Michael Edelstein wrote:
This is one of the best overviews of the greenhouse
warming issue I've read.
Thanks, Michael, for forwarding this. It is much better than the usual
conservative/libertarian response to global warming (to wit, "Oh, no! The
environmentalists are calling for regulation! Therefore their science
must be alarmist! There's no problem at all!") Lindzen doesn't attempt
to handwave global warming away; instead, he says that the warming is very
small, and exaggerated by most climatic models. It's much more reasoned
than the usual stuff coming out of places like CEI, which usually smell
more like "evolution is only a theory" reasoning. See also Ronald
Bailey's take on the global warming debate at <URL:
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb111004.shtml >.
It is important to note that this particular article of Lindzen's is from
the Spring 1992 issue of _Regulation_; the state of the art has changed
since then, with fourteen years' worth of improvements computational
modeling techniques, computers themselves, and both local and remote
sensing data from the earth and other planets. Still, a brief Web search
didn't find that the status quo is significantly different than outlined
here.
On a broader note, I am constantly intrigued that global warming itself is
a consistent issue among libertarians. I understand why - most
presentations of the issue are coupled with a call for government
regulation. However, libertarians tend to react to the wrong part of the
mention, as if a call for single-payer healthcare should be met with
claims that medicine is a hoax. (There are some in that camp, as our
"smurf" candidate for Senator from Montana showed, but not in reaction to
calls for government-funded health care.)
~Chris