15A018 Climate in the ZGS by Jim Davies, 3/10/2015    

The recurring theme in this Blog is, how radically different and better life will be in the coming zero government society; but here's one topic unlikely to differ much.

As far as can be seen, the galaxies will still swirl, the planets still revolve, and the Earth will still spin once a day. Occasionally massive volcanoes will upset the weather for a while, as they did for example in 536 and 1600 and 1883, and ice ages may come and go, but otherwise nothing drastic is likely within any one century.

What will change if and when one of these natural disasters does strike, is how mankind reacts. If we project the trend of the last century or two, without question governments will get together and compel plain folk to rearrange their affairs to withstand the disasters that those governments say are on the way. That will give the administrators a wonderful rush of the enjoyment of power, but will also waste a substantial fraction of all the resources we have, and so depress worldwide standards of life. That is where "climate change" - a term revised from the earlier "global warming" because it's less easy to deny - is heading.

The alternative, which will actually occur if ZGBlog readers take the simple action asked of them on the first page of the TOLFA site, is that governments will vanish from sight one by one, starting with the US ones rather soon, and spreading worldwide during the few decades following. Then, in the resulting worldwide ZGS, whatever natural changes take place will lead to rapid action on an individual and market basis; for example if ocean levels measurably rise, prices of low-lying real estate nearby will fall as residents move out, to live on higher ground. Who knows, there may be a boom in houseboats, for those preferring not to move. Riches will reward the most accurate forecasters.

If promoters of renewable energy sources succeed in bringing costs down lower than those of hydrocarbons (as I hope they will) there will be a switch to those sources driven by greed, which is the mainspring of progress and always has been. If oil reserves run dry (not likely, in the next century) its price will rise so high as to make alternatives attractive even if their prices are not reduced. Whatever happens, the free market will handle it; without fuss, and certainly without intervention by government - for none will exist.

The hobgoblin of anthropogenic global warming (AGW, aka mankind's alleged frying of the planet) is endorsed by thousands of scientists of whom most are employed directly or indirectly by government, and rejected by thousands of scientists of whom many may be employed directly or indirectly by the existing energy industry; so for sure, the mantra that claims "the science is settled" is an outright lie no matter how long it is chanted. That is one terribly sad consequence of government intervention in both that industry and in education; scientists are in large part no longer neutral or impartial. Their opinions can be bought. Real science makes progress only when those brains are free to follow where reason leads.

I have difficulty understanding how the average global temperature can be measured, with the degree of accuracy (tenths of one degree) needed for any meaningful long-term forecast - how, even, that term can be defined. I am also skeptical that when the total CO₂ emitted by humans is much less than even the annual variation of CO₂ emitted by natural forces, a modest reduction in the former can possibly have any effect at all. I also have trouble grasping how anyone with a science degree can parade the hubris needed to make a forecast of weather for several decades, when by common knowledge such forecasts are only sometimes accurate for the next 24 hours.

Yet the propaganda continues. My favorite MSM news source is The Guardian, for the reader forum they run is excellent; within the usual rules that comments must be on-topic and polite, any viewpoint goes - except on the topics of global warming and feminism! Several times I have offered reasoned disagreement with what is Politically Correct in those areas, and every one of them has been deleted. It's a shame; The Guardian began life as a champion of real liberal thought in the 1820s, and helped bring about the phenomenally beneficial industrial revolution in the UK - known as a "Laissez Faire" policy. Despite its recent heroic work through its reporter Glenn Greenwald to publish the findings of Edward Snowden, it has now become just another mouthpiece for the Establishment.

A recent article there reveals a big weakness of the AGW position, elsewhere known as the Algorean Religion. Author Jonathan Freedland bemoans the fact that support is coming only from the political Left, and so cannot command the kind of majority that would be needed for drastic large-scale action. He's right - though he's wrong to say that "climate change has become an issue of the left." It has always been an issue of the left - and it's always been a political issue, not a truly scientific one - ever since Al Gore arrogantly called it an inconvenient "truth." No surprise that AGW is a favorite of the left, for the left never saw a government intervention, or a tax, that they didn't like; they openly favor big government, and climate intervention would become the biggest intervention of all time. The political right favors big government too, of course, but pretends not to. Especially when they are in a minority.

Happily, in the coming ZGS there will be no political left, right or center, so we'll all be able to go about our business on our own responsibility and adapt to likely natural changes as they take place.