Global Warming: A hoax or a reality?
When I gave up being an environmental/political blogger I did so to protect and preserve my own sanity and dignity. The stress of dealing with the lunatic fringe commenting on my blog posts proved to be too much for me. My alter ego arose in her full almost flaming glory.
Yes, the warrior princess within me began poking climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists with her sword. She roared with laughter when Rep. Rohrabacher intimated to a Congressional Hearing that carbon emissions could have been produced by dinosaur farts. Then I chose to drag the warrior princess out of the political arena but, now I feel her being drawn into the fray again. How about you readers ? Have you made a decision?
Conspiracy or Crock?
An overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the globe is warming – the world’s climate is changing – and that the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels is to blame. We know that the risks are incalculable and, increasingly, we understand that the solutions are affordable.
Unfortunately, a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign is poisoning the climate change debate. Using tricks and stunts that unsavory PR firms invented for the tobacco lobby, energy-industry contrarians are trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits. Source
A U.N. climate panel agreed last year that the world needs to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to stave off potentially catastrophic changes to the weather system, that will bring more storms, droughts and higher sea levels. Negotiators will also have to work out how to deal with the United States — the only rich nation not to have signed up to Kyoto — given that President George W. Bush will be leaving the White House after November’s election. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, saying the pact would hurt the economy and was unfair since it excluded big developing nations from committing to emissions cuts. The White House has since moderated its stance by saying it would accept emissions targets if all other big emitters do as well based on their individual circumstances.
Here’s a long overdue hat tip to Juan who brought some pertinent videos to my attention. Please watch at least the first one. And here’s a link for Mark who has shared his opinion on his blog.
The Question: To Act or Not to Act?
So here’s the reasoning in a nutshell.
Activists warn: Upheaval and destruction.
Skeptics warn: severe economic harm.
First off, no one’s perfect. So any choice you make brings with it a risk if your choice turns out to be a mistake. Given that understanding, which risk would you rather take:
(1) listen to the activists and take big action now, risking the possible harm to the economy that the skeptics warn us about,
(2) or listen to the skeptics and don’t take big action now, risking the possible destruction and upheaval that the activists warn us about.
The bottom line is, which is the more acceptable risk: the risk of taking action, or the risk of not taking action?
So readers which choice do you make?
The answer to your last question seems so clear, and yet obviously many people disagree. If only people could understand that acting also presents economic opportunities.
By the way, I hear you about being hesitant to blog about these kinds of topics. There is a very vocal lunatic fringe out there.
Until someone finds a way to make money off saving the planet, this destructive path we’re on isn’t going to be diverted. If anything, we’re running faster along it with each passing year.
Hi Ian,
It’s always good to hear from you. Yes that’s true. But I also feel compelled to do the best I can to cut down my own contribution to the problem so I can look the next generation in the eyes, knowing that I did the very best that I could do.
@Mark
Thanks for coming here to comment. We are in obvious agreement when it comes to choosing (1) and it astonishes me that others would waste time and energy on listening to the deniers, deluders, deceivers and dis tractors but I suppose it takes all kinds … :roll:
P.S. This blog took a terrible nose dive from 156 links to 68 because I was sick and depressed all winter and did not blog as I had done before. The page rank likewise diminished, of course and I want the blog to recover so I’ll be blogging regularly again. I now have a reciprocal links only policy. I have linked to your personal blog http://thistimethisspace.com/links/ and if you link back to this time this space then I will will not attach a “re=nofollow” to yours, ok?
There is a clear scientific consensus on climate change, except amongst scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry. This 2004 article explains the point.
The science is relatively straightforward, but the global warming story has been calculatedly manipulated by vested interests who have effectively ensured a misreporting of the status of scientific opinion within the media. This has helped to support an entirely misguided public belief that real scientists are divided on the issues. They are not.
The delusion of differing scientific opinions is peddled enthusiastically by a small number of isolated but vociferous so-called ‘researchers’, many of whom are funded by big oil. The tragic legacy of this cynical manipulation of so-called science and of public opinion began with the systematic undermining during the late 1980s and 1990s of the global negotiations leading up to Rio and Kyoto (see the dramatic account within Jeremy Leggett’s book The Carbon War.
A decade on, the present scale of deliberate misinformation (the denial industry) remains breathtaking, as explored in detail within George Monbiot’s recent book Heat):
Although increasing anthropogenic carbon emissions have a critical role in driving recent climate change, they are not the only factor, however. Specifically, it needs to be appreciated that global temperature variations reflect the superimposed effects of both anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions (increasing, and accelerating) and a lower amplitude natural cyclicity in solar insolation (currently entering a relative low).
There is a very clear and excellently framed analysis here: Climate change in the public debate. A basic appreciation of the science along these lines clearly refutes the oft-cited (but tragically inaccurate) red herring that global warming stopped in 1998.
Monbiot memorably invites anyone inclined to a sceptical view of global warming to answer the following four simple questions:
1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?
2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the average global temperature?
3. Will this influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?
4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?
Monbiot continues, “If you are able to answer ‘no’ to any one of them, you should put yourself forward for a Nobel Prize. You will have turned science on its head.”
Hi roads,
Thanks for sharing on this. I appreciate hearing from readers who can read …lol :D
On a forum in a social network I belong to we have experienced the most bizarre cases of denial and that I have ever witnessed. So your comment here is like a breath of fresh air.
Be well and happy until we meet again. :)
Trouble is the “believers” treat the issue as a religion not a science.
The quotation from Monbiot above is a classic
1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?
Yes – all O2 respiring organisms produce CO2 and vegetation uses the CO2 via photosynthesis to produce complex hydrocarbons and so we have the building blocks of the Carbon Cycle.
2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the average global temperature?
Some debate about which comes first but that aside – Water vapour is a far greater cause of warming as is methane – not from dinosaur farts but rotting vegetation and bovine farts most certainly.
3. Will this influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?
This presumes (Monbiot is certainly presumptive) that he gets the answer he wants for question 2. and as the answer is more complicated than he would like the truth is that even if it did – the effect is small compared to other greenhouse gases.
4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?
Yes – as well as methane and water vapour.
So the issue for me is not that we should not do something – it is “are the “believers” correct in their strident belief that CO2 is the sole guilty entity.
Deforestation for Palm oil production so that we can have less CO2 producing biofuel seems to me to be one of the most amazing opportunity costs that the “believers” have managed to shoot themselves in the foot with.
Thankfully people look at Al Gore with is huge carbon footprint from three mansions, private jets and 6 limos, rather sceptically when his film states that sea levels will rise 20ft and then the IPCC states sea levels could rise about 17 inches.
Personally I think that if one more failed politician (they are all failures in my book) or pop star (average 5 mansions, a Lear Jet and 12 vehicles) tells me that I have to change MY lifestyle to save the planet I am going to throw up or kick them in the groin – possibly both.