Even if global warming is hoax perpetrated by power-hungry scientists, we will benefit from changing our energy-intensive ways.
Despite the strong consensus within the scientific community that global warming constitutes a serious threat to the human race and that human activity is contributing to the warming trend, there are some people who continue to insist that there is nothing to be concerned about and no reason to alter our behavior. An angry tone seems to be common when these doubters and deniers discuss global warming.…
Article comments
26 - Baritone
Clav,
It does distress me that people are investing in endeavors which promulgate and support war and mass murder. But that's just me.
You fail to consider that while we may well be in a warming cycle owing to larger influences, that we may also be exacerbating the adverse effects it is having on our climate via the pollution of our air, water and ground. Isn't it also possible that the climatologists and scientists in related disciplines involved in this research are aware of said cycle, but still see the deleterious effects man is causing over and above the natural events? There is no naivete' to it.
B-tone
27 - Jordan Richardson
This whole thing about "human involvement" seems about the dumbest part of this discussion. Is there "something to lose" in taking care of the environment and being more prudent on earth issues? Is there "something to lose" by not providing a better planet for future generations?
The idea of whether or not "we" caused it seems akin to standing around outside of a burning building, watching it burn down, and arguing about who caused the damn fire. It's ridiculous. The evidence regarding climate change is there, it exists. This discussion of an apparent mythology is absolutely ridiculous and, from an outsider's perspective, seems to demonstrate, yet again, the ultimate in American arrogance. The rest of the world is ahead of the curve on this issue, yet us in North America (Canada is now included in this, thank you Stephen Harper) are dragging our feet along with China.
The fact of the matter is that there is a scientific consensus about global warming. It is occurring. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which in 2005 the White House called "the gold standard of objective scientific assessment," issued a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science saying "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions." Anyone can cite fringe studies taken by special interest groups, but I'd rather trust those with nothing to hide and no interests to protect. What "special interests" are there to appeal to, other than the law of nature, in terms of the U.S. Academy? It's not a "political" issue at all, it's only been made into one by idiotic special interest groups with shortsighted philosophies and cash-first ideologies. It's disgusting to watch from the outside. I can't imagine how heartbreaking it must be to experience from within.
The only debate in the scientific community, the reputable scientific community, is about how much and how fast warming will continue as a result of heat-trapping emissions.
People citing these fringe studies need to investigate those studies more to discover the special interests behind them.
The day I trust Bjorn Lomborg, of which there are pages and pages and pages of refutes to his "facts" online is the day I roll over and give up all reason. Lomborg's books have been refuted by just about every reputable scientist within earshot, so I'd be careful citing that one.
Peter Huber is arguing his points with HEAVY political interest, dismantling global warming into the idiotic "us vs. them" debate. His book, Hard Green, (which I've sadly read) is a snotty and idiotic manifesto that argues AGAINST environmental conservatism of almost every kind. Huber says that all environmentalism has "damaged" the human race and believes all modern science to be fraudulent. Yeah, there's a trustworthy voice.
Hollander's book argues that poverty is the REAL environmental crisis because of the huge heaps of garbage left in shanty towns and their escaping pollution. Those damn poor people polluting the earth with their refuse! His book has been openly refuted by most major objective scientific bodies that had the patience to put up with his shoddy research.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery's book has, again, been openly refuted by most major scientific bodies. There are countless refutes online that actually use FACTS as opposed to their bland hypothesis. Their idea that "global warming is unstoppable" isn't supported by any concrete evidence. The idea that global warming occurs naturally every 1500 years is halted easily by the fact that humans haven't burned fossil fuels every 1500 years. Duh.
Wilfred Beckerman is an economist, first and foremost. His book, A Poverty of Reason (which I've also read), looks at everything (and I mean everything) within the global warming discussion from an ECONOMIC perspective. Yeah, real objective.
Clavos, no offense my friend, but I think you need some new books on your bookshelf. Your reading material does prove illuminating as to how you have this point of view that you have, but it surely isn't even-handed or unbiased.
This idea of "fear mongering" is idiotic too, but it's no surprise that it comes from the "Everything's Fine" crowd of right-wingers. The notion that there is even a "raging debate" about global warming is alarming to most people, as the rest of us would rather change our lifestyles to a minimal degree and start helping to put out the fire.
28 - Clavos
"Clavos, no offense my friend"
None taken, Jordan.
You are as entitled to believe what you want to believe as I am.
