Monday, February 26, 2007

Global Warming

To be perfectly honest, the consensus of the majority of the world's scientific community isn't a clincher for me. I don't know why the vast majority of relevant scientists support the global warming thesis. I don't understand the science, so I can't evaluate their consensus.

I don't know if solar activity is causing global warming, and that therefore, there's nothing we can do.

I'm obviously a little unimpressed by scientific "renegades" who question global warming when their funding comes from the oil industry, but one never knows.

But it seems to me, that the fact of the matter is there is a possibility that human activity is causing global warming (perhaps even in combination with those solar flares or whatever) and that if, say, the United States is prepared to sink one trillion dollars into an imperialist adventure in Iraq (that was based on the bogus possibility that Saddam had WMDs) then it shouldn't be a problem for that country to spend twenty-five billion dollars on an apparently far more plausible threat.

And it seems to me, that regardless of what climate-change deniers say, there's no question that our deforestations and massive smog output is going to have some effects on the world's environment. It's absurd to imagine that we can do all this and not affect things.

We can't continue this way, and we're going to have to come up with new sources of power, more effective pollution scrubbers, and etc. If building highways, railroads, nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons, military hardware, faster computers, etc., is always treated as a boost to economic activity, then investing in the greening of our society will also have benefits.

Sure, there'll be costs. But that obviously means that the money will also be going to people who will hire other people and who will all spend it.

We should start yesterday.

No comments: