'Responsibility' vs. 'Do no harm'

Climatologist James White debated author and attorney Christopher Horner on policy responses to global warming, April 8 at the Lakewood Cultural Center, in the debut event of the Centennial Institute distinguished speaker series at Colorado Christian University. Interest from the campus community and metro Denver friends of CCU was high, with attendance of about 400 overflowing the 300-seat auditorium. "Global Warming: Is the Kyoto Agenda Warranted?" was the topic for an hour-long exchange between White, who directs a research center at CU-Boulder, and Horner, whose book Red Hot Lies alleges unfounded alarmism about CO2 emissions. The adversaries were respectful but forceful with their dueling slideshows. Audience questions continued past the scheduled hour of adjournment. If you'd like a DVD of the whole event, click here to request ordering information.

White insisted human activity is massively and adversely modifying the biosphere, but he stopped short of the doomsaying often heard from the Al Gore camp. People will get by even if warming worsens, he said, but we should take climate change as a warning to lighten our footprint -- "training wheels for sustainability." Change on earth is natural, he said, and that includes human-caused change -- "but unlike bacteria, we can control our actions. We can tell right from wrong, we have a sense of responsibility. What is our responsibility to the Earth?"

But Horner said that Obama's energy tax as contained in the cap and trade legislation before Congress violates the principle of "First do no harm." With 155 countries already signaling non-cooperation on carbon emissions, he said, stringent efforts by the US will have negligible impact on warming trends "while leaving us less well-off economically to deal with what's coming anyway."

If climate activists were serious about reducing carbon, he taunted, they would start with clean green nuclear power, not a job-killing tax. Further evidence that they are not serious, Christopher Horner noted, is in a 1991 strategy memo by Club of Rome which said in order to advance their no-growth agenda, "new enemies have to be identified [and] the threat of global warming fit the bill."

"Man has always adapted, and wealthier societies adapted best," Horner asserted in his closing argument. "Access to energy, not energy poverty," will position us to cope with whatever is ahead, another of his slides stated. For a future that may be literally more stormy than today, he pointed out, you'd rather live in affluent Florida than destitute Bangladesh. So the prescription is policies making all the world more like Florida and less like Bangladesh -- exactly opposite to the Kyoto agenda.

Centennial Institute Fellow Kevin Miller, an Aurora entrepreneur, commented afterward: "Can one begin to imagine such a debate being sponsored, let alone tolerated, on the CU-Boulder campus? That's the niche CCU is claiming with its new institute and thoughtful programs like this one."

John Andrews, institute director and former Colorado Senate President, joked that the event avoided being snowed out, only to be blacked out. The evening's mild weather put to rest worries about the "Al Gore jinx" of several recent warming conference, but the debate was ignored by mainstream media. For example, said Andrews, editors at Channel 7 for some reason didn't feel this fit their upcoming series on green issues, while the Denver Post environment reporter avowed Horner's presence made this occasion "not a debate... not news."

But CCU and the Centennial Institute shrugged it off. "Our two nationally-known experts on climate science and climate policy seemed to think it was a debate," said Andrews. "So did a century-old local university. So did our capacity crowd of several hundred open-minded Coloradans. If the MSM choose to be close-minded about this, it's really their problem, not ours."

Nature is always the standard for us

When the natural elements wreak their havoc on us, we are reminded that human power can extend only so far. Yet our submission to "the laws of nature and of nature’s God" is more cause for celebration than despair. Many people, educated and uneducated, seem to assume that nature is something outside us, forgetting that mankind is part of creation or the cosmos, and indisputably a powerful force within it. Some deplore and some rejoice that we seem to be the masters of all we see.

But, I believe, the truth is somewhere in between the extremes of minimizing and maximizing our position in "the great chain of being." We are not mere beasts and certainly not gods, for we have a nature no less than all other things in the world. Thus, there is freedom in but also limits to our power. We are the "in-between being" who partakes of both the bestial and the divine.

Some speak of creation or the cosmos rather than nature, for they understand that nature does not name all that exists but is a term of distinction for all things. That is, every thing has a nature, which is constituted by its form and characterized by its purpose.

For example, birds are designed to fly, possessing the wings, shape and feathers that equip them for this purpose. This definition also serves to distinguish them from other two-legged creatures and animals with other appendages. They do more than fly, of course, but we are speaking here of what is distinctive. Some insects fly too, but no one confuses them with birds.

