Global Warming Hysteria: Avoiding Today’s Problems for Pie in the Sky

I cannot express my disappointment in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in sufficiently strong terms.  I voted for him despite knowing he was not my cup of tea in some areas because I believed he would get tough on California’s potentially terminal budget problems. Now, it is years later, the state is actively dying of budgetary cancer, and he still won’t perform necessary surgery.

But he will float through clouds of green.  Even though we are carrying the burden of 1/2 trillion in bond debt, even though we are already 21 billion in the red this year only months after the state supposedly closed a $40 billion deficit—much of which was put off through budget gimmicks—he wants the state to plan for the global warming meltdown, that is a phantom fear, and even if it isn’t, is decades away!  From the story:

California has set an ambitious agenda to combat climate change, but on Wednesday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the state needs to prepare for the worst if human action cannot stop global warming and the rise of sea levels. In an announcement on San Francisco’s Treasure Island, Schwarzenegger said he is creating a panel of 23 California leaders to recommend specific actions to prevent the destruction of infrastructure and deal with a depleted snowpack, the spread of disease, intense wildfires and other calamities that would result within the century from climate change.

“I normally never make a Plan B because then you start concentrating on that and not really on Plan A,” Schwarzenegger said. “But ... I think we have a responsibility to have a Plan B in case we can’t stop the global warming. Treasure Island, where three years ago the governor signed the state’s aggressive greenhouse gas reduction law, is among many locations in the state projected to be underwater from the sea level rising within a century.

TI is a man made island, built on fill that sits very low in the water.  It is sinking a bit, but not due to global warming.

We are not only going to plan, but we are going plan based on the most hysterical assumptions:

The creation of the panel is a top recommendation of the so-called California Climate Adaptation Strategy report released Wednesday. The report anticipates that average temperatures will rise by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 and 9 degrees by 2100. Also, sea level is anticipated to rise by as much as 18 inches by 2050 and more than 4 1/2 feet by 2100.

That’s way higher than even the alarmist IPCC “consensus” that sees between 18 inches and two feet in the next century! Hey, since we’re playing “pick a number,” and clearly want to act on panic, let’s do it right and project a sea rise of 1o feet.

Alas, this isn’t benign fantasizing.

In addition, the report finds that the state also should anticipate a greater number of “extreme events,” such as heat waves, wildfires, droughts and floods. To deal with that, the report recommends that hazards from climate change be included in environmental reviews for new development and state emergency planning. It also suggests the state should create a more systematic approach to decide how to pay for prevention efforts and to decide what parts of the state are most at risk.

Translation, we will kill job growth by stifling development even though we are in a depression in this state with more 12%+ unemployment.

Stoking global warming hysteria was a splendid way to avoid being in bad odor with the Hollywood Poobas and Silicon Valley Establishment that he so loves to please.  But that doesn’t cut it in a state literally sinking beneath the waves—and not those caused by global warming but profligate spending.  Good grief.