I'm beginning to think that you aren't really on the global-warming bandwagon after all, or are on it by mistake.
Scientists say these losses will be increasingly compounded by global warming, which accelerates smog formation and increases the risks of fatal heat stress.
The relationship between global warming and smog, as stated here, is that 1) global warming connotes a global rise in temperature and 2) temperature increases accelerate smog formation. Smog is not global warming and global warming is not smog. Temperature increases accelerate smog formation regardless of the reason for the temperature increase. Smog is greater in the summer than in the winter because the temperature is higher. The relationship is between temperature and smog. The notion of global warming is incidental.
Smog is what we can now see. It has immediate impact, But global warming has even more dire consequences for the longer term:...I am like most people. I am not too concerned about the longer term.
Global warming is a long term problem. If you are not too concerned about the longer term, it's hard to imagine why you are interested in global warming. Unless you are mistakenly conflating global warming and smog. Or global warming and environmental protection.
aggressively cutting down on pollution, using energy more efficiently, and not doing unnecessary harm to our natural resources seem so obvious.
Seems obvious to me, too. But it's not necessary to raise the spectre of the global warming to do that. There are plenty of here and now reasons to reduce pollution. Health reasons, particularly, but resource reasons and aesthetic reasons and cost reasons as well. Interjecting global warming into the argument may do more harm than good. Invoking global warming as a scare tactic may get more attention directed toward pollution problems. But the hyperbole of it may turn other people off to what are reasonable pollution reduction actions. You can see right here on this thread knee-jerk negativity at the mere mention of the word, environmentalist. As a practical matter, it's hard to say whether it turns more people on than off or the converse but the utility of it is questionable. Independent of the practical effect, intellectual integrity is also a factor. Hyping and scaring people to get political action is not something we want to foster, methinks. |
