Is It Ok To Not Believe In Global Warming?
I feel like such a crackpot having doubts about global warming, but I do.
(from http:timwheatley.wordpress.com )
I recently noticed that NASA corrected a Y2K bug, making 1998 no longer the warmest year in history. The warmest year on record is now 1934, 1998 is second and 1921 is third.
To me global warming just seems like another hippie “the sky is falling, (and only we can help you understand why and stop it)” type of thing. Hippies and liberals do think of the environment as their domain, while most of them don’t actually get out in nature much, they sure think they know a lot about it. I guess a subscription to the LL Bean catalogue will do that to you.
Quickly, the main point is that you can look at any change and attribute it to anything. It’s funny when it comes to the earth, people think they are just so important that people must be causing it. While that POV is rather misanthropic, I can’t really get behind it. The idea that humans can destroy the earth is presumptuous and paternalistic. The earth will be here long after we’re gone and shows us daily that it has no qualms about chewing us up and spitting us out whenever it fucking feels like it.
Tim Wheatley mentions the ice age, and if that was due to too many neanderthal campfires, which is pretty funny.
Another thing is that it’s in the best interests of some to believe in global warming, like environmental scientists and hybrid car makers and anyone else who sells things that are supposed to be good for the environment. Look at those smug Prius owners and how they swear they are single-handedly saving the environment by driving around those ridiculous looking cars. I bet the earth laughs at those people the same way it laughed at Arabs in the early 1900’s who would cover the crude oil percolating out of the ground with sand, thinking it was of the devil.
I’m sure i’ll get a lot of responses that say “hey, but Al Gore, and Earth In The Balance and A Inconvenient Truth and you’re a neocon”.
The problem with science is not really what it can explain, but rather what it can’t explain. It starts from a faulty premise which is, all things are how they should be now. Look at sand on the beach for example, which we think is really fun to run around on naked. A million years ago, people were probably really pissed off that all of those rocks were being smashed to bits and turning into rock dust. Now, we think it’s a great place to have sex with a stranger.
It’s like, scientists aren’t even really sure what causes hurricanes, yet they can say “Well, hurricane Katrina is probably because of global warming”.
Sort of an aside:
Did anyone see that crapcan movie called “The Day After Tommorow” ? My favorite part is when they have to run into the library because that arctic front is coming— at about 3MPH. Haha. The freezy air is gonna catch you! Get in this old poorly insulated building fast you fuckface!
Then at the end we get lectured by pretty boy Jake Gyllenhaal who is like 100% serious about global warming after just showing us the most ridiculous movie ever made.
It’s the equivalent of me showing you the movie Ghostbusters and then having a serious lecture on the importance of leaving earth with a contented soul.
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maureenoz
I think we all have little niggling doubts but to be honest.. isn’t it time we all took better care of our planet? If global warming fear is the catalyst for change, I’m all for it. Let’s stop needing 3 cars per family, running the lights all night, letting taps drip, burning native forests, living in houses 5 times the size we really need —and on and on.
August 19th, 2007 at 5:30 pmkenzrw
I agree about not leaving lights on all night. All through the U.S., even in the rural areas, small towns are lit up at 3 in the morning with STREETLIGHTS. Why? If you’re in a business that’s open all nigh, fine. But why not turn off most streetlights in the U.S. after midnight, especially in small towns and farms, etc. Think of all the emissions and electricity that could be saved and nobody would know the difference.
August 19th, 2007 at 7:19 pmskeezy
“It’s the equivalent of me showing you the movie Ghostbusters and then having a serious lecture on the importance of leaving earth with a contented soul.”
Brilliant.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:59 pmandyfox1979
@maureen and ken,
I agree wasting energy is stupid, but for moment imagine how much human energy is being wasted on global warming, which is at best a theory.
I love how libs say they hate the governments “Scare tactics” when its something tangible like terrorism, but they are ok when it comes to warm globes
August 19th, 2007 at 10:26 pmMark Chu Cheong
Did somebody say “niggling”?
