Hypothetically, if man-made global warming is theoretical BS, what harm could it do to beleive it's real/true?

Question

Consider for a moment the possibility that Anthropogenic Global Warming is "made up" fiction created by the scientists of the world as a means of making them important and reliable. Personally I don't think this is remotely close to reality, but purely hypothetically speaking, just go with me on this for a moment.
The question is, if the whole scientific fear campaign were fictional, what would result from a planetary wide trusting of these people? What would happen to our social, economic, political, religious, technological, environmental, and industrial society? How would believing something like that change us, how we live, work, play, shop, trade, relax, etc?

Consider these control constants in this hypothesis: Our planet is approaching peak oil; The nuclear energy industry is desparately seeking new places to bury radioactive waste, while at the same time promoting itself with a passion; We have exceeded the sustainable limit of global human population; We war with each other

For those who find my question difficult to understand, I will rephrase:
suppose for a moment that global warming, the whole climate change experience (which includes but is not limited to CO2 emmissions), were a massive concocted fantasy. Suppose for a moment everything the sceptics say is true, that minute changes in global average temperature are a cyclical phenomena, such as it was during the medieval warming period. Suppose for a moment that PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere means nothing. What would the result be if the whole planet became utterly and totally convinced that the Earth is experiencing runaway anthropogenic global warming, triggering a climate change of catastrophic proportions, and that everyone became convinced that carbon dioxide emmissions as a greenhouse gas is a, but not the only, driver of this experience.
imagine the long term effects, both good and bad, of believing this, and how much the human experience could change.

Answer 1

Do you mean how would it change us if we discovered that global warming is merely a fear campaign? Because obviously most of us already believe that we are living in a time of man-made global warming. And even without the effects of man's works there is evidence from other planets that our whole solar system is going thru a time of "global warming". Even knowing we live on the verge of an energy crisis, that we are quite possibly only months from a crisis in transportation of food into cities, of failure of heat and lights to millions, Americans continue to buy SUVs that suck down gasoline as if an oil pipeline ran directly to each person's front door and a huge gap grows between the rich and the poor. Huge houses are built that take tremendous resources to light and heat for the upper class and a growing lower class struggles to have food and a decent place to live and basic health care. For this lower class, global warming, is just something that means their lives are more miserable because they can't afford air conditioning in the hotter summers that are lasting longer. What would happen from a planetary wide trust that global warming is happening? Exactly the same thing that is happening now. Too few people who have power are willing to give up their luxuries. The oil companies are going to suck the last dollar they can from this planet.

I'm afraid I haven't even begun to make an answer to your question. I didn't really understand exactly what your question was. But maybe I've made a start at a dialog.

Having seen your additional explaination, I see that my approach was wrong. Were we to assume that a significant majority of the population of the world truly believed that global warming was about to bring about catastrophic changes to our planet I suspect that we would see centralization of power and martial law become the norm. The U.N.'s Agenda 21 and our own government's recent cavalier treatment of the Constitution is already setting the stage for such centralization. Use of all petroleum based fuels would undoubtedly be rationed and limited to military and goverment use, except by special permit. Solar, wind and nuclear power would be the main power sources available to our world to begin with tho' undoubtedly, there would be a rush to find new power sources. People would have to choose between having nuclear powered electricity or no electricity as coal powered electrical plants were shut down. Undoubtedly, to begin with, there would be "brown outs"-- times when the electricity was shut off to reduce the amount of man-made emissions. It would become illegal to run air-condition unless temperatures were in the 90's. The demand for solar panels would probably drive the price up, tho' with a world wide crisis and more demand, better cheaper ways of manufacturing them might come about so that the price might drop, making solar power for every home eventually a reality. But there could be other crises. In large, inner cities, there could be a very real possibility of starvation and lack of water. Without fuel for trucking to bring food to cities, grocery shelves would be depleted within days. When there is no electricity to run pumps, there's no water. Certainly this is a grim outlook and is it to be hoped that authorities would have planned ahead better, but considering the fiasco of Katrina it seems safe to say that at least some cities in the world would be in dire straits as fuel stores were depleted or hoarded by government and military. Without food or safe drinking water, many city dwellers would undoubtedly try to make it out into the countryside, but they would find no welcome there. Though country dwellers would at least have the possibility of raising there own food, even if anything has been left to them under martial law they are going to be desperate to hold on to what they have for themselves and their families. If the world population truly believed that global warming is going to bring on a crisis for our planet, each nation would do well to immediately begin putting in place the infrastructure for switching to the alternative energies we have available now i.e. wind, solar, and nuclear. Tho' nuclear power has it's inherent problems they must be overcome to provide safe power for the world. While I am not a Globalist and will never support Agenda 21, a true world crisis deserves a world solution. Industrialized nations having been the major cause of the green house effect, should rightly bear the brunt of the expense of the research and development of new technologies for dealing with the crisis.

