I was gonna shut up. I was gonna stop after my last post. BUT 30-SOME POSTS LATER IT KEEPS GOING SO I MUST CHIME IN!!!
Ok, in any industry, there are going to be people who are more interested in personal gain than the greater good. However, I think the idea that scientists are pushing this to gain research funding, rather than Big Industry pushing to discredit the findings about Global Warming or position it as "theory" in order to safeguard their financial standing... If you think about it, the scientists have much,
much less to gain from being right.*
Any scientific movement is going to take flak when it is announced if it isn't beneficial to all involved, or if the findings are negative or unpopular. I mean, look at the great scientific findings of the past: Galileo was imprisoned and ridiculed for suggesting the Copernican model of the galaxy (that the earth wasn't the center of the universe). Before that, people were once convinced that the earth was flat, or that it was impossible to cross the equator because of the harsh temperatures. History is full of these follies of popular belief. But what is common to all of them? No matter how hard people fought against these scientific findings, inevitably they became accepted; it's hard to fight against overwhelming evidence for any period of time without losing credibility.
I'll be the first to tell you that certain things pertaining to energy and the environment don't necessarily make sense. I'm not convinced on the viability of ethanol, and
I'm from Nebraska, where it could bring TONS of cash into the state. (Well, except in the case of closed-loop systems or in smaller-scale, local operations. Then, I'm all for it.) But Global Warming? The evidence is mounting, with even the
U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluding in their fourth assessment report (AR4) that:
• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
• Most of (>50% of) the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (confidence level >90%) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
• The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.
• World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century
They also talk about the measurements on how much oceans could rise, and all sorts of fun stuff like droughts, flooding, heat waves (do I need to mention the heat wave in France a few years ago that killed so many people?), and so on. That's 2,000 scientists from all over the world (150-some countries) who were involved in these studies. I hope I don't need to say what sort of weight that gives their case.
* Further, there is evidence that political lobbyists from ExxonMobil, in a memo to President Bush, pushed to replace the chairman of the IPCC with someone more "industry-friendly." That's also on the IPCC page I linked to above.
P.S. – 18 Days is right on. Except I feel that Green Industry could actually
help our economy. Alternative energy sources are being refined and improved for efficiency all the time. I drove through California a few months ago, and there were MILES AND MILES AND MILES of wind turbines, as far as the eye could see, all generating clean and renewable electricity. That made me feel good. And then I come back to Nebraska where we're pushing ethanol so hard, and I hear a statistic that we're like the 6th windiest state. We have like three wind turbines in Lincoln that I've seen. What the crap? Makes no sense! From what I understand in speaking with someone from a biofuel company here in Lincoln, Wind-Power companies in California are making a killing. Unfortunately, here, our hesitance to adopt wind is at least in part because we have public utilities here who don't want to change. But it's frustrating that we've got all this potential, and we're not using it. And it's all because the status quo is easier in the short term, and that's what people care about. Folllow the path of least resistance. Well, the path of least resistance could land us in a pile of trouble later on, and it's stupid when we can do something about it now.
/rantnumbertwo
Topic: Help Stop Global Warming... (Read 22259 times)
