Copenhagen

A lot of news about global warming, with the current conference of world leaders going on.

I'm falling behind, so I will kill two articles with one post.

First, we have an example of some of the very scary talk that comes out of environmentalists and global warming supporters:

"the meeting of Humanity's future"

"Our current trajectory of inaction, unabated consumption of natural resources and unhealthy addiction to dirty energy won't result in a soft landing. Humanity is teetering on the edge of what I can best describe as a massive global systems failure."

I am no fan of unabated consumption. However, this is a sin issue. Things like greed, conspicuous consumption (pride). These things are very hard to legislate, without a lot of negative side effects and oppression (which ultimately hurts the weak and poor the most).

"What this flagrantly disregards is an ever-increasing population with a veracious appetite for growth and a vastly diminishing resource base. Any agenda that does not acknowledge those issues is not all comprehensive. In other words, we are fundamentally moving from an era of resource abundance to an era of resource scarcity."

The worst sort of scarcity is artificial scarcity (for example, intellectual property depends on artificial scarcity). This creates an overwhelming feeling of injustice, which leads to Robin Hoods (like DVD Jon), which leads to scoff-laws, which leads to craziness like DMCA.

I don't see any sort of real scarcity from environmental concerns today. There is talk of treating CO2 emissions as a scarce resource, which must be managed. I doubt any good will come of that. Talk of "ever-increasing population" smacks of the anti-life trends we see in culture today.

Second (I will try to be fast), we have an emotional appeal to "save the glaciers". I particularly like the comparison to the British navy and limes. How can we be certain which side of the AGW debate is comparable to the British navy? Of course, the author believes himself right (pun intended).

Why is saving glaciers a good thing? They are big blocks of cold water. Fresh water. Water we could be using. Isn't it better to free up that water? Rather than shutting down our activities, and shifting from efficient means of energy production to inefficient ones, shouldn't we be preparing to harvest all this fresh water? To store it, before it runs into the ocean (averting fears of raising sea levels). Why doesn't anyone propose that?