This is one of those problems that will correct themselves: Crude-oil is finite. Our demand will excede our ability to produce in the not-so-far future...
Alternitive scources of power will eventualy become cheaper than OPEC can match, and when that happens (at about 8 to 10 dollars per gallon in the US) we will switch to something like solar (hydrogen fuel cell can be based on solar power to seporate hydogen from water).
Adam Smith's guiding hand... cost and benifit will guide the hand towards something else.
Talk about missing the point. Peak oil and climate change are two linked but seperate problems. Transport is a major contributor to greenhouse pollution, and thus climate change, but coal-fired electricity is the bigger problem. "We will switch to something like solar..." entirely ignores the massive time and cost of switching the world's transport and electricity generation to other sources, which will probably require at least a generation and many TRILLIONS of dollars. Anyway, we've already discussed in depth all of the assumptions you get wrong here, and I'm not going to re-hash the entire discussion.
Climate change will not "correct itself". Adam Smith's invisible hand pertains to markets, not environmental problems, and the history of the industrial revolution ably demonstrates that the market does not, and never will, solve environmental problems because it does not incorporate the cost of externalities (pollution) into production. If it did, we would not be in such a bind because switching to renewable energy sources on a large scale would have been occuring by now given that the cost of coal-generated electricity, with externalities incorporated, is about the same as wind and solar, and far more expensive than natural gas.
People like you who spread this nonsense that "it's not our problem" because "technology" or "the market" will solve it just give an excuse to the masses who believe them not to do anything about their own behaviour, and that is an extremely negligent and counter-productive attitude. All of our children will pay for our myopic ignorance.
Now, to the OP. Cheap ad hominem attacks don't deny the science, and although I don't believe that the war crimes analogy was apt, THE SPONSORSHIP OF ACTIVE MISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS BY INDUSTRIES SHOULD BE ILLEGAL. In Australia we have seen this with forestry industry, uranium, coal, petrol, fast food, cigarettes... the fact is, and there is extensive documentary evidence to prove it, including the confessions of the lobbyists who have run campaigns in the past, that large companies and industry peak bodies pay advocates to use untruthful methods to cast doubt in the minds of the ignorant masses about the truth of situations that will damage their industries.
It's happening all around you, all the time, and websites like Steve Milloy's "Junk Science", paid for by Exxon and used by most message board neo-cons as the "evidence" to question everything from climate change to the risks of passive smoking, should have to display the source of their bias. The average citizen should also take the time to educate themselves about issues from primary sources, rather than 'taking the word' of industry hired guns.
Here's a great article by George Monbiot about exactly this:
WHO'S PAYING
When pundits discuss contentious issues on air, they must reveal their financial interests.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 26th September 2006.
On the letters page of the Guardian last week, a Dr Alan Kendall attacked the Royal Society for “smearing” its opponents. It had sent an official letter to Exxon, complaining about the oil company’s “inaccurate and misleading” portrayal of the science of climate change, and its funding of lobby groups which deny that global warming is taking place. The letter, Dr Kendall argued, was an attempt to “stifle legitimate discussion”(1).
Perhaps he is unaware of what has been happening. The campaign of dissuasion funded by Exxon and the tobacco company Philip Morris has been devastatingly effective. By insisting that manmade global warming is either a “myth” or not worth tackling, it has given the media and politicians the excuses for inaction they wanted. Partly as a result, in the United States at least, these companies have helped to delay attempts to tackle the world’s most important problem by a decade or more(2).
Should we not confront this? If, as Dr Kendall seems to suggest, we should refrain from exposing and criticising these groups, would that not be to “stifle legitimate discussion”?
There is still much more to discover. It is unclear how much covert corporate lobbying has been taking place in the United Kingdom. But the little I have been able to find so far suggests that here, as in the US, there seems to be some overlap between Exxon and the groups it has funded and the operations of the tobacco industry.
The story begins with a body called the International Policy Network (IPN). Like many other organisations that have received money from Exxon, it describes itself as a “think tank” or “an independent educational charity”. It seems to me that a more accurate description would be “lobby group”. But while the BBC would seldom allow someone from Bell Pottinger or Burson Marsteller onto the air to discuss an issue of concern to their sponsors without revealing the sponsors’ identity, it has frequently allowed Julian Morris to present IPN’s case without declaring its backers. The International Policy Network has so far received $295,000 from Exxon’s corporate headquarters in the United States(3). Julian Morris told me that he runs his US office “solely for funding purposes”(4).
The IPN argues that attempts to prevent (or mitigate) manmade climate change are a waste of money. It would be better to let it happen and adapt to its effects. It published a book this year arguing that “humanity has until at least 2035 to determine whether or not mitigation will also be a necessary part of our strategy to address climate change … attempting to control it through global regulation of emissions would be counterproductive.”(5) Morris has described the government’s chief scientist, Sir David King, who has campaigned for action on global warming, as “an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country.”(6)
Like many of the groups which have been funded by ExxonMobil, IPN has also received money from the cigarette industry. Morris admits that it has been given £10,000 from a US tobacco company(7). There is also a question mark about his involvement in a funding application to another tobacco company, RJ Reynolds.
In the archives the cigarette companies were forced to open as part of the settlement of a class action in the United States, there is a document entitled “Environmental Risk”(8). It is a funding application to the tobacco company RJ Reynolds, to pay for a book about “the Myth of Scientific Risk Assessment”. “The principal objective of this book is to highlight the uncertainties inherent in “scientific” estimates of risk to humans and the environment”. Among the myths it would be contesting were the adverse health effects of passive smoking. It was requesting £50,000 to publish the book. The editors, the application said, would be “Roger Bate and Julian Morris”.
Julian Morris insists that his name was added to the document without his consent. He says he had “nothing” to do with the book(9). It was published in 1997 under the title “What Risk?”(10). It has a foreword by David Davis MP. It claims that passive smoking is no more dangerous than “eating 50g of mushrooms a week” and attacks “politically correct” beliefs such as “passive smoking causes lung cancer” and “mankind’s emissions of carbon dioxide will result in runaway global warming.” Julian Morris is not named as its co-editor, but he is the first person thanked in the acknowledgements, for his “editorial suggestions”.
The book’s editor, Roger Bate, is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – which has received $1.6m from ExxonMobil(11) – and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received $2 million(12). Until 2003, he was Julian Morris’s predecessor as head of the IPN. When the book was written, he ran the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), which published “What Risk?”. The registered owner of ESEF’s website is Julian Morris(13). He claims he had nothing to do with ESEF either, and registered the name purely “as a favour to a friend”(14).
PRWatch alleges that ESEF was originally called Scientists for Sound Public Policy (SSPP), and was founded by a public relations agency working for the tobacco company Philip Morris(15). Documents in the tobacco archives show that SSPP was the subject of a fierce turf war between the PR firms Burson Marsteller and APCO, who were vying for Philip Morris’s account. Burson Marsteller’s proposal argued that “industrial resistance” to regulation is “perceived as protection of commercial self-interests”. A different “countervailing voice” was required, consisting of “international opinion formers supported financially by the industry”. Their role would be “educating opinion leaders, politicians and the media.”(16) The group would also seek funding from other industries. Some of the people ESEF recruited as “academic members” were people working for US lobby groups later funded by Exxon, who have made false claims about climate change(17).
Like Julian Morris, Roger Bate has often appeared on radio and TV programmes. Interviewed by the Today programme about climate change, he argued that cutting carbon emissions has been “folly all along”. Instead, we should concentrate on adapting to climate change(18). In 2000, he presented a film on BBC2 called “Organic Food: The Modern Myth”, on which Julian Morris also appeared. Bate has not yet answered the Guardian’s requests for a response.
