The thought for those who believe in Global Warming, climate change, is that even if it is a fallacy of logic and science, it is still worth fighting for. I mean, I sort of understand why those crazy ass people would fight so hard for animals, because if someone touched my cat, I would kill them too (I kid, but seriously, they wouldn’t do it a second time).
The point is that, they can’t be wrong, because if they enact their policies, well nothing is going to happen that wasn’t going to happen anyway, so they win. Even if their policies aren’t enacted and disaster doesn’t happen, they’ll be able to say that it could have been worse.
The issue for me is that the New York Times article came out and had this gem in it, “…Weber told me…’More or less, people have agreed on that….’”. I was thinking, “More or less” doesn’t mean shit! I could more or less kill someone and still not kill them. I could more or less have sex with a woman with my mind. I could more or less be a fantasy hero who gets head after saving the princess.
None of which would ever happen. If only it was possible to have sex with a woman with your mind! Damn, I would have been laid so many times! That is besides the point. The point is that “More or less” is just filler to sound neutral, but still say what people think they want to hear. The statement should have been written, “Let’s start with the fact that climate change is anthropogenic, people have agreed on that.” Which is an untrue statement, because I don’t agree with it. I’m part of the lesser people the person is talking about.
The rest of the article is actually pretty insightful, unfortunately, I don’t really care about signing up and giving New York Times access to my soul. I couldn’t read the rest of the article. I think the gist of it, is that the arguments that the climate warming people are putting forth aren’t getting across on the people they are trying to persuade.
The point is, that I’ve always thought about the environment. I love the environment, yet, for some reason, because I don’t believe in some theory, I some how don’t love the environment. Shit, that really peeves me. Why don’t you plant a tree and stop worrying about my trash habits. If I want to throw out my porn magazines, as opposed to recycling them (I would make a comment, but it would be taken incorrectly), then it is my choice.
The problem, I believe is that the point of recycling is the environment and I think people are all for green, instead of the gray. People like parks, and generally beautiful places and people. It is how people get laid, if you are beautiful, then people want to sleep with you. If there is a beautiful place, then people want to sleep with the special person at that location. Okay, I pulled that out of my ass, but it makes sense. Hell, I would love to make love in the park (although, I wouldn’t be all that picky on where the act was made as long as the act was being made).
Anyway, the point of global warming is to freak people the hell out to get them into action. I think Al Gore fully believes that the Bullshit he puts out is justified by the actions millions of people are going to take because of it. If he was actually honest and shown that parts of the USA wouldn’t be flooded by 2100, then people wouldn’t give a shit. Which the study being conducted in the article shows. When you give facts, well, people could care less, because it doesn’t affect them or people around them.
However, if you are in the so called “area” that will be flooded and it is quite a large area, so most people will be, then you are going to be alarmed. The point is that the article that is referenced, does not have the oceans raising 11 feet, but only a fraction of that (predicted, so only a theory, but based on “observations”1).
The change to “climate change” instead of “global warming” is that there is also global cooling else where. The problem being and the so called deniers will say, “What global warming,” when there is a sudden cooling, is that it doesn’t disprove the “global warming” trend. If the overall trend is warming over the years, a few fluctuations towards cooling doesn’t offset the overall warming. It is just that the so called deniers like to point it out to reference the fallacy of the “global warming” argument.
The term Climate Change can include the sudden shifts towards cooling and everything else that is wrong in the Earth’s climate. I mean, the argument is beautiful in its simplicity. It allows references that people are generally idiots and won’t realized how much they are being fooled. The argument makes a great deal more sense than “Global Warming” when there is unseasonable cooling. It is genius and extremely difficult for the so called deniers to disprove.
