Monday, February 12, 2007

THE REAL STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS

Earlier Today Drudge had a transcript of Czech President Vaclav Klaus dispelling man-made climate change in an interview with a Czech paper. Of course, those Czechs have seen all that collectivism masquerading as enlightenment too many times to count already. Here are couple of moments worth reading

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.

2 comments:

E said...

The rare politician who answers the questions and will not allow himself to be badgered! Yes, temperatures are trending up globally, that is documented fact. But it does not follow that the current trend is permanent rather than cyclical, and even if it did, it doesn't necessarily follow that man has caused the increase, and even if it did, it doesn't necessarily follow that man can change the trend, and even if we could, it doesn't necessarily follow that we should. The enlightened cannot tell me what to think, no matter how many times and through how many channels they repeat it.

Dude said...

In the '70s, the trend was towards cooling and everyone thought we were entering an Ice Age. Now the trend is towards warming and the elite is convinced that it is our doom. The entire science is based on a logical leap that the advent of science itself was designed to preclude.

The doomsayers always interpret the evidence as proof that man is
destroying himself. For example, in the '40s, we exploded an atomic
bomb and we also formed an Air Force. We began noticing flying saucers in the skies and a certain reasoned contingent became convinced that the saucers showed up because of the explosion of the bomb. They went on to build an entire philosphopy around why the "space brothers" were here to save us from destroying the planet.

The human mind is built to make cause/effect relationships and we
sometimes recognize patterns in random noise. It could be that the
flying saucers have been in the skies all along and we only began
really noticing them in the 40s because that is when we as a species took to the skies. It's less romantic but the cause/effect relationship is still there with that more mundane theory.

With "global warming" we have another doomsday prediction based on a spurrilous causal relationship. The entire theory is built on the fact that the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is measurably
increasing. This can be measured over time and if that is what the
numbers say then I have no reason to doubt it. However, the logical
leap which concludes that increased carbon dioxide in our atmosphere directly affects the average temperature on Earth is a bunch of hokum.

The composition of our atmosphere has been in constant flux for
billions of years. There have been Ice Ages interspersed with rivers of molton lava all without the input of humanity. It is the height of hubris to even seriously consider that we have any input in the Earth's thermodynamic equilibrium. We have yet to built a model that can predict a city's weather more than four days out, but we are suddenly sure that burning oil leads directly to global climate change within twelve decades. Give me a break.

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