Minnesota State Senator Tom Neuville

I don’t know, Tom. It would be an expensive effort to use technogy to add something else to the atmosphere, the side-effects of which are not certain. What if there are unintended side-effects that are worse in some ways than the problem it seeks to solve? And it’s also simly a way to delay having to deal with conservation issues like fuel and energy inefficiency.

Exxon and the coal companies would love to extend their profits instead of diversifying into green technology; More delay. Exxon would love to push hydrogen as the sollution, although it’s a long ways off, not because it’s greener, but because they have the distribution infrastructure already in place for selling a fuel for cars (electric cars mean you may be buying a recharge from the electric company, not Exxon, so they hate ‘em).

And if we found a way to spew ash into the atmosphere, as we increase the C02, how soon would we reach the point where we could not keep up, and could not put enough ash up there to compensate? (Do you see why it may have been published in the Wall Street Journal, now owned by FOX Network owner Rupert Murdoch, notoriously engaged in all sorts of global warming denial and distorion?)

Here are some exerpts from an op-ed piece that ran in the NY Times. Made me think of the long-running debate here. As I’ve given credit to the author and paper, and clipped out some sections (so as not to include it in its entirety), copyright restrictions don’t apply:
……………..
Published on Monday, October 15, 2007
by The New York Times

Gore Derangement Syndrome
by Paul Krugman

On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal’s editors couldn’t even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore’s name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.

And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with “that well-known peace campaigner Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore’s stance.” You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change - therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists.

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job - to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for - the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.

[….]

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said F.D.R. “We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

The solution to such conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide individuals with an incentive to do the right thing. In this case, people have to be given a reason to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, either by requiring that they pay a tax on emissions or by requiring that they buy emission permits, which has pretty much the same effects as an emissions tax. We know that such policies work: the U.S. “cap and trade” system of emission permits on sulfur dioxide has been highly successful at reducing acid rain….

[….]

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial - but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t be solved with tax cuts or bombs - well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investor’s Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious schemes of - who else? - George Soros.

Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy.

Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics at Princeton University and a regular New York Times columnist.

Regarding comments from John George:

John, you write, “rooted in political hype and not good science.”

This is a two-edged sword that cuts more in the direction of Exxon-Mobile than in the direction of the environmentalists and majority of scientists who are concerned about global warming.

Perhaps you’ve read the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) called “Smoke and Mirrors,” with its reproduction of Exxon memos regarding their well-funded PR campaign, which shows how they hired some of the same PR experts as were used by the tobacco industry for their disinformation campaign about the health effects of smoking. A large number of the most prominent global warming skeptics are very well-funded by Exxon.

It’s hard to read that report and not conclude that the skeptics’ positions (which sometimes disagree with each other but usually argue against human-cased global warming) are poltical and economic hype.

On the other side, we have a majority of scientists who think much or most of global warming is human-caused. In your comments, you cherry-pick scientific speculation about global cooling seem to suggest that the use of this example, red-herring style, can be enough to dismiss all those scientists who are concerned about global warming and the trends they claim to see in the data. “See, those darn scientists can’t agree on anything, and they keep coming up with all these hair-brained speculations.” One often hears these sorts of complaints. But may be more about those few scientists who are sometimes chosen by the popular media for a few seconds of fame than it is about peer-reviewed scholarly consensus.

Next, we hear complaints about peer-review, many of which sound like the Hillary Clinton of the ’90’s in reverse: Instead of a “vast, right-wing conspiracy,” it’s a “vast conspiracy of academia” that supposedly works like this: If there is anything like a majority of scientists who agree that global warming is human caused, then, according to the skeptics, it must be an agreement that is based not in a clear discernment of facts and data and truth, but instead, it must be because scientists are all socialists at heart (they get paychecks from either the government or private universities, or both), and they are more afraid of being politically incorrect among their peers than they are dedicated to pursuing the truth, so they just keep churning out scholarly papers that fawn over and conform to the prevailing opinions, because, well, otherwise, they would not get published, and if they don’t get published, they won’t get tenure, etc.

So we’re supposed to believe that those scientists who get paid by Exxon are not swayed at all by money, and those scientists who claim to be concerned about global warming are only worried about tenure and publication.

