| Editor's Note - It Is Time to Act |
| Yesterday I went to a small gathering my friend Rick Ingrasci organized and listened to one of the lead authors of the IPCC climate reports talk about about how The American Geophysical Union, the world's largest professional association of scientists studying climate, is planning to hold a conference in San Francisco to try and figure out how to get the public and politicians to understand how really desperate the situation is. We are, he said, befuddled, by what we see as the willful ignorance of policy makers. We don't understand why our alarms have so little effect. But what really caught my attention was this: We could make the transition from a carbon based energy system to a non-carbon based system for about two per cent of the American GNP. When I talked with him I pointed out that we now spend each year about 17 per cent of our GNP on the illness profit system. So, if what he was saying was accurate, and I trust both his passion and his proven expertise, then if we could achieve approximately a 12 per cent reduction in healthcare costs we could pay for the whole energy transition. The reduction plus the cost would mean that the total would be no more than we are paying now. Inasmuch as the French pay 11 per cent of their GNP to have the best healthcare in the world, and we pay 17 per cent to get the 37th worst healthcare, it is clear that the only thing stopping the transition is the corruption of our Congress, and the greed of the uber-rich and the corporations they control. Think about that insight. Nothing is going to save us but ourselves. If you value your children's and grandchildrens' lives you better start working and organizing your friends to make your voice heard through voting and social activism. And here is the realpolitik truth as I see it: The Red value states are not going to wake up to the coming disaster in time, so the Blue value states have to overwhelm them, by changing election financing laws, and voting for men and women with fact based world views, and enough integrity and guts to see this change through. The alternative is the end of world as we now know it. -- Stephan A. Schwartz,www.schwartzreport.net |
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Comments: 10
Simple, drop and apologize for the "settled science" routine, the demonization and name calling of anyone who does not have blind faith in the UN IPCC, the runaround and denial about the failure of the computer models/modelers to predict over fifteen years of relatively warming free global temps, and the "climategate" e-mails, and the exploitation of weather events that fit the idea that the globe is warming precipitously while ignoring those which contradict that idea, etc, etc, and begin a serious, open, responsible discussion of the potential. In short, stop acting like conmen, and start acting like real scientists. Then, we'll see . .
Just trying to come up with another guilt trip/harassment/badgering campaign is so incredibly stupid, if the people pushing the catastrophic AGW theory are actually convinced, that in and of itself it implies they aren't really convinced, or aren't really very smart people, to me.
Enough with the con games, I say, present the case for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, all by it's lonesome, not the case for any and all environmental concerns, as though the ONLY threat to any environment is human caused global warming. That works great for the mega corporations exploiting the worlds resources and environments for profit, because it blurs and obfuscates what they might be up to which is damaging to environments/life/us, and gives them cover to operate under without scrutiny, but it is hardly a realistic summation of all "environmental" threats/problems on the planet.
If no one had ever thought of this CAGW theory, we would hardly be all done cleaning up our act, and ready to live happily ever after in harmony with nature . . that's dumb, and obviously so to me. I reject this either stupid or deceptive person's every whine, 'cause I don't pretend so good . .
I just told you . . please read again . . it's pretty simple.
The shoddy/bullying tactics are what first made me truly skeptical . . I thought there must be very strong evidence and logics I simply had not yet seen, until I started seeing that sort of BS being flung around . . and I can actually go get comments I made on this site to prove it. I once was (at least tentatively) convinced there probably was a serious threat from human CO2 emissions, but became leery as a direct result of those tactics being deployed.
So I went about educating myself in these matters, and found no such strong evidence or logics, but a "rush to judgment" shell game of sorts, that sought to turn the predictions of some UN enlisted computer modelers into "settled science", and to demonize/ostrisize anyone that questioned their "alarming" predictions. Now I know why, I believe, and it ain't because they had an iron clad case, to say the very least . . .