (that we know of). At the same time though, we shouldn't be taken in by all the misdirection out there forcing us down a particular lifestyle choice like vegetarianism or primitivism because we are afraid of the consequences or because of guilt over what we have done. The climate change question is still open and although the IPCC has concluded the likelihood of anthropogenic climate change as the cause of current global warming, the matter is not sealed and every day we are researching new causes, new technologies and new treatments for this problem. I'll leave the last word on this topic to Gerald Broflovski whose advice to his son Kyle in South Park should be heeded by anyone who feels guilty about killing the planet the next time they tuck into a cheeseburger:
"But to believe in something just because you're afraid of the consequences if you don't believe in something is no reason to believe in something"
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