And we’re supposed to believe that Exxon would never stoop so low as to finance a disinformation campaign, or a kind of fraud to advance or protect their profits, because we know large corporations like Exxon never do this. After all, Haliburton and KBR and all those corporations with the no-bid, cost-plus contracts in Iraq are doing their patriotic best to avoid any kind of fraud.

Oops, I guess that was a bad example, as we know the news about widespread fraud among contractors in Iraq, which has come under scrutiny from both Democrats and even some Republicans, and regarding which there have been recent efforts at reform.

Polls have shown that public opinion has changed very little regarding global warming, and yet Exxon and other groups are fighting the tide. There is no large left-wing conspiracy to destroy the US economy, no evidence that the Nobel committee will profit, no socialist conspiracy among scientists in academia, no lists of academics and environmental activists who stand to reap huge windfalls from their investments in renewable energy corporations.

What we have instead is Bush political appointees who are non-scientists, and who have censored and edited reports from government scientists.

And we also have a growing list of Republican politicians and even memebers of the Christian right who are concerned about global warming and stewardship of the earth. And if you need to think through the left-wing conspiracy theory, then it would appear that Republican Senators Norm Coleman and Olympia Snowe have either simply been deceived, or they are just opportunistic liars who are playing politics to attract moderate and liberal votes, and the only politicians who remain standing on the solid ground of truth are those who remain global warming skeptics? This is a bit of a stretch for me.

John: Thanks for keeping up the conversation.

You bring up many points.

We have some areas of agreement: Although I think it’s possible to support the argument that one could “offset” one’s carbon footprint by investing in renewable energy or tree-planting, I’m skeptical about it too. It’s a luxury for the rich to thereby claim they’ve done the right thing–but perhaps avoid responsibility–and it’s too hard to confirm whether what happens when one invests in the offset actually works, and doesn’t create more C02 in the process.

We have some areas of disagreement:

You say that you “have read the reports of many ‘green’ scientists, and they start with a premise that the world is in the condition it is today solely because of the influence of man.” I don’t know who you’re reading (Greenpeace?). If you read the IPCC report and the related FAQs, it seems to me that they bend over backwards to acknowledge every factor related to global warming that has absolutely nothing to do with human causes, but yes, they consider that too.

You write, “There is another cadre of scientific investigation that is not Exxon financed, but has as one of it’s tenets that man is not the center of the universe. And there is observable phenomina to support their tenet.” But this is not a matter of shopping around for a favorite scientific point of view that suits our culture, egos and political persuasions best. If CO2 is triggering global warming, and if most of the evidence does not point to the cycles of the sun, then it’s a scientific judgment, not a popularity contest in which a sleeper candidate (with the motto, “it’s the sun, stupid”) is currently behind, but we try to change the trend with our votes.

It seems you have fallen prey to the anti-Gore propaganda without wondering what the home size and average electric bill have been for other former presidents and vice-presidents. There are things I don’t like about Gore, but it doesn’t help anyone to resort to an ad hominem attack. The message should be judged on its own merits, regardless of the electric bill, carbon offsets, or weight gain in recent years of Mr. Gore.

I’m not against considering migration of invasive species. But if the weeds in your greenhouse are perking up because you left your car running in the garage, left the garage door shut, and left the door open from the garage to the greenhouse, then even if the weeds are growing too fast in your greenhouse, that may not be the primary problem. You may be treating a symptom and not the cause.

I am not saying that there are no politics involved in academia. I’m just saying that one can read the memos and UCS report on Exxon’s disinformation campaign, and it’s hard to argue against the evidence for the manipulation because of their interest in protecting their profits, and also the similarities and connections to what happened in the tobacco industry. If you’re going to argue that some college professor who studies ice cores at the south pole is politically motivated because of stock he owns, or that his research is corrupted, you have to make a case, and support your case by providing evidence. You have not done this.

Today I saw another article about C02 as a cause: It seems the oceans are absorbing much of the C02, and have long been doing so, but that they are slowing down in their ability to absorb it. In the process, the surface of the ocean is being acidified at an alarming rate. The resulting dilute carbonic acid is contributing to the bleaching of coral reefs, and reduces the calcium carbonate that reefs and shellfish need.

Now it seems that you’re ruling out cultural change, and - what? Talking about invasive species? Shall we find some “natural” pesticide to kill migrating species of bugs? Why rule out cultural change? Is the human race not responsible for human cultures?

