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.
I posted it because the hyperventilating and fawning over the movie are breathtaking.
Two times zero is still zero.
Well, then, if the extent of glaciation is the yardstick for measuring global health, we should all strive to start another Ice Age. After all, that would end up covering all of Massachussetts.
Boy, how nice that a gal like Kim can care about a guy like me, Rex. I am deeply touched by her thoughtfulness and generosity.
I am also astonished that Ms. Stanley is such a pinhead.
But, she's good at it.
Unprecended rates???? Really?????? Just 15,000 years ago Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Illinois, Ohio, and Indian were covered with glaciers. Did thos glaciers retreat because they anticipated the invention of SUV's? What a bunch of kooks.
Think this might be part of the problem with your hypothesis?
The rub is, have humans contributed to the situation or is it just one of the natural cycles that will continue as long as the Earth exists?
The other rub is will any efforts on our part to "curb" this trend result in a worse situation in the long run?
We're doomed!! Puny humans are killing the planet that's been in existance for billions of years and has experienced all kinds of turbulence and climate changes, and the earth would wipe us out if it wanted to!! Oh, the humanity.
"the resulting water could raise sea levels worldwide 20 feet,"
Nonsense. How much have sea levels risen in the last 100 years? People are moving already?!?
Each and every fact in this should be debunked.
Tempting, is it not? :-)
History tells us that Fat Teddy would still find some way to save his own ass even if his entire state drowned though...
How about some consistent, verifiable data?
Looks like she swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
These people who believe all this global warming BS don't have any backbone. If they did, and if they really believed it, they'd give up their cars, electric power, airline travel, processed food, and move back into caves. What are they waiting for?
Easier said than done, being that there aren't any observable facts in the piece to start.
She bought each and every fantastical fable with the credulity of a child waiting for Santa.
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