29 - Cannonshop
zingzing- the LA basin was called the valley of the smokes long before European colonization. It's a BASIN-the type of terrain that is PRONE to hold smog.
Did anyone look at the numbers in terms of CO and CO2 put out just in the Pinatoubo eruption? St. Helens?
Pinatoubo put out more CO2 than the entire industrial age prior-including the age of coal-burning and the unregulated output of the Soviet Union. (the guys who turned Lake Baikal into a near-lifeless body of water.)
This doesn't even touch ongoing geophysical activity worldwide that doesn't normally make headlines.
It's rather interesting that in CE 1000 Greenland was good wheat country, and Scotland was growing the wine-grapes common to Southern France today-and nobody was burning industrial quantities of fossil fuel at the time.
None of this means that it isn't a good idea to get off the fossil-fuel habit. Oil is how groups like Al-Quaeda are financed, it is subsidizing a paranoid neo-stalinist in Venezuela,and it has a finite supply that once gone, takes a few thousand millenia to replenish. None of these, nor the carbon output, is going to be impacted by "Carbon Trading" band-aids, instead, it will simply transfer wealth from developed, regulated states to states that are unregulated dictatorships, the largest of which is a one-party state that has neither environmental controls, nor civil rights protections.
But that's an aside to the main issue, which basically breaks down into a faith-based doctrine of human significance over forces humans don't fully understand. i.e. Anthropogenic Global Warming is based more on faith and arrogance than on hard science. It bears more than a little similarity to the thinking in the 12th century that attributed the Plague to "Sinful Behaviour", and it is most often grounded in the same kind of puritanical thought that claims that if everyone stops committing a particular sin, the world will be a better place, so why not use whatever excuse you need to make them stop?
30 - zingzing
cannonshop: "the LA basin was called the valley of the smokes long before European colonization. It's a BASIN-the type of terrain that is PRONE to hold smog."
so where is the smog coming from, if not LA?
31 - JustOneMan
Hate to piss on the global warming morons in here -- but truth and facts win over consensus...
From Tech Daily...
Over the past year, evidence for a cooling planet has exploded.
China has its coldest winter in 100 years.
Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history.
North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began.
Record levels of Antarctic sea ice,
record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously
Gee...dont let the truth get in the way of praying to Al Gwhore fat lard ass...
JOM "Global Warming - Fairy Tale for Morons"
32 - Cannonshop
Certainly, Zing-zing, it's coming from LA. The thing you're basically ignoring, is that it was coming from the pre-Los-angeles inhabitants TOO. LA had smog when the only fuel in use was wood, and it retained smog long before anyone even knew what internal combustion WAS. (or, for that matter, steam engines). It's a really shitty place to build a city if you care the least bit about air-quality, and LA would have smog if you ripped every gas, diesel, or coal-fired engine out of the area.
after all, it had smog when the population density was down around five to ten every square mile, rather than the hundereds to thousands per square mile today.
33 - Jordan Richardson
JOM, you do realize that global warming produces more extreme weather patterns, not simply an overall warmer planet, right?
34 - Cannonshop
Um, JustOneMan:
Name calling is what the other side does. It undermines your argument.
That said, several backers of Anthropogenic Global Warming have already prepared their counter-argument, the pseudoscience underlying the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" comes to immediate mind- that is, "Global Warming" sparking a "Global Cooling" trend of (AH-gAIN) catastrophic proportions.
35 - Dr Dreadful
Cannonshop, clearly you're not very familiar with JOM's work, or you'd know that your advice is going to go right over his head.
As for yourself, no-one seriously promotes The Day After Tomorrow as an accurate depiction of the results of global warming. Of course it's pseudoscience - it's a Hollywood movie. Strawmen don't help your argument.
36 - Cannonshop
I was actually referring to the portion of the hypothesis that states that as the climate/temperature rise, the weather becomes more extreme. I used the wrong example of how this is popularized.
37 - Jordan Richardson
How is that hypothesis in the realm of "pseudo-science?"
