"Most journalists and pundits have limited knowledge of science; as a result, they tend to pick whichever science best suits their political prejudices. Both science and journalism deserve better. Perhaps we can start by remembering that an ideological crusade can be as strong an inducement to bend the truth as the profit motive."Amen.
A Republican friend of ours up in DC called me a "dirty hippie" when I started jokingly blaming weather patterns on Al Gore ("Al Gore's f'n up the World!"). Once she realized I was teasing Al Gore, she backed off.. But the fact is, I think there is a great deal of truth to global warming, and think Al Gore is doing a bang up job bringing it to attention. He's just fun to tease. In this friends mind, I really should stand out as a "dirty hippie".. A capitalistic, government reducing, dirty hippie.
The kicker is, I'm willing to bet that this particular person comes from a liberal arts background, never has taken a science class of any substantial merit and has never looked into understanding even the basic premise of the theory of global warming.. The party line states its a farce, and a farce it will remain.
Technology has come a long, long way since Reagan ordered the solar panels off the roof. The economic argument continually holds less and less water. On the democrat side, they only promote scientific studies that back worst case scenarios. It's "politics of fear," only instead of terrorism, it's hurricanes.
What will it take to actually, seriously, look into this issue? And would either party be willing to admit that they were wrong even if we did? What would be so bad about increasing the automobile standards so that we aren't dead last in the entire world? Or maybe increasing appliance standards to energy star levels? These aren't suggestions to simply encourage a healthier environment, they're suggestions to reduce our energy use overall (and consequently dependence on oil). That fits both "sides" agendas, no?
Comments...
(Page 1)1. Here's my thing: obviously the world is getting warmer. We have temperature data that shows a warming trend to prove it. However, this concrete data only goes back 100 years or so. Anything prior to that is conjecture based on soil samples, ice in glaciers, etc. Let's assume that data is accurate. If we do, we'd see that the earth has been warming for a couple hundred years (far prior to the Industrial Revolution or Al Gore flying around on his private jet). What happened before that? Turns out there was a bit of an ice age, so of course the earth is going to warm up if it can't get much colder. What about before the ice age? It was warmer! So it seems as though the earth's temperature fluctuates, SUVs or not. How could this be since the earth isn't getting closer or further from the sun? It seems as the the sun has been getting hotter lately, so it would only make sense the the higher temperature energy put out by the sun would make it to earth and warm us up a bit.
What can we do? Well, if it's a Mother Earth natural thing, not much. But why not do as much as we can to prevent human acceleration of warming or cooling? That's fine and dandy. I say go nuts. Recycle your ass off, buy a vehicle with good gas mileage, don't stand outside with an aerosol can spraying at the sky. The problem lies in the idea of "standards." Who enforces these standards? Our own altruism? Of course not. We've got the wonderful government there to help us out with standards! Of course, good luck finding the "ensuring environmental friendliness" amendment in the Constitution. And how much is too much? When do these standards become oppressive for businesses to conduct profitable business without having to raise costs to consumers, thereby lowering buying power?
You see, the people supporting the idea of man-made global warming have formed their own religion. This religion isn't really about saving the environment. It's an anti-capitalist religion whereby the government can force those evil, greedy corporations to incur higher costs that would ideally (in the environazis' eyes) put them out of business. Also, the hysteria over man-made global warming feeds off the need for some scientists to justify their own existance. The more frightened the public and thus politicians are of this "problem," the easier it is for these scientists to get funding. If this "problem" were to go away, there would be no need to fund the scientists. Therein lies the problem, at least for those guys. It's kind of like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson -- if there's no racism, what the hell does anyone need them for?
Wow, that was longer than I intended.
10:40PM on Jan 17th 2007 by Mätt