Article 29
Knowledge Versus Governmental and Industrial Belief-Only Response To Global Warming.
Following application of my definitive knowledge/belief differentiation to global warming since the last Ice Age (Article 28), I now apply it to governmental and industrial responses to the more recently alleged anthropogenic warming to show that global warming by our fossil fuel combustion is merely a belief; that this belief and other hypotheses (beliefs) as to the cause of the effect which is global warming ought to be investigated by cause/effect science rather than asserted as belief; that this now ubiquitous belief and all other governmental and associated belief-only policies require my definitive reality-validation of cause and effect if they are ever to be shown to need knowledge-only alternatives; and that it is now necessary to explain the means by which belief-only pressure groups have converted not only belief/counter-belief governments to a specific belief in anthropogenic global warming, but have also persuaded industrial scientific/technical (knowledge-based) companies to respond to this belief as though it were knowledge.
During my longstanding involvement with the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of United Nations’ International Maritime Organisation (IMO), first as a UK delegate and subsequently as an accredited independent-observer, I was able to observe the attitudes of 192 national delegations, the oil and chemical industry representatives, their respective ship owners, and accredited environmental pressure groups, and to note that the beliefs of the environmentalists were taken as read; that their re-enunciation by the attending representatives was unnecessary; that the industrial representatives spoke mainly to request delay in the implementation of ever-increasing levels of regulation; that the nation state representatives spoke only to support new regulations and/or increasing levels of existing regulation, and to suggest the means by which they were to be achieved. When I asked a soon-to-retire oil company representative why none of the industry representatives ever offered a knowledge-based objection to further regulation, he replied that none of them were there to object; that they were there only to report back to HQ on what IMO would next require the industry to do; and that all they were actively required to do, was to request sufficient time to achieve compliance.
Thus, I was left to conclude that ship owners did not see objecting to be in their best interests; that they were content to comply; that they could pass all additional costs to the cargo owners who could not find any cheaper transporters, all of them being subject to the same regulations; and that member states and the environmentalists could claim credit for acting to protect the marine environment whether or not such protection was actually known to be necessary, and whether or not the new or increased levels of regulation were actually known to achieve what was only believed to be necessary. However, these conclusions led me further to conclude that compliance with new regulations almost always required the ship-owner to install new and additional equipment designed and manufactured for compliance with these ever-developing regulations; that the additional costs to ship-owners would also be passed to the cargo owner by all compliant ship-owners; and that nothing would for the regulation of global warming.
Again, these consequent conclusions led me further to conclude that costs arising from all innovations intended to protect the environment whether they achieve their belief-only objectives or not are ultimately passed to the consumer; and that this transfer of costs is ubiquitous whether it arises from changes of regulation in marine, land or air transportation; that when it arises from belief-only environmentalism it is pointless and futile; and that costs would more usefully be incurred and passed on to consumers in the correction of knowledge-only problems by knowledge-only solutions. If we now examine environmentalism’s belief-only concern to replace fossil fuel combustion with alternative energy sources for activities at sea, on land or in the air, we may conclude that whatever costs fall to the ultimate consumer will be of no concern to environmental activists; that so long as these costs remain acceptable to consumers who believe them acceptable in the good cause of preventing belief-only global warming and/or reduction in belief-only marine pollution, industrialists and their investors will turn a profit; but that were consumers to begin to hear that such investments and the resulting costs to themselves were doing next to nothing to restrain continuing rise in global temperature for example, consumers would refuse to absorb the costs falling to them and investments would not return profits.
Indeed, were reality itself to show that anthropogenic global warming is mere belief, the pleasure of owning an electric car at twice the price of the hydrocarbon alternative would soon vanish; that public pleasure in the current myriad of available options for consumer goods such tooth-paste for example, might vanish at the same time with considerable readjustment of global economies; and that all in all, it would be more cost-effective to rely on knowledge rather than on belief. 5/11/20.