By now you’ve probably heard about the hyperventilating from the Pentagon about the threat from Hotcoldwetdry, which is a waste of money, pushed by administration weenies, and, quite frankly, a way to move the military even further to the Left politically, all based on supposition and looking into crystal balls. What if we stopped wasting money and time?
(The Hill) With each new case of the Ebola virus reported by the media, there is also more speculation about a pandemic if Ebola gets out of West Africa, which unfortunately it has. A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads across continents. The world has experienced pandemics at least as far back as the Middle Ages, when the Black Death killed about one-third of the world’s population, to more recent pandemics like smallpox, tuberculosis and most recently HIV/AIDs. In the early 1900s, the U.S. experienced the deadly Spanish influenza. Since about the middle of the 20th century, we have experienced at least four major epidemics: polio, Asian flu, swine flu and HIV/AIDS.
While the risk of an Ebola epidemic in the United States is believed to be small, it is a significant threat that will become even more serious if cases outside of West Africa become more numerous. As governments and health professionals focus on improving detection and treatments, it is fair to ask: What could we have done to better contain the risk? There is no single or simple answer. But one controllable condition is obvious: global poverty.
For over a decade, environmental scientist Bjorn Lomborg and others have been making a convincing case that the preoccupation with global warming/climate change has been misguided and wasteful. In a Wall Street Journalarticle in December 2009, he wrote that “Money spent on carbon cuts is money we can’t use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, HIV/[AIDS] prevention, health and education infrastructure, and clean water and sanitation.” He added that “our dogmatic pursuit of a (climate change) strategy … can only be described as breathtakingly expensive and woefully ineffective.”
We’ve wasted enormous amounts of time, resources, and money on this idiotic notion that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for every little change in the weather, which could have gone into actually helping people.
It’s fascinating to see small government conservatives now complaining that we haven’t spent enough of Ebola research and ISIS destruction. Actions have consequences. Dr. Francis Collins of the NIH stated that we’d have an Ebola vaccine now except for cuts in the NIH budget.
It’s admirable that conservatives are acting as if they care about someone other than themselves, but the truth is conservatives are terrified of Ebola and ISIS because the threat seems more immediate. Your contention that global warming is a hoax demonstrates your (and conservatives in general) lack of foresight and inability to look past your own proximal fears.
Here’s the bio for the author of The Hill piece: William O’Keefe, CEO of the George C. Marshall Institute, a front group for the ExxonMobil Education Foundation; Formerly COO of the American Petroleum Institute and a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil.
O’Keefe relies heavily on the writings of Bjorn Lomborg and falsely described him as a scientist (he isn’t). As of 2010, Lomborg conceded (flip-flopped) that the Earth is indeed warming from the burning of fossil fuels but claims (without evidence) that the peoples of the world would be better off with 1000 ppm CO2 AND with more electricity delivered to the impoverished 3rd world. Read his 2013 NYT opinion piece that O’Keefe completely misrepresented. Some quotes from the Lomborg Op/Ed that O’Keefe missed:
“There’s no question that burning fossil fuels is leading to a warmer climate and that addressing this problem is important.”
“… wealthy Western nations must step up investments into research and development in green energy technologies to ensure that cleaner energy eventually becomes so cheap that everyone will want it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/opinion/the-poor-need-cheap-fossil-fuels.html?_r=0
Do you agree with Lomborg that the Earth is warming because of man-made CO2? Regardless, he gives Deniers an intellectually honest “out”. But you have to admit you were completely wrong about the science of global warming, yet still be able to Deny that there is anything to do about it. The only way to fix global warming is to have everyone generate as much CO2 as the average American does!
50 years from now conservatives in Miami (too flooded), West Texas (too dry) and Missouri (too hot) will be whining about why we didn’t do something about global warming.
“50 years from now…” What a joke. 5years ago it was ..5 years from now, the Arctic ..blah, blah… Not one bad thing has ever happened that can be proved to have been caused by AGW. In other words, it would have to shown that it wouldn’t have happened without us being here. And, seeing that everything that’s happening has happened before, well, good luck. I love it “50 years”- far enough in the future to not worry when it, like everything else, won’t come true but scary enough for the gullible types.
Dr. Collins of the NIH stated that we’d have a Ebola vaccine if not for budget cuts to NIH?” Actually, Republicans in the House appropriated more money than Obma wanted for the CDC. But yes, only a liberal would believe that the “cuts” would be affecting the current crisis. If it was SARS, we would have had a SARS vaccine except for “budget cuts.” And on and on.
The Pentagon, every scientific body on Earth, all governments, every Church, every business recognizes the obvious, only American far-right extremists do not.
jl, I’ve noticed you never support your claims with actual evidence. Show me the non-Rush, non-Daily Caller evidence showing the House Repubs wanting to give more money to the CDC than Obama.
You don’t think that an Ebola vaccine would be valuable right now?
So you now support increasing the NIH and CDC budget significantly? Obama sneakily increased the NIH budget temporarily with his stimulus program that I’m sure you supported.
