I was wondering to myself what I would post about today, and simultaneously complaining to myself about the weather, because it's way too warm, and those two things combined...well. You can see from the title.
I'm aware that my opinion about global warming isn't the usual save-the-polar-bears, buy-an-environment-friendly-car, we're-all-killing-the-world type opinion, and feel free to disagree as much as you would like. Here we go.
First of all, I'd like to ask any of you out there who believe in the theory of evolution why you're worried about global warming. I mean, according to that theory, the world is always changing and species are always evolving, so even if the polar bears DO go extinct, isn't that part of nature? If the world really is warming, isn't that just part of the world slowly going from one stage to the next one? Personally, I believe that IF the world really is getting warmer (and I don't think it is, long-term) and IF species are going to go extinct - that's nature. To quote my mom, nature isn't a static thing. It's always changing.
As to why I don't believe the world is getting warmer, I have two reasons for that one. The first one is that, as I'm sure you'll discover if you ask your parents, scientists were predicting another Ice Age fifty years ago. Only fifty years ago. And now they're wailing about global warming. I don't know about you, but that makes me less inclined to believe them. The second one is that we've been recording yearly temperature averages for, oh, about a hundred years. Without going into how long the world has existed, that's a hundred years out of at least two thousand. We have no idea how worldwide temperatures fluctuated before that - NO idea. The same goes for polar ice caps. Sure, they may be melting somewhat, but how long have we been measuring their size? About fifty years. Again, out of two thousand. That doesn't strike anyone else as being a bit early to jump to conclusions?
I'm looking for feedback here, just so you all know - I AM interested in other opinions. In fact, I'm intrigued. Anyway, last point is all the guilting that goes on about releasing carbon dioxide into the air. Did you know that humans are responsible for a total of 2% of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere? Natural causes, such as volcanoes erupting, are responsible for 98%. We're not killing the world, at least not in that respect, the way everyone seems to think we are.
That would have made a horrible essay...I don't have much of a structure or a conclusion or a thesis statement, but bear with my randomly stated objections, guys :)
EDIT: HAH I managed to blog about my global warming skepticism on Blog Action Day, which is supposed to highlight environment-friendly blogs, without knowing it. If that's not hilarious, I don't know what is.
~Sil
"I'm sorry, Erin. I'm proud of you. In fact, I'll tell you what. I'll take you out for lunch. At McDonald's. Your treat, of course. I'll even pick you up - if you give me gas money."
7 comments:
Well, this is going to be a rather boring comment, as I totally agree with you. And I really like your first point, I'd never thought about that before.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that, although there are real pollution problems out there, none of them are really in North America. Really, we're excessively clean over here right now. So, why do enviromentalists seem to concentrate on how bad Americans are? The real problem is overseas in the third-world countries and their gross factories and such. But, the enviromentalists keep on whining about us. Sheesh.
Heh. Technically that's also my mom's point. But I'm sure she doesn't mind me using it, provided I give credit where credit is due :) And wow! Someone DOES agree with me! I had sort of thought my opinion was a bit radical :)
~Sil
I agree with you, too. Well, to an extent. It's not like I think we should be like, oh, well it's just nature, so we should feel free to pollute all we want. Not so much. I know that we're really not polluting all as much as we think (as you pointed out) but still. There comes a point where you kinda have to wonder a little bit about stuff like that.
So yes, I do agree with you. And yes, it would be sad if Polar Bears went extinct...but then, I'm also sad that certain dinosaurs went extinct since I love dinosaurs. But humans didn't have anything to do with that.
I really don't know where this comment is going...I should transfer over to my own blog before I waste all my blog thoughts on a comment...=P
Yeah, for sure. I mean, nature isn't something to be endlessly used exactly the way we like, it's just that I think the extent to which we are abusing it is blown completely out of proportion.
~Sil
I saw this on the back of a truck once and agree with it:
"Global Warming is just a money-making scam."
....well, since I did my general Nature Science project about the environmental warming last time, I researched muchos. :P I'm ALWAYS sceptical...just as much about the enviromental warming as about God/evolution/whatever.
My conclusion was that we do influence it more than most would like to admit though. I wish I could show you my project, but since it's all dutch....
...I can only say it worried me. I love the sea. But my country will probably be swallowed by it in about 50-100 years, and I like that a whole lot less.
Of course, the US isn't the only country polluting. To be honest, I'm much more concerned about China: they just burn coal mines, which causes major pollution. But I'm VERY upset with the US too. They didn't sign some important stuff and still produce way to much pollution. :(
Here (in the Netherlands) there are many rules to stop people from misusing energy...but that's probably because we'll just drown if the environment changes too much.
I used to ice-skate every winter, but I haven't seen real snow since I was 10. And ice-skating/ I can only do that indoors now. The environment IS changing, and it's not a good thing.
My question is: Has anyone ever considered that this could just be a cycle? You know, that the world has a pattern where it warms up fairly significantly every 100 years or whatever, and cools down after that. Just throwing that out there. Because, just think about it: We've only been measuring temperature accurately worldwide for what...100 years? Maybe that. So, it's really too early to hit that big panic button yet. There is a decent chance that the earth's climate could work the same way the seasons do, just in a larger scale.
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