And why do you assume that cultural change must mean that we go back to the “horse and buggy” days? Who is advocating that? (Not me.) Who assumes this would be the case? (Not me.) But if human-caused CO2 is triggering global warming, and if we don’t do something about it but assume, as you seem ready to, that we can’t change culture, then it’s very possible that the effects will be much worse than invasive species.

There are already terrible droughts in the US Southeast and Southwest (including California, New Mexico, and Arizona), Kenya, Australia and Spain. We had very little rain for a great deal of the summer in MN this summer. A drought in one place might be an anomaly, but it’s not just an isolated event.

And it’s not just “throwing money toward something that may or may not have any effect.” If we raise fuel efficiency standards, it may save many people money on gas (or do you have Exxon stock, and are you protecting their profits–or “culture”?). The more wind and solar electric generation we build, the more it should come down in price, and it’s better than buring coal (or do you have Xcel energy stock, and are you protecting their profits–or “culture”?). If we change building code to require more geothermal, it may be an added expense up front, but homeowners may save more money in the long run, and perhaps we don’t need such huge homes as are being built (the average square footage has been rising steadily for decades). If businesses and homeowners conserve, it can save them money. If businesses use waste-heat recovery, they could generate electricity from now-wasted heat.

There are many methods at our disposal: consuming less, conservation, recycling heat and waste, considering exponential (and unsustainable) world population growth. We would need reforms and government leadership. Carbon-credit trading may only allow the rich nations and corporations to buy irresponsible energy consumption, but carbon-taxes may be necessary.

Why is cultural change off the table, and you want to discuss diseases and parasites?

Bush says we’re addicted to oil (add to that coal and natural gas), yet it seems most people don’t want to consider that addicts need treatment and recovery.

After the Clean Water Act, we saw the relatively swift effects of small cultural changes. The Mississippi River experienced dramatic changes, and species that some thought had disappeared from the river have begun to return. Cities separated their sewage and storm water, treated their sewage more carefully, and industries polluted less. It cost (and still costs) money. But it had an effect.

Why assume that similar efforts with global warming would be wasted money (and not, often, money saved)?

So yes, let’s admit that both sides are politcal in their own ways. But politics can be used to support truths or lies. Certainly, at times, there is hype on both sides.

But it would be naive to assume that the world is moving toward recognition of Global warming because some people…. give too much money to Greenpeace? Invest too much in factories that build wind turbines? Or carbon-offset companies?

Calvin Coolidge once said that the future of nations may be determined by who has access to petroleum. We intervened in Iran in the 1950’s because they threatened to nationalize the oil fields, to the great dismay of Great Britain and our own oil interests. Exxon is the largest corporation in the world. Money, and our addiction to oil, is all on the side of denial. If in fact the world is waking up to global warming, it might not be because it’s just “another kind of politics,” and “all things being equal.” As a wise man once said, some things are “more equal” than others. Monied interests tend to get their way, unless “their way” leads to bad enough things, and what goes around starts to come around.

This doesn’t mean human beings are the center of the universe. Far from it. We reap many good things we didn’t sow. But in the end, if we sow enough bad seed, eventually we’re going to reap it.

John:

I never said we should restrict it to changing energy use habits, and I’m not sure that Gore or Greenpeace are asking that either. I think both would be fine with measures to deal with diseases that result from climate change. But being prepared means not ruling out energy use either.

You say you’re not swayed by Exxon propaganda, but you do a great job quoting some of it uncritically. You still miss the point. It doesn’t matter that much if you compare the Gore estate to that if GHWB, or if you include the large Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, or any other summer homes owned by any former executives or vice-executives.

The point is that the message should be judged independent of the messenger. The ad hominem attack seeks to misdirect attention to the messenger (”kill the messenger”) so that listeners might not be swayed by the message, which could be the real deal.

Example: Say you have a recovering alcoholic (and I’m not taling about W now) who is a friend of your cousin’s. He comes to you and says that your cousin has a drinking problem and needs treatment. It’s certainly possible that the alcoholic runs a treatment facility, perhaps the only one nearby, and is looking for more customers. It’s also possible that the alcoholic has insight from experience and an important perspective that you should not ignore if you care for your cousin. You could certainly dismiss the message (”My cousin could not be an alcoholic, because that alcoholic who told me so is an alcoholic, and maybe he’ll benefit.”) Or you could consider the message on its own merits.

