Year 4, Month 7, Day 14: Absolute Immobility Is Apparently The Only Option

The Washington Times (Rev. Moon’s vanity project) runs an article by a denialist buffoon, one Chip Knappenberg. He doesn’t think much of President Obama’s climate policy proposals:

Scientific research suggests that global warming is proceeding, and will continue, at a slower pace, with fewer negative impacts than current projections indicate, including those underlying the president’s plan. On top of this, the U.S. relative contribution to climate change is declining year after year as greenhouse-gas emissions from developing nations, such as China, expand rapidly.

Together, this means that the president’s plan for reducing emissions in the United States effectively will have no impact on the local, regional or global climate. Domestic reductions will not produce any demonstrable change in the weather; there will be not be verifiably fewer tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, heat waves or any other manner of extreme weather. The rise in the number of billion-dollar weather disasters highlighted by the president will continue — driven by the fact that there are more people with more stuff in harm’s way, not by human-caused climate change.

The president recognizes that actions in the United States alone will be insufficient to change the course of the climate. A global effort is required. Therefore, what the president really hopes to achieve is not direct climate-change mitigation from reducing U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, but to gain bargaining power at international talks to address climate change and, ultimately, that low-emitting energy technologies will be developed and deployed rapidly and safely around the world.

Yet there is no guarantee of these outcomes.

There’s no guarantee Chip Knappenberger won’t get run over by a truck, either…but that doesn’t stop him from crossing the street. June 27:

Chip Knappenberger’s contemptuous response to President Obama’s climate-change proposals demonstrates a remarkable readiness to ignore our nation’s long-standing leadership role in the international community.

Mr. Knappenberger argues unpersuasively that since nations like China and India will continue to emit greenhouse gases, there is no reason to reduce our own — and dismisses the President’s proposals as attempts to “gain bargaining power” in future climate negotiations. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone suggest that since “there is no guarantee of these outcomes,” the US has no reason to strengthen its position in treaties and international agreements.

By pursuing unilateral action on carbon emissions on the basis of an overwhelming scientific consensus on the human causes of global warming, our nation may regain some of the credibility we sacrificed a decade ago when we invaded another nation based on evidence which even our own intelligence agencies knew to be spurious.

Warren Senders