38 - zingzing
cannonshop: "Certainly, Zing-zing, it's coming from LA. The thing you're basically ignoring, is that it was coming from the pre-Los-angeles inhabitants TOO."
true. i had a clue that the landscape had some role in LA's smog issues, but i had no clue it played such a large part. or that wood fires could create smog such a huge area... i'm still a little doubtful on that one, but whatever, that's not the point.
the point was that dave nalle claimed that LA's smog comes from OTHER COUNTRIES. which is nonsense. so i asked where LA's smog was coming from, if not LA.
i'm glad to hear that it is coming from LA, because that was some ming-boggling bullshit. my mind does not appreciate bogglement.
so, dave... where is the smog over LA coming from, if not from LA?
oh, and i love jom's "first snowfall in baghdad in ALL OF RECORDED HISTORY" silliness. yeah, it's rare to see snowfall in baghdad. but snow has fallen in baghdad before, and during recorded history.
weather's a funny thing. minnesota's winter has been colder than the last few years, to be sure, but it is still a fairly warm winter for them. here in new york, we've had about half as much snow as usual, and no snow has really lasted more than a couple of days. so while wisconsin has a terrible winter, we have a pretty mild one (with several days of near-springlike temperatures). my mother says it's been cold and blustery and snowy in north carolina, which isn't that rare, but it is rare for her to comment on it.
but cold days here and warm days there is not what we need to be worried about, now is it?
39 - Dave Nalle
so los angeles smog comes from... where? "other countries?" like where? i suppose mexico... but i've never heard of any such thing. reference, please.
Actually, not just from Mexico, but even from clouds drifting from Asia. LA may get as much as half its pollutoon this way and here in Texas we get huge amounts from agricultural burning in Mexico. Here's an article on the subject from USA Today.
dave, you seem to have two version of facts. your version and the version that doesn't fit in with your vision of your version of the facts. you ignore the latter.
Facts are facts. The only area of disagreement is in what those facts mean.
as for your "big cities have remarkably clean air" shit, go to china. go to new york. the air is not clean, it's filthy. and don't quote "hurricane experts," as they are obviously all fools.
I was mainly talking about the US and other modern nations. You may not be old enough to remember what pollution was like in the 70s. By comparison we have amazingly clean urban air today. And it's actually been getting better for a century or so. In the 19th century London had clouds of sulphur dioxide which floated around the streets near the river and killed people.
Dave
40 - zingzing
dave--china's pretty modern. that may just be the issue. and while there aren't sulphur clouds floating around in our streets, we burn different things these days... there are people, a friend of mine included, who have fairly weak respiratory systems or allergies and have trouble breathing in our bigger cities. of course, given that, why would he choose to live here, you might ask...
i still don't buy that you can blame 50% (!) of LA's pollution problems on asia and mexico. sounds like passing the buck to me. i'm sure the u.s. passes just as much of its pollution around the world as the rest of the world passes around. and its the u.s. that fights to keep standards of emissions lax throughout the world, so who do we have to blame?
41 - Dave Nalle
Because of LA's unique geographical position in a basin - like Mexico City - it's a gathering point for any pollution that happens to drift by and once the pollution gets there it doesn't move out until there's a major shift in the weather, which doesn't happen much in LA.
The US may pass its pollution to other parts of the world - I'd guess northern Europe - but our pollution is so incredibly low relative to land area compared to most other countries that I doubt it has much impact.
As for China, they are burning coal in huge amounts in the dirtiest possible unregulated ways. Their output of particularly nasty stuff like SO2 and carbon particulates is huge compared to any western nation including the US.
Dave
42 - Dr Dreadful
In the 19th century London had clouds of sulphur dioxide which floated around the streets near the river and killed people.
Try the 1950s. The smog was sometimes so toxic and full of nasty crap that it was actually green - hence the term 'pea-souper'.
It took an Act of Parliament mandating the use of smokeless fuels and the relocation of power stations out of the city for things to improve.
Unfortunately, the smog is now making a comeback, due to the ever-increasing volumes of traffic in the city - which, yes, does sit in a basin, albeit a shallow one.
43 - zingzing
i was in china last year, and was very entertained by the fact that you can look directly into the sun.
also, it seems that most adults cough almost uncontrollably. of course, they smoke like rock stars over there as well. i was smoking a good 30 a day over there, and when i got into social situations (social graces demand that every male offer a cigarette to every other male every time they smoke at banquet meals--WHEN I WAS DINING WITH THE COMMUNIST PARTY, BITCHES--), i'm sure i had up to 50 at least one or two days. even the girlfriend, who doesn't usually smoke, was buying cartons. lung-buttering stuff right there.
but i digress--i'm not going to say that the u.s. is responsible for china's nasty habits, but we certainly are happy to profit from their cheap energy and labor standards. we may pay lip-service to joining world efforts to reduce emissions, but our economic models keep us from fulling embracing those ideas. let those other countries wallow in pollution, as long as we can profit. the chinese economic boom is hurtling towards certain doom, that's for sure.