You just have to look around at the climate and you’ll notice a shift of the climate. If you frighten enough people, then certainly people will enact whatever you want to “stop” the climate from changing. The issue is that people tend to believe they can affect the climate. The Earth is actually a lot bigger than people tend to think. In the grand scope of things, it is hard to believe that a “pollutant” that is less than 1% of the atmosphere can really cause as much change to the climate. I mean, it would have to be close to 10% to really start harming human life (although, other animal life probably be screwed royally). We wouldn’t die until it reached 20%.
I mean, most of the atmosphere is Nitrogen and Oxygen, so carbon dioxide would have to displace them and they can’t just disappear, it has to go somewhere. The graphs are deceiving, because while they might be correct, the scale of them tell a different story. If it was to scale with everything else, then the changes would appear a great deal smaller than what is actually shown. I think is is what is frustrating for me, is that those pushing the whole climate change theory are playing on the general public’s lack of knowledge or concern towards details.
You can deceive with fact, just by playing on a person’s ignorance of facts. I believe that is generally what those in the climate change crowd attempt to do. I also believe they feel it is justified, which is okay.
1 Well, the so called deniers will say that the observations are flawed, but meh, even if you take the report at its word, then there wouldn’t be as much flooding as Al Gore wishes people to believe.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Media Matters: A Watch Group For Conservatives
- Please Spay and Neuter Abusive Parents
- Net Neutrality: Are People Wrong?
- Will Democrats Save Us from Corruption?
- Social Security
Your facts are correct, but your analysis is a bit flawed.
Each component in the atmosphere (well, most of them), has a role in the existing climate structure. Ozone (remember that hole, a while back?), CO2, Oxygen and Nitrogen, all have their own roles, and their percentage in the atmosphere matches that role.
The role of CO2 is to keep the earth warm, by “stopping” the heat from escaping the earth surface. If there was no CO2 in the atmosphere, life as we know it now could not exist, as earth would be completely frozen. CO2 is about 0.038% today, much less than a percent, but this low percentage enables all life to live on this planet (you too, by the way). So, it seems that there is quite an effect to less than 1% of a gas in the atmosphere.
Ozone, for instance, is about 0.000007% (thank you, Wikipedia), but still keeps you from getting skin cancer.
Because the earth-atmosphere relationship is so complex, we cannot actually predict the results of atmosphere composition changes (chaos theory, bla bla bla), but because the percentages match the roles, it is clear that drastic percentage changes will change the existing balance.
Now, some will say, that climate changes naturally. It changes all the time, true, but not so fast. Evolution keeps up with climate changes over the natural history, but when we change it too fast (a couple of centuries is nothing in evolutionary terms), evolution can’t keep up.
So, global warming, climate change, and all of these nice terms mean one thing – Something is changing, we are causing it, and we have no clue what the results of the change will be. However, as we (and all other life forms), have adapted to the current atmospheric balance, this change will probably not be very good for us…
Of course, we can all ignore this balance shift, and maybe nothing drastic will happen for a while. But because these changes take time, when and if something does happen, it will be too late to fix it. Then we will all mutate into gray-green puddles of ooze and die horrible deaths (or just get cancer, instead).
One final comment:
The term “Global Warming” refers to an increase in the average temperature, not to everywhere warming at once. This increase has been observed, but since people are too dumb to care about averages and scientific crap like that, you have to scare them with floods.
Thanks for reading,
Ofri
I know what Global Warming means, but the fact is that it the average temperatures has only increased a tiny fraction over the past 100 years. Indeed the only way to realize this is to look at the scale of the chart in the aforementioned study sponsored by the UN. You see great big Red colors that signal danger, “Danger!” however, when you look at the scale it is only a few points difference between 2020 and 2100.
Well, actually I forgot my original point of all of this, which was that I the climate change and “global warming” people do have to put such concepts into perspective that regular people can understand.
The reason I switched to CFL for lighting, is because it saves on electricity costs and lasts practically forever (well, I hated having to buy incandescent light bulbs every 3 to 4 months and having them in stock). The problem is that when I moved and went back to my mothers where I had the lights, my mom switched it back to incandescent! WTF? I thought.
