It sure is hard to sort through all the crap both sides of this environmental debate are throwing out there. It seems like I have my mind made up and then BOOM! I have some more doubts. I must have swung back and forth on this at least five times.
Some of you right now are saying, ‘ This is ridiculous. Can’t he see that We are right? The science proves it!’
This is exactly my problem. The science only seems to prove it if you look at it the right way.
To quote Scott Adams,
"I’ve noticed that whenever there are two sides of an issue that sound like this…
1. The fact is true
2. The fact is complete bullshit…
…you can safely bet that the fact is complete bullshit. You don’t
need to know much about the coriolis force, or the monetary policy of
Peru, or the life expectancy of a beetle to make your case. Just place
your bet on “it’s bullshit” and collect your winnings."
Now, Scott Adams may not be an environmental scientist. He may not be a politician. And he may not have studied complex weather patterns all of his life. That doesn’t make him wrong. And, yes, he wasn’t refering specifically to global warming. but, he does make some telling statements about human behavior. Scientists, politicians and researchers are human.
Did you know about the polar ice caps on Mars? Apparently, increased solar output has been causing the south pole icecap on Mars to shrink for three summers, as per data gathered by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey Missions. A Brief article here at Slashdot. Some think what is warming Mars is warming Earth.
So what if global warming on both planets is mainly caused by solar radiation increase? Granted, people have screwed the Earth with pollution. But what if we are only responsible for part of it?
Let’s sit down together here and have a beer while we think this through a little. Just put down your politically correct thinking and have an open mind for a minute.
Here is a chart that proves lack of pirates caused global warming.
I found this at Wikipedia. What strikes me about it is the correlation does not equal causation thing. Number of people and pollution increase, global temperature increase. We must be causing it! Well, maybe…….
Well, I for one am going to become a beer drinking pirate. Hey, Ernie, give us a prairie pirate post!
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Saskboy1 // Mar 18, 2007 at 9:22 am
Of course what is warming Mars is warming Earth! It’s called the Sun. The difference is the atmospheres, and we’re screwing with ours, and changing history by doing it.
“So what if global warming on both planets is mainly caused by solar radiation increase? Granted, people have screwed the Earth with pollution. But what if we are only responsible for part of it?”
Exactly, “so what” is the point. Who cares? The point is we’ve screwed up our atmosphere, and even if climate change wasn’t on the table, we still have acid rain, ozone holes, smog, and other toxic clouds that give us reasons to reduce our air pollution. Climate Change denial is completely about instilling apathy and sloth in our population so they will accept polluting methods of the past, so they will not require polluters to pay their fair share to fix their killing our habitats. Anyone who claims it’s more than slightly about intellectual honesty if global warming isn’t exactly as scientists expect it is, is being led down the garden path by the Denial Machine.
2 Tim Ebl // Mar 18, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Good points,Saskboy. I definitely agree that humanity has to shape up, and they should start by taking responsibility for their wastefulness and wanton Earth-pillaging. I’m just feeling like there are those on both sides of this argument who are willing to fudge the facts to fit their case. What we need is a unified theory of environmental impact. If the sun is also involved in the warming of the Earth, it makes it pretty tough to decide how much each one of our actions is harming the situation beyond repair. If, for instance, jet travel is as bad as I understand it to be it to be, we should ground them all now. Think anyone would go along with that? No one cares that much. Or, rather, the people in charge don’t care that much.
3 Saskboy // Mar 19, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I know what you’re saying Tim, and I agree there is a real danger in overhyping the danger. It would be nice if denialists who are only looking out for their short sighted interests didn’t have such a large media voice, and were relegated to the minor role they should be playing in the discourse. It’s the disproportionately loud ignorant voices at Fox News and from people like Tim Ball who tempt people with real concern about humanity to use balancing sensational claims to help average out public opinion. Media just has too much power when used for bad, that the truth and reason get quickly drowned out by the more sensational crap. People are too comfortable and think it will stay this way because we haven’t had a global upheaval involving the rich since the 1940s. That’s why Paris Hilton will always have a place on the air before the droughts in Africa killing hundreds of thousands of people.
4 Scruffy Dan // Mar 20, 2007 at 12:34 am
Taken from my site here:
http://www.scruffydan.com/blog/?p=681
National Geographic (who usually is very reliable) recently published an article about the recent shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap, and how it suggests that Mars is also warming, casting doubt that humans are responsible for the warming trend here on Earth.
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human- induced—cause, according to one scientist’s controversial theory.
If true this of course raises some serious questions about the current warming trends here on earth, and skeptics (like the one in the National Geographic article) are jumping over this as proof that climate change on earth is not cause by humans. As usual of course none of the skeptics are able to back up their claims with peer-reviewed data. Secondly this ’study’ was conducted over a 3 (Martian) year period, which is hardly long enough to separate a long-term trend from seasonal variations, such as the cooling trend since the 1970s.
to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970’s
Luckily real scientists have an explanation for the recent shrinking of the Martian ice caps.
The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.
While skeptics are quick to claim that shrinking ice caps on Mars are proof that climate change is not caused by humans, they ignored the much larger dataset of retreating glaciers here on earth for many years.
Since I (and I assume you the reader) do not truly understand the complexity of climate models (both here and on mars) I place my trust on the peer-review method to weed out the ‘junk science’, and I recommend you do the same.
It is yet another example of the media’s preoccupation with lonely (sometimes looney) voices. No wonder the public remains convinced that the scientific community is still locked in a legitimate debate over climate change. When a journalistic institution like National Geographic is this careless in presenting the science, how can casual observers hope to make informed conclusions?
Presenting both sides to a story can be important, when there is legitimate debate, but when one side is backed by peer-reviewed data (good and reliable), and the other is backed by special interests (bad and unreliable), the media should weigh each side appropriately.
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