Perhaps even, as some conservative commentators have noted, this “everything is affected” argument is the real attraction of CO2 control for would-be world-improvers. The trouble is that a lot of the proposals will do a lot more harm than good. And this is mainly because too many intellectuals do not want to see both sides to an argument: They are too busy being smug and self-righteous.

I also remind people of the dangers and costs of nuclear energy whenever possible – as well as some opportunities. And I agree totally with your last statement. So why don’t you try persuading your colleagues to be more open minded about climate science. I’ve done so and found it’s mostly pessimistic conjecture. I suspect it all stems from opportunistic grant-seeking overhyped by those smug, politically-correct hypocrites as suggested by Craig Bohren – a talented atmospheric physicist – who smelt the corruption, opted out and hence lost out on the grant avalanche.

I believe green ideas and energy ideas can converge to a clean, sustainable energy future but it all needs to be based on honesty, truth, humanism, real experimental evidence and real open-mindedness. We have a long way to go before that happens. We’d all welcome the real environmentalists into the realist fold to build a clean, green, poverty-reducing, sustainable future.

You say “If we didn’t need plants and trees, should we keep them around? ie. if all our food and air could be manufactured synthetically, is it morally required that we keep nature around? Well perhaps not, but lets say we simply need them for human health and we can’t do without”
Ask yourself if you would really prefer manufactured synthetic food? What would we manufacture it from if not from natural elements? Which is what nature does anyway, so why bother going to all the trouble and expense of synthetic manufacture?
I also wonder if nature is morally required to keep us around? Or perhaps nature doesn´t have a conscience, or even care.

Just a small point that often crops up is; why do you consider yourself somehow separate from nature? Why do we have humans on one `side´ and `nature´ on the other?
Isn´t this division rather artificial and more a product of divisive thinking than actual reality which seems to indicate that we are part and parcel of this universal system?

Energy is good! But does it have to be equated with burning fossil fuels and nuclear power, with all the attendant problems of pollution and waste disposal? We haven´t progressed much since the cave man days in respect of burning carbon for our needs, and many of our our so called modern inventions were invented in the century before last. Nuclear fission power is very high risk and fusion seems to elude us for the time being. We need some serious new ideas and that means thinking outside the box.
One of the main objections I have to the current energy question isn´t just about how we produce it. But how we use it or rather misuse it and abuse it. Petroleum is one of our most precious resources, yet we waste it in so many ways. Energy efficiency is clever and intelligent and we should be focusing very clearly on that goal.

Colonising other worlds is all very well, but shouldn´t we be a bit more critical of the manner in which we are colonising this one before we decide to take our crappy, dirty 19th century technology to outer space?

I agree with your basic point though, we think we are developed, but we are mere babies to what we could become if we really got our act together, cleaned up our own crap and started living up to our label of `humanity´ . Developing means maturing intelligently?

To JamesG “The environmentalist ideology is also very simple: If it happens naturally we know it’s ok but if it isn’t natural, be suspicious.” With respect, this statement is just simplistic nonsense. Earthquakes are ok? Hurricanes are ok? Viral and bacterial infections are ok? But trains and buses and bicycles are not ok, neither are houses and shops and schools and hospitals? Telephones? computers?
I appreciate that you consider the idea of clean energy to be “not a bad aim”. Nuclear power is very problematic and its use simply bolsters our unthinking use of energy rather than encouraging us to think `clean´- Chuck another uranium rod in the chamber darling, I need to take a power shower, these hydrocarbons do stick so-

Perhaps if you really want to know what Greens think and why they think it, and not what you think we think, you should do a little more research. Be open minded. Clinging to outdated positions and holding entrenched opinions is not the way for us humans to develop in an intelligent creative manner, is it?

a. Is industrial CO2 demonstrably warming us?
b. If so, by how much?
c. Is that bad or good?
d. Has the large funding available caused scientists to lose objectivity and pretend to know things that they really don’t?