Here is what I thought: 1 CFL lasts ~3 years, which is 48-72 months. I can buy 1 CFL for around $2 USD (6 pack at Wal-Mart for $12-$14). I can buy a regular light bulb for $0.40 (2-pack is usually $0.80). A regular light bulb, lasts on average 3 months. So in three years, I would have used 16 regular light bulbs for a total of $6.40 (to $9.60). Three times the amount over the years that I spent on the CFL. This amount doesn’t include the savings on electric bill from using less power.
What my mom (probably) thought: “Oh, $0.80 vs $7.00 (2-pack CFL), I’ll go with $0.80!”
My only complaint with CFLs is that they contain Mercury, which is harmful to the environment in that it is harmful to humans and other animal / plant life.
The good news is that the emerging OLED market should bring LED lights down further or at least enable it to be more efficient. Not that OLED is going to be cheap, but the power usage will be less than that of even LED lights and if they can get the lights to last 50,000 hours.
Well then damn, that is five years, if you left it on 24/7 and 19 years, if you used it 7 hours each day. That is the initial lifetime, they should be able to extend that life to closer to 100,000 hours, which, I mean, is even more truly forever than you can get.
Plus, with that, you can expect it to run at the same brightness of a 60-watt regular light bulb at less than a watt (estimate from the 3-6 watt LED equivalent). Also,given its nature, you can expect the light to be more natural than CFLs and less of a strain on the eyes.
So I mean, the focus for me wasn’t, “I have to save the environment,” it was more, “How can I save money and do less work?” When the price for LED lights come down, must be less than $20 for a single one equivalent to 60-watt regular light bulb, I’m going to jump right on to them. You can bet I will be using OLEDs when they become cheap enough to justify the initial cost.
The problem with it all, is that scientists aren’t all in agreement, you can find them. However, I mean, people are biased. If you start saying, well, you know, “Maybe…” people tend to think you are pulling shit out of your ass and stop listening. Therefore I can kind of understand why Al Gore said it that way. It just doesn’t further his argument when other scientists come out and say that the theory isn’t all there.
Well, that is to say that while it is true that the Earth’s temperatures has increased (if you go off the current proof and statistics), it is a little premature to say that it is humans that are causing it. The problem I think, is that governments aren’t really interested in the facts, just the hype and I think that is where rational people tend to converge from the whole “Humans caused it.” Governments appears to be a little bit more concern with raping the piggy bank of the people (You hear about the governments attempting to prevent and tax cow farts?) and less concerned with the environment.
If governments were more concerned with the environment, then more trees would be planted, more land would be declared protected, more of a group political effort will be pushed towards preserving forests (or reforesting after cutting down) in governments that have no restrictions and the lumber corporations are taking until there is nothing left. Well, more so than they are doing today, I mean they have tried in the past with little success.
The bigger problem is that cap and trade and government regulation runs counter to progress and the thing called an economy. I will predict that there wouldn’t be one, if the current USA government continues its push to cap and trade carbon-dioxide.
I mean, at what point are they going to start taxing my breathing? Carbon-dioxide exists naturally and the process for regulating it also exists naturally, so, people overall aren’t going to really change their behaviour, so I guess a few hundred-million trees planted now might make a difference in 2020 and hopefully a few hundred billion will be planted by 2100. Well, you would create jobs planting trees, instead of killing jobs by restricting human behaviour.
I also have problems believing that humans can affect something so massive as the planet, by adding to something that exists naturally. The problem then becomes is that given that we are adding such and such amount and such and such is being subtracted, then at what point should we be at? The percentages aren’t changing that much and temperatures are hardly being affected by it. By current estimates, if the trend continues, whether caused by humans or not, then the Earth will be only a degree or two hotter in 2100 than what it is now.
Well, I suppose the other problem is that if cap and trade was enacted, then basically what would happen is that people would be so ticked off at the prices of everything that the next election would be a fairly landslide one for the party not in power.