Global Freaking Warming

I had just been commenting on this issue over at Blog 4 Brains and I was bored this weekend so I bought, An Inconvenient Truth, and I'm staring at the pathetic dusting of snow on the ground, which all has me thinking about global warming. The fact that people still think its not real simply amazes me. One thing that I think hurts is that not very long ago everyone was told that its a slow process and so a single warm or cold year did not indicate the validity or invalidity of global warming. Unfortunately every subsequent report has been more dire than the last and now it seems that time might be very limited in which we can effectively react.

So for shits and giggles I decided to check out what the skeptics had to say. Its pretty easy to find, just look at any typical media representation of "the controversy" heres an example from a source thats just too perfect. The Kansas City Star.

Speaking of ice age - Mr. Reyno, who is sceptical of global warming, points to a Time magazine article from January 1977 that suggested the Earth was tail-spinning into another ice age after a particularly chilly winter - a point he makes in reference to the media’s "flip-flopping."

Only in Kansas should you be able to get away with this. The scientist who wrote that report has apologized several times, said they did not fully understand the workings of the climate at the time and has said to please disregard that report, but it still gets used, but only by those who assume their audience doesn't know any better.
More info on the cooling myth


Then there was this, and its not even from Kansas, but the Asia Times which I have difficulty describing without excessive swearing.

Instead of reducing CO2, we should, perhaps, be increasing it. We should pay the smokestack industries hard dollars for every kilogram of soot they pump into the atmosphere. Instead of urging Chinese to stop using coal and turn instead to nuclear-generated electricity, we should beg them to continue using coal.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. Again if this was fuckin Ann Coulter I could understand but how could anyone choose to publish something that suggests we should be giving incentives to companies to INCREASE pollution. At least the person is honest, they put short term economics above all else, and they're proud of it, fuck the grandkids, I'm rich, but not rich enough!

So what do you want? If your not convinced that global warming is real at this point what would it take? Whats left, does an entire american city need to be destroyed before you'll take notice, oh wait that already happened, ok does a primarily white city need to be destroyed before you'll pay attention? The UN has released its report, the IPCC but a couple people got paid by Exxon to refute what several thousand scientists said so thats been thrown out. So maybe something closer to home, how about this quick list of FACTS:

What's Known

Scientists know with virtual certainty that:

• Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
• The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
• A warming trend of about 0.7 to 1.5°F occurred during the 20th century. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (NRC, 2001).
• The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
• Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

So what liberal whack job group published this. The EPA. So to the skeptics, I hope your right because if your wrong then we're all fucked, oh I assume that the species will survive. But our civilization will not. Our country will be mostly desert, we won't be able to grow enough food to survive. Canada will build a giant wall to keep out all the illegal immigrants, but don't worry I moved there a few years prior. Africa will be even more screwed than it is now. Asia will no longer have the fresh water to keep its population alive so expect death tolls in the hundreds of millions in that area. Europe ironically might actually get very cold due to the fact that the gulf stream has shut down after Greenland and the arctic ice cap melted. Massive storms pound the coasts around the world to the point of being nearly impossible to leave near the beach anymore, but its no big loss because those same storms swept away all the sand anyway. Theres little in the way of fishing anymore after the coral was killed off the water became acidic at ever increasing rates to the point that shellfish can't create shells, which quickly meant no more shell fish, which meant no more fish that ate shellfish and remember shellfish includes krill which is of immeasurable importance to the sea, or was before they were wiped out. Insects on the other hand are loving it so their are plagues that constantly ravage whats left of civilization.

I realize this is a worst case scenario, but its also coming true. I'm going to use the argument that theists use against me all the time, what if your wrong. Well if global warming is wrong, then we will have come up with sustainable energy more quickly than we needed too and we have all that oil to be used for other things, so it will be around for a quite a while before we need to come up with another way to make synthetic everything. What a terrifying future.

Oh of course this imagines that the world is not getting warmer, which isn't even debated. The only thing thats even vaguely questioned is if we're causing it. If the skeptics are correct and we are not at fault, then we can't prevent it. meaning all of the horrible things I mention will happen and theres isn't a damn thing we can do about it. Does that make you sleep better at night? If so then sleep tight and for their sake don't have children.