And the answers are:
a. While it’s scientifically plausible, it’s not really possible to separate out natural variability. Those who say it is are guessing or lying.
b. Anything above 1 degree per CO2 doubling is mere guesswork disguised to look like science.
c. Probably good (albeit by complete chance) – the planet is greening and all the talk about more extreme weather is alarmist hogwash belied by the data.
d. Oh yes!

The environmentalist ideology is also very simple: If it happens naturally we know it’s ok but if it isn’t natural, be suspicious.

Industrial CO2 isn’t, of course, natural. Greens have no trouble disbelieving scientists when it suits them so yes here they do have a hidden agenda. No it’s not socialism (many are privileged toffs)! Their hidden agenda is merely that they want clean, green energy to sustain us in the future. It’s not exactly a bad aim. They cannot be happy about the result of jumping on this bandwagon though – ie the return of nuclear power. Talk about unintended consequences!

Does humans being healthy and prospering in ever greater numbers mean the biosphere is healthier?

A likely first objection is, “but that’s not sustainable!”

OK, so does a slowly progressing cancer, which isn’t aggressive enough to kill its host, is that cancer “sustainable” and therefore “healthy” ?

Well, the host wouldn’t feel too healthy anyway.

Does the presence of any foreign organism in my body mean I am not healthy? Well, I seem to benefit from gut bacteria.

If we didn’t need plants and trees, should we keep them around? ie. if all our food and air could be manufactured synthetically, is it morally required that we keep nature around? Well perhaps not, but lets say we simply need them for human health and we can’t do without.

What then does “sustainable” mean?

If we use less resources, there will be more resources for later, and so that looks more “sustainable”. But if through using fewer resources, we can only support fewer people, then what’s the point, if those people have to live in more primitive conditions, and have more primitive lifestyles and cultures. ie. more racism, more ethnocentric violence, more wars, more brutality.

The more people we have, the more brains, the more technology, the more globally connected we become, the more we move towards united humanity in peaceful coexistence. As we haven’t achieved that as yet…. we obviously have further to go, much further. Staying where we are NOW is NOT sustainable. Any major disease, asteroid, or war, could easily wipe us all out. History does not end today, and there are many human potentials which we have glimpsed but haven’t as yet achieved in any significant numbers. If we go bust in the process then so be it, but we cannot sustain staying at our current level of development. We are as a race still very underdeveloped. I don’t know where people got the idea that the West is “developed”…. we’re just not as undeveloped as some places.

So we must progress with culture and technology and wisdom. More wisdom means more technology. Which means more power. More energy. More materials and resources.

Yes, we do need to make industry cleaner, but not at the expense of industry itself. We are still primitive and our current technology, solar or nuclear or oil, cannot sustain us. And having fewer people won’t sustain us either–that just prolongs the decay, like trapped miners trying to breathe slower.

I don’t think we can consider ourselves “sustainable” at least until 20% of us are colonizing other worlds, or have connections to other worlds beyond ours, and for that we need human wisdom to progress much much further. We tend to stop killing each other when we no longer need to to survive. In peace we can afford to practice being more altruistic and compassionate. Being green is just a very small part of that move forward.

overall: total, inclusive of all parts (not to be confused with protective garment to keep out the dirt and wet of same name)

healthy: not sick, ill or diseased. State of wellness. Beneficial.

flourishing: thriving, prospering, growing vigorously.

biosphere: Life on Earth (or any other planet). The sum of all organisms living on Earth and the space they occupy: the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. The concept also describes the interactions that take place to maintain the conditions for life.
Earth system. The ecosystem of the entire planet. Big ball of life…and how it functions.

And please don´t ask what is the meaning of `life´.

But I would like an answer to my questions above.

Hope you are well and flourishing!

Have to disagree with both these statements. Simply, clean air and clean water are basic to human health. Ensuring those two elements is primary.

“It gets even more murky when you introduce the concept of an ‘overall flourishing healthy biosphere’. What the hell is it? Not even ’science as a tool for knowledge’ (whatever that is) can yet determine what constitutes such a thing.”

