Oh My Gaia!
People seem to crave human imagery in explaining things that we have not yet been able to explain through science. That’s why I think Gaia substitutes so nicely in the lives of people who do not have God. However, as one who looks to neither God nor Gaia for reason, I have, on occasion, reviewed the science presented by Al Gore and his acolytes, with the help of many other scientists who also have reviewed the information and have nothing to gain (but much to lose) by respectfully disagreeing with his claim of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW).
I wish merely to point out that perhaps we shouldn’t swallow the idea of man-made global warming whole. As someone who devoted her professional life to writing, enforcing, and working with environmental regulations and policies and her academic life to environmental sciences (focusing on geology and water resources), I consider myself just knowledgeable enough to doubt that we have the data to support AGW or to understand what the full implications of GW might be. As must follow, I doubt we can we know if, let alone how, and certainly not at what price we should try to arrest it. I do know that more regulations guarantee only two things: more bureaucrats and more of everyone’s money given to government agencies – nothing else.
Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize not the Prize for Chemistry or Physics, both of which figure strongly in climate science. It is a political movement, albeit one which has “reached across the aisle” as politicians like to say. But man-made global warming is not a scientific fact.
Accepting it as fact and asking the government to solve the problem is like looking at the soaring gas prices, corporate bailouts, and our ever-eroding liberties and saying, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”
Some dissention to Gore's argumentum ad populum (warning: scientists, for the most part, do not have sexy websites and there is a non-scientist – but don’t dismiss him before poking around on his website): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it gives one a good place to start looking at the data manipulation which has occurred in bringing us the Global Warming Crisis.
If "scientific consensus" is still an idea you rely upon, click here and here.
Finally, it is necessary to exploit the earth in order to live. Think about it. Where should our treading lightly stop: less burning of fossil fuels, fewer acres of forests to pastures for livestock, fewer roads, fewer houses, fewer humans? This is the natural progression of the idea that the lives of men are the disease, and lessening their impact is the cure for an ailing Mother Earth. Who gets to decide the carrying capacity or even the correct temperature of the earth? Based on what? Guesses, conjectures, politicized opinions, personal comfort?
I do not consider my own life, or those of my children, to be a disease on the earth. If and when there are incontrovertible facts that man’s life on earth as we know it will end unless we change our behaviors, we will. Until then, exchanging individual rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as protected by the government for a group discount rate of communal rights to be administered by the government is like committing suicide with a butter knife.
I wish merely to point out that perhaps we shouldn’t swallow the idea of man-made global warming whole. As someone who devoted her professional life to writing, enforcing, and working with environmental regulations and policies and her academic life to environmental sciences (focusing on geology and water resources), I consider myself just knowledgeable enough to doubt that we have the data to support AGW or to understand what the full implications of GW might be. As must follow, I doubt we can we know if, let alone how, and certainly not at what price we should try to arrest it. I do know that more regulations guarantee only two things: more bureaucrats and more of everyone’s money given to government agencies – nothing else.
Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize not the Prize for Chemistry or Physics, both of which figure strongly in climate science. It is a political movement, albeit one which has “reached across the aisle” as politicians like to say. But man-made global warming is not a scientific fact.
Accepting it as fact and asking the government to solve the problem is like looking at the soaring gas prices, corporate bailouts, and our ever-eroding liberties and saying, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”
Some dissention to Gore's argumentum ad populum (warning: scientists, for the most part, do not have sexy websites and there is a non-scientist – but don’t dismiss him before poking around on his website): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it gives one a good place to start looking at the data manipulation which has occurred in bringing us the Global Warming Crisis.
If "scientific consensus" is still an idea you rely upon, click here and here.
Finally, it is necessary to exploit the earth in order to live. Think about it. Where should our treading lightly stop: less burning of fossil fuels, fewer acres of forests to pastures for livestock, fewer roads, fewer houses, fewer humans? This is the natural progression of the idea that the lives of men are the disease, and lessening their impact is the cure for an ailing Mother Earth. Who gets to decide the carrying capacity or even the correct temperature of the earth? Based on what? Guesses, conjectures, politicized opinions, personal comfort?
I do not consider my own life, or those of my children, to be a disease on the earth. If and when there are incontrovertible facts that man’s life on earth as we know it will end unless we change our behaviors, we will. Until then, exchanging individual rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as protected by the government for a group discount rate of communal rights to be administered by the government is like committing suicide with a butter knife.
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