I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth yet, but I expect that I will agree with it. There has been a lot of talk about global warming lately. People who are against the concept (largely conservatives) say that it's paranoid Chicken Little "the sky is falling kind of stuff". The people who believe that global warming is an issue (largely liberals) are saying that people are simply trying to ignore the truth, hoping it will go away.
Whether you're conservative or liberal, it's time to tear down these partisan barriers and admit that something is going on. Like it or not, global warming is becoming a reality.
There was a heat wave that tore across our country last month. We all felt that at some time.
When I was in Seattle, the temperature of the ocean had heated up to 15 degrees higher than normal, hence the lack of oysters.
Many of you will disregard that as simple summer weather. We've had heat waves before, right? Life goes on, doesn't it?
Here's something you may not know: this heatwave also caused a brief but bad drought in areas of Europe. The result? Reduced grain production.
What does this mean to you? Well the price of malting barley has soared in recent weeks.
What does that mean? Next year, you might be paying a lot more for European beer.
That's really hitting us where it hurts. Are you with me now? Isn't it time we did something?
Link to story
4 comments:
I think part of the problem is an avoidance of long-range thinking.
I'll repeat myself, because I always do: first time I heard about global warming was 1982, when studies of greenhouse gasses were being carried out at the University of Michigan Biological Station.
That was twenty-four years ago -- nearly a quarter of a century has passed.
Data doesn't lie. Science doesn't lie.
Do politics ever lie?
If politics lie, do those lies effect the Economy, aka the God of all politicians? Betcherass they do, or nobody would bother to lie, would they?
Those who call the rest of us Chicken Littles are simply more concerned with amassing short-term wealth and power than they are concerned with preserving the planet for their descendents.
Another thing I've noticed? Conservatives who have children are more likely to give a shit about the state of the planet than conservatives without children, but they are a little slower on the uptake because their focus is still typically on the economy -- again, short-term thinking. Liberals without children tend to give enough of a shit about the descendents of their fellow humans that they care about the future of the planet.
I suspect that if we were in immediate danger of perishing en masse from heat and drought, those who currently refuse to admit to the long-term implications of scientific data might take an interest.
Or they might not. Perhaps they think they'll finance artificial environments in order to perpetuate their selfish little gene pools.
If anything, Chicken Little needs to start fudging the data and telling political lies to get our economically focused greed & war-mongers' attention.
If the data doesn't effect the Dow or the NASDAQ, it will be ignored.
End rant.
PS: We'd better get our beer while the gettin's good, eh?
Polar ice caps...whatever
Mass flodding...what?
Global chaos...who cares.
What? My beer's going to cost more?
Someone should have told us that sooner. It would be even easier to solve the crisis if it caused erectile disfunction. You'd have every fat bastard in Washington lobbying for more funding for research into this catastorphe.
That's it! We need to generate a scientific hoax that global warming causes erectile disfunction...maybe the increased temperatures are making male genetalia too warm to produce sperm too...or maybe wild variations in barometric pressure are causing breast implants to violently explode?
agreed. that would be a catastrophe. I needs my fancy beer...
seriously, I have noticed price increases recently on my fave brands.
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