There are a mix of noble and ignoble reasons why conservatives oppose the global warming initiatives. Of course, the ignoble one is that many are more concerned for short term economic prosperity and holding on to power and the status quo than long term environmental safety. However, there are the more ‘noble’ reasons why conservatives oppose the modern panic over global warming:
1. Unsubstantiated Claims of Certainty:Â
Conservatives [believe they] can smell pseudoscience and unsubstantiated claims built on faulty assumptions a mile away. The same overreaching overconfidence that we see in the evolutionist camp plagues the environmentalists. No matter how much they protest that their science is definitive, it is clearly incomplete. They just haven’t made their case well enough even if they are right. They appear to be jumping the gun for ideological, rather than scientific reasons.
2. Panic, Hype, and a History of Extremism:
 Environmentalists have a [perceived] history of crying wolf, overstating their case, and being dead wrong. How is it that global warming has replaced global cooling? Why must it always be a looming crisis? Why is your science mixed with dire, fear-based doomsday scenarios that you haven’t really proved will happen?
3. Failure to adequately address contra-indications:Â
If their theory is right, how do they account for extreme warmth and temperature fluctuations before the industrial age? If they came up with a good answer (like maybe lots of volcanic action?), we might be more inclined to believe. Maybe they’ve already answered this question, but I haven’t seen it.
4. Worship nature, kill people:
Unfortunately, due to a [perceived] undercurrent of hating mankind, viewing him as a parasite on the earth, or at best, just another animal, they are not only opposing the Judeo-Christian view that man is here as a steward and caretaker OVER creation, not merely another animal, they have unwittingly proposed initiatives that have harmed people.
One such example is the ban on DDT, which led to the death of MILLIONS of people due to malaria. In fact, in countries where the ban was observed, malaria cases increased by 1000% in the decade of the 90’s. and as it turns out, DDT just needed more controlled use (and is now re-approved for use by WHO).
In part, this is just a problem with using the wrong language to win over conservatives, but in part, it is also a failure to address the immediate human cost of implementing such policies.
5. Integration with liberal and anti-west policies:
Unfortunately, such policies as the Kyoto protocol do not credit forward-thinking nations like the US for already making plenty of headway in this area. Instead, they favor ‘developing’ nations for their lack of forethought, giving them slack so that their ‘developing economies’ can grow, while our mature economy (which is denigrated as built solely on colonialism and imperialism rather than those unfortunate things AND ingenuity) is forced to suffer for their speculative pending environmental catastrophe. It just seems unjust, unbalanced, and unfair.
6. Disregard for the economy and the poor:
Most regulations proposed by environmentalists seem to disregard all other considerations, including how harming the economy of nations will affect the poor and middle class that they say they care about. Rather than offering incentive-based, gradual, and balanced plans for reducing pollutants, they [appear to] fling out their scary doomsday slide show, and demand that we implement a draconian and heavy-handed program that ends up hurting people while having questionable affect on the environment. They just lack caution, balance, and consideration, not to mention moderation.
I’m not saying that all or any of these positions are defensible, though I am swayed by them. But these are my stab at why conservatives resist the global warming movement. You may also want to check for the audio for the Global Warming debate on NPR.  You could also check out the PIG to Global Warming.
Seeker two key flaws with your statements:
1) Unfortunately, such policies as the Kyoto protocol do not credit forward-thinking nations like the US for already making plenty of headway in this area. Instead, they favor ‘developing’ nations for their lack of forethought, giving them slack so that their ‘developing economies’ can grow, while our mature economy (which is denigrated as built solely on colonialism and imperialism rather than those unfortunate things AND ingenuity) is forced to suffer for their speculative pending environmental catastrophe. It just seems unjust, unbalanced, and unfair.
This issue is neither a liberal or conservative policy debate. Nor should it be.
Your statement from an economic standpoint categorically false. Statistics prove in modern industrialized countries that have signed on to Kyoto (every country except the US and Australia) that there has been no significant detriment to the developed countries economies. This is what I have seen within study after study. Additionally, to say the US has made any strides in this arena is laughable considering the US trails every country on the planet in terms of fuel efficiency for cars, trucks, and other forms of transportation that enable the transport of goods. The US in fact trails every industrialized nation in terms of fuel efficiency. Worse still, the US even trails China (a developing country by all accounts) in their own cars (avg. fuel efficiency is 35 MPG in China…been this way for well over a decade). If a country like China can do this with no ill effect on a segment of their economy, then it is laughable to say the US cannot do this from an economic and a moral stand point.
