Climate Change
I’ve been told that today is Blog Action Day ’09 — Climate Change.
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.
Well, OK, I’ll blog what I think about climate change. I think most of the fears about climate change are . . . over stated, to put it politely. Here are my views on this concept of climate change:
1. I just don’t see how the way they measure the planet’s average temperature gives valid or useful information. The coldest regular temperature on earth is below -120° F, the hottest regular temperature on earth is over 130° F — that’s 250 degrees range. So it’s hard for me to see a 1.3° change in the average over a 100 year period as anything more than a statistical blip.
2. Even if the global temperature is rising (slooooooowly), I just can’t feel the fear of of the supposed global repercussions. Each year, as the Earth revolves around the sun, the temperatures rise and drop by dozens of degrees — I mean, hell, the temperature can change in my city by 30 degrees over a 12-hour period. If a 60° change every year doesn’t cause great havoc to the planet, I’m just not worried about a 1.3° change over a century.
I pay attention to the hurricane season predictions each year (I live in the hurricane belt), and I’ve watched the professional weather and climate scientists get their predictions wrong year after year. I have no faith in the weather scientists to predict next week’s weather, much less next year’s, or the next century’s.
3. Even if the temperature is rising, and the climate change predictions are accurate, I’m not convinced that humanity has any large affect on the global situation. I’ve looked into this, through several sources, and I see just as much legitimate information saying humanity isn’t the main cause of global climate change as I’ve seen information saying humanity is the main cause global climate change.
There has always been some kind of doomsday scenario hanging over the world’s head, and they have most all been some form of man-made disaster. Nuclear war was the global bugaboo in my youth. Now it’s climate change. I fully expect there to be a new man-made sky-is-falling concept imagined within another decade. Some people are always wringing their hands and fretting over what terrible contastrophe some other people are going to wreak on the world. It’s a normal side of human nature.
I don’t want to live in a world covered in nasty chemicals and smoke, and I’m happy with the cleaning up some industry regulations have brought to our environment over the decades. I think clean energy would be a great thing, and so I would support the expansion of nuclear power plants in America.
But I just am not worried that the world is in some kind of climate crisis, in the near future or the far future. I just can’t buy into the kind of The Day After Tomorrow doomsday scenarios that most of the climate change fear mongers warn about. And I’m not convinced that mankind is the main culprit of their projected global weather disasters.
And I notice the name for this situation has been changed from “global warming” to “climate change.” I guess those who carry the banner for this concept got tired of people pointing out that 30 years ago the cry was “new ice age.”
And now, I must grant equal time to a different opinion: Rainbow conspiracy.
Bullgrit
8 Responses to Climate Change