Global Warming?
Maybe my "Chicken Little" side is coming out in me today. With the weather the northeast US has been having this winter, maybe there is something to this whole global warming thing. I mean, how else are you going to explain a winter with more mid 40 degree days than mid 20s? Or the fact that so far we have had one snow storm which left more than half an inch, and the half-inchers can still be counted on one finger?
I suppose if you want a giggle, you can imagine me in a chicken suit running in circles screaming "The Earth is warming! The Earth is warming!" at the top of my lungs in rush hour traffic!
Ok, back to sanity for me. First, yes the weather up here has been strange to say the least. Last summer and autumn it rained enough I began questioning if somehow Massachusetts and Seattle had swapped meteorological positions in some Orwellian weather fourth dimension. Even so, and taking into account our rather balmy winter, I do not believe it is the work of some global warming scheme created or caused by humans. I just do not believe that a creature who can be killed by a mosquito has the power to permanently harm something as mighty as the planet. After all, the planet has already survived three ages of dinosaurs capable of defoliating 10% of it per day! Dinosaurs died, the planet obviously didn't.
I guess the real hang up for me is the narrow mindedness of the Global Warming camp. Yes, I can look at the recorded temperatures, running them through a computer and statistically prove that over the past hundred or so years the temperature has indeed gone up. This is something most sixth graders can do in school now as a science fair project and not even get a ribbon! My question is, "So What?" What does that mean to the overall life of the planet? Someone please tell me how a hundred years of data somehow becomes indicative of a planet hundreds of millions (if not billions) years old? At least when I was in school, science still had to be backed by data, and the data needed to be conclusive, not merely supportive.
Who is to say that the rise in temperature is anything more than the Earth's normal cycle? Who is to say that the Earth, in order to keep itself balanced, does not naturally warm itself every one to five million years to allow for new plant growth? Who is to say that we are not indeed heading into the next Ice Age? Who has the temperature logs from the last one? Did it warm up a million years before it?
The point is that sometimes we humans begin to think we are more intelligent than we are. We begin to think that with limited data and a hypothesis which can be supported but not proved we have the answer. To me, the whole Global Warming thing is akin to watching three seconds of the middle of the third Matrix movie and deducing the ending without ever watching the rest of the movies! Yes, we can assume because it's Hollywood that Neo wins, but that's just it, it's Hollywood, and after all did he really win, Trinity does die!
I'm not saying not to take care of the planet. I do not believe we have the right to damage this planet in any way since as far as we know we are only the current iteration of the dinosaur. We should make every effort to leave the planet in as good of shape as we found it. But to think we know all the answers because we have been paying attention to the last hundred years in a billion year old ecosystem is human absurdity at its finest!
I suppose if you want a giggle, you can imagine me in a chicken suit running in circles screaming "The Earth is warming! The Earth is warming!" at the top of my lungs in rush hour traffic!
Ok, back to sanity for me. First, yes the weather up here has been strange to say the least. Last summer and autumn it rained enough I began questioning if somehow Massachusetts and Seattle had swapped meteorological positions in some Orwellian weather fourth dimension. Even so, and taking into account our rather balmy winter, I do not believe it is the work of some global warming scheme created or caused by humans. I just do not believe that a creature who can be killed by a mosquito has the power to permanently harm something as mighty as the planet. After all, the planet has already survived three ages of dinosaurs capable of defoliating 10% of it per day! Dinosaurs died, the planet obviously didn't.
I guess the real hang up for me is the narrow mindedness of the Global Warming camp. Yes, I can look at the recorded temperatures, running them through a computer and statistically prove that over the past hundred or so years the temperature has indeed gone up. This is something most sixth graders can do in school now as a science fair project and not even get a ribbon! My question is, "So What?" What does that mean to the overall life of the planet? Someone please tell me how a hundred years of data somehow becomes indicative of a planet hundreds of millions (if not billions) years old? At least when I was in school, science still had to be backed by data, and the data needed to be conclusive, not merely supportive.
Who is to say that the rise in temperature is anything more than the Earth's normal cycle? Who is to say that the Earth, in order to keep itself balanced, does not naturally warm itself every one to five million years to allow for new plant growth? Who is to say that we are not indeed heading into the next Ice Age? Who has the temperature logs from the last one? Did it warm up a million years before it?
The point is that sometimes we humans begin to think we are more intelligent than we are. We begin to think that with limited data and a hypothesis which can be supported but not proved we have the answer. To me, the whole Global Warming thing is akin to watching three seconds of the middle of the third Matrix movie and deducing the ending without ever watching the rest of the movies! Yes, we can assume because it's Hollywood that Neo wins, but that's just it, it's Hollywood, and after all did he really win, Trinity does die!
I'm not saying not to take care of the planet. I do not believe we have the right to damage this planet in any way since as far as we know we are only the current iteration of the dinosaur. We should make every effort to leave the planet in as good of shape as we found it. But to think we know all the answers because we have been paying attention to the last hundred years in a billion year old ecosystem is human absurdity at its finest!
posted by Aaron Peavy | 12:54 PM
1 Comments:
Aaron - loved the "Chicken Little" story! Would like to ask one huge favor - could you make the text larger next time so it will be easier for 'ole farts like me to read?
Wish you & Eva much success with Nexus!
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