Thursday, February 18, 2010

Blips Versus Epochs

The earth is approximately four billion years old. I think it's probably fair to say that a great deal has happened to it throughout that time-frame. For instance, I think it's also fair to say that we've no doubt had countless previous episodes of global warming (not to mention countless ice ages as well) - some of which have no doubt been very destructive. I say this, folks, not as a global warming denier, but simply for a little more perspective. I mean, absolutely, there may in fact be a strong element of human causality at play here. But, clearly, there may also not be..........................................................................................I simply ask you to look at these statistics from geocraft.com. According to these folks, 95% of all greenhouse gas is nothing but water vapor. And, yes, even if you DO exclude this particular element, man made greenhouse gasses (CO2, nitrous oxide, methane, etc.) represent only 5.6% of all greenhouse gasses in the environment. Is that amount enough to markedly alter global temperatures? Maybe, maybe not (just for the record, if you do include water vapor, man made greenhouse gasses represent less than .3% of all greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere)........................................................................................So, does this all mean that there's nothing to worry about here? Nope, it doesn't mean that at all. Global warming is global warming. Of course, what it does mean is that maybe we need to be focusing more on how we adapt than how we prevent. And, really, even if (and, yes, I'm saying if) man made pollution ISN'T causing global warming, it's still making us pretty damn sick. We should at the very least want to stop it for THAT. And, yes, as some of my colleagues have pointed out of late, getting off of Middle-Eastern oil wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, either.

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