I finally got around to watching the video by Channel 4 out of England called “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. While I know that this video has its own biases with being connected to BP and other organizations that could benefit from global warming being downplayed, it is thought provoking nonetheless and is refreshing to hear a counterpoint to an issue getting no rationale discourse in the opposite direction. I also spent some considerable time one night searching more on it reading both for and against, and I especially focused on discussions I found among different researches and other interested people. While I do believe global warming is happening, I am certain we are not the cause. However, I believe we are CONTRIBUTING to its severity with our pollution, but the consequences in the next 100 years have been extremely exaggerated by Al Gore types and are not helping anything. In fact, I think it is hindering areas in the environment that truly need more work. Go ahead and read the latest predictions by the IPCC and those from Al Gore’s “documentary”. Since Al liked to quote them so much he might find it quite a bit different.
Though I am from Utah and a conservative, I have always been very supportive of environmental controls. I have held the opinion long ago that it is absolutely absurd that we are still using fossil fuels to run our cars and that it is driven because there is no economic incentive for oil companies or car companies to change. In my opinion cities have been far too aggressive in zoning residential areas where there is already too much congestion. The most troublesome piece for me is air and water quality. Here in Utah Valley, and even more so in Salt Lake, during inversions the air becomes almost toxic. This last few months had a day where we had air quality five times worse than LA. It was literally killing people with a distinct increase in heart attacks during those time according to a recent report. It also made anyone with allergies or asthma home bound. And it is only going to get worse. Instead of our focus being on these real problems, everyone is instead expectedly jumping on the doomsday exaggerated claims of global warming when the evidence for even slight disaster being dubious at best. Instead we have real crises now that are being ignored. I found this great quote on a comment to a blog I read.
“We should be cutting back on use of fossil fuels due to the resource dwindling not because people are running round saying the sky is falling down, because as soon as it doesn’t people will go straight back to their bad old ways and run the wells dry.”
This is precisely what will happen. As soon as the apparent danger leaves the people will go back to the status quo and forget about the real problems these things cause. The proponents of radical measures to stem global warming are doing it on dubious information at best, and most scientists admit this. Aren’t many of these the same people who have continuously bagged on the Bush administration for doing the same thing in going into Iraq? Enormous amounts of money are being pumped into this research around the globe, and developing companies everywhere are being severely hampered economically all on a wild hunch. How are these two things any different? Well, it is a lot easier to hide the ill effects of bad global warming policy than it is an open war, even if the end effects are just as disastrous.
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