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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (13105)	5/29/2007 5:29:18 PM
From: miraje	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

First of all, I'm not a scientist and have no desire to delve into technical minutiae. My interest, as a layman, is to get a handle on the big picture and attempt to foresee the possible consequences of various scenarios being played out in addressing the "global warming" issue. I have no time for religion, red, green, secular or supernatural. I also have no time for unsubstantiated opinions being promulgated as facts (and that includes all the political crap that has permeated, polluted and distorted the much needed, objective and dispassionate inquiry into this matter). Common sense and reason are in grave danger of being trumped by hyperbole and hysteria. And if some high school gal can dispense a dose of the former into the mix, then more power to her. Here's a summary of my take on this topic.. First, it would be hard to dispute that the earth has warmed up slightly as of late. Is it entirely due to natural phenomenon? Or entirely the result of human activity? Or some degree of combination of the two? No one knows. And anyone who claims to "know" is stating an opinion (AlGore) and not a fact. Second, if the warming trend continues, will it create, on balance and as a result, more positive or negative environmental consequences? (It's reasonable to postulate that there will be some of both). Third, if it's a natural occurrence, then there's not a damn thing that anyone can do to change it. Fourth, if it can be demonstrated that warming has, in fact, a primarily anthropogenic basis, then it would be expedient to weigh the economic factors necessary to mitigate or reverse the trend against any "down the road, end of the world" scenarios resulting from maintaining the status quo. Lastly (in my opinion), all the touchy feely, "one sheet Cheryl" greenie "solutions" to curbing greenhouse gas emissions are so much pissing in the wind. And the politically mandated reductions being proposed and implemented fall into the same category, being costly and economically damaging without accomplishing anything. The cold (no pun intended) hard fact is that the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to restore pre-industrial atmospheric levels would be to destroy modern civilization. Ain't no way around it. And the more that people are pushed in that direction, the less that they're gonna like it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if anthropogenic global warming can be proven and also to be proven to be predominantly environmentally destructive and not benign (and neither has been proven as of yet), then the sole realistic means of addressing it will be capture and sequestration on a global scale..