44 - JustOneMan
"global warming produces more extreme weather patterns".....oh how could I be so wrong...the warmer the earth gets the colder the weather...oh now its so clear...
JOM "Global Warming= Religion for Atheists"
45 - Dr Dreadful
JOM, it's easy to be wrong - for you. Just start typing. Or open your mouth.
46 - Baritone
There are some people commenting here, well, one at least, who are (is) mind numbingly dumb. I'm not naming any names, though. If the shoe fits...
B-tone
47 - Dave Nalle
Unfortunately, the smog is now making a comeback, due to the ever-increasing volumes of traffic in the city - which, yes, does sit in a basin, albeit a shallow one.
When I was last in London everyone was talking about large portions of downtown basically being closed off from private vehicles. Did nothing come of that?
As for China, it was announced today that it just passed the US as the number-one producer of CO2. Of course, if you break down CO2 output relative to GDP (a rough indicator of how polluting their industries are), they've been number one in pollution for years.
Dave
48 - Dr Dreadful
When I was last in London everyone was talking about large portions of downtown basically being closed off from private vehicles. Did nothing come of that?
You're thinking of the congestion charge which was introduced by London mayor Ken Livingstone in 2003. Unless you're a resident, you have to pay £8 to drive your car into the city centre. The scheme has its critics but seems to work quite well as far as it goes. There are still blackspots: when I was there in December it was still far quicker to walk down Oxford Street rather than take a bus.
The major snag - I've noticed - is that the people who can afford to live in the congestion charge zone are the folks who tend to own gas guzzlers like SUVs and... well, you've lived there: I'll leave it to you to imagine how ridiculous a Hummer looks trying to knuckle through the narrow streets of the West End.
49 - Duscany
If engineers could create cars which emitted pure oxygen Los Angeles would still be smoggy (or at least hazy). The reason is that temperature inversions make Los Angeles naturally hazy whether there are cars or not. That's why the Indians here called it "valley of a thousand smokes."
50 - STM
Dave's right, much of LA's pollution problem is the result of its location ... in a coastal basin.
It's virtually identical to Sydney in that way, even down to mean summer and winter temperatures - and temperature inversion, where you see that pall of brown smog just hanging over the city on cool, clear, days, is not pleasant. Photchemical smog in these two cities, and also in others on the coast like Vancouver and New York, is a major problem.
Sydney has one slight advantage: more weather change than LA in summer, with cool southerlies often blowing in for an hour in the evening and dispersing the smog. It still doesn't get off scot-free, however, and I've seen the brown pall hanging over the Sydney basin against a bright blue sky in winter just as you would see in LA.
Although greater Sydney is a very big urban area geographically and suffers also from being part of a very long urban coastal strip, it is not the size of the greater LA area, at least in population terms, and so the problem for LA is really the sheer volume of pollutants in concert with its location ... and it's worth remembering that the Southern California coastal strip from about Santa Barbara down to San Diego is now also just one long urban sprawl.
The last time I was there, I developed a persistent, hacking cough after about three days as my throat reacted to the particles in the air, and I was staying on the coast so you'd imagine that places like the San Fernando Valley would get it even worse.
This vanished after a couple of days as the body got used to it. I have also had the exact same thing in Sydney, although more intermittently and I'm assured that intermittently doesn't - or didn't - apply in LA.
It's for health reasons that we should be cutting pollution of this type as much as anything else, as kids in places like these are particularly at risk with conditions like asthma.
I'm not sure climate change is the only factor here.
51 - Dave Nalle
Dead on with that last comment, Stan. It's the health issues that matter most of all with virtually all forms of pollution. I'd put national security issues in second place. Saving the world by redistributing wealth to the third world is somewhere WAY down the line.
Dave
52 - Dave Nalle
I'll leave it to you to imagine how ridiculous a Hummer looks trying to knuckle through the narrow streets of the West End.
London's not so bad - plus when I lived there I didn't have a car most of the time. I had a hell of a time driving my little Austin down the streets of Norwich (where I spent some time doing dissertation research) without hitting parked cars and oncoming traffic.
Dave
53 - Maurice
I am wasting my time responding to this post.
The government makes more money on gas sales than the gas companies. The federal tax on gas is 18.4 cents. The gas companies have a very slim profit margin and make 7 to 14 cents per gallon. We need to investigate the obsene profits the US government makes from the sale of gasoline.