There is no law against taking money from corporations, or advancing arguments in the media that accord with their interests. Nor should there be. The problem is what appears to be a failure to declare an interest. When someone speaks on an issue of public importance, we should be allowed to see who has been paying them. This should apply to all advocates, pressure groups and thinktanks, from Greenpeace to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The BBC’s producer guidelines are clear on this point. “We need to ensure that we do not get involved with campaigning programming which is politically contentious. Programmes should not embrace the agenda of a particular campaign or campaigning group …”(19). Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of us warned that campaigning groups did not always describe themselves as such. We were ignored. The BBC now seems to have woken up to the problem. But we have lost ten years in which climate change could have been tackled.
www.monbiot.com
1. Alan Kendall, 22nd September 2006. Global warming debate must be heated. The Guardian.
2. This process is described in Heat: how to stop the planet burning.
3. http://www.exxonsecrets.org./html/orgfactsheet.php?id=108
4. Discussion with Julian Morris, prior to BBC interview, 14th September 2006.
5. The Sustainable Development Network, 2006. Carrots, Sticks and Climate Change. International Policy Press, Bedford Chambers, London.
6. Antony Barnett and Mark Townsend, 28th November 2004. Greenhouse effect ‘may benefit man’. The Observer.
7. In interview for Newsnight, conducted 14th September 2006.
8. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/cgi/getdoc?tid=wov90d00&fmt=pdf&ref=results
9. In interview for Newsnight, conducted 14th September 2006.
10. Roger Bate (Ed), 1997. What Risk? Science Politics and Public Health. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
11. http://www.exxonsecrets.org./html/orgfactsheet.php?id=9
12. http://www.exxonsecrets.org./html/orgfactsheet.php?id=2
13. From: whois.networksolutions.com:43
Registrant: European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF-DOM) UK
Domain Name: ESEF.ORG
Administrative Contact: Morris, Julian (JM4309)
[email protected]
European Science and Environment Forum
Kersfield Road
London, SW15 3HE
14. In interview for Newsnight, conducted 14th September 2006.
15. http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.html
16. Burson-Marsteller, 1994. Scientists for Sound Public Policy. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/cgi/getdoc?tid=jpd24e00&fmt=pdf&ref=results
17. The full list is included at the back of What Risk? It includes S.Fred Singer, Sherwood Idso, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon and others.
18. The clip can be played at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/746453.stm
19. BBC Producer Guidelines – Programme Funding and External relationships, viewed at www.ucipe.org/documentos/fundamentos.pdf
As for you fools who don't believe the top scientific institutions in the world, you may as well believe in a flat earth. It's incredible that otherwise intelligent people would put more faith in the words of non-scientist hired guns than in the combined scientific muscle of the best the world has to offer in environmental and climatic science!? I mean, when did you lose you minds?
Come on down to Australia some time and we'll show you what climate change is already doing to us. In Australia we are in the midst of a 6 year drought, the worst on record, and have just gone into an El Nino drought with no sign of real rain on the horizon. Most Australian cities are at less than 50% of their dam capacity, and Austrlia's wheat production this year will be 20% of the average. Entire regions of irrigated cotton and other agriculture have not produced a thing for years because they have no water. Desertification (the process whereby ag land becomes desert) continues to worsen as rainfall patterns change. All of these things were predicted by CSIRO, our peak scientific organisation, using climate models in the 1990s.
How exactly are we going to adjust to the widespread devastation of our agricultural belt? This is happening across the globe, so where is all of the food coming from as the climate shifts and traditional food growing areas become marginal or desert? And if the sea level rises by 2m, where are the 1/2billion displaced people going??? As for the asertion that we should "adapt" to climate change, these people don't know what they are saying. The cost of "adapting" to the aftermath will be massively more than the cost of averting the disaster.
But nah, let's just let the disaster happen and clean up afterwards! What a smart idea. :rolleyes