2) Disregard for the economy and the poor: Most regulations proposed by environmentalists seem to disregard all other considerations, including how harming the economy of nations will affect the poor and middle class that they say they care about. Rather than offering incentive-based, gradual, and balanced plans for reducing pollutants
In the developing world (in all the economic reports that I have read –NOT news articles), the developing countries instead of investing in heavy poluting technologies are moving towards the adoption of cleaner burning equipment that is A) more efficient and cost effective to run and B) is cleaner by a major drop in CO2 emissions. China, a developing country on steroids has made the political choice of building all new power plants clean coal-fired power plants moving forward (2005-on). No negative impact on the economy or the working poor.
Generally speaking, I would be all for gradual change to help the 3rd world. However, I have yet to see the United States say that because we care about the working poor and our economy is strong enough to bare the burden, that we as a country and member of the global community are prepared to take the lead right now and cut emissions in line with Kyoto to allow the developing nations some breathing room and also engage in Carbon trading with other countries to balance things out. It is very easy to rest on the excuse of the working poor when the United States of America (a population of 370 M people) is responsible for 40% of CO2 emissions worldwide.
The world wants leadership not excuses. The problem from a realistic perspective is that we as a country have spent the last 30 years debating the merits of Global Warming while the issue has gotten worse. A lot of this debate has been fueled by big industry and supply-side economists.
Major industry and supply-side economists made the same types of arguments when calls to eliminate Freon production to eliminate the destruction of the Ozone layer by this chemical. They said it would hurt the US economy, that it would impose the equivalent of economic sanctions against the developing world, etc. Sound familiar?
Forget the impact on the environment for a moment (although the hole in the Ozone layer over Antartica is virtually gone — recent report summarized in the Smithsonian in Jan ’07) The thing is 10 years after the complete ban, they found alternatives to this chemical that a) were cheaper to produce, b) created a huge market and area of economic growth that replaced the previous product, and c) saw widespread adoption through the signing of a global treaty?
How did a global treaty happen? Not by, if you do this, I will cut my emisions. Instead the US took bold leadership on this front and committed to cutting production of Freon on its own (by far the leading producer world wide) and then got the rest of the world to sign on. That is the kind of leadership that inspires. Frankly, that leadership has been very lacking with the US on the Global Warming front.
My question is simply this, if the countries that have signed on to Kyoto (as flawed as the treaty was) and the US cities (some 125 at last count) that have seen no real lasting ill effect to their local economies by being more strict with their CO2 output, then isn’t it being a little selfish of the United States to stick its head in the sand and do nothing at all?
I will write more about this later (even provide links to the economic studies that are out there—even one from RAND) once my migraine goes away. But those are some things to chew on.
Respectfully,
Silver
Seeker,
One more thing….
Failure to adequately address contra-indications: If their theory is right, how do they account for extreme warmth and temperature fluctuations before the industrial age? If they came up with a good answer (like maybe lots of volcanic action?), we might be more inclined to believe. Maybe they've already answered this question, but I haven't seen it.
The variation of global warming prior to the industrial age is insignificant compared to the changes in global climate since the dawn of the industrial age. It isn't that Global Warming scientists say that there was no change in climate and temperature prior industrialization. Rather they say, based upon CO2 levels that the amount of temperature change pre-industrialization is small compared to the shift seen on a global level as the world has industrialized and rapidly increased CO2 emissions.
The science says that there is a direct correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now is 60 times greater (if memory serves correctly) than the CO2 levels found in Antartic core samples that can track C02 levels going back 50K years (We can argue whether the earth is that old on another day, on another debate about YET and relativism of time measurement).
The studies substantiating these positions about CO2 emissions and global temperature are pretty clear and has been backed up. So, yes these questions have been answered.
I don't have time now to argue with you, but I agree that pollution controls can be implemented in an economically beneficial way.
However, while pollution reduction in general is a good thing, your evidences for the clear link between human activity and global warming are still not only not convincing, there is now evidence from Greenland showing that the catastrophic melting is not happening.
I and other conservatives are not convinced that we have done our due diligence researching cyclical temperature changes, and the recent IPCC report, which not only shows that the doomsday predictions about sea level and temperature rise were not as severe as predicted, and the fact that there are obvious political problems with the IPCC data (enough for some members to quit in protest) makes it look like a partisan effort, despite the many scientists involved.
And your responses still do not fix the problems with the Kyoto Protocol's anti-west slant.
While I agree that global warming may be caused by co2, the current panic mode that liberals are in makes thinking people put on the breaks because it smacks of fanaticism and politically driven science. Even if the science is good, the pushy, anti-west, anti-capitalist, holier-than-thou, overly sure proclamations and fear-mongering panic coming out of the global warming camp hurts the cause because it (1) appears to squelch dissent or questions about it's conclusions, and (2) just looks like another heavy-handed pseudoscientific political maneuver by the eco warriors.
