- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Just some more speculative notes

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on August 19, 1999 at 01:24:11:

In Reply to: We seem to have very little control over our climate. posted by Ludwig von Mises on August 18, 1999 at 15:59:15:


: Ok, so the chart would indicate that the more industrialized we get, the higher the tempurature gets, and the theory is that if we stop putting out pollutants, the tempurature will stop rising and possibly cool down. However, there have been several points in time where the temp has been at extremes.

SDF: I think that what the IPCC concluded was that the observed temperature change was too drastic to have been merely a result of changes in solar intensity (a "change" which weren't being recorded on the instruments), that the climate change of the last century or so was mostly a matter of increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The point is that people can effect changes in the global ecology far faster than any other animal or natural process.

(skipping)

: And as easily as you can say that the opposition to the pollution-induced global warming theory are just right-wingers trying to bail out corporations, I can say that the creators and disciples of that theory are just left-wing authoritarians trying to find a way to take out corporations.

SDF: Well, there are entrepreneurs out there who consider global warming as a business opportunity, there are also scientists working on technological quick fixes to the problem... not that I believe that any of it will work, but I think it's noteworthy that libertarians who would otherwise arguing about humanity's infinite capacity to design technological quick fixes to environmental problems (a capacity that didn't "kick in" on Easter Island, way back when) are today crowing that "global warming" is a fraud, as if their "quick fix" argument were suddenly rendered invalid by a real environmental problem. Well, maybe it was! (The other option, of course, is that of a bunch of libertarians whose thought processes have been bought up by oil industry propaganda.)



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