A blogger's dream...

A topic that is evergreen. In this case: global warming. A late comment yesterday on an older post about anthropogenic global warming just happened to coincide with more evidence which makes me glad I flip-flopped - er, rethought - my position.

"The Stern report exposes the bankruptcy of the arguments of President Bush and some in Congress and industry that taking action on global warming will hurt the economy," said Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. "In fact, just the opposite is true -- it's the refusal to take serious action that poses the true risk to our future economic prosperity." [More]

This is no lightweight piece of thinking here.

The debate over global warming has proceeded through predictable stages to date:

1. Arguing over whether global warming is happening - then,
2. Arguing over whether people contribute/cause it - then
3. Arguing over whether it's a bad thing or not - then
4. Arguing over whether fixing it is worth the cost

The pattern seems to be continual ground-giving by the skeptics - even if they are right.

OK, let's assume it is all a grand conspiracy by the Masons or the Opus Dei or pro wrestling (you did know that was fake, didn't you?). These evildoers are piggy-backing on a natural phenomenon or statistical blip to advance their loathesome agenda, like:

• even more research (which of course they will have to jigger for the right answer)
  
• energy conservation
• water conservation
• resource management
• population control (not crazy about this one)
  

My point is the aims of the enviro-radicals scare me less than the far right, whose goals seem to include (without options) institutionalizing war as a way of life ("as long as it takes"), acclimatizing citizens to the idea of torture as an effective way to get info, eroding personal lberties, ignoring the accumulation of wealth into a tiny number of hands, and suing over enviro-messes instead of avoiding them.

Even if the dwindling number of skeptics are right (and I dispute that) they broadcast self-righteously such an unattractive, mean-spirited and self-centered philosophy that they hold no appeal to this engineer.

Besides my bet is all farmers are going to become supporters if they are not already. After all, one big reason to mandate ethanol and another $150/A gross income for the Midwest is to combat global warming by using renewable fuels. And we are about to develop another lucrative side benefit: carbon sequestration credits.

Landowners who agree to maintain tracts of woodlands and grasslands are assigned "carbon credits" by the exchange based on plants' ability through photosynthesis to pull carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it in their tissue.

Those credits earn farmers income once exchange member corporations purchase them to offset their carbon dioxide emissions to meet voluntary reduction targets. [More]

The commenter said to "follow the money". It could also be that money is following the truth.

Update: Global warming could be caused by fat people.