Sunday, February 22, 2009

Our Current Orwellian Moment

Remember George Orwell's 1949 novel "1984" ? I remember reading it in high school. I was struck by the concept that the government had so much power and control that it could change and manufacture the truth and even re-write history. While Mr. Orwell was off by a few decades, his vision is becoming eerily more poignant.

Let's talk terms. I define Global Warming as meaning humans influence on our climate. Climate Change is the term I use to talk about natural changes in temperature of the decades based on nature's influence (sun activity, winds, etc).

The major report supporting Global Warming is the IPCC report. IPCC stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The mere name implies government influence. All of the hysteria today has been caused by this biased report funded by people with larger agendas. There is plenty of bad science that was used to support Global Warming claims but government funding supports the science so what would you expect?

There is a much better report out by the NIPCC. NIPCC stands for the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change. This organization, by name, is not motivated by ulterior agendas, it is just based on science.

Here is a link to this report. http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC-Feb%2020.pdf . I warn you, it is a bit dry, full of a lot of technical information, and you may not understand all of it (God knows I didn't). But you'll get the idea that we are about to make a lot of major policy decisions based on bad and biased science.

Of course we have Climate Change. We've had it since the Ice Age. We have been warming since then. We've been warming before we developed the internal combustion engine and the power plant. Data shows we've had some cooling periods as well. As humans we like to think we have more power and influence then we really do but Mother nature still has the final say.

So here's my idea. Let's work on developing alternative fuels so we can lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Let's try to conserve when possible because it's just smart and it'll save us money. But let's do this on our terms, based on good science, and in a framework of capitalism.

Let's make George Orwell wrong a little longer.

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