It's Energy Policy Debate

Apparently not climate change debate, that interests the Greens, the Liberals, and the Democrats. I have seen the pattern for years, using some emotional argument regarding any environmental phenomena that could be construed, however slightly, that Man's involvement is at fault, and must be swatted down. Like using the Endangered Species Act to slow logging, housing developments, transportation planning, or fuel exploration. Nowadays, it's all about using the climate change debate to change energy policy, to break the hold petroleum companies have over the entire energy industry. This is why the climate change debate needs to be over as soon as possible, so the energy revolution can begin. Scientifically, the debate over Man's contribution to climate change is far from over. Carbon dioxide's radiative forcing of warming the average land surface temperature is just one small part of how people can affect the climate. But only the agenda driven scientists are getting the attention of the media and policy writers, because their agendas match up. And I'm not the only one who sees this happening. Roger Pielke, Sr. writes regarding Barbara Boxer's survey on climate change:

The clear conclusion is that this survey is designed to promote energy policy with climate change being used as the vehicle to encourage the political adoption of changes in energy policy. This also provides a reason that climate assessments such as the IPCC focus on the radiative effects of fossil fuels, rather than the broader issues of the human role in regional and global climate variability and change as clearly articulated in the 2005 National Research Council Report Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties. They are essentially ignoring that Report. Their goal is to change energy policy.

My plea is to be honest and clearly separate energy and climate policies, such that the science issues, rather than being used as political weapons in arguing for or against particular politcal actions, can be used to provide the actual diversity of peer reviewed research information on climate (and energy) science.

Of course, I join that plea, but in today's political climate, the science and the political debate have been so successfully intertwined by propaganda programs, wholly endorsed by the editorial boards of most major newspapers and media outlets, that the political course now, is to limit the damage that new policy will have on energy infrastructure. The science debate will continue, but very quietly, because the media will not cover new conclusions based on better climate models, since the answers will not match the climate change narrative.

Incidently, I believe the Summary of the IPCC data that was just released made a strategic error in overselling the disastrous nature of their version of global warming. They made it clear that Man was responsible for bringing us over the tipping point (90 percent consensus doesn't mean much to real scientists, since in Copernicus' time, there was 100 percent consensus that the Sun orbited the Earth, but that's a warning, not a reason to believe or disbelieve the IPCC's conclusions), and that the damage is now irreversible. Part of selling the energy policy debate was the fiction that we could reverse the warming by some strange scheme of cutting emissions to some arbitrary level. But the Summary says it's too late. According to them, the warming will proceed for centuries, no matter what we do. I can hear the African nations rejoicing now, because the Kyoto emissions protocols will be abandoned, but the Climate Impact grants will increase. Like I said, the UN made a strategic error in the eyes of those who wish to change energy policy, but the UN's political goals have always been to elevate the poor nations through economic wealth redistribution. The Summary fits perfectly with those goals.

As for me, I'm tired of writing about this stuff, because the issue has become more political than science-oriented. The policy writers and politicians have fallen for the junk science, and for them, the debate is over. Since, this is now a political issue, I'll be writing about it less often. If I do see something science related, I'll write about that, but for now, climate change has fallen off my radar.