Posted on 07/03/2006 9:52:18 AM PDT by Sgt_Schultze
I saw Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and learned I didn't know the half of it.
The planet we've known since the beginning of recorded time is changing more rapidly than believed possible. Most convincing are the before-and-after photos of glaciers and snow-capped mountains that show the ice melting at unprecedented rates, the graphs Gore uses to explain complex climate concepts, and the collected data that definitively show humans are overwhelming the earth's ability to regulate itself.
Both the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting away from the inside out. People on faraway Pacific islands and nearby Smith Island, Md., have already had to relocate because their homelands are sinking under rising sea levels. Gore explains that if even half of Greenland or Antarctica melt away, the resulting water could raise sea levels worldwide 20 feet, thus drowning areas at or below sea level around the world, places where millions of people live.
Sure we've been influencing the environment ever since we cut the first tree, killed the first animal, built the first fire and planted the first crop. All organisms modify their environment by their very being. But as Gore points out, the number of humans was pretty consistent over time, thanks to nature's checks and balances. Nature could take what we were dishing out.
No more. Once we started making more efficient tools and learning how to manipulate our world, we gained the upper hand and population began increasing: worldwide population is slated to increase to 9.22B by 2075. These advances have allowed us to do increasing harm to the basic life support systems sustaining us.
More people demand more food, fuel and shelter from finite resources and create more waste, including the greenhouses gases that are trapped in our atmosphere and are warming the planet. We are depleting the very resources that help regulate the atmosphere and make life livable on this planet: the only planet known to support life.
I'm bewildered. What's it going to take for people to accept humans are causing global warming and do something about it? More Hurricane Katrinas? I'm trying to do my part by changing my behaviors and writing this column. I'm gravely concerned about my son's future.
Recently, a reader left a message telling me I was entitled to my opinion, but he considered people like me "environmental wackos." Galileo was considered a wacko, too, when he pointed out the earth revolves around the sun. Us "wackos" just want people to understand the threats that have been known to us for over 30 years and act before it's too late. If I'm a wacko, so are the scientists at the National Academies of Science, the 255 mayors who have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement and the leaders of over 160 countries who, by signing the Kyoto Protocol, acknowledge that global warming is an extreme issue that demands immediate attention.
A congressman once called global warming a "hoax" perpetrated on the American people. How so and by whom? The only thing believers have to gain are healthier futures for all. But we could lose much of what we cherish if we don't start working to reduce carbon dioxide emissions right now. We have the technology and smarts to do it; we lack the leadership.
Kim needs to go to the Canadian Rockies and visit the Athabascan ice fields. The glaciers have monuments showing how they have been melting and receding for 175 years or so -- long before there were SUVs. There may be global warming but it is not caused by manmade green house gasses or auto emissions.
Why can't all responses to this be as correct & concise?
The best thing about global warming is that it keeps idiots like this up at night.
Lunatics.
I am convinced... that the stupid are easily led. Here is a classic example of what I am talking about. A little education, very little in this case, can be a dangerous thing.
I agree there is also global warming on Mars.
A study of the ice caps on Mars may show that Mars is experiencing a warming trend also. Mars is experiencing global warming, then perhaps there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System, such as increasing solar output irradiance.
So when is Mr. Wonderful going to stop taking chartered jet trips across the country? Every time he does that, he's burning more fuel than my car does in 10 years. Oops, conservation is for everybody but rich liberals. Got it!
Thank you! :-)
You honor me!!
And she's delusional. But that's okay, because she's a lefty and that's her emotional response to algore.
This is perfect proof of this twits ignorance.
It wasn't Galileo who "pointed out the earth revolves around the sun." It was Copernicus, among others. Galileo was technically accused of supporting the Copernican theories in his book, but even that was a fraud. He was really put on trial for insulting the Pope, by putting the Pope's arguments into the mouth of a character named "Simplicio," meaning "simpleton." Basically he was on trial for being an ass.
On top of that Galileo had called the Vatican's own astronomers (Scheiner and Grassi) who actually supported the Copernican view of our Solar System, as frauds. And, unlike Galileo they actually had evidence that could support the theory with observation and calculations, which the Church actually would accept. Galileo denounced them, among other things, by claiming that the comets whose orbits they calculated (using "Copernican formulae" developed by Kepler) were actually optical illusions.
Sounds like algore to me.
Yep. The moonbats have picked the perfect mascot for their charade. A loudmouth jerk who had a good press agent and was unscrupulous enough to steal from his betters and claim the work as his own. Oh, you didn't know about the little trouble with the historical claim the he "invented" the telescope? That's because most science (and history) that is taught in this country, such as that relied on by algore, is crap.
Simply making sense of this one sentence could take up the remainder of "recorded time".
Yes. And the sad reality is that her receptiveness is endemic of media "thinkers." Her lack of skepticism cheats her readers. Maybe copy editors only care about spelling and punctuation, facts must be left to real editors.
The great majority of the aforementioned are not climate scientists they are politicians.
Whew! That's an awful lot of conclusions based upon the same faulty premise!
More Kool-Aid, my dear?
Another rub would be if it was discovered that our collective warming contribution is becoming irreversible. Our growing population would have to be reduced. The humanitarian concerns of the far-left which seeks to preserve populations which by themselves are unsustainable. What would the far-left do then? Preserve humanity or preserve the planet?
You SOUND bewildered, dear. You also sound like one of the countless airheads who can't remember anything that happened more than 12 months ago. Katrina was a hurricane, one of those nasty things that crop up in considerable quantities every year, but don't always hit a major city like New Orleans. Here's another newsflash while you're still impressionable: there were hurricanes, bad ones, during the age of the wooden ship! Sailing is supposed to be so pure, so non-polluting yet thousands lost their lives in hurricanes and typhoons! Was George III driving his SUV too often?
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