REVIEW Roads and the Hillbilly with the Harvard veneer

REVIEW

Roads and the Hillbilly with the Harvard veneer

If you’ve got a common first name Tom and a common last name Moore, it must come in handy to have a funny middle name like Gale, so people can remember you,

especially when you write a book about climate. And alleged climate change.

Every age seems to be afflicted by some popular alarum, an issue worthy of disappasionate evaluation and quiet consideration, but which all manner of slick conmen and artful parasites, many of them, sad to say, in this keyboard tapping line of work, beat up into passionate Great Issues that need drastic Policy Initiatives and sweeping Reforms, major Public Programs and International Conferences, new Agencies of government and Conventions and Treaties, not to speak of new Taxes, an issue that they think should distract schoolkids from learning and growing up, and the rest of the populace from their various proper private pursuits. For anyone who has been too preoccupied to watch a TV news program or read front newspaper pages these past few years by the really worthy stuff such as fishing, gardening, baseball, music, charity, booze, coin-collecting, dogs, sex, house renovation, film, chat and child-raising, I report the news that climate change is one of the great issues of this city’s policy wonks as we approach the next millennium etc.

And that this stuff about a Global Warming Catastrophe is actually believed by Al, a wooden dimwit former senator from Tennessee (he doesn’t just look wooden, he really is, I’m told by people who have tried to explain things to him) who wants to succeed Bill, the amiable and charming rogue from Arkansas, a minor scrounger and a harmless sex maniac, whose domestic doings at his mansion at 1600 Penna Av NW intrigue many, just down the road a bit from me there in Washington DC. (It is truly remarkable what manner of men manage to finagle their way into getting the American people to give them years of free board in this minor palace, plus limousines, brass bands, guards, flunkeys and all the rest of the fuss.)

Lest anyone say that this strays from the subject of toll roads, let it be said that whether Al gets to live at what’s now Bill’s place could have weightier implications for traffic and revenues on toll roads around the world than all the many quantifiable and surveyable factors studied by Wilbur Smith and his associates at some expense to many readers. You see, I fear Al really believes that automobiles pose “a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront.” He didn’t just say that to a reporter in some moment when his handlers were loafing off, he has it in a book under his name that he has never disowned (“Earth in the Balance” p325.) Here is this wonderful 4-wheeled machine owned by almost every family in the US and which consumes as much of their budgets as booze, smokes, dope and other sin combined, which sits out in the street harmlessly most of the time, otherwise helps them do mundane things like getting to work, or shopping for groceries, and this guy says the thing’s a mortal threat to every nation etc. It is enough for us all to pause a moment each evening and give thanks to the founding fathers. The nation, indeed the world, is indeed greatly indebted to the constitution devised by the last great statesmen of the US, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Madison etc to whom we owe a debt of gratiutude for the checks and balances they set on the power of rogues and fools in that white house. And of out-and-out nuts who seek the tenancy.

Despite the best efforts of the founding fathers to prevent an emperor or monarch becoming entrenched, the inhabitant of 1600 Penna Av is provided, as they say, a bully pulpit from which Al, the hillbilly with a Harvard veneer, could make his administration into a crusade to badmouth the so-called “mortal threat.” Backed by a horde of bright opportunists, always attracted to Washington DC, Prez Al just might well manage to corral the US Congress — not noted for backbone — into enacting a variety of new restrictions and taxes on the awful auto, which might detract seriously from the traffic and the revenues unless... Unless a few persons of goodwill, commonsense and an interest in what the science says, go out and arm themselves with the data to debunk this untalented ex-senator and his deluded followers. Which is where we get to the book “Climate of Fear” by Thomas Gale Moore.

Moore of Stanford Univ is the kind of academic who restores one’s faith in scholarship. He digs out pertinent facts and arguments that are relevant, presents them in lively fashion and with commonsense. He documents what he writes so you can distinguish the objective from the subjective. He brings historical perspective, demonstrates what we know from what we guess. If I might crudely summarize the guy’s great labors: There is not much evidence that the earth’s climate is warming, but if it is warming it seems likely to be a quite moderate warming and, on balance, for the better for mankind and the earth’s other plants and creatures. And in any case nothing that mankind can do at this point will make any discernible difference to the climate of 2050 or even 2100. So those who want to impose policies of pain on people in the name of preventing global-warming probably love that pain more than they fear the warming.

Moore notes that “evidence for the claim that the earth has grown warmer is shaky: the theory is weak and the models on which the conclusions are based cannot even replicate the current climate.” Nevertheless, if any warming does occur, historical experience suggests that the results will be anything but catastrophic.

More CO2 & warmth great

The book surveys the historical record and finds that “mankind has benefited and will continue to benefit from an upward tick in the thermometer.” During the Climatic Optimum of 8k to 3k years ago for example, global temperatures were “much warmer than today, perhaps 2 degs C hotter, about the average of the various predictions for global warming after a doubling of carbon dioxide.” Yet people “built the first cities and established city states and then empires...trade flourished, writing was invented, and the human population exploded.” On the other hand, when the climate turned markedly cooler, as it did about 600 AD in Europe, “progress, civilization and trade came to a standstill.”

“Most modern industries are relatively immune to weather. Climate affects principally agriculture, forestry, and fishing, which together constitute less than 2 percent of US gross domestic product,” Moore observes. But warming is hardly a threat to those industries. “Warm climates have longer growing seasons and higher productivity. Climatologists predict that a warmer world would enjoy more rainfall. The net result of warming and enhanced precipitation would be to boost farm output.”

“Global warming would, in all probability, produce gains for most Americans. Somewhat higher temperatures would improve health, cut death rates, facilitate transport, reduce heating bills, and help satisfy people’s taste for warm weather. From an American point of view, spending anything to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases is unwarranted.”

Most other countries would benefit too from a more carbon dioxide rich atmosphere and a warmer climate, especially if, as the evidence suggests, the warming is concentrated on the colder portions of the globe. If some communities have a problem — from slightly higher sea levels — then they’ll be better off concentrating on developing greater productivity and technical knowledge and wealth to cope and adapt (like the Dutch for example) than by trying, King Canute-like, to boss around the oceans, the sun, or the winds. (Contact Thomas Gale Moore, 415 723 1411. To get copies of the book “Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry about Global Warming,” $10 paper, $19 hardcover call publisher Cato Inst 800 767 1241)