And then, after all this, is there harm in believing in theoretical B.S.? What if this is just the excuse needed panic people into accepting martial law? Look at all the freedoms we've given up since 2001 because of the fear of terrorists. So if we were afraid our world was really, really in trouble and we were all going to die, what might some give up, to save themselves? I say, it can do a lot of harm to believe falsehoods. Especially ones that panic you into ill-conceived actions. In the end, you are more likely to wind up with a far worse situation than the one you thought you were working against.

Answer 2

Man-made global is only a small part of the problem. if we stopped polluting our environment, it would have a positive impact after decades of clean-up. But let's look at the real problem which is beyond us to control.
NASA has with-held their discovery that sun's temperature has elevated (remember those huge solar flares a few years back? strong indicator). Evidence: Ice caps on Mars are shrinking, and the surfaces of moons around Jupiter and Saturn that are normally frozen are now melting. Al Gore is using his scare tactic to aid in instituting a carbon tax. Once a carbon tax becomes a reality, it will give big government a justifiable reason to continue to rob the people of even more of their hard earned income. This will further enslave the people to work longer hours and become more easily controlled (because we will all be too busy working to do much else).

Answer 3

1. Multi-billions of dollars, if not a trillion or more, would be wasted in "CO2-control" schemes.

2. These funds would be better invested in ameliorating local and other consequences of global climate change, which seems to be currently on the increase, regardless of cause.

3. A false sense of security, while the seas rose, etc., that "we've solved the cause/problem."

4. An increased layer of red tape, oversight, imposition on people's behavior.

5. An decreased economic development curve.

Interestingly, the causal relationship of [CO2] as a major factor in global climate change is not established. The IPCC is a cause-driven organization which did suppress alternative hypotheses, according to members, even as it claims to have reached "consensus." A herd of "eco-lemmings" believed "global cooling" was the case in the 1970s. The models are still not conclusive, and alternative theories (e.g., solar cycles, [CO2] rising after warming, etc.). are credible.

The brief answer is that a) no one knows; b) the proffered disaster scenario is very grave; c) climate change may be occurring, regardless, from other causes substantially unrelated to [CO2], and d) regulating human CO2 emissions is very costly and bureaucratically oppressive.

Thus, mankind is faced with a rather cliquish IPCC, eco-alarmist, supported by control-minded politicians who can make the issue into their vote-getting domain, predicting an urgent need to "DO SOMETHING" about CO2, lest horrors result, and all this based on incomplete and questionable theoretics.

A least-worst case option, assuming the [CO2] model proves inaccurate/overemphasized, could be that of installing carbon scrubbers according to each nations' output of CO2. The technology is on the shelf, would not so drastically interfere with people's lives or businesses, and prevent catastrophe, if indeed no other causes are in play.

Bjorn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It" are good resources for the sceptic of manmade CO2 as significantly causative; http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/ is a somewhat-non-triivial counter site, although the weight of value appears to rest with Lomborg.

regards,

j.

Answer 4

Its hard to speculate on what the outcome would be one way are the other. I just wish we could work together to make our lives better by attempting to expand on our immediate life styles that just fit us. Most of us like a clean environment to live in... we like our house clean, our yards clean and pretty and we like to keep ourselves clean. Instead of us looking at the what ifs... I wish people could focus on the what can bes.
I think we have made strides in keeping ourselves a little clean. But there is so much we can do to make it better. For instance we do recycle some of our waste but I think we can recycle 95% of our house hold waste. With a little education we can learn how to recycle all of the packaging the products we buy come in. People need to look around at all the mountains of trash that is piling up everywhere in land fills and say enough is enough. I know this dont answer your question but I'm tired of looking at the what ifs and do something whether there is truth to it or not.

Answer 5

Anyone who ignores our human impact on this planet is delusional. However, delusion is very popular. The real reason the majority don't believe the facts is because Global Warming is not in any holy book.

Answer 6

The creation of unnecessary laws, rules, taxes, prohibitions, fears, paranoia, enemies, "solutions", wasted energy, government distraction, and misinformation.

Everything we don't need more of.

(Do you really think that Al Gore was the best candidate for the Nobel Peace prize? Of all the people in the world that have devoted their lives to world peace, and Al Gore was the best candidate - Why? Talk about warped priorities!)

Answer 7

Well i believe you got it right,it is a myth created to scare us,giving them grants etc.oil isnt even at its peak,Mexico and Venuezula recently found new deposits and we havent even tapped into our reserves(we only tap 15% of it),and I cant understand why we dont send nuclear waste towards the sun to burn up before impact.I mean after all isnt there deadly radiation already out in space?

Answer 8

What harm is false belief? Is it safe to consider the possibility contingent on the belief or assume that any false believe is symptomatic of mental break down or mental retardation. Correct action is immediate on facts not fiction. Suppose I forgo correct thinking and simply accept what is told to me, how to I attain independent thought to solve for problems and test for validity. Who do I better in my stupidity and who would not, who would profit and who would lose. Those near me would lose a valuable member and those to profit would profit more. Even communist Venezuela wants to increase oil prices. What better rationalization to increase prices than to hypothesize that it would reduce consumption.

Answer 9

The worst consequence would be energy independence from limited fossil fuel sources and better health... not to mention less reason for war over resources!

Answer 10

Chicken Littles for dinner, anyone?