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.
-Galileo was considered a wacko, too, when he pointed out the earth revolves around the sun.-
What a maroon. In Galileo's time, most folks couldn't even read. I think we've advanced a bit since then. I'm only disappointed that she didn't include her thoughts about what the Founding Fathers would've done (as if the FF's were all flaming lefties or something).
Google Kim Stenley and you discover that there is a Kim Stenley in an administrative role for the Sierra Club in MD! Uncommon last name - conincidence?
http://maryland.sierraclub.org/newsletter/archives/2006/03/a_011.asp
http://maryland.sierraclub.org/newsletter/archives/2005/12/a_021.asp
conincidence => coincidence
It's like the thundering dinosaurs blaming the timorous little mammals for causing the mass extinction.
Good point... but note that she said that she didn't even know that much. ;^)
Sure, it could never be caused by the SUN now, could it?
Friis-Christensen and Lassen (Science, 1991)
study of Global temperatures versus solar cycle
length. Note as the solar cycle length diminishes
(towards the top of the diagram - scale at left),
the global temperatures rise and as they increase
in length, global cooling occurred. This current
cycle is a full year longer than the last one
perhaps signaling a cooling.
Apparently, in the eyes of a liberal, if one wacko was once validated, that means that all wakos will be validated. How can one argue with such "logic"?
Liberals always proceed with only half of a thought. They can understand the ebb of the glaciers, and a single downward trend on a graph... but they cannot fathom a simple and natural sine wave.
They also cannot fathom how they don't have a massive impact on the entire globe, because they are gods in their own eyes.
They drive a Toyota Prius to assuage their guilt. Meanwhile, they keep their 3000 sq ft house and turn the a/c down to 68 degrees, and they commute alone and they recycle all their garbage, which consumes more energy and resources than putting it in the dump. By hey, it makes them feel good and that's what it's all about.
See my post #32. :-)
If only the Martians would sign the Kyoto Accords!
He also made many discoveries using his home made scopes, such as 4 of the moons of jupiter. As for optical illusions, he was told by many that his telescope(the one he made) was nothing but an optical illusion, so I guess he had heard the argument before!
History is full of inaccuracies because people, scientists too, tend to take credit for things they didn't do!
Al Gore, for instance, invented the internet!
As in "it's not nice to mess with mother nature".
And so we come to the real reason for all of this global warming idiocy. Plain and simple folks. This puts enormous and sweeping power into the hands of the Marxists to control virtually every aspect of our lives and fortunes. It's just that simple. Kyoto reads like a Marxist control freaks wildest wet dream!
To paraphrase a famous bumpersticker: "Algore says it, She believes it, and that settles it"
"Galileo was incorrectly considered a wacko. I' am considered a wacko. Therefore those who consider me a wacko are incorrect. "
Gee, with reasoning like that it's a wonder the whole world isn't jumping on the band wagon.
A clear grab after the means of production.
Yeah I thought the Sun got bigger, and bigger as it's life cycle went on. Of coarse this aging is supposed to take place over "millions of years".
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