I am a fairly left-leaning sort of bloke. I approach every issue armed with logic and reason, but I do tend to still find myself slanted just a tad to the left. It could be because I am left-handed and have an affinity for it the same way my blue eyes influence my preference for things blue. I know this is an Earth-shattering revelation I have just unleashed upon my regular readers, but it is true. Do you need a few moments to digest this before I continue? Take your time. The reason I am bringing all of this up is that I am about to take a very un-lefty position on a very left-intensive issue: global warming. Just move ahead when you are ready. The words are waiting for you.
See, I do not believe global warming is man-made per say. I think we are influencing it, but not the way most environmentalists do. I find most environmentalists to be more anti-capitalists rather than Earth-savers. Their solutions always rely on someone else doing something, usually some corporation. They think their marching and donations carry their end of the deal as they buy hundreds of tiny plastic bottles of water every year and drive their SUV’s to the corner store to buy them.
Everyone seems to agree that CO2 emissions are the leading cause for global warming. Most people look to cars and industry as the leading CO2 producers, but I tend to think differently. I tend to think over six billon people exhaling creates far more than all the corporations put together. I think we are influencing global warming by our uncontrolled population growth and resource abuse. I mean these 6,000,000,000+ people need places to live, so we simply cut down the forests to make room. We forget trees breathe in CO2.
We talk about a “hole” in the Ozone layer forgetting the basic principles of physics. Ozone is a gas and gases will fill empty space. How exactly can there be a hole in a layer of gas? I am no scientist and could be 100% off base on this one so please correct me (I know you will).
Saving a species from extinction is a very noble thing to do. It makes a person feel good, but are they really helping anything? Species go extinct naturally every day. It is nature’s way of population control. Should we really be trying to save every species with an “endangered species” list? Don’t these species also exhale CO2?
There will be some extremist who stopped reading long ago and will probably post that we should just kill everything and solve the problem. That is not what I am getting at. What I am saying is that we might be saving our foot just to lose the leg. The actions we are doing to fix a problem that we know is a natural cycle could just be accelerating it.
Nature has done a great job of maintaining itself long before we were ever here and it does not need our help. If you want to do something then stop building new houses when there are empty ones, support sex education and stop demanding others do things you are not willing to do. Rats in a cage become hostile as space runs out. Why think we are any different? Notice any more wars lately?
The views expressed here are probably 100% wrong, but they are the things that pop in my head as I read about global warming issues. I posted this because I am hoping someone will be able to help if I am way off base.
5 comments:
Its all a matter of how you look at the problem.......The reality is in the length of viewpoint you take on the issue of global warming....If you take the most narrow and myopic view, yes, the average mean temp of the globe has increased since the industrial revolution....
If you expand your view the data shows the exact opposite, that the average temperatures are flucating, yet extremely stable....
Expand your view further and you see the last 10,000 years have been almost flat line compared with the weather patterns before that time, a time where there was NO HUMAN IMPACT ON WEATHER......
Most 'punidts' that decry global warming have only read politically slanted material that suits their narrow purpose of anti-growth and anti capaitalism....
And look at how silly the big 'Global Warming' pundits are.....Kennedy jr. who accepted oil from Chavez, flies in a private jets and drives in convoys of vehicles.....He also stop wind power from coming to MA...Nice going 'Global Warming warrior'
Same with Arainna Huffington, who has a 40,000 sq ft home and spends 20k on her yearly water bill.....Some advocates of cutting down on consumption....
In the words of the great philosopher Borat,.....NOT......
I think that global warming is occurring for all of the reasons you enumerated. As far as I know, this planet has never before been forced to support 6 billion people in addition to all the other plant and animal species. Without a doubt, the very act of all those creatures breathing contributes to the problem.
As you said, though, nature knows how to take care of itself and has been doing so for millenia. Earth has been through global warming before. There are extreme consequences to living things when it reaches critical mass. The entire phenomenon is so monumental, however, that I don't believe there is any feasible way of counteracting it. In other words, whatever will happen, will happen, regardless of whatever preventive measures we attempt.
We probably won't see the most extreme effects of global warming in our lifetimes, but it's almost inevitable that future generations will. We can (and should) do what we can to conserve and preserve. I'm afraid that in the end, though, nature will take the upper hand and do whatever needs to be done.
Interesting Rex. Not sure I understand most of it, but I think you are saying it is bunk science.
George Carlin once said the meaning of life is plastic so we should keep burying it.
I took several classes on the environment and global warming in particular....If one just looks at the actual history of weather patterns, we can see that the weather has been historicallly calm for the last 10,000 years...
Which just so happens to coincide with the rise of man.....
My only point is, we simply do not understand the larger ramifications of global warming or understand the response of mother nature..... and the people who qoute 'scientific reports' as absolute fact, do so at their own peril.....
Bunk Science is a good phrase to point at global worming. I posted my thoughts on James P. Hogan's Book Kicking the Sacred Cow on my blog earlier. You should read it. He spends some time on Global warming (as well as DDT, AIDS, relativity, Velikovsky, and much more).
I have nothing to do with this man; I just think it is a great book.
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