You might have read about Eric Holthaus, who completely lost it and pledged to never fly again (except for the return home flight he was getting on. BTW, someone should keep an eye on his twitter feed and social media, see if he flies. See if he shows up at COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, come November) as well as get a vasectomy
I realized, just now: This has to be the last flight I ever take. I'm committing right now to stop flying. It's not worth the climate.
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) September 27, 2013
Read more at Twitchy. Well, here comes Ben Sandilands to say “um, wait, hold on a second”
There is increasing investment in new energy technology that will end the world’s dependence on fossil carbon releasing fuels that are overwhelming the natural shorter term carbon exchange cycles and seriously inhibiting the natural reradiation of energy from the earth, causing global warming and turning the oceans acidic, endangering the marine food chain.
Yet that alternative energy investment depends on the demand driven by the air transport, the land transport, and the sea transport sectors, the latter two comprising a higher sources of damaging greenhouse gas emissions than the former.
Mr Holthaus’s crying would, if translated in a widespread cutting down of such activities, collapse not just the fossil sourced greenhouse gas activities, but the capacity of the human species to investigate and innovate in its very obvious need to stop those carbon emissions that are not part of nature’s way of doing things.
His is a profoundly ignorant, indulgent, selfish, and silly response to the problem, since a world that can’t eat, or heat itself in colder climates, is going to embark on the most ruinous imaginable plundering of the nearest forests and fisheries and arable lands to extract the energy and protein needs it can’t buy in from more distant locations.
Sandilands goes on to write that aviation is just a little blip on man-induced climate change, and says that while Holthaus was surely sincere, his freakout and pledge is also “lazy, stupid and defeatist.”
Let’s break this down, shall we? Sandilands is providing a Typical Warmist Rationalization in order to make sure Warmists have excuses to continue to avoid practicing what they preach. Period. End of story.
Humorously and unintentionally, Sandiland also provides that rational for continued use of fossil fuels while avoiding the disaster of current “green” technologies.
