I've always been a skeptic of apocalyptic hysteria, as I'm sure all of us are to some extent, yet recently it seems people have worked themselves into a frenzy over the idea of global warming. We've got new emission laws popping up all over the place, politicians running around like maniacs (even a city commissioner who claims "Trees have rights"), and a new breed of activists, all claiming that if the human race doesn't stop poking at Mother Nature, she'll hit back, hard. Personally, I find it all a little ridiculous.
It's human nature to want to feel important and to feel in control, there's just no way of getting around it, and I think that explains a lot of the hysteria regarding global warming. We want to think we have a significant impact on the Earth's climate because it would make us important and give us some measure of control over our vast and ever-changing world. However, the numbers just simply don't add up. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, humans have emitted a total of only 3.298% of all the greenhouse gasses (aside from water vapor) in Earth's atmosphere. This means that 96.702% of emissions come from plants, animals, and other natural causes! I'm no mathematician, but I'd say that's pretty insignificant, at least not significant enough to cause such extreme damage as some would claim.
So what's the cause of temperature change then? Natural cycles, in my opinion. The Earth goes through hot and cold spells over time, it's to be expected. It's generally accepted that before human's time there were more than a few ice ages, yet somehow the Earth managed to heat itself back up into the state it's in today, right? We're just in another upper part of the cycle.
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3 comments:
From my understanding ice ages are in fact a direct result of the earth's position in relation to the sun over great lengths of time. While the greenhouse effect, or global warming is a phenomenon directly influenced by the amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. High concentrations of carbon dioxide(regardless of how they got there) block the radiation that the earth emits from escaping our atmosphere. Thus rising temperatures here on our planet and creation of our own personal hell on earth, Yay Satan!
Indeed, ice ages have some to do with position from the sun, however, if we are to take that route, we can also talk about heating in relation to position from the sun, can we not? Additionally, there is information to suggest (for example greenland drilling) that there were much hotter than there are now, and there weren't floods of bilical proportions.
I'm less against rising temperature as I am against hysteria.
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