Krauthammer On Global Warning

Yesterday I discussed proposed Global Warming legislation making its way through Congress. The Markey bill is not alone however. On the senate side similar legislation by Leiberman and Warner is also pending. While I agree that efforts to reduce pollution are necessary and reducing our dependence on foreign supplies are in our national security interests these bills are overzealous in their scope and potentially damaging to our economy.

From Charles Krauthammer, "Confessions of a Global-Warming Agnostic; The Church of the Environment needs a nuclear Reformation"

I’m not a global-warming believer. I’m not a global-warming denier. I’m a global-warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can’t be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems — from ocean currents to cloud formation — that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative...

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. “The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity,” warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”