With every other crackpot throwing in their two cents on the Copenhagen environmental summit, I’d be remiss to avoid the subject.  But I very badly want to avoid the subject.  My opinion isn’t going to win me any friends.

The debate about global warming is divided into equally idiotic sides.  The first is people who believe the science and want action.  The other is people who don’t believe the science and therefore want no action.

I believe the science and don’t want any action.  None.  Let’s just leave it alone.

The science of global warming and the politics of global warming are two different things.  The science is rock solid and it makes a great deal of sense.  Carbon dioxide traps heat.  More heat raises temperatures.  Human industry produces a lot of carbon dioxide.  Therefore the temperature of the planet rises.

You can produce the effect in a bottle. Go ahead — try it at home.

People who disbelieve the science apparently can’t understand a simple children’s experiment.  Or they’re being completely disingenuous about their opposition.

Either way, they can be taken about as seriously as a creationist.

But where my bullshit detector starts a-pingin’ is when simple scientific fact is taken into the political realm.  Where catastrophe is predicted, fear mongered and action demanded.  Basically, whenever Al Gore talks.

Way I see it, humans got through an ice-age with extremely limited technology.  A few degree shift in temperature is not the end of the world, of civilization and certainly not of humanity.  We’re more durable than cockroaches. Remember sabre toothed tigers?  Neither do I.  Humans armed with sticks kicked their asses.

Then we made fun of them on The Flintstones.

Nature is a punk ass bitch.  Now, I know that Tsunami scared some folks but, if humans had of set out to destroy that area, everyone would be dead, the land would be radioactive and cancerous mutants would live there for thousands of years to come.  As a killer, nature has nothing on us.  Nothing.

Besides which, all of this supposed DANGER takes place in the future.  Well, fuck the future.  It’s not  our business.  We’re trying to solve a problem a hundred years’ distant. Can you even imagine the crackpot solutions someone in 1909 would have to the problems of 2009? You think the future is going to to give a shit?

They’ll have problems of their own.  Most of them caused by our solutions.

We should take a lesson from these future people.  Now, I might have missed something but I’m almost certain that we still have current problems to solve.  Last I checked, the planet was embroiled in war, slaves  produced our goods, mercenaries fought our wars and jackboots were stomping all over civil liberties.  Last I checked, we couldn’t even solve present day problems.

Simple ones too.  War is not good for people, let alone the environment.

Why the fuck do we care so much for people not yet born but couldn’t give a fuck about already born brown people getting blown up — by us– for no reason at all?

And yes, I certainly believe emissions should be cut, car efficiency improved and oil made obsolete.  I just think global warming is the worst reason to do any of that.  There are present day problems created by all of that shit.  Just to name a few:  Smog, mining, oil wars, child soldiers. People can argue with what might happen a hundred years hence.  I’m not so sure they can sensibly argue about what is happening every day.  Or with low fuel prices.  Let alone flying cars.

Our machines  should be clean, our energy should be free and capitalism should get off its lazy ass and start providing that.

That it hasn’t –that we still use essentially the same car engine as Henry Ford– is an incredible and, perhaps, unforgivable failure.  Where’s all that progress they promised us?  You know the stuff spurned on by the market, competition and the quest for profit.  It’s not supposed to take 100 years to not get a better mousetrap.

Yet here we are:  Obsolete techs with more blinking lights.

But what the market has failed to provide, the governments will certainly fail to provide.  These men are not superheroes. They are scum.

They’re not in Copenhagen to save the world.  They’re there to do the same thing they always do: Make the rich richer and the poor poorer.  They’ll find some way to make sure the wealthy nations keep their wealth, the developing nations never develop and the leaders of all get paid off. The people, as usual, can have their cake.  They just can’t eat it too.

I might be a cynic.  But I tell you this:  As cynical as I am, you can bet real money that the people who run the world make me look like a dew-eyed romantic.

Considering the folks who are capitalizing on this mess, I can see why some people refuse to believe the science.  What I don’t understand is why the people who do believe the science scream that everyone must defer to the experts.  That people who do not believe the experts are stupid. That’s just crazy-talk.

Has anyone else noticed the problems experts have caused lately?

Experts said Iraq would be a cakewalk.  Experts said Obama would bring change.  Experts say a lot of things.  Anyone who still believes experts is a bit of a moron.

Without doubt, I’m a bit of a moron.   I still believe in experts.  I do so against my better judgement and only after sniffing their claims.  I just can’t abide a world where there is no such thing as a genuine expert.  I love expertise.  I crave expertise.  Its existence is central to my world-view.

But I  certainly understand why people are wary of experts.  I am too.  Expert is too often a fancy word for a bribed liar armed with degrees and jargon.

The next time you say something like “All the climate experts agree” you need to stop, count to ten and remember:  That is not science, that is not evidence and that is not truth. It is an attempt to intimidate your debating partner with far off and unquestionable authority.  It’s religion.

pic nicked from here

And too much of the climate debate is religious in tone.  On one side you have people who seem to think the earth will punish us for our sins, invoking the opinion of experts and the spectre of future hell.  On the other, you have people who think humans are magically separated from a casual relationship with the planet, invoking the existence of bullshit climate conspiracies while acting like the oil companies would never lie.  On both sides, most of these people have no fucking idea what they’re talking about and all of them could better spend their time doing something –anything– else.

I might be completely boiled-owl crazy, but I think humans can live in peace, make a better car engine and that we can all live pretty well. We have the techs.

But we’re not going to do any of that if we waste what precious little resources and brains we have arguing about what people will be doing in a hundred years.  And a bunch of plutocratic dipshits signing papers in Copenhagen  –papers that they will all ignore at their earliest convenience– is no help to anyone .

We’re being distracted and we’re being used.  By experts.  What else is new?