Is The Care About Global Warming And Clean Energy One And The Same?

Russell Redenbaugh write a very interesting article about the limited thinking about global warming.

Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn’t know what an atom was. They didn’t know its structure. They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon….

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s thought knows it.

The other claim that is made in the article and is slightly more troublesome than to think it is possible that we worry for no reason, is that it is possible we try to correct the “wrong reason”.

what if the cause for global warming is not CO2?

One convincing theory is that of solar magnetic activity and irradiance – two separate but generally coinciding phenomena.

It seems that there are astrophysical researchers that have good reason to think that CO2 has only partial influence on global warming if any and the process is due to planetary cycles that occurs over hundreds of years.

I for one would really like to know more about the alternative explanations for global warming, if we devote so much energy to the CO2 problem it better be the real problem.

I found more supports to the views that global warming might have very little to do with CO2 in an essay :

‘As presented, based on the scientific evidence reported in the 2005 National Research Council report, the European Commission has clearly missed an opportunity to include an accurate perspective of climate change science in their policymaking for a Climate Change Strategy. If the real goal is a new energy policy independent of whether a climate response is significant or not, the use of climate as the vehicle to promote such important issues as energy independence, alternative energy sources, and energy efficiency is not needed and is misleading. Moreover, the Strategy will contiune to lead to unrealistic expectations that we can actually substantially alter climate impacts on society and the environment through the planned controls on CO2 emissions.

The suggestion of Roger Pielke Sr is to separate the climate policies from the energy’s ones. These makes a lot of sense actually. We would still stand for clean energy even if it was proved beyond a doubt that CO2 doesn’t cause the climate changes, because if we think about it we still want clear air and clean water. We want the earth to have trees and landscapes. Being green is not basically an against thing or a fearful thing it is pro life, sustainability and nature. There are many many reason to switch to clean energy among them the dependency on fossil fuel that is depleting the earth from its recourses and can’t for more than 10-20 years unless some alternative source of energy is used. The health and the quality of the air we breath, the water we drink and the products we consume. The balanced and reciprocal relationship with mother earth. All these are great reason to be green, the debate about the causes of the global warming is interesting indeed but it is not the base of environmentalism.