August 19th, 2007 at 10:29 pmChas
I love how you start off all “global warming isn’t real and NASA data backs me up” and then veer off to “maybe there is a change but it takes an egocentric liberal to think it’s caused by humans” and then you close with a bunch of ad hominems bashing “smug” and “pretty boy” types. You sure convinced me.
Now if you could use your same brilliantly insightful logic to explain the disappearing ice caps, I’ll give up getting all my worldviews from Rush and come back to your blog!
August 19th, 2007 at 11:19 pmandyfox1979
wow chas, great of you to believe enough in your statements to leave a real email address “chas666@limbaugh.con”
If you want to make a point make one. If you want to fight my ad hominem attacks with your ad hominem attacks, you know you’re just gonna look ‘late to the dance’ by everyone reading. Learn to take the high road my friend, where i’m sarcastic you be earnest, where my facts are slight overwhelm us with facts.
Or, just use a fake email address and say stupid shit.
August 19th, 2007 at 11:23 pmMoZe
I think it’s really easy to understand feeling jaded enough to doubt global warming, and if it were only - you know - Leonardo DeCaprio and Al Gore saying that we have a crisis on our hands, I’d probably take it with a grain of salt since neither of them are climate scientists. But when basically all the qualified and credible climate scientists in the world, the National Academies of Sciences, the I.P.C.C., the Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Geological Union, etc., etc., the list just goes on and on are saying something, then I think it is important to listen and try to understand. And if you start to look at the data and read and understand, it becomes pretty clear that (1) the Earth is heating up rapidly (2) all other explanations that could account for it like increased solar activity etc. have been examined and ruled out and are not causing this (3) there is much more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been at any time in the last about 700,000 years I think, and they’ve done isotope analysis and so they know it is CO2 from the carbon that humans burn (oil and coal) (4) high CO2 levels will trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere, which will cause temperatures to rise (5) a number of environmental consequences will result from the rising surface and ocean temperatures, and not many of them are very good for people. I find the evidence pretty compelling. I am very familiar with a lot of the arguments that people make to say there is doubt in the data, but I have taken the time to look and see whether there are good responses to those arguments, and I have to say that they don’t hold up.
About the NASA correction. Actually, it wasn’t a Y2K bug. The people who analyze temperature data at NASA had to make an adjustment to how they reconciled data from two different sources, and when they did, the change was very small. Actually, 1998 remains hotter than 1934 globally. The difference to global temperatures as a result of the adjustment they did was infinitesimal. For the continental U.S., 1934 now becomes just slightly hotter than 1998, but that’s not all that surprising, since the 1930’s (the dust bowl days) were hot in the U.S. But globally, nothing is affected at all by that adjustment: 1998 is hotter than 1934 globally. But 1998 is no longer the hottest year on record globally. 2005 is.
About the hubris in thinking that humans can affect the environment or that the concern is that the planet will be destroyed or that somehow there is a belief that the present climate is ideal is some abstract sense. I think the reality is that humans affect the climate in lots of ways and always have. A lot of the time, we don’t really notice these things because we get used to them or don’t know anything different. But people in L.A. or Shiang Hai notice the trouble they have breathing sometimes and that is caused by humans. Even the dust bowl and all those huge dust storms that raged across the Great Plains were in part a result of poor agricultural practices. So it’s not that strange to think that 9 billion humans on the planet could possibly affect the environment in some major ways.
I agree with you 100% that humans will not destroy the earth. The earth will outlast us for sure. That’s not really the issue. The issue is what will life be like for humans as the earth continues to heat up?
I think the cause of hurricanes is generally pretty well-known to be that heat in the ocean which isn’t carried away by wind creates a low-pressure area which can cause wind to start to spiral inward on itself. The link to global warming is that the size of the storm that is linked to the amount of water vapor available to the storm, and higher sea levels and temperatures mean more water vapor available. This is why most climate scientists think that global warming creates conditions where more hurricanes can grow into very large category 4 or 5 storms, and there is evidence that there are more of those super-powerful storms now that things are heating up.