The thing is, they may be right, but their heavy-handed and overreaching methods create understandable resistance among people who see other motives besides the environment present. A more reasoned and fair, less judgmental, less politically driven, less panicky, less know-it-all attitude approach would go a long way towards getting conservatives on board.
Silver, you also might want to check out that NY Times article that quotes a scientists arguing that the current warming trend is no different from any of the others – not any hotter.
As with evolution and Cineaste, you say that science has locked this up, but there are scientist in the field who don't agree. Then they get death threats, as the story seeker and I linked to illustrates, have their funding cut and are regarded as less of a scientist for their skepticism. Do you not think that has something to do with the "overwhelming" evidence for man-made global warming?
Cineaste you can link to it and quote part of the article. You don't have to put the whole thing in the comments. I have read all the furor over this debate and it should prove one thing to you, if nothing else, Christianity (even evangelical Christianity) is not this monolithic structure than so often you and others cast it as.
I do think many of the fundy-evangelicals do miss out on many things are may indeed be to tied to conservative politics (some may see me that way), but that doesn't mean that evangelicals should embrace whatever pop culture and pop science tells them to.
Cineaste you can link to it and quote part of the article.
I think you need a subscription. I wanted Evangelicals to be able to read the article.
Aaron,
Silver, you also might want to check out that NY Times article that quotes a scientists arguing that the current warming trend is no different from any of the others – not any hotter.
Aaron, I have read the article. If you parse the article carefully you will also find that although there is dissent, the overwhelming majority of published scientists that work in the field, agree that the warming trend in relation to CO2 levels is a problematic. Again, warming in the context of GW is not a question of just degrees but overall concetrations of CO2, particularly at the poles where the concentration of UV is at the greatest and where C02 levels have the highest impact in trapping solar radiation.
That being said, I rely more on reading published scientific studies on this topic than news articles that appear in the popular news media. Like everything in society, the news media excels in sensationalizing an issue in the interest of selling papers and pushing ratings. Get the masses rapid and excited. I don't play that game.
Aaron, there will always be scientific dissent. There was scientific dissent about the feasibility of splitting the atom and the validity of the Theory of Relativity in the 1930's too.
However, of the published scientists that cover this topic, well over 90% of them agree that climate change is indeed greater now than than it was pre-industrial age. Global Warming in of itself is a misnomer, in fact what you see is a radical shift between temperature and seasons across the board. You will see rapid melting at the poles, and greater change in seasonality in formerly temperate regions, while in other places increased cooling. All of this is in effect is being caused by increased CO2 level (if you believe the science).
Seeker,
there is now evidence from Greenland showing that the catastrophic melting is not happening
At this time I don't have time to point to the evidence that refutes this statement. So, I will hit the bullet points. Where they are seeing catostrophic melting in Greenland is in the under surface ice, which constitutes the bulk of the ice pack in Greenland. If you look at photographic evidence over the last 40 years you will see a significant melt off of the ice in Greenland. So, yes it is happening.
Further counter point, critics of Global Warming used to point to the fact there was no mass melt off in the Antartic as a sign that global warming was not happening. Until… Until the largest piece of ice…some 20 square miles broke off in the late 1990's. People said that was impossible, but it happened in the Laurens region of Antartica. As a result of this you have raised ice on the ice pack that has accelerated melting (we're talking hundreds of square miles) since there is no buffer between it and the ocean now (loss of Lauren's ice sheet).
We can argue about this until the end of time. Frankly, I would be more worried about the proven melting of the permafrost in Alaska and Siberia. The permafrost in Siberia is thought to contain +600 tons of trapped CO2. If that goes, it could be a tipping point, but again if you buy the fact that there is a mass concentration of CO2 in the permafrost (I have read the scientific journals on this point)
Further, I would also stress, that I am not one of those alarmists, but one who is not being overly swayed by the political movement of the left or the right. It is easier to do nothing than to do anything at all. That's human nature…regardless of topic…the federal deficit, social security reform, and the environment. It is far too easy as a politician to do what is easy and stay in power than what is hard. With respect to Global Warming, I look at it as not a political argument, but a moral one. Those that label the Global Warming movement as a tool of the Liberal establishment are merely using it as a canard. I reject accusation by Conservatives that this is just an excuse by the Liberal establishment to over-regulate and hurt the economy when the Economic and Scientific evidence show otherwise.
Respectfully,
Silver
If only gay sex caused global warming:
Why we’re more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat.
NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.
The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and … well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming.
Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features — features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks…