Stray thoughts...

[silverthorne]

So.

Global warming. I'm of two minds about it, and about the fuss.

On the one hand, I agree with the assessment that we need to stop polluting, find better, cleaner energy sources, start treating our home a lot better than we have.

One the other? Half of me thinks the whole 'global warming' thing is a desperate attempt on some one's behalf. For what, I'm not quite sure. Money, maybe. Politics. Wouldn't someone benefit from this, no matter what side they're on, and probably in a big financial way. Lobbyists with a clever way to get all those bills passed that just won't be paid attention to if there's no Global Threat?

Who knows, really. We hear about reports of course, but don't see them ourselves.

Thing is, pay any attention at all, and you know that the Earth goes through these periods. Asteroids. Warming. Ice ages. Plagues. Tipping of the planet. Even the magnetic poles reversing. Most of them happen on such a grand time schedule though, that we as humans very rarely have records of past experiences to fall on. Our planet is just that old, and we as a race just that young. We caused any of it about as much as the dinos before us did.

So yeah, I hesitate a bit when Global Warming comes up. It's not that I don't think we're doing a number on the planet, because we are. By the same token though, I don't think we're doing the whole song and dance.

And in the end, all the yelling about whether or not we're doing it or not is moot. We're still messing up. Pollution is a fact. So is over population. So is over use of things like antibiotics, where although it does us okay now, when the effectiveness wears off, we'll be victimized by the new survivalist strains that our technology can't outrun.

We need to educate ourselves, learn some global responsibility.

But I don't think sensationalizing a single factor that may or may not be accurate in a string of factors is the way to go about it.

Comments

I believe

[aquila-dominus.livejournal.com]

I read the best commentary on this in Discover. A very prominent scientist as asked about human influence on global warming and his answer was this:

"If another country starts amassing an army on your border but there is only a 20% chance they will actually invade; would you do nothing?"

Re: I believe

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

It is a good assessment.

The question I have though?

Why aren't you already prepared?

Which...I think is part of what bugs me. In a way, the situation is being used to push people into the things they should have already been doing. Which ties back into the whole education, parents letting the governement and TV teach their kids, falling literacy. etc etc etc. The specific cuase may or may not be a danger, but the necessity of pushing it so predominantly into the spotlight as a 'panic' situation shows just how uneducated the lot of us is.

When you have to start screaming 'it's gonna squish you!' while it's already doing it? We have a problem. And it's not whether or not cow farts and our own pollution levels have mated and birthed the Antichrist of environmental apocolypse.

...and if you made sense of that ramble, good. ^^