Mankind is a warm-blooded upright animal with the capacity for thinking, visibly manifested in speech but also demonstrated in tool making. Some birds make sounds similar to speech but there is no inward meaning in them. Many animals build but they do not articulate a design or make blueprints.

Man’s rationality is the basis for his capacity to choose, not only among alternatives that present themselves in everyday life but to make plans for the future; to determine what is immediately pleasant or beneficial but also to discern what is good for families and nations. Nothing is more distinctively human than contemplating the purpose for our lives.

What has distinguished mankind in our time is technology. Through an industrial revolution, human beings generated greater power and demonstrated more productivity than ever in our history. As fundamental as this was to our higher living standards, it almost seems quaint compared to what has come about since in electronics, computers, and space and medical technology.

These remarkable advances have not and cannot change our fundamental nature as rational animals. I am far from minimizing the enormity and the value of technological progress, but we are still mortal and subject to the domination of passion as well as reason. In a world of brilliant scientists there are "ethically challenged" ones who need to be governed by the laws and customs of our humane civilization.

Just now our greatest danger is the passion for limitless experimentation and the urge to commandeer the whole world’s resources. Ironically, it comes in the guise of concern for mankind’s well being, whether that is the eradication of disease or the amelioration of our fears.

What could be more desirable, some believe, than utilizing the seemingly limitless possibilities of embryonic stem cells to combat diseases? Why should the loss of allegedly less than truly human blastocysts stand in the way?

And who wants to be incinerated in the zone of green house gases that are said to be threatening to dry up the world? Who wants to see the ice and snow melt and inundate the earth with water while turning the fertile portions of the earth into gigantic deserts?

These horrible scenarios depend for their credibility on the almost divine claims being made for modern science. Its practitioners believe that they can eliminate all human ills even as they accuse their fellows of making the world uninhabitable by past scientific progress! Their hubris (overweening arrogance) consists in overestimating man’s powers and ignoring the limitations of his nature.

We human beings are builders and thinkers but we are not gods. We are not free of nature. We are part of it. We cannot "save" mankind or the world. We can only live in accordance with our natures and the natural elements.

Attend climate debate 4/8

Centennial Institute, Colorado Christian University’s public policy think tank, invites you to attend a debate on “Global Warming: Is the Kyoto Agenda Warranted?” James White of CU-Boulder says yes. Christopher Horner of CEI in Washington says no. They will face off at 730pm on Wednesday, April 8, at the Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S. Allison Parkway, Lakewood, CO. The two sides on global warming don’t often directly engage, so this will be a notable occasion for civic dialogue. Tickets are free but space is limited. Click here for reservations. Then read below for details.

The Issue

The Kyoto Agenda to address alleged global warming is contained in the 1997 treaty of that name which has been ratified by 183 countries – but not the United States. The agenda involves overall reduction of worldwide carbon emissions by about 5% from 1990 levels. The proposed cap-and-trade bill in Congress is President Obama's response to the Kyoto Agenda. Proponents warn of catastrophic harm to ecosystems and human civilization if Kyoto is not implemented quickly and fully. Opponents argue that implementing Kyoto would hurt the poor by slowing economic growth while only negligibly reducing temperature increases (if any; they cite data that global cooling has begun). What does the data say? What should be done?

The Forum

Two nationally respected scholars on global climate issues – Dr. James White, Director of INSTAAR at University of Colorado-Boulder, and Christopher Horner, Fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. – will debate this important topic. The Kyoto question is not often argued head-to-head as a result of former Vice President Al Gore and other proponents insisting the time for discussion is over; the time for action is now. The Centennial Institute and CCU, as seekers of truth, believe that free inquiry and debate in human affairs are never out of order. Our April 8 forum is offered in that spirit.

The debate is open to the public and free of charge, but space is limited. to reserve seats for the debate call 303-963-3424 or e-mail Centennial@ccu.edu.

Some hard truths

Fellow conservative blogger Donald Douglas has an interesting post up that cites Robert Bork's recent book entitled: A Time To Speak:Selected Writings and Arguments. Many of you will remember Bork as having been an unfair victim of left-wing demagoguery during his 1987 Senate confirmation hearings after Ronald Reagan nominated him for the U.S. Supreme Court. Though beaten in that instance, Bork has been unbowed in using his prodigious intellectual talents to influence the national debate via his writings over the past 20 years. As Douglas recounts, Bork wrote back in 1995 with uncanny prescience in his essay Hard Truths About the Culture War that we face a real and growing threat from liberalism that is destroying our culture: Modern liberalism is most particularly a disease of our cultural elites, the people who control the institutions that manufacture or disseminate ideas, attitudes, and symbols-universities, some churches, Hollywood, the national press (print and electronic), much of the congressional Democratic party and some of the congressional Republicans as well, large sections of the judiciary, foundation staffs, and almost all the "public interest" organizations that exercise a profound if largely unseen effect on public policy. So pervasive is the influence of those who occupy the commanding heights of our culture that it is not entirely accurate to call the United States a majoritarian democracy. The elites of modern liberalism do not win all the battles, but despite their relatively small numbers, they win more than their share and move the culture always in one direction ....

