Posted by
Bob on Wednesday, December 09, 2009 10:41:17 PM
Few things chafe me like global warming/climate
change/climate crisis. It’s not that I’m
a greedy Earth killing capitalist – not entirely at least. It’s that I bought into it for so long. I grew up in northeastern Connecticut, where
things are nice and green in spring and summer, white in the winter, and all
kinds of crazy colors in fall.
I’ve been
in Florida since 1985, and I really miss it. People call me crazy, Florida’s warm, sunny, the beaches –
They can keep it. I’ll take the hike through the woods in autumn in Tolland County over a
beach any day of the week. And I don’t
want either of them to go anywhere. People have a right to enjoy the beach like I enjoy a trail, and I don’t
want pollution destroying God’s creation. I’m not against industrial progress such as oil drilling, but I urge
caution when doing so.
So when I first heard about global warming (AGW), I
thought it was a no-brainer. Our
pollution goes into the atmosphere, traps heat, and the additional heat changes
the climate. You can’t drive the turnpike
in Northern New Jersey and not believe
it. What to do about it? I’d go along with conservation, recycling,
looking for renewable clean energy resources, hydrogen fuel cell cars and
forestry management.
I still do. But
there’s always a but…
I found out the bogeyman they were pointing the finger at
was carbon dioxide. As in what cars
breathe out through catalytic converters. What we breathe out. I didn’t pay
too much attention to it.
Until I heard
Al Gore speak.
I don’t remember the show, but was interview/documentary
format, and the veep said, “The debate is over,” “There is a scientific consensus,”
and such. I heard other people call AGW
deniers “holocaust deniers,” “flat earthers” and “environmental Nazis”.
That’s when I woke up. Have you ever got into an argument with someone like, say, Rosie O’Donnell? You give her some facts that can’t be
answered, or deconstruct her position on whatever it is, and they just
explode. Rather than continue on in a
rational conversation and move in at a different angle, or, heaven forbid,
admit they don’t have an answer in a coy admission of defeat, they lash
out. The insult you, your intelligence,
your family, they shout you down so nobody can hear what you have to say, and
if you persist, you get intimidation and threats of violence.
To me, these are indicators of someone who has already
lost the argument and they haven’t grown up enough to figure out how to behave
when this happens. It was shameful to
see such conduct on display from the former vice president, no matter how much
he smiled when he did it. When we see guys
with Phd’s name calling people who disagree with them on television, we who
work for a living are reassured they really are no better than us, they’re just
better students who want to keep that grant money coming in.
That is when I started digging on my own. I’d like to thank radio talk show host Todd
Schnitt, for being the single best source for links at www.schnittshow.com , with literally
hundreds of links with scientific dissenting views. So great is the wealth of information at his
site and others, I’m starting to believe Al Gore and his friends in Copenhagen
are the minority scientifically.
They just happen to be trendy.