Would you have smartly cut the funding for radiation countermeasure research, measles, MERS, MRSA etc ten years ago and poured it into Ebola research? Hindsight is great. You can’t cut budgets without cutting services and activities.
I understand that right-wing extremists think that most government spending is wasted and we can cut taxes and spending with no impact. But that’s clearly false.
“The CDC’s discretionary funding was cut by $585 million during [2010-14]. Shockingly, annual funding for the CDC’s public health preparedness and response efforts were $1 billion lower for 2013 fiscal year than for 2002. These funding decreases have resulted in more than 45,700 job losses at state and local health departments since 2008. Again, it is not just the Ebola that is a looming threat. We need to worry about vaccine-preventable but neglected infections like influenza, measles, and whooping cough; the serious emerging viral infections in the US like Enterovirus-D68, chikungunya and dengue, as well as overseas MERS and bird flus, and natural disasters.”
j,
Your last refuge seems to be the “it’s happened before” meme.
So because the Earth has warmed and cooled before human civilization proves the Earth cannot be warming now by added CO2.
Is that your position? Please explain.
J, maybe if you got your info from a reputable place, you’d know better. But from the CBO – federal spending INCREASE 2013-2023 with the sequester: 2.31trillion. Federal spending 2013-2023without the sequester: 2.44 trillion. But anyway, as long as you’re arguing strawman, look at the money we’d have if we hadn’t bailed out GM, or wasted it on Solyndra, or the “stimulus”. And if I recall, those budget “cuts” we’re approved by congress, no? Republicans had majorities in both houses then? “Your last refuge seems to be “it happened before” meme.” No, actually the first question that a real scientist would ask. On the contrary, your last refuge is trying to ignore it. “So the earth has warmed and cooled before human civilization proves the earth cannot be warmed by added CO2?” My position, and Mother Nature’s, is that there’s no proof to the contrary. But science-wise, it’s the new kids on the block that have to do the proving, not us. The real question, of course, is “so the earth has warmed and cooled before human civilization proves that added CO2 is the sole cause?” The earth has 4billion years of data, you have faulty computer models.
And now the military and organized religion, two entities liberals love to cozy up to, are now paraded about as experts on climate, or something. You just can’t make this stuff up. By the way, the defense department is of course under the command of Barak Obama, but I’m sure there’s no connection there.
The new kids on the block have proven it well enough for everyone except a few far right extremists.
You’re only argument is that it’s warmed before.
Let me know when you come up with a reasonable argument.
J, even I don’t really want you to look like a fool, but…”Your only argument is that it warmed before.” Well, your only argument is that it’s warming now.
And here’s ol’ Jeffy again spouting the Earth is boiling because of man made CO2.
He still has never answered why, if in the past, CO2 level increases have ALWAYS lagged temperature increases. Never have CO2 levels increased before temperatures.
He also can’t tell us what the optimum temperature of the Earth is. In fact, no one has ever determined what this baseline should be. Until this is determined, the so-called science of climate change is fatally flawed.
Nightie,
No. No one has argued the Earth is boiling. The Earth’s mean global surface temperature has increased 1.4F.
During THIS current warming period, CO2 is causing warming. The Earth has never experienced in injection of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels before.
I’ve explained to you on several occasions why the current rapid warming is significant compared to the rest of the Holocene.
It’s diagnostic of right-wing authoritarian thought processes that they cannot incorporate new evidence contrary to their religious-like ideological beliefs.
North American snow cover just set a record for the month of September.
We’ve had no appreciable increase in global mean temperatures for 18 years and 2 months.
Two recent papers (Lewis & Curry, Harde) have found low climate sensitivity to CO2, suggesting global warming is not a crisis.
Antarctic sea ice is at a record max for this time of year.
Lake Superior and Michigan are 6 degrees colder than normal.
Jeffrey, you seem to have misconstrued just about everything you chose to write about here. For example, the problem at the CDC/NIH isn’t money, it’s policy. But something tells me that you’re good at misconstruing things; it makes it easier for you to attack strawmen.
rural,
Here’s a video map of NA snow cover in September. (Note too that NA is only about 4% of the Earth’s surface). Do you have a citation supporting your claim that the small amount of snow shown here is a record?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/snow-cover.php
“Appreciable” is in the eye of the beholder. The RSS dataset shows no warming if you carefully choose your starting point, i.e., including the 1998 El Nino super year. The other datasets do show “appreciable” warming. The oceans are warming appreciably.
Lewis and Curry is consistent with CMIP and IPCC. Harde 2014 is just another opinion paper in a open source journal.
Yes, Antarctic sea ice extent is at record. So?
Since you didn’t cite your source, I assume you got your Lake Superior information from WUWT’s false headline:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/14/water-temperature-of-the-great-lakes-is-over-6-degrees-colder-than-normal/
Did you actually read the article? It showed only 2.4-3.5 degrees F colder than average, not 6. According to the article, in 2013 both lakes were WARMER than average! So what Anthony Watts did was to say the difference between the warm year 2013 and the cold year 2014, which WAS 6 degrees, was the difference between 2014 and the average. Tsk, tsk Anthony. Poor form.