The church of Global Warming (GW) divorced itself of science when it continued to preach even when its early fervent precepts were shown to be false. As an engineer I am truly annoyed by claims such as the great CFC hoax that required us (U.S.) to change our behavior based on theories that are so far out they make the spagetti monster seem reasonable.
54 - Dr Dreadful
London's not so bad - plus when I lived there I didn't have a car most of the time. I had a hell of a time driving my little Austin down the streets of Norwich (where I spent some time doing dissertation research) without hitting parked cars and oncoming traffic.
There's a reason why Europeans tend to drive smaller cars...
I've read that residents of the congestion zone bitch about the charge even though they don't have to pay it. Their logic on this escapes me - as does the logic of actually running a car when you live in the middle of a city with perfectly fine public transport which will get you pretty much anywhere far quicker than you could drive.
For most journeys, there's no practical reason to drive in any major city that has a decent, comprehensive public transit system (London, Paris, New York, San Francisco etc)*. If you need a car to go on trips or do the grocery shopping, fine (and in San Fran you can even rent them by the hour to do just that).
But commuting by car in such places? Pointless.
* Los Angeles doesn't count. It's not really a city anyway, but a conglomeration of about 45 towns that have merged together into a massive urban sprawl. There are even scheduled airline services between some of the LA suburbs.
55 - alessandro
#53 - Bingo.
You win the prize.
Cui bono?
56 - STIGO
london is poo, along with most of europe, nice, but governemnts in europe are all fucked
57 - Maurice
Winston,
you seem very earnest and sincere. What do you think about PETA's letter to Al Gore?
I am all for taking good care of Mother Earth. Using science and practices that make sense. I agree with your title but not some of your assumtions; like your very first sentence (consensus!?!?!).
As has been pointed out there are geographical considerations also. Here in Idaho we can drive for 300 or 400 miles and not see a soul. We don't have the smog problems of L.A. or New York. We do have huge beef and pig ranches.
Appropriate solutions based on science should be the mandate for all concerned.
58 - Winston Apple
Maurice,
Obviously you, Dave, and any number of other people who have commented on my post, realize that I am concerned about global warming and feel we should be doing everything we can to limit activities that MAY be contributing to the problem. I emphasize the word “may” because I will readily admit that I am not a scientist and I am in no way equipped to know whether human activity is contributing to global warming.
It was never my intention to try to convince anyone to change their position. I think that several of the comments to my post make it clear that there are people on both sides of the issue who are better informed, and better misinformed, than me on this issue. I won’t even claim to know which side is which.
I think the tone of the comments to my post supports my contention that discussions of this issue tend to get heated. My intention was to convince people to stop getting so upset - to agree to disagree about the issue itself - while agreeing that “we should err on the side of caution,” particularly since we will benefit in other ways from doing the things we can do to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
The few comments that do address my main point seem get lost in the heated exchange. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by that. Although I am relatively new to blog sites, it seems the angry posts draw the most discussion.
At the risk of adding even more fuel to the fire, I will respond to your inquiry about my thoughts regarding PETA’s letter to Al Gore. I am a vegetarian. I hope Al Gore stops eating meat. It would be good for his health and good for the environment.
For what it’s worth, I think everyone should give up meat, but I don’t ever try to convince anyone of that. I am not an evangelical vegetarian. Despite the efforts of PETA and other vegetarians who do engage in missionary work, you needn’t be too concerned about Idaho’s beef and pig ranches. The vast majority of Americans will give up meat when it is pried from their cold, dead hands, along with their guns and their car keys.
And hey if this global warming thing turns out to be as bad as some scientists predict, you’ll be able to broil your meat by just leaving it out in the sun for awhile. (I’m going for the Triple Crown here - earnest, sincere, and a sense of humor.)
Winston Apple
59 - Dave Nalle
My intention was to convince people to stop getting so upset - to agree to disagree about the issue itself - while agreeing that "we should err on the side of caution," particularly since we will benefit in other ways from doing the things we can do to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Nothing upsets people as much as hypocrisy, and that's what dominates the GW debate. People claiming to be scientists holding irrational beliefs on a basis of pure faith and then trying to suppress any scientific inquiry into the subject like a sort of Spanish Inquisition - that kind of behavior is upsetting and it should be.
