The Cult of Doom Prophecy
Derek Lowe has a great article up about in which he discusses and extrapolates from this article by Freeman Dyson, which is in turn about global warming and modern environmentalism. You should go read those and come back here, since I’ll be discussing and extrapolating from them. You can tell Derek Lowe is awesome, since he has a baseball player named after him, and you can tell Freeman Dyson is awesome because he has a video game hero named after him. The only way you’re probably aware that I’m awesome, though, is because I told you. So I guess this will be like if Beavis and Butthead talked about Plato talking about Socrates.
I find it terribly interesting that the Al Gore plan to save the world will actually double the amount of economic damage caused by global warming. Also, I don’t think anybody is actually surprised that they Kyoto Protocol results in improvement stuck halfway between zero and none, since it’s perfectly obvious to anybody who’s actually read that thing that it’s a first-order watermelon and has a whole lot more to do with redistribution of wealth than it does with protecting the environment.
I guess I don’t really have a whole lot to add other than my typical Beavis-and-Butthead "heh heh heh" jokes, such as pointing out that Lowe’s term "the Full Albert" is fantastic and should be adopted immediately for use by everybody. I’d just like to direct my readership at a couple of intelligent, analytical arguments on a highly emotionally-charged subject by two of the smartest people writing today. And especially living and working where I do, I find great satisfaction in this statement of Lowe’s:
"I consider myself an advocate of the environment, but I think the best way to preserve it is to do more genetic engineering rather than less. Better crops will mean that we don’t have to plow up more land to feed everyone, and we won’t have to dump as many insecticides and herbicides on that land we’re using. That means that I also think the best way to preserve unspoiled spaces is to do less organic farming, and not more: organic farming, particularly the hard-core varieties, uses too much land to generate too little food, and it does so mainly to give people in wealthy countries a chance to feel good about themselves."
I couldn’t agree with him more.
