While it may have been reached regarding global warming, the arguments against it being human caused and the people presenting them, are much too sensible to merely be written off as shills for some corporation or another; all of which leads to a sensible decision to not rush into anything that may result in vast change at a huge cost.
The environmental movement spearheading the charge on this hasn’t really garnered many honors around the correctness of its past warnings; population boom, coming ice age, mass starvation, etc., to cause us to lay all on the line for its current one.
There are so many public issues, right here in River City, that are clearly urgent, like flooding, police protection, and prison stability, that looking to address them first, while reserving judgment on those larger and of more uncertainty, could be prudent.
Global warming: What's the big deal?
By John D. Cox -
Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, February 4, 2007
You can put a fork in it, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in so many words. Our climate goose is cooked. The people who really know what they're talking about have just made public their latest assessment of the global warming situation and confirmed what observations and computer simulations have been telling them for some time now. Evidence of change -- largely caused by human activities -- is showing up everywhere, and no matter what we do, the climate is expected to continue changing for many years.
If we can judge by the "Summary for Policymakers" made public Friday in Paris, among the most troublesome features of this new forecast is its focus on the momentum of climate change and its implications for the future. If the rise in greenhouse gases were to suddenly grind to a halt, global temperatures would continue climbing about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit each decade for the next several decades. If nothing is done, the rise will continue at about twice that pace. Among the more positive features of the report, examined by more than 2,500 scientific expert reviewers, is that it builds on the increasing ability of the world's climate scientists to describe in more detail the broad range of changes -- not just rising temperatures -- that are the consequences of global warming.
Are they really concerned about a rise of globally averaged surface temperatures of only 1 degree Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2005? Are we missing something here? What's a couple of degrees of gradually increasing temperature, shared among friends? Over time, it's going to be like we all moved a little farther south, right? So who couldn't do with a little warmer winter, or longer spring? What exactly is the problem? Why are we being asked to care so much? To be honest about this, well, as Rhett Butler might have put it to Scarlett O'Hara: "Frankly, my dear, I don't see this as having any significant effect on me."
