Once upon a time, in 1988 in fact, on 03 July, the USS Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner. It killed 290 passengers.
George Bush, on his presidential campaign at the time, was asked for an explanation. He emphatically stated that, “I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are.”
Although the story is old, and completely irrelevant in this context, I like it. It tells us something important about how politicians think. It is for them more important to follow their own agenda. The truth is often seen as some inconvenient impediment. Yet there are always the more troublesome individuals amongst us, who do care what the facts are and who will demand explanations.
All of which brings us to the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference held in December 2009.
It involved some 193 nations getting together to discuss the threat that global warming poses to our planet. It consisted for a large part of the same motley mix of individuals and assorted do-gooders that has persistently failed to do anything about such things as poverty, AIDS, Malaria and an assorted range of human ills.
The objective of this huge talking shop was to create a global agreement that extended and expanded the Kyoto Protocol. They were concerned about what can be done about an apparent and uncontrolled rise in global temperatures.
There is absolutely no doubt that human beings will need to adapt to such a thing if indeed the temperature is to increase dramatically. There would be a number of practical implications for human beings; some good, some bad. But temperature data is generally such a mess of random fluctuations that with enough manipulation you could derive any bogus trend you please. So the fact is that nobody probably really knows if it is rising, and if it is, by how much it will rise, or for how long. The climate has been comfortably uniform for thousands of years. The only sudden changes in the earths’ temperature – sudden such as in over hundreds or thousands of years – tend to be a sudden drop in temperature causing ice ages. Normally the temperature tends to go up for a while – over a few decades or so – and then down for a while. All of this happens within a comparatively narrow temperature range.
Were any of these issues discussed at the Copenhagen Conference?
No. Amidst the apocalyptic talk – how it could be calamitous for the human species - they waffled on about Greenhouse gas emissions. The real connection between greenhouse gasses and the climate, much less any effect human production of greenhouse gasses can have on the climate, was not discussed. Or it was, but was discussed by politicians, do-gooders and people who obviously slept through their high school physics classes. Then the final Copenhagen deal did not even manage to establish any greenhouse gas emission targets for anybody.
They waffled on about how nations – humans in other words - must limit temperature increases to no more than 2o Celsius. Then they lamented on the failure of the representatives of these 193 countries to clinch the “real deal” on how exactly to achieve this.
They did agree that CO2 emissions should be measured, reported and verified by . . . well, they were a bit vague about that one. Apparently some global organization would influence and monitor all nations' efforts to reduce their CO2 emissions. Would it be similar to the multitude of global organisations that monitor and influence all nations’ efforts to reduce poverty? Or promote democracy? Or spend public money properly?
Is it expected that this organisation have the same record of success?
If human beings are to suddenly start messing around with the climate in order to make the planet a more convenient and predictable place to live, why limit human interference only to the climate?
Why not go the whole hog?
Although the Copenhagen commitment to limit a global rise in temperature to two degrees is laudable, there are a number of other equally deserving causes that are being completely ignored:
1. Stopping continental drift. The current arrangement of continents is just fine. Humans have gotten used to it over the last few millennia. Besides airfares are likely to get completely out of hand should continents continue to drift apart unchecked. The negative impact on an already fragile airline industry will threaten to disrupt a whole way of life, dependent on easy and cheap international travel.
2. Limiting volcanic eruptions to one major eruption per millennium. Volcanic eruptions, especially, are really disruptive events. These eruptions tend to spew billions of tons of dust into the atmosphere, playing all sorts havoc with the climate as well as with the comfortable visual familiarity of sunsets and sunrises. Small eruptions, however, should perhaps be increased due to the tourist attraction value.
3. If global temperatures are indeed rising, then the warming effect of the Gulf Stream on some remote North Atlantic islands and the west coast of Scandinavia would become redundant. It would be much more sensible to reverse the direction of this oceanic current. It can then flow south-westwards from the comparative cold of the sub-arctic to cool down the Caribbean. Since this would be in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a global organization could be established to have this rather silly law annulled. This organisation can then also influence and monitor all sorts of other laws of nature that have become dated or inconvenient. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for one, springs to mind. Imagine the possibilities for human invention if scientists are no longer obliged to work their way around all sorts of uncertainties as is the case under the current laws of nature.
The possibilities for international conferences, first class international travel, pompous reports and general scaremongering are endless. And making money. What makes these causes any less deserving than the climate from being under human control rather than that of nature?
The problem with defining and discussing the challenges that face human beings is that it is not done through elected governments that may become unelected if they loose touch with reality. Defining and discussing the challenges that face human beings nowadays tend to be the domain of a bunch of unelected power brokers, who always pop up just where the action is. Under a variety of different guises, they press their agendas on all manner of things. The majority of these they also invent and define themselves. The prime movers in a complex new system of power and influence, this shadow elite make public decisions without consulting the public. They make decisions about everything - from the economy, to national policy of countries of which they are not even citizens, to foreign policy and financial rules. Ultimately, they answer only to each other.
They make no distinction between the weather and climate. No distinction between our responsibility to take care of our natural environment and controlling the climate.
Having defined CO2 as the great evil facing all of humanity they are now preparing to do with carbon what they have done with a number of other things: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. Carbon-related financial products are just about ready to be sold to investors.
Banks will apparently allow a mandatory carbon-trading system to save the planet at the lowest possible cost. In this manner a completely new U$D2 trillion market can be created by turning climate change into yet another commodities market. Derivatives, by the way, are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity. In this case it is CO2 and other greenhouse gases (the most common of which is water vapour).
Selling fluff in the truest sense of the word . . .
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