Dave
60 - Clavos
Maurice,
You asked Winston, not me, but I'm nothing if not opinionated, so here's my tuppence worth about PETA's letter to Al Gore:
It says nothing. It alludes to a report by the UN (Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues And Options) which reportedly found that raising livestock for meat is harmful to the environment, but doesn't explain why (though presumably, the report does), and asks Gore on that basis to add eliminating meat from our diets to his list of priorities to save the environment, without giving him any specifics.
The letter is to some degree, hypocritical because PETA's main raison d'etre is to stop what they perceive is cruelty to animals, and only incidentally the "saving" of the environment; yet they're trying to enlist Gore to their cause by pushing his button.
61 - Deano
Don't forget the converse Dave - coins have two sides...
62 - Clavos
Maurice,
You asked Winston, not me, but I'm nothing if not opinionated, so here's my tuppence worth about PETA's letter to Al Gore:
It says nothing. It alludes to a report by the UN (Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues And Options) which reportedly found that raising livestock for meat is harmful to the environment, but doesn't explain why (though presumably, the report does), and asks Gore on that basis to add eliminating meat from our diets to his list of priorities to save the environment, without giving him any specifics.
The letter is to some degree, hypocritical because PETA's main raison d'etre is to stop what they perceive is cruelty to animals, and only incidentally the "saving" of the environment; yet they're trying to enlist Gore to their cause by pushing his button.
63 - Esperansoel
Come promesso la prof ssa Faliva ha messo a disposizione i materiali visionati in aula.
Li troverete nella sezione materiali del Master.
Fatemi sapere se avete bisogno di ulteriori approfondimenti.
http://cersin.zip.io
64 - Maurice
Winston - your reply makes sense and I look forward to future posts.
Clavos - thanks for your 2 2 tuppence. As I understand it the main complaint was methane.
65 - Clavos
"As I understand it the main complaint was methane."
Ah yes, the old cow farts threat...
[guffaws]
66 - Winston Apple
I stated in my last comment (#58) that “I am not an evangelical vegetarian.” At the risk of sacrificing my "non-evangelical" status, I would like to pass along the thought that came to me when I read Clavos last comment (#65) mentioning “the old cow farts threat.”
Considering our treatment of cattle - growing them primarily as a food source - it would be a cosmic joke worthy of Kurt Vonnegut if the human race were to be done in by cow farts.
- Winston Apple
67 - Dr Dreadful
It would indeed, Winston.
But not quite as elegant, I feel, as Douglas Adams, who in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy envisaged a race of beings who decided to get rid of a whole useless third of their population - the ones that did fundamentally artificial and superfluous jobs like advertising executives, documentary film producers and telephone sanitizers. But they were humane, so they told this third that their planet was doomed by some impending cosmic disaster and packed them off in a massive spaceship.
The ship eventually crash-landed on prehistoric Earth - where the survivors founded the human race - while the remaining two-thirds stayed behind on their home planet and lived happy, trouble-free lives until they were all wiped out by a virus contracted from a dirty telephone.
68 - Baronius
Winston, there's a lot of merit to the point you're making. The problem is that those first two paragraphs of your article are maddeningly condescending. You say, in essence, that you don't understand why someone would disagree with you. Maybe they're greedy, or religious nuts, or they like to drive their cars fast.
That's your launching point for bringing everyone together in a calmer environment?!
Look, I'm a pro-lifer, and I refer to people who disagree with me as "pro-choice". That's not a big concession. That's the term they prefer, and there's no need to be a jerk about it. But you refer to people who disagree with you as "doubters and deniers". How about "skeptics"? That term doesn't conjure up any images of neo-Nazis claiming that the Holocaust didn't happen.
I also note that a lot of commenters have disagreed with you on global warming, but not one of them has said "me like to drive fast and kill tree". You should look at some of the reasoning that your opponents really use, rather than create belittling hypotheses. I think that most GW skeptics (a) distrust the track record of environmental science, and (b) distrust the motivation of those who politicize it. (A few of us delight in pollution and global death, but less of us than you apparently think!) Understanding that would be the first step toward bridging the divide.
69 - Maurice
Damn, Baronius! You talk good!
70 - Winston Apple
Baronius (#68),
Your points are well taken. Although it was not my intention to be "maddeningly condescending," several comments starting with Dave's (#1) seemed to feel that I was. Consequently, before I posted this piece on my own blog, I did a fairly substantial rewrite.
Hopefully, by eliminating phrases that inadvertently turned up the heat on the discussion, my main point will be clearer - that we will benefit from reducing energy consumption even if the threat of global warming is a false alarm.
- Winston Apple