After four or five conversations about global warming Desi finally said, “What is the big deal with you and global warming?”
I asked, “Have you watched the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ DVD yet?” to which she just rolled her eyes.
And I understand. Having a whiny Al Gore shove more political crap in your face is not enjoyable. But he doesn’t. Believe me, voting for Al Gore was the first time I used my vote as a weapon. I think he’s just as slimy as any other politician but for the first time I thought someone could actually do harm in a public office – so I threw my vote to the lesser of the two evils. Ah, but Shrub got in anyways and now look. But I digress…
It wasn’t Al Gore I was interested in Inconvenient Truth but the information. I have always found meteorological, geological and planetary changes fascinating. Believe me, planetary changes is not an exaggeration.
If you don’t know the background, Al Gore has been doing the lecture circuit on this presentation for sometime and director Laurie David thought a movie would be a better way to get the message out. Apparently a professor he had in college, Roger Revelle, who is one of the original scare mongrels on this whole global warming thing, had inspired Al to do this lecture.
As much as I dislike Shrub, I am by no means an Al Gore fan. What I found so profound was the information he presented. I’ve been hearing about ‘Global Warming’ since I was a kid. Roger Revelle started measuring the CO2 levels in our atmosphere in the late sixties. Having gone 30 years and not seeing any real changes it was easy to dismiss Global Warming. After all, remember the over population threat in the seventies? Shortly after The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich none of his predictions came true. I don’t believe the same will be true of Global warming.
The difference is that 35 years have gone by and the evidence has just stacked up. “Come on, I just saw the forecast and there’s record heat that haven’t been broken since the 1800’s” Look at it this way – you have a 1 in 365 chance of breaking record. Believe me; we don’t want to break them all in one year. Did you know, since 1890, here are the 10 warmest years: 2006, 2005, 1999, 1994, 1933, 1927, 1998, 1995, 2004, and 2000 (in order 1- 10)? Notice only 1927, 1933 & 1995 are out of the last ten year range.
I have talked, argued, call it what you like about ‘Global Warming’ and some people just don’t want to ‘buy it’. I’m not really ‘selling it’. Without going into the whole Kyoto thing, it comes down to simple logic. Have you heard the logical discussion to believe in God? It goes like this: If you don’t believe in God and there isn’t a God nothing happens. If you believe in God and there isn’t a God, again, nothing happens. If you believe in God and there is a God, you’re good to go. BUT if you don’t believe God and there is a God, you’re kind of screwed.
This same logic applies to Global Warming. Do these ‘non-believers’ think Al Gore is going to raise taxes to put down a layer of Freon to refreeze the polar caps? Or paint our roofs with solar panel paint? Maybe that would be a good thing but that’s a different discussion. All I’m looking for is agreement that we screwed up on the environment, and, when the opportunity presents itself, we should try to fix.
Like any controversial issue, unless you are willing to compromise (meaning you agree you will be OK with NOT get your way) you do not have the right to sit at the table to come up with a solution. Too many people take an ultraistic perspective that it ‘my way or the highway’. It doesn’t work with Abortion, Christianity or any discussion when there is no clear answer. And it’s not going to work with Global Warning. All we can really do is lean for or against. And all I’m saying is we should lean to reducing CO2 whenever possible. Get it?