What is a flourishing healthy biosphere?? You mean you don´t know?
Must I also define `knowledge´ for you? And the concept of `tool´?

“Being such a nebulous concept, the desire to protect an ‘overall flourishing healthy biosphere’ can extend well beyond the rational.”
You saying it is a `nebulous concept´ highlights the fact that you don´t know what it is. Suggest you brush up on the physical sciences: physics, chemistry and biology and their related diciplines of atmospheric science, oceanography, botany, zoology, astrophysics, physiology, medicine… And that for starters. This might give you a clearer idea of what I mean by the term. Unless we both understand what the term means, then we will not be communicating effectively and therefore unable to say whether the desire to protect it, or conversely; to trash it, “can extend beyond the rational” or not.

“For instance, environmentalism’s political capital is invested in the precautionary principle. This allows environmentalists to extrapolate from only superficially plausible science, that change is equivalent to damage, and we are therefore committed to an ‘unsustainable’ system that will lead inevitably to catastrophe.”

The use of the terms `superficially plausible´ to describe science is yet another indication that it is your grasp of the science which is superficial(as demonstrated above) rather than a description of the science.

Change is not synonomous with damage, and it is wiser not to confuse one with the other.

The use of `unsustainable´ to describe a system, means that by definition the system will break down. That is what an unsustainable system is. It is a system that will break down because it is unsustainable. If a system is sustainable then it won´t break down because that is what the word sustainable means. Get it?

“The process of industrialisation, while indeed ‘dirty’ at the outset, led to new ways of producing things which are cleaner, and which wouldn’t have been developed had we been worried about clean air, clean water, and an ‘overall flourishing healthy biosphere’.”

Wonderful bit of `Homer Simpson ´logic! But perhaps it has also been because we got worried about the clean water , clean air and the OFHB that led to producing things that are cleaner?
Agree with you about the process of industrialisation being dirty at the outset. Still is dirty , so perhaps if we stop worrying about it, it will become cleaner, as your clause suggets.?

“It’s not true, you see, that human interests are always the same as nature’s interests.”

No I don´t see. What are `nature´s interests´?

“Furthermore, it is not the case that an argument for clean air, clean water, and an ‘overall flourishing healthy biosphere’ are automatically legitimate. It would indeed be a wonderful thing if no factory needed to emit any pollution, but the world would be a lot less comfortable, a lot less rewarding, and a lot more painful without them.”

Neither is it the case that the argument for clean air, clean water and an OFHB is automatically illegitimate. It would indeed be a wonderful thing if no factory needed to emit pollution into the air we breathe or the water we drink and generally contaminate and degrade the OFHB. And there. dear sirs, is precisely the rub. How to have all those comfortable rewarding things and not pollute the OFHB?? Challenging huh? Creative new thinking, perhaps? Technologial innovations that free us from dirty 19th century practices. Or perhaps you are afraid of change? you have certainly mentioned on other posts that you worry that Greens are out to change the way we live, so I can only assume that you don´t want to move forward on new technology and creative new 21st century thinking? Prefer to stay huddled in your cave, crowded round your coal fired power stations.?

‘Green idealogy is science based. What else do you suggest we base our ideas on?

“It isn’t science based. Green politics is prior to science. It attempts to legitimise itself with science, but that’s not the same as being ’science based’.”

This is just silly. Of course it is science based. What do you think we do? sit round plotting the revolution and fabricating scientific facts to support our case? “Humans need oxygen!” “Oh, ha, ha that´s a good one..” “trees produce oxygen..” “brilliant Dr Brocoli !! stick that in the manifesto.. that will fool the punters!” Like I said.. silly.

The evidence is stacking up that (stalled for a decade) global warming is not going to be catastrophic and the anthropogenic component is tiny. The expedient thing to do now, for anyone wishing to preserve their scientific reputation in the long term, is to get on the fence. Bravo Professor Hulme!

The problem with the debate so far is the lack science, and the excess of ideology.