Saturday, July 19, 2008
Global Warming
Having lived 80 years, I have seen heat waves, cold waves, droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and ideal weather conditions. I have read about ice ages and seen charts of weather accounts starting with the year 1,000A.D. through 1900 A.D. These charts would seem to indicate a warming (Medieval Warm Period) for about 500 years and then a cooling (Little Ice Age) for about 500 years. During the l970's I decided to buy a home in Florida (if possible) because climatologists were predicting another cold age. Recently, Al Gore made a speech in which he predicted dire consequences in 10 years if steps were not taken to alleviate the anthropogenic (manmade) global warming. In my opinion, he is either delusional or a political charlatan. No one disputes that climates change. The amount that man is able to affect this change I believe to be so minimal as to not be cause for concern. I do not accept the argument about "consensus". This way of coming to a decision is foreign to the scientific method where skepticism is essential to progress and learning. I'm sure we all agree that there are excellent reasons to use less oil, develop new sources of energy and avoid polluting our environment. This is now a matter of our national security and economic health. Unlike Al Gore, I predict that 10 years from now it will be business as usual as far as the climate goes, but I'm not so sanguine about the economy and world peace.
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I think there is a possibility that it is correct that there won't be any real climate change due to man's activities so far. But I also think there is a real possibility that there WILL be climate change due to what we've already done, but more importantly what we WILL be doing. To deny the possibility of man's actions affecting the Global Environment when we've seen so many cases of man's activity affecting smaller regions seems imprudent. Certainly we KNOW that a single volcanic explosion can affect the environment. It is easily to extrapolate that there is SOME level of human activity which WILL affect the world climate. An openness to POSSIBILITY is what is needed to address our species' changing relationship with our ancestral home. I'm sure all of us are 100% in agreement that there are many wonderful reasons to act responsibly and conservatively to save fuel, pollute less, and find other energy sources with less downsides than big oil, so in the words of my friend Bernard Lassegue, let's leave the issue of large or short cycle climate change "On The Shelf", which means we don't close our minds on EITHER side of the issue, pending more information. I applaud Big V.'s willingness to undertake and finance a project as large in scope, and as long-term in duration as the PV installation on Anna Maria island. If our elected leaders were equally as willing to consider new approaches, our problems (Climate Change?, dependence upon hostile governments for energy, etc. would already be well on a path to being solved
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