I don’t know of the publication to which you refer, but here’s an answer from Genesis:
Remember the flood. People become sinful, losing a sense of the kinds of priorities and charity for which their creator intended them. God, through nature (in this instance, the rains and flood) wipes out all but a few chosen, a remnant.

You speak of how we should take certain steps against diseases, etc. But that depends on how you see your relationship to the God of Genesis: Shall we simply let God, through disease, drought, violent weather (climate change in general) and reduction in available fossil fuels, etc., wipe out many species, and a large chunk of the human race?

One way to look at it would be to say that this is God’s right, to decide who lives and who dies. And furthermore, some would claim it’s self-idolatry to try to tamper with God’s will. Let the AIDS victims, and the Tsunami victims, and the Katrina victims, pull themselves up by their own bootstraps or die, because it’s God’s will, and perhaps we should (like Pontius Pilate?) wash our hands of it instead of playing God. Some are very comfortable taking this position, contrary to certain biblical admonitions to hear the cries of the widow and orphan, etc.

And if one is a big Ayn Rand fan (or a kindred spirit of Ayn Rand without knowing her works), then the job of humanity is to work and make a profit, and if this results in global disaster, then only those who save up enough profits and supplies will survive, and God will sort out the rest. They would say the equivalent of, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” — and leave humanitarian work up to God.

Another way to look at it, perhaps for some Christians, is to view the teachings of Jesus, and the Last Supper, as Jesus’ way of passing on a commission to us, that we should be his hands and feet, and that we should be instruments of charity toward one another, and not (like Ayn Rand fans) worship at the altar of Mammon (materialism, the almighty dollar).

If one holds this view, then yes, perhaps we should consider what to do about diseases, and about drought, and about violent extremes of weather, and peak oil, and better stewardship of the earth, and acid in the oceans from too much C02, and bleaching of coral reefs, and rampant consumerism that wastes limited fuels and lines the pockets of the rich, who shall, after all, have to enter the kingdom by way of the eye of the needle….

Verse 13 of Joshua chapter 24 describes the kind of life most of us lead:

“I gave you a land which you had not tilled and cities which you had not built, to dwell in; you have eaten of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.”

We were born into cities and systems of economics and agriculture from which we benefit greatly, and that we didn’t create from scratch. What if these systems become our own undoing as a human race?

Joshua famously says, “…As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

But he warns the people:
“You may not be able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God who will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.
20
If, after the good he has done for you, you forsake the LORD and serve strange gods, he will do evil to you and destroy you.”

So one could argue that this is exactly what has happened. We’re addicted to oil (running out), and to natural gas (running out there too) and coal (also a limited resource), we’re letting our leaders feed us propaganda and lies and fear to lead us into war from which contractors and corporations are reaping great profits. And we’re on a path to our own doom in a multitude of ways.

So we have to decide who we will serve. Some want us to serve the almightly dollar to the end, and have “faith” that this alone will lead us from darkness to light, as long as we keep justifying wars in the name of freedom and democracy (and fear), and as long as we don’t do anything that might hurt profits (like single-payer health care, or like old Republican General Smedley Butler’s suggestion, that in times of war, we restrict wages and profits of military contracts to the same pay the soldiers receive).

So who you gonna serve?

John:
Thanks for your generosity in keeping up the conversation on a number of points.

(And Tom, congrats on your judicial appointment.)

1. If you don’t trust Al Gore because he doesn’t walk his talk, I won’t try to change your mind. But my point was that sometimes such people are messengers of truth, even if, on some counts, they are not trustworthy. My kids enjoyed a movie called Ladyhawk in which a liar and thief finally decided to mend his ways and tell the truth, but when he did so, the authorities assumed he was still lying, so they missed an opportunity. The message is the point, not the messenger.

2. My wife is a public school teacher, and I teach English at the college level. I find that there are still compelling ways to read and discuss literature that relates to the problem of greed. One can also study the Bible as literature in public schools and universities. And while the Bible may have many of the most memorable lines about the problem of greed, there are many secular authors who have had good things to say.

