Blogs for Lists of Important Things

Noonan is diving back into global warming, this time with a list of "things more important" than it is. Any better than his previous forays? I'll start with my own list. It is the list of Mark Noonan's previous "there ain't no global warming" arguments. Snow at 8000 feet? Well, global warming is a scam. Following Nigel Calder, only 90% are sure anyway Liberal head exploding piercing questions A socialist said so Environmentalism is a religion, so... well... obviously... warming... ah... But, anyway, the environment doesn't exist But, anyway, the Earth's temperature doesn't exist Warming ended in '98, anyway Some guy with oil money in his pocket said so And lets through in Mark's compadre, Matt Margolis, who has not seen Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", nor will he, but, damnit, he knows its all lies. I wonder, should we also toss in The American View's “God is sovereign, the earth is the Lord’s and, by His grace, it is being renewed and will not be destroyed”? No... lets stick to Noonan. So how does this list fair? 1. Winning the War on Terrorism. 2. Anti-religious persecution. 3. Abortion/infanticide/euthanasia. 4. Spread of disease. 5. Slavery, especially the global traffic in sex slavery which almost invariably involves children. 6. Third world poverty. 7. Popular culture degradation of public morality. 8. Family breakup. 9. Nuclear proliferation in tyrannical States. 10. The rise of Chinese imperialism. Mark's List of Things More Important Than Global Warming (Bumped) Ok. 1. Winning the War on Terrorism. Crime is a problem. Terrorism is criminal. War is a problem. Fighting terrorists with the mechanisms of war is idiotic, like fighting the mafia with aerial bombardment or solving the drug problem by blowing up whole neighborhoods to get at the dealers. 2. Anti-religious persecution. I also would like to stop the persecution of the anti-religious, Mark. Funny that we should agree. Or maybe you mean "stop the persecution of the religious"? Well, I'd like that to stop too. I'd like to stop the persecution of all religion, though, and let that perversion of intellect die a long deserved death in peace. I wonder how you stand on that? 3. Abortion/infanticide/euthanasia. Infanticide? That's a stretch. How much of a problem is that, really? Not counting abortion, as that has its own place in the list? Likewise with euthanasia. How much of a problem is that? Besides which, I'd rather like the option of dying if things were bad enough, and frankly, if things were bad enough it would mean I'd need help. 4. Spread of disease. Diseases are a human scourge, but you've got to be joking? 5. Slavery, especially the global traffic in sex slavery which almost invariably involves children. Slavery effects hundreds of thousands. Global warming effects billions. I hate to be Machiavellian but this is not a bigger problem. 6. Third world poverty. I'll get back to this one. 7. Popular culture degradation of public morality. Comical. 8. Family breakup. What a warped mind you have. 9. Nuclear proliferation in tyrannical States. Yes, yes. Only the good guys get nukes. You'll never get that logic to work. Nuclear proliferation in any state is the problem. 10. The rise of Chinese imperialism. China? China, I suspect, will fall under its own weight as did Soviet Russia. We aren't suggesting another war are we? So how does this tie into global warming? Of the ten... 1. Winning the War on Terrorism. 2. Anti-religious persecution. 3. Abortion/infanticide/euthanasia. 4. Spread of disease. 5. Slavery, especially the global traffic in sex slavery which almost invariably involves children. 6. Third world poverty. 7. Popular culture degradation of public morality. 8. Family breakup. 9. Nuclear proliferation in tyrannical States. 10. The rise of Chinese imperialism. ... it looks like eight, at least, would be exacerbated by global warming, so how this can be a list of things "more important than" is a bit confusing. If you are concerned about these problems, you ought to be concerned about global warming. Changes in global temperature mean, at the very least, changes in the distribution of agricultural lands, water supplies, and other food sources-- fish, say. This means that people start to go hungry (6). Hungry people get sick (4). Hungry people get desperate (3). That someone would sell themselves or their children (5) is not a stretch. It is a time honored tradition. Hungry people turn on each other (2). Hungry people try to rectify their hunger by taking from other people (1,10). Hungry people use whatever means they have at their disposal (1,9). I suspect that 7 and 8 would be made worse as well, but those are hard to quantify and kinda silly. Making too much of this, am I? Several generals have com out about Warming, Wars, and Security and the rest of the case I've made in Gambling with our lives and Blogs for “Prudence”. From the latter: Consider, for example, that as temperatures rise, agriculture will shift North and into Canada, leaving the United State’s famed “bread basket” behind. Canada gains, we lose. Russia also gains considerably in the same area. Russia gains, we lose. Mexico suffers even more than the US Midwest. Tumult on the border perhaps? Hungry people get desperate. Blogs for “Prudence” Noonan apparently "can't get worked up over it being a little hotter than it is today" because he can't quite figure out that the Earth getting a little hotter is not quite the same thing as your house getting a little hotter. Turn up the temperature in your house by 9ºF and not much happens really, but 9ºF is the difference between now and an Ice Age. A few degrees can matter. The IPCC has predicted, depending upon the model, a rise of 3.2ºF to 7.2ºF. (I'm using Fahrenheit because Americans have no sense of Celsius.) Even at the low end, that is a significant fraction of that difference between now and an ice age. As for there being "zero actual evidence that even a crash program to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gasses would have more than a trivial effect on any theorised increase in global mean temperatures over the next 100 years", assuming this statement is true we would still be wise to bet on warming anyway. Cross-posted at Hell's Handmaiden.