Fight Global Warming - Keep Africa Poor?

The global warming debate is becoming (almost) humorous.  Almost everyday, there's another dissident voice contradicting the current paradigm that human activities are the primary cause of global warming.  Others are speaking out against the hysterical language used to discuss global warming.  Recent dissidents include:

• Steven F. Hayward and Kenneth P. Green of the American Enterprise Institute, who wrote about the Climate Inquisition in this week's Weekly Standard.  From their article: "More troubling is the growing worldwide effort to silence anyone with doubts about the catastrophic warming scenario that Al Gore and other climate extremists are putting forth," and "The climate inquisition is eliminating any space for sensible criticism of the climate science process or moderate deliberation about policy."



• Mike Hulme, the Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, who criticizes the hyperbole used in describing climate change:  "Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the observable physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging which surrounds science's predictions? ... We need to take a deep breath and pause....The language of catastrophe is not the language of science."

• Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre, has been researching the effect of cosmic rays on the Earth's atmosphere.  His new book claims that "fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet."  According to his team's research, "Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed." 

• And from Czech president Vaclav Klaus, this spot-on assessment: "Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate....environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism."  

The scientific community is increasingly asking for a) moderation in speech and 2) an open, critical, rational mindset.  Enough already with the end-of-the-world scenarios. 

Equally batty as the hysteria over global warming are the batty suggestions for combating it.  Don't give your sweetheart flowers for Valentine's Day, because "Valentine bouquets are bad for the planet."

"Latest Government figures show that the flowers that make up the average bunch have flown 33,800 miles to reach Britain.In the past three years, the amount of flowers imported from the Netherlands has fallen by 47 per cent to 94,000 tons, while those from Africa have risen 39 per cent to 17,000 tons."

"Environmentalists warned that "flower miles" could have serious implications on climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes....Air freighting flowers half way round the world contributes to global warming."

Good Lord, these people are mad! 

The enviros want Brits to grow their own flowers, not purchase imported flowers.  It turns out that Kenya and Ethiopia have become major exporters of flowers to Europe and the U.S. 

"Horticulture is the country's (Kenya's)fastest growing sector and is ranked third (after tourism and tea) as a foreign exchange earner. At a time when most foreign investors are wary of committing money in Kenya, horticulture is one of the few industries that continue to attract foreign investment."

So the environmentalists, while claiming "We don't want to be killjoys,"  don't mind harming one of Africa's strongest emerging markets.  The liberal environmentalists claim that they want to help poor people, but in fact their dim-witted ideas to combat global warming would only hurt Africans.  Are we surprised?

Comments

[Teresa]

In the same way that banning DDT has killed millions of Africans.

Despite all the advertising to the contrary, not a single leftist cares about anyone in Africa dying. All those cute red phones and shirts and iPods and crap to help the women and children with AIDS, make all of them "feel good". But don't really address the problem itself.

Apparently it's also only fashionable to help the women and children with AIDS - men can just die on their own. Sheesh these wacko environmentalist people make me angry.

[Steve Harkonnen]

We have a lot of those liberal wackos here where I work. It's uncanny, but this is the sort of crap they were rambling about earlier this morning.