Excellent review Luke. I also liked spiked’s take. The Guardian drivel merely pounds home one of Durkin’s (and your own observation) more appropriate points: at the expense of debate (and science) the frenetic screamers react with “witty” ad hom and “soft” censorship.
In fairness I’ll screen Al Gores documentary for an “official” counter-point. But the snarky reactions of those opposed to the likes of Durkin aren’t helping their case any.

Left by subadei on March 13th, 2007

On the other hand… using the adhom and seemingly politically motivated speech of the opponent to “prove” the non-existence of a global warming problem, caused in part by human activity, would not be very scientific, either.

One might as well assume that these folks are politically motivated by the scientific data (however limited) which supports the idea of a human-created global warming phenomenon, and then go extreme in their zeal.

Or even, we might as well assume that those power-hunger, self-interested, and totally non-Green (in spirit) folks have seen the reality and are using it for their own selfish interests. So they’re power-hungry and don’t really care about “Global Warming” except as a tool for gaining power; this does not disprove Global Warming Theory.

Let’s suppose, for sake of argument (begging the question, that is) that Global Warming is actually happening as these folks say, and for the reasons they say, and to the degree they claim; what sane man wouldn’t become a Green zealot, seeing that it is so?

In order to disprove the theory, adequate data would be necessary for disproving it. Although by nature a skeptic, the theory of sitting on our hands in the absence of data proving the absolute reality seems a little too dangerous a ploy for dealing with this particular controversy, I think. I am sympathetic to the Libertarian spirit, but not a fanatic. I do not want freedom from statists at the expense of millions of deaths along coastal regions — nor even, at the expense of a few extinctions out of my range of view. The one human liberty Libertarians tend to deride is the liberty to come together to work on a solution, via government.

Left by Curtis Gale Weeks on March 13th, 2007

I should have noted — had it in my mind, but forgot it in my zeal! — that attemtping to create a fear of those who are using fear for personal gain…well something’s not quite consistent in that argument.

Left by Curtis Gale Weeks on March 13th, 2007

Phil – you downplay the likely consequences of climate change. If the only ramifications were 12 inches worth of sea level rise and a few species dying out, that wouldn’t be so bad. But that’s not likely to be the case.

What I find remarkable about your libertarian solutions, specifically bullet points 2, 3 and 4, is that they go to a system of electricity generation that is very old school, centralized and ‘statist’. What I mean by this is that the means to generate, transmit and distribute electricity lies in the hands of the government (e.g., through ownership of a national grid) and large corporations (who are either state-owned or are, in effect, private sector bureaucrats).

This model is inevitable, of course, if you choose to generate electricity through large power plants, whether they are windfarms, nuclear plants, gas-fired stations. Only government and big business has the money and the willingness to incur the risk.

I would have thought that libertarians would favour ‘distributed generation’ (where electricity is produced close to the point of use, e.g., through combined heat and power plants) and ‘micro-generation’ (where anyone – a householder, a farmer, a business owner, can generate their own electricity through small wind turbines, solar panels and so on) and be able to feed excess electricity into the grid and receive a market price for it. Such a system reduces the load on the national grid, is more efficient in that electricity is generated at or close to the point of use (thereby cutting the loss that occurs when electricity is transmitted long distance), and makes everyone more self-sufficient.

Your point about the electricity market, at least in NZ, is misdirected. The real issue is that the market is dominated by the government and a handful of big corporations. There is no ability for smaller companies, major electricity users (like hospitals, timber mills) and individuals to be part of the market, in the way that I set out above. And those who conserve energy, or use if more efficiently, are penalized because of flat charges levied by the electricity distributors (i.e., even if you reduced your electricity usage to a low level, you would still pay the same flat as the person who keeps their clothes drier and heaters blasting all day).

I have to challenge your assumption that ‘green power’ is more expensive than ‘dirty power’. There is not necessarily a correlation, as NZ’s experience shows. Where there is, it is often because established ‘dirty power’ generators have built-in advantages over new entrants to a power market. And invariably the external costs of dirty power, such as the annual cost to a country’s health system of treating respiratory diseases, is not charged back to the electricity producer, and hence factored into the cost of true cost of electricity generation.

Left by The strategist on March 13th, 2007

Apologies Luke for misattributing authorship of your post.

Re. climate change – I’m making the point that climate change is driving a raft of changes, both direct and indirect, not just sea level rise (whatever the figure is). It therefore needs to be taken very seriously.

My point about the NZ electricity market is that the way that it is currently structured is not efficient, free or fair, because it favours established well-capitalized companies over new entrants, because it favours one mode of electricity generation (distant source generation) over over forms (such as DG and MG), and because it sets up disincentives for people to conserve energy or use it more efficiently (this is the point about the flat charge) and for companies to offer alternatives.

It doesn’t seem particularly ‘free’ to me that a supposedly free market (in this case for electricity) actually severely restricts the choice available to customers because of te way the market is structured and regulated.

Left by The strategist on March 13th, 2007

Luke,

True, I wasn’t so much trying to characterize your stance on global warming so much as characterize the type of counterargument often given by many who oppose the Green Zealots™! So this ties in with the use of fear-mongering, when the object to be feared is an archetype of a person rather than actual people, whichever side of the argument we fall on.

The difficulty with devising Libertarian solutions to global warming issues seems to be this: If people were going to do it on their own, why haven’t they already? We might argue that “a state” (whatever that is) has been using its powers to keep people from doing it on their own in a Libertarian manner; but how would you propose making the Libertarian scheme viable, given the fact that so many of the millions who believe the Green Zealots™ have already chosen, on their own, to look toward the state(s) to find solutions?

Left by Curtis Gale Weeks on March 13th, 2007