McCain: wrong on the environment

I must preface this blog with my overwhelming endorsement of John McCain for president in 2008. A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for the Democrats…unless you sort of like the democrats but don’t think Barak Obama is radical enough and vote for the green party or socialist party, in which case vote away for the third party. But I must save that argument for a forthcoming blog.
Yesterday, John McCain exposed his biggest flaw in my opinion, his pandering to the environmentalist wackos. The enviromentalist wackos will never vote for an enviromental moderate like McCain, only for like minded wackos. It seems that McCain believes that most people believe that we have to “do something” (the dreaded do something disease) about the global warming because they’ve seen some one sided piece on CNN or saw some alarmist front page of time magazine or the like. Unfortunately, McCain is probably right. But he was mostly wrong in his speech on the environment yesterday.
First, he was at least in part wrong to suggest that he might revisit the awful kyoto protocol, which might be best summarized as an economic suicide pact. A pact which many of the signers have decided to ignore. Witness:
http://www.upi.com/International_Intelligence/Analysis/2005/12/28/10_eu_nations_to_miss_kyoto_emissions_goal/1435/
In perhaps his most disturbing comment, McCain stated ” I will not accept the same dead-end of failed diplomacy that claimed Kyoto. The United States will lead and will lead with a different approach — an approach that speaks to the interests and obligations of every nation,” This is neither feasible nor likely, but it certainly does show a good deal of optimism. If the US can do what Europe did– sign the kyoto protocol and immediately ignore it, that would be one thing, but it certainly doesn’t speak to our integrity. As Barak Obama would say in plagarism, words mean things. Which is another reason why invading Iraq was the right thing to do. But I digress. McCain has admittedly adopted the “what could it hurt?” or “shoot first, ask questions later” philosophy on global warming that ignores any contrary evidence and instead calls for immediate action, (mostly) ignoring the costs and consequences. And he certainly ignored the facts in his speech in several areas.
First, McCain incorrectly states that “satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets” yet the fact is that, particularly in Antartica the ice is thickening, something that even those right wingers at ABC news recognize. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98113&page=1 Furthermore, McCain states “We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion.” I don’t know who wrote this speech but they obviously didn’t do any research here and frankly, it makes McCain look stupid. First off, how is “carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuel combustion” any different from carbon dioxide produced by any other natural means? I’m no organic chemist, but I’m willing to go out on a limb on this one and say there’s no difference. More importantly, McCain is absolutely, no debate necessary wrong that carbon dioxide is the worst green house gas. The number 1 offender in this category? That awful polutant, water vapor, which is almost exclusively of natural origin. It also contributes about 95% to the green house effect. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html Nitrous Oxide and methane, though less abundant than CO2, are nonetheless more potent greenhouse gases.
McCain in the end does seek to find market based incentives and answers, but it is not enough to be satisfactory and the cap and trade system that he is proposing is nearly the same as what Clinton and Obama are proposing. He is right to call out China and India to contribute to the cause but wrong in identifying the cause. He has made the most foolish move to take actions which have great costs to pursue advantages of unspecified or verified value.

Gore the Opportunist

Al Gore’s insistence that the Myanmar cyclone is a “consequence” (sounds like Reverend Wright saying the chickens are coming home to roost, doesn’t it?) of global warming is case #3,000,000,000 of the left wing exploiting tragedy for political gain. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, and not giving the political left the benefit of the doubt. One thing I’ve realized since I began reading Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is that to the left everything is political. That’s because they seek to replace religion with the state. Therefore, the left can’t conceive how the cyclone could possibly be apolitical. Just as the religious will look to God in times of trouble, the left look to government. In the case of Albert Arnold Gore Jr., everything is because of, or a response to, a consequence, or sign of global warming, except (and this is the beautiful part) when it isn’t. Therefore, climate change advocates (or whatever you want to call them: alarmists, believers in the goddess gaia, etc.) say that the global cooling exhibited in the last 6 months is merely a blip on the radar and has to be considered in light of the last 30 years or so, but certainly not in light of the last 60 years or so because that might not paint the picture they want to paint because it would show that there was significant global cooling in the 70s which makes current temperatures look like global warming.
I am quite sure that scientists who believe in anthropogenic (human caused) global warming would not chalk the cyclone up to global warming, but Al Gore is no scientist. Al Gore is an opportunist. He doesn’t let the facts get in the way of his agenda. Nonetheless, these scientists know what side their bread is buttered on, and refuse to even admit that the global cooling that has happened lately is “climate” but “weather” two words that have been codified to classify anything that global warming advocates want. Therefore, record high temperatures in 1998 are evidence of global warming, but record lows in 2008 are abberations. Indeed, Gore was ever the opportunist during the heat wave of 1998, and criticized republicans for stalling Clinton’s Global Warming bill of the day.
This is an issue that is usually if not always oversimplified. Ironically, both sides can and have accused the other side of oversimplifying the issue. In the case of the recent global cooling scientists have rightly chalked this up to weather and la nina and reduced sun spots. But the opposite is true, whether or not the alarmists on the left (or in the pocket of big government) want to admit it. The warming of the 90’s was the result of a multitude of factors, including el nino, increased sun activity, yadah, yadah, yadah, etc., etc. Moreover, as the “globe” is warming, there are spots that are cooling as well as places warming. Just as the Antartic ice has been getting thicker while artic ice has been thinning. The opportunist simply ignores the former, and crows about drowning polar bears and the latter.