What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of the New Left of the 1960s - the New Left that collapsed as a unified political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.

In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex ...

As Douglas also notes, the "splintered" left-wing groups that Bork described in 1995 look a lot like the various liberal organizations that have now organized to make change within the Obama Administration.

An excellent example of this can be found in Ben Smith's recent article at Politico.com entitled: Unity '09 -- Dem Groups Quietly Align:

A broad coalition of left-leaning groups is quietly closing ranks into a new coalition, "Unity '09," aimed at helping President Barack Obama push his agenda through Congress.

Conceived at a New York meeting before the November election, two Democrats familiar with the planning said, Unity '09 will draw together money and grassroots organizations to pressure lawmakers in their home states to back White House legislation and other progressive causes.

The online-based MoveOn.org is a central player in the nascent organization, but other groups involved in planning Unity '09 span a broad spectrum of interests, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Council of La Raza to Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions and environmental groups.

The obvious point to be made here is that the most radical of left-wing interest groups are organizing to have a major impact on public policy in the Obama White House. What follows logically from this is a pro-choice, pro-illegal immigration, pro-tort/pro-defendant and pro-union orientation that will systematically weaken the foundation of our nation and our economy. Just today, for example, it was revealed that estimates for Obama's "Cap and Trade" environmental protection regime will cost the economy well over $1 trillion over the next several years -- a huge tax on business in the name of satisfying the global warming alarmists who seek curbs on carbon at any cost.

With the Obama presidency we have opened the West Wing to the worst kind of single-minded interest groups -- for whom the word "compromise" and "in the national interest" have absolutely no meaning. There is no quid-pro-quo among the true believers, who have organized their lives around unyielding belief in the importance of a single issue -- be it abortion, immigration, torture, civil liberties or the environment.  For these disciples, there is no second place  -- total victory is the only option.  And for those of us who believe in open, honest debate, this is a hard truth, indeed.

The church of climatology

One of the things that has always confounded me about many liberals is their arrogance. They are so darn certain they are right that they are unable to entertain any divergent views. Ever try and have a truly rational discussion with a liberal on race? On abortion? How about the war in Iraq? Or Guantanamo Bay? As they say on the Sopranos: Fuggedaboutit.

There are no areas of compromise on what I call the signal issues of the left. And even worse, if you dare to think differently, you are immediately attacked as a racist, a sexist, a fascist or just plain stupid. Using such personal attacks with such highly inflammatory labels has the effect of putting those with opposing views on the defensive, and distracting the discussion from the issue at hand. It is a very common -- and very effective -- way for the left to quell honest debate on many of the most important issues of the day. It's disingenuous. And it works.

Climate change is a perfect example of this. Bill McKibben at the left-leaning Foreign Policy magazine has a fantastically irresponsible piece on global warming where he claims without qualification that global warming is an irrefutable fact and that it might already be too late to save the planet. The science is apparently settled:

Every national academy of science, long lists of Nobel laureates, and in recent years even the science advisors of President George W. Bush have agreed that we are heating the planet. Indeed, there is a more thorough scientific process here than on almost any other issue: Two decades ago, the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and charged its scientists with synthesizing the peer-reviewed science and developing broad-based conclusions. The reports have found since 1995 that warming is dangerous and caused by humans. The panel’s most recent report, in November 2007, found it is “very likely” (defined as more than 90 percent certain, or about as certain as science gets) that heat-trapping emissions from human activities have caused “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.

According to McKibben, the IPCC (a UN sponsored body that is rife with political considerations) has decided that humans are warming the planet -- and so it must be true. He speaks as if the science of geologic activities on the earth -- a planet billions of years old -- is settled fact because a group of scientists have been studying the issue for twenty years or so. That he speaks with such certainty of the science behind temperature change within earth's complex ecosystem is the height of arrogance. How do we know that this isn't normal change in the ebb and flow of the earth's climate process? Doesn't anyone recall that the earth was once covered in ice? And that the onslaught of the ice age happened so quickly that it wiped the dinosaurs from the face of the planet?

