Global Warming

[Kizzume]

There are still people out there trying to deny that man has increased global warming. There are still people out there trying to deny the fact that global warming is even occurring at all. It boggles my mind that people are able to deny such things.

So far, the only people that I've seen denying the existence and severity of global warming have been right-wingers, often the same ones who try to argue against evolution.

Is it the mindset where people think that everything on the planet was put here for OUR use? What is it that makes people deny these kinds of things?

The one argument they bring up that I can actually relate with is when they say that humans MAY NOT BE the primary reason for the climate change. It's true--it MAY NOT be the primary reason, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to do what we can to reduce those changes.

What do you think?

[Hackfest]

Everything was put here for our use according to my beliefs. It's the fact that we don't respect it that ruins it. I don't agree that we aren't causing it, but on the other side, signing the Kyoto Treaty would have bankrupted us. And that's too extreme.

[Kizzume]

There definitely are some provisions in the Kyoto Treaty that would certainly make things very difficult to say the least, that's for sure.

[jq]

I think the biggest argument against global warming is simply that the money we spend on fighting it worldwide could be spent instead on things like overpopulation, disease, and poverty. There is a prevailing belief among political scientists that if we ended poverty FIRST, then more nations around the world would be better equipped to fight global warming. Don't know if it is true or not, I will have to dig my article back up tomorrow (I am about to go to bed right now) and cite it for more clarification, but it seems like a prevailing point that may be right. Either way I would say we are suffering from climate change and it is something we probably need to prepare for, whether we are causing it or not.

[technocrat]

A problem with the Kyoto Treaty is that it's only really a stepping stone, and it had several problematic loopholes that would have decreased it's effectiveness. Sadly, tis far too little far too late. The problem is a lot more serious, especially when you factor peak oil into the problem, the problem of which is supposed to hit us within this or the early next decade. If we were serious about the problem, we have to realize we will require significant lifestyle changes. It's not going to be pretty economically, but neither is the alternative. We cannot maintain our car culture or our massive consumer economies that produce lots of junk. We need to movement toward vast urbanization, dismantling of the suburbs, mass transit, and nuclear energy public works.

[Kizzume]

Less cars, stop making so many disposable things, yes, you are correct. I may hate the idea of what bad things can happen from nuclear energy, but I think it is one of the few answers we currently have for the upcoming energy crisis.

[technocrat]

We are a bit beyond the mark, though. It's difficult to remedy this problem without suffering, because we have waited far too long. Nuclear power has been the boogieman for decades, thus we have lost out on the ability to construct them over decades. President Carter actually screwed the pooch on Nuclear Power when he banned spent fuel reprocessing, which would actually have made Nuclear power safer, cleaner. I don't see how we can construct nearly enough in time, so we are going to have to slog through it. We should construct more, but we would have benefited more had we done it earlier. It's a big investment all at once in addition to the time required.

[Kizzume]

It's very sad to me that some people think we can't make ANY significant difference, yet just about ALL the evidence supports the idea that we CAN make a pretty big difference.