According to the New York Times, there's a debate raging between the sane scientists who actually follow the scientific method without falsifying data, and those who are screaming that the world's gonna keep heating up until it catches fire, and that the current winter weather is only indicative of global warming.
Really?
Last summer did have a good, hot spell (but it wasn't as hot as the previous summer's, and didn't last as long); however, last summer was shorter and cooler than the summer before.
And there are record breaking amounts of snow in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Baltimore, Maryland; in Washington, D.C.; in Chicago, Ohio; and Dallas, Texas will be seeing snow tonight. The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation has been snowed under so heavily that it's been effectively cut off, and will likely see more deaths as a percentage of population than the other areas combined (the initial press release is dated Feb 1, and is currently about a third of the way down the page).
Human-caused global warming my ass. The earth goes through approximately sixty-year cycles, thirty years warm, thirty years cold. We were in one of the warming cycles for most of my life, and there was nothing anybody could do to change it. We're heading into the cold half of the cycle, and there's nothing anybody can do to change it.
Shut up. Just...shut up. Don't dump a crap load of taxes on us designed to force us into "green" behavior. We're already doing everything a reasonable nation can expect to do. Any more and we'll be crippled.
Unless, like a character in a book once implied, that there is no difference between our modern "greens" and the former Russian Reds.
In which case, that's precisely what they want.
1 hour ago
Well, it is winter!
ReplyDeleteWhatever we think about 'global warming', 'climate change'..etc.
we should never ignore the fact that MAN is polluting the planet big time!
Yeah, I know. But *we* are not the ones doing the worst of it. *We* should not be punished through draconian legislature for those that are. Like China. Like India. Like the Middle Eastern nations. In some cases, those nations are "dirtier" because they've only just begun to industrialize. Some of them are beginning to try to stem some of the pollution that comes with bootstrapping oneself up out of a feudal economy.
ReplyDeleteIn other cases, the national culture just doesn't care what's done to the environment.
India, like the United States, is beginning to try to clean up their act. But, since they're still not quite up to first-world nation status, they have a bit of a hard time affording the tech.
The more our politicians try to destroy the wealth of this nation with things like mandatory Medicaid and cap and tax legislation, the less able they make it to *not* pollute the environment. It takes business capital to put air scrubbers on factories. It takes huge profit margins to be able to afford keep factories and farms and other industry as "clean" as they can get.
And I've noticed that Al Gore hasn't inflicted himself upon New England and Washington, D.C., much this winter.
I know it's really unscientific and all, but secretly I'm rooting for a second "Little Ice Age" to come. Just because of the level of panty-waddage it will cause to Gore and those types.
ReplyDeletealso, I live in the South, so a global cooling (esp. in the summers) would make me very happy.
Also, I run around with a lot of geologists - big picture type people. A number of them are not convinced/definitely unconvinced that any warming is specifically human caused; there are lots of long-time-scale cycles that affect global temperature. Lots of the other environmental types don't take that long term of a view and seem blind to it....
I tend to do major research before I form an opinion. I don't buy that we are the cause of global warming, nor do I buy that catastrophic global warming is happening. Our global climate is changing, but that's normal, according to every credible piece of research I've read. I may not have a degree in science, but I do have an interest, and I understand both the theories and historical proofs.
ReplyDeleteThirty years ago, scientists were convinced that we were heading into a little Ice Age. Three hundred years ago, we were in the midst of a nasty global cold snap (one that started in the mid fourteenth century and had killed off a whole lot of people by starvation when the climate shifted away from being agriculture friendly) that didn't end until the mid-nineteenth century. The general historical and archaeological pattern, though, is pretty clear that we didn't cause the warm period between about 400 a.d., and 1350 a.d., and that that warm cycle was a bit warmer than this last one.
I kind of half hope for a little ice age, too, Ricki. I've noticed that the media has been quieter than usual about the EVIL that is MANKIND'S EFFECT on the GODDESS that is GAIA.
And the idea that they may have to shut up entirely makes me smile.
http://i454.photobucket.com/albums/qq267/oldcatman/flip_lg_wht.gif
ReplyDelete