McKibben has no such questions, however. His article also includes a strange defense of China as a main culprit of the carbon dioxide that he blames for heating up the earth -- and herein lies a clue as to his political motivations. McKibben argues that while it is true that China has overtaken the U.S. as the main producer of carbon emissions, the only fair way to view the issue is on a per capita basis: because China has four times the population of the U.S., China is not as bad a carbon scofflaw as America is:

And by that standard, each Chinese person now emits just over a quarter of the carbon dioxide that each American does. Not only that, but carbon dioxide lives in the atmosphere for more than a century. China has been at it in a big way less than 20 years, so it will be many, many years before the Chinese are as responsible for global warming as Americans.

Starting to see the picture? China produces more carbon emissions that the U.S., but we are the bigger sinners, since they are new to the game and we've been doing it for years. And, if that isn't bad enough, McKibben actually gives credit to the Chinese political leadership for doing more about global warming than we are:

What’s more, unlike many of their counterparts in the United States, Chinese officials have begun a concerted effort to reduce emissions in the midst of their country’s staggering growth. China now leads the world in the deployment of renewable energy, and there’s barely a car made in the United States that can meet China’s much tougher fuel-economy standards.

Maybe McKibben hasn't been paying attention to the air quality issues athletes faced at the Beijing Olympics, or the tremendous air quality problems throughout China that have created serious health issues. China has one of the worst environmental records in history, and their rapid industrialization has been virtually without restraint.

But none of this matters when you worship at the Church of Climatology, where faith trumps fact every time. It is more important to punish the culture of consumption in the United States and place the blame on Americans who drive SUV's and other cars that the left finds to be a sin against their belief that everyone should ride a bike to work. We are the original sinners, after all; we are the true crucible of industry. It is because of America that the automobile is so ubiquitous in our world.

So according to McKibben we must repent and change our deadly ways. And even then, it may be too late:

The only question now is whether we’re going to hold off catastrophe. It won’t be easy, because the scientific consensus calls for roughly 5 degrees more warming this century unless we do just about everything right. And if our behavior up until now is any indication, we won’t.

And the left always says that conservatives practice scare tactics!

Now, I'm not a scientist and I don't pretend to play on on the Internet. But I've done a little bit of research, and the science of climate change is not settled. Take a quick look at the informative article, for example, at the aptly named JunkScience.com, which takes you through the science of greenhouse gasses and global warming. The most interesting section is the following:

Who says it (the earth) is warming catastrophically?

Humans have only been trying to measure the temperature fairly consistently since about 1880, during which time we think the world may have warmed by about +0.6 °C ± 0.2 °C. As we've already pointed out, the estimate of warming is less than the error margin on our ability to take the Earth's temperature, generally given as 14 °C ± 0.7 °C for the average 1961-1990 while the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) suggest 13.9 °C for their average 1880-2004

We are pretty sure it was cold before the 1880 commencement of record and we would probably not handle the situation too well if such conditions returned but there has been no demonstrable catastrophic warming while people have been trying to measure the planet's temperature.

If we have really been measuring a warming episode as we think we have, then setting new records for "hottest ever in recorded history" should happen just about every year -- although half a degree over a century is hardly something to write home about -- so there's really nothing exciting about scoring the highest number when looking at such a short history.

The JunkScience.com article has lots of interesting graphs -- perhaps the most interesting is the one which shows the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature. For a full resolution image of the graph, click here.  This graph shows a slight uptick in temperature (to the tune of .5 degree centigrade over 120 years), but you see a much larger increase in carbon dioxide over the same period. Doesn't look like a clear causal relationship between the two to me -- and this is the primary foundation for both McKibben's article in Foreign Policy and almost all climate change policy.

The point here is not that the earth isn't warming -- clearly, it is to a small degree. Rather, the issue is how much and why: the left wants us to believe that the science is clear that we are to blame, and that the impact of this change will be catastrophic. These scare tactics are designed to quell open debate about climate change, and to make it impossible to discuss alternative explanations (or solutions) to the problem.

Most religions are organized around fear to a certain degree, and the Church of Climatology is no different. It's a powerful motivator for change. In this case, that change is to remake the world in a more progressive fashion -- wind, solar, electric cars, etc. The only way to get to this in a rapid fashion is to galvanize people through tales of Armageddon. How much are you willing to spend to save the earth from certain destruction? To the green movement's lasting delight the answer is plenty. And with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge, you can bet that the money will be flowing for the foreseeable future.