3. I agree with you that the problem is much bigger than Exxon. There is also greed, undue influence and corruption of the political system related to other oil companies, nuclear, coal, and yes, oil-rich countries. But we’ve taken about half of the recoverable oil from the earth already and burned most of it. We aren’t finding major new oil fields, and what is left is often of lower quality and more expensive to recover and refine. In addition, demand is rising; when Model T’s were selling, there was little demand. Now the middle class in India, China and elsewhere is growing, and they want cars too, so as supplies dwindle, demand is going up, and it’s foolish to expect oil prices to “stabilize” or go down.

This all spells trouble: Too much of our economy depends on oil. Too much of our food production, distribution and packaging is floating on a bubble of oil.

And as climate change continues to unfold, whether it’s caused by C02 or not, we will see more drought, more desert, more famine, more displaced populations from coastal areas.

What’s ahead? Wars over dwindling resources of fresh water and oil? It’s very likely if we can’t plan more for the future, as you say.

Yes, there are people very excited about the Arctic melt, and very ready to make money off of new shipping lanes. And yes, for a while this would cut down on the amount of fuel needed.

But if oil gets too expensive, then we simply won’t be shipping that many things. I think there will be a great move toward more local, sustainable production practices.

And as I’ve said before to Senator Neuville, I think it’s wrong not to make more progress on renewable energy. It would be better to change infrastructure and invest in wind, solar, geothermal, etc., than to simply wander into the future assuming that we can keep doing things as we’ve done them, keep consuming fossil fuel at the same rate, etc.

You see the same debate in Northfield City planning, where some want to move toward new ways of planning land use (use less land, live closer together, have more sidewalks, more homes in walking distance of schools, work, shopping), and others assume that Adam Smith would want to let the “invisible hand” of the marketplace determine how things unfold in the face of impending disasters. Adam Smith would never have approved of the way his “invisible hand” ideas have been abused.

As far as longer growing seasons and greater yields go, tell that to the folks in Atlanta who are watching their water supply dry up. If there were no droughts, no scorching heat over the summer, then we might get bigger yields in some places. But beyond a certain point, the C02 doesn’t help yield, but only makes many crops sink more roots–and it only works if other conditions are good. If the corn is scorched (like much of it was around here last summer), that helps no one.

The Neocons currently in office, and much of America, seem to assume that it’s OK if the US spends more than all the rest of the world on military spending, and increase our already huge national debt. There was a time after WWI when Republicans (like Marine General Smedley Butler) complained about the war profiteers, and how corporations should not be getting rich while young people are risking life and limb to serve in the military. I agree with your hunch that greed will take over, unless people rise to the occasion and do things to prevent it.

Paul. Thanks for the URL on the crop yield. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m sure it will be interesting. As far as the changes coming in our climates worldwide, the big question for me is whether we will be able to adapt quickly enough to the changes. If there are quick, severe, long lasting changes, such as the drought in the south lasting for 5 or 10 years, this will definitely be catastophic to the population there.

It seems there is an uncertainty about how much, how fast, and what duration climate change will be. I’m not sure we have sufficient historic data to really direct us here. That is why I suggest taking this a little slowly. Slowness does not help much for short term local disasters, but when we are talking major life changes, such as going to local neighborhood population concentrations for our whole life, it will take quite a bit of time. In fact, I’m not sure how we could approach this, seeing as how we have become so economically dependent upon commuting. My fear is the changes will be forced upon us by the government, all in the name of saving the planet, and we will see our freedoms evaporate. It is less that a century ago that whole families seldom moved outside a 25-50 mile radius of where the generations were born. With the advancement of travel and communication methods, people are free to move thousands of miles from where they were raised. This lifestyle will not be easly or quickly changed.

I don’t see trying to change natural processes as very helpful. Many local ecosystems have been irreversably damaged by our scientific intervantions. Two examples come to mind: the Asian beeltes used to fight aphids and the introduction of multiflore rose bushes to try to contain cattle.

As far as Al Gore goes, I haven’t seen any changes in him that would convince me to trust him, but that is just my opinion. I’m not sure your analogy fits.

As far as your secular authors and greed, what is the compelling evidence to obey them? I think that if people will not obey God (out of unbelief that He exists), they will probably not obey any secular writers, either. The whole intent of scripture is to change a person’s heart. His actions can be changed by force, but he will still have his evil intent in his heart, lying dormant until the oportunity arrises for him to act on it. I’m not convinced that the Bible will do anyone any good if it is taught as equal along side secular writers.