Shadow1980 said:
What I'm saying is that laymen debating the very validity of the science itself, with some of the detractors outright claiming "CONSPIRACY!", is pointless and unproductive. It's not much different than us debating whether plate tectonics is real or just a conspiracy to hide the "fact" that the Earth is hollow. Politics and money should never be an excuse to reject science. Just because those dirty hippies at Greenpeace are proclaiming the end of the world doesn't mean the scientists are full of shit. Just because you don't like the Big Bad Gubmint doesn't mean the scientists are lying to us. Just because you might lose some short-term profits doesn't mean you should work to sow doubt about the science. Lumping in the scientists with the non-scientist activists is counterproductive and intellectually dishonest. What I'm saying is that we should take the scientists at their word. The world is warming, we are the cause, and there is a chance, however slight, that the warming could be sufficient over the next century to have detrimental effects well beyond the costs to solve the problem. Millions of people displaced by rising seas, crop disruptions, increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, spread of tropical diseases, disruption of ocean currents, loss of mountain glaciers. These problems are most likely solvable, and global warming isn't going to cause the end of civilization itself (unless we find a way to burn every bit of recoverable oil and coal in the Earth's crust), but it would be prohibitively expensive and millions would still suffer in even middle-of-the-road scenarios. The warmer it gets, the greater potential for worse scenarios and thus greater cost to adapt. It's not alarmism. It's not a plot to establish totalitarian communism. It's real science. What I am saying is that we can solve the problem with technology we already have, and we don't necessarily have to use solutions frequently suggested by liberals. We could offer positive incentives or lend money to utilities to get them to invest more in and gradually change to nuclear, wind, solar, etc. I personally think that liberals and environmentalists bear at least some of the blame themselves for their knee-jerk rejection of nuclear power, which the data clearly shows is a statistically far safer form of power generation than coal or natural gas. Think of solving the problem as more like insurance. Yeah, you might have less money in your pockets each month just to buy something you might not ever need, but you get it anyway just in case shit happens. You may go your whole life without ever crashing your car of having a house fire or a catastrophic illness, but in the worst-case scenario you'll want that insurance. And just like how some insurance companies offer partial refunds for being a good driver, getting off of fossil fuels for electricity generation and automotive fuels would have benefits beyond preventing potential harm in the future. Even ignoring global warming, fossil fuels kill hundreds of thousands each year and cost humanity many millions of dollars just from the direct effects of pollution. |
Debating the validity of science shouldn't happen but it does. This is because there are different findings on similar issues within scientific literature. e.g study A says that climate sensitivity is likely to cause 1C degree warming for a doubling of Co2, but study B shows a likely 6C degree warming. People can't actually dispute the science, as both are most likely valid studies and most people don't understand the methods used. But if study A was funded by big oil, then people will be more likely to believe study B. A lot of work goes into establishing peoples biases instead of looking at their data.
Yeah I'm kind of baffled by the refusal to go nuclear. I live in Australia and we don't use nuclear power despite holding around a third of the world's uranium deposits! Seems like an obvious solution for the developed world. Those in developing nations who are only just getting a taste of coal-fired power certainly won't be able to go nuclear in a hurry.
