In 5 -7 years this will be seen to have been a tempest in a political tea pot. In the spectrum of important world issues this one is about meaningless.
Frankly, Bob, I know you won't believe me when I say this, but I actually hope that you are right about this. I have to add, though, that I said the same thing to people about Iraq back in '03. They didn't believe me then either--I was "hoping" for Iraq to be a mess, was told to wait just 3 more months, then just 6 more months, killing Saddam's sons was a tipping point, Saddam being captured was a tipping point, blah blah blah. They refused to accept the simple and time-honored point that when you are fighting a people on their home turf who don't speak your language, and have very different gods, traditions and customs than you do, and most of them are opposed to you being there, you won't win unless you kill a large number of them fairly indiscriminately. This time there is another simple point--the scientists who have been studying this stuff for the past 3 or 4 decades aren't involved in a "political" conspiracy, they have considered every scientific objection that lay people can dream up, they have engaged in constant criticism of each other, they too refused for a long time to believe that the atmosphere and the climate could be affected by human activities, and that atmospheric changes could occur over relatively short periods of time. They ran what experiments they could run, they dug up and studied tree rings and ice cores and oceanic mud, they reasoned according to well established laws of physics about heat and moisture and plant, phytoplankton, fish and animal biology, they have built up ever more sophisticated models to try to decipher what has happened in the past and what is likely to happen in the future. And they have come up with what they have come up with.
Maybe you're right and they're wrong. But the fact that most of the people who think that "In 5 -7 years this will be seen to have been a tempest in a political tea pot" are adamantly opposed to government regulation leads me to believe that they are the ones who have a political agenda, not the scientists who have been studying the matter ever more intensely for the past 30-40 years.
Anyway - the results of the next 10 years are baked in the cake.
You are right about that. For the most part, at any rate. The next 10 years could turn out to be worse than they have to be, although they and likely even the next 20-30 years won't be good ones whatever we do now if the view of most climatologists is correct. But actions taken now will affect the last half of this century. I realize that many people on this board won't be alive then, and some have even expressed a "so who cares about the last half of the century, I'll be dead" attitude. The French aristocrat's "Apres moi, le deluge" attitude back in the mid-18th century. But government shouldn't take that attitude, IMO. And people with children shouldn't take it either.
I know I don't take that attitude. But, yeah, I know, I'm just a self-righteous and hysterical kinda guy. |
