thomas fitzgerald.net

Every time I read about some twit that claims not to believe in Global Warming I get really annoyed. Its not about faith, or about beliefs. It’s about science and taking preventative steps to protect our species. Who ever decided to use this issue as a political tool to discredit their enemies should be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity. The two things that annoy me the most about people who doubt global warming are as follows.

1. It’s basic science.
People who claim that Global Warming is a myth always say that the current warming trend is caused by something other than humans, such as coming out of the last ice age or that it’s caused by cosmic rays. All these interesting theories are great, but they conveniently side step one pretty big issue. The effects of humans on the atmosphere is basic science. We know what happens when we add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We know it has a warming effect. No one doubts that. It’s basic science. We know that the amount of carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere is growing exponentially. No one doubts that either. Therefore the only thing people claim is false is the conclusions reached by putting those two things together even though it’s blatantly obvious. It would be like saying that if I put a lighted match to a piece of paper and when it starts to burn, saying that it is on fire because of the light entering the room or a freak gust of warm air. We know the effect of putting a naked flame to something flammable, and we know we put the flammable object in the path of the naked flame. To say that you accept these things but that you then don’t believe the flame caused the paper to burn is absolutely absurd, yet this is what people are claiming when it comes to global warming.

2. It’s better to be safe than sorry
Even if you forget the first point, and shame on you if you do, then consider this. If it became known that some famous brand of bottled water or coffee or even coke or pepsi contained some chemical that could cause cancer, even if it only increased your chances by 10 or 15% there would be uproar and the brand would be pulled from the shelves until the chemical was removed. It happened in europe in the 80’s with perrier. So even if you don’t believe that there’s enough proof that man is the cause of global warming, why take the risk? If there’s even the slightest chance we should be acting to try and prevent it. If you are wrong billions of people will die. If this hadn’t become a political issue, this conversation wouldn’t even be happening. No one was quite sure what would happen with the millennium computer bug but millions were spent to prevent anything from happening. What is the difference here? On the off chance that the scientists are wrong, the only thing lost is money. If they are right and we do nothing, countless lives will be lost. Is money that much more important that human lives that we would rather risk lives than risk spending money?

By creating doubt around this issue, those who crave power have used it as a tool to hurt those who merely want to do the right thing. It was a simple political move. Turn the thing your opponent stands for into a bad thing and suddenly they can’t run on that any more. Unfortunately in this case the same old lies and political games will cost us not just another corrupt government, but loss of life on a massive scale and the potential extinction of the entire planet. Is any political office worth that?