So anyway, I am not going to accuse you of being a neo-con like your post said! But I think you make a mistake when you say that the problem with science is not with what it can explain, but with what it can’t explain and that scientists start with a faulty premise that things should be the way they are. I think that you can’t really dismiss scientific findings with broadsides like that. We rely all the time on science to develop the machines to diagnose our illnesses, to design computer components ever smaller, to be constantly generating technological advancements that benefit us. So we are not at liberty to now dismiss the findings of the world’s climate scientists without actually examining them first, at least not if we know what is good for us. One problem is that there is a very well-funded but small group of think-tanks and pseudo-scientists that are invested in promoting a lot of falsehoods to create doubt about climate change. Some of these same people (e.g. Dr. Fred Singer) were hired by the tobacco companies who set out to make people doubt the link between smoking and disease and they are doing a lot of the same things now to try to create a fog of doubt. Newsweek just did a cover story on it, and there is also a really great Australian documentary you can watch at http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/video_player.html?denial Trust me, it will piss you off but good.
There is also a really good set of programs on YouTube that are global warming debates. The first one, numbered 01 is actually an interview with Martin Durkin who made a movie denying global warming. It shows how he falsified data and fraudulently misrepresented what some scientists who had agreed to talk to him said in order to make his film:; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlbvJEZA_4
The problem with all of this is going to be what happens as more powerful storms start to destroy important strategic assets. What happens when rising sea levels start to engulf highly-populated areas like Indonesia and large-scale evacuations and resettling of refugees must be undertaken. What happens when unpredictable droughts and weather patterns destroy crops and cause food shortages and increases in food prices. What happens as more and more of our resources are devoted to managing the consequences of rapid climate changes that we are not prepared for, that target populated and developed areas taking lives and destroying valuable property. What will happen if diseases spread to areas where they were not formerly present and create new kinds of pandemics that we are not prepared for. The problem is that all of these things are likely consequences of dramatic climate change. Not all of them may happen right away. Not all of them will be felt in every part of the globe. Some freakish occurrences that you wouldn’t think about unless you were a scientist and knew that these things had happened in the past long ago between ice ages: melting glaciers dumping a lot of freshwater into the North Atlantic can not only change the salinity and endanger our supply of fish, but the change may slow down the currents in the North Atlantic and cause some weird cooling periods in the Northern Hemisphere especially W. Europe. The point isn’t that any one of these events in and of itself is the end of the world or even the end of humanity. But we do depend on a fairly predictable global climate to survive and have civilization. We are looking at growing instability if we have to be dealing with crisis situations brought about by rapid climate changes.
No, I did not see “The Day After Tomorrow.” It sounds terrible! As you can probably tell, I am really more interested in looking at some of the facts and the science involved in this than in seeing sensationalistic horror movies about it. Don’t let the sensationalism of some of the media make you turn away from taking it seriously, though! There is a great blog called Open Mind that you might want to check out too: http://tamino.wordpress.com/
August 19th, 2007 at 11:31 pmBrad
This post is what happens when the truly ignorant feel compelled to put their truly ignorant ideas out there for all to see.
Here’s my summary of this post:
“I have done absolutely no research on this topic, I admittedly know nothing about it, but WAAAH liberals!”
August 20th, 2007 at 5:48 amMark Chu Cheong
I don’t think we landed on the moon either and I’m convinced Kirk Cameron is our lord and savior Jesus Christy.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:01 amMark Chu Cheong
@MoZe I think its funny that somebody actually entered data and fact into this conversation.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:48 pmJeremy
I for one can’t wait until the polar ice caps melt. The beach is really to goddamn far away from my house as it is, and I think it would bring my property value up if it’d just come a little closer.
August 21st, 2007 at 11:39 amandyfox1979
hey brad if you read my blog you’d see that no amount of “research” could possibly help someone know about this issue. We’ll sweat it out. As far as your blog, I don’t think i’ve ever seen a taller pile of monkey dung in my life.
August 21st, 2007 at 11:49 amBrad
Wow. That’s what you call “owned”? You truly are a wordsmith. I was expecting something to actually respond to or even challenge my views and make me think, “wow, maybe these douches aren’t as dumb as they look.”
I was wrong. You are every bit as dumb as you look.
August 21st, 2007 at 6:03 pmandyfox1979
i hate you brad
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:13 pmJack
Great read, I totally agree that global warming is a bunch of nonsense but the fact of the matter is, people are easily brainwashed and have forgotten how to think for themselves. Leo and Al Gore leading the sheep to the pasture…. give me a break!
The fact that recycling a tin can somehow makes people feel better about themselves or guilty if they don’t is just absurd. Proposing law that would require Americans to be “envo friendly” is and will be the beginning of the end of the world as we know it.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:59 amMike
On the plus side, if you’re out on a date and things are getting a bit boring - just tell her (or him for the females out there) that global warming is a myth and you’d rather be in bed. At least you’ll get some sort of a reaction. (Can you tell where my mind is at?)
October 31st, 2007 at 11:10 ama girl
wow, this makes me sad… it has been scientifically proven, multiple times might i add, that humans have vastly altered the atmospheric, terrestrial, and aquatic environments of the earth. Organzed agriculturem which is a human invention, has alterd the earth’s ecosystem more than any other development in history. This is because this practive greatly impactxd feeding, shelter, and the sustenance of other terrestrial vret species
September 10th, 2008 at 7:41 ama girl
funny, since you most likely put in 5 minutes at the most researching this… i know you’re trying (trying) to be funny, but, no other species has changed the earth like people. We were the first to employ organized agriculture, which involves extensive partitioning of land/ ecosystems,not to mention the first organisms to exploit fossil fuels and use (for good and bad) sources of nuclear fuel… humans have affected the earth irreversibly, and i definitely don’t think that this makes us conceited or puts the human race above other organisms. We think we’re better because we nistreat and slaughter other animals and disrespect the earth? hmmmm….. i really don’t think that makes us better… try the opposite
September 17th, 2008 at 10:41 pmdan
Nice to know I’m not the only who doesn’t buy into this Global Warming hype. Erroneous NASA data aside, how can we make such rock solid generalizations about long term global climate based on so little data? We have perhaps 100 years or so of imperical climate records, the reliability of which probably decreases exponentially the further back you look. On the scale of global history, not even a blink. Beyond that we have only pieces of evidence that may or may not support a theory based on current scientific models and understanding of our environment which we have already admitted is quite limited. At best we can make some statements about local trends on a segment of earth’s history and future. But the overall picture is anything but clear. Earth has seen it’s most inhospitable conditions when human beings and/or industrialism did not even exist (formation of planet notwithstanding).
Global Warming has always been a concern, something to keep an eye on, but to suddenly start running around and hollering this as indisputable fact is what I have a problem with. I agree that the motivations for this are more political than scientific.
Now, I’ll have to pick a bone with this statement from your article:
“It’s funny when it comes to the earth, people think they are just so important that people must be causing it. While that POV is rather misanthropic, I can’t really get behind it. The idea that humans can destroy the earth is presumptuous and paternalistic. The earth will be here long after we’re gone and shows us daily that it has no qualms about chewing us up and spitting us out whenever it fucking feels like it.”
This is not necessarily a “we are the center of the universe” delusion scenario. Humans can and do cause damage to our environment to at least some extent. And yes, it is likely that the earth will still be here long after we’re extinct but you are missing the point; destroying the world doesn’t have to mean blowing the earth to smitherines (although that’s not entirely impossible either), it simply means to cause sufficient environmental damage to make the earth inhospitable to human life. That is our “world”.
The simple fact of the matter is: we don’t know! We make guesses. Educated guesses… sometimes. I’m completely open to the possibility that we may indeed be causing a global warming trend but we simply don’t have enough data to make that kind of determination right now. In the meantime, it would be wise to live responsibly and not with total disregard for our earth, but people shouldn’t be spreading fear and panic by claiming to know that something WILL happen when they don’t really know. Stick to raising awareness, stick to offering possibilities but please don’t feed us opinions and tell us it’s FACT!
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 pm