The Global Warming Hoax

I received the following from a family member:

Greenpeace Founder Says Climate Change A Combo Of ‘Extreme Political Ideology And A Religious Cult’
Posted on February 28, 2014

Climate Change in our whole solar system should be taken into account.
Check it out:

This guy is my new hero on Climate Change. Patrick Moore, the founder of Greenpeace, says he left the group back in the mid ’80s after being with them for 15 years, when he says the group took a hard turn to the political left and began to adopt positions he could not accept with his scientific background.

When asked by Hannity what’s driving the Climate Change agenda, he said this:

It is a powerful convergence of interests among a very large number of elites, including politicians who want to make it seem as though they are saving the world, environmentalists who want to raise money and get control over very large issues like our entire energy policy, media for sensationalism, universities and professors for grants – you can’t hardly get a science grant these days without saying it has something to do with Climate Change.

http://conservativebyte.com/2014/02/greenpeace-founder-says-climate-change-combo-extreme-political-ideology-religious-cult/

Consider the Source
First, we should consider the source of this information.  This is from "ConservativeByte.com".  Whose tagline is: "Taking a byte out of Liberalism".  Note that their tagline is not "bringing you unvarnished facts".  Here's the first paragraph from their About page:

ConservativeByte.com provides you with the latest news from a conservative perspective to counter the liberal bias of the mainstream media. These news bits help you to take a byte out of liberalism, socialism, and other threats to the freedom that our founding fathers fought and died to give all Americans.

 So again, their stated goal is not publishing unbiased information.  They clearly state that they intend to provide "new" to *counter libarl bias*.

All fair and good.  They've found a former "Socialist" who says Climate Change is a hoax to in a bitd for power.  I'll throw this in the category of "Conservatives Discover Yet Another Black Conservative".

Bits of Truth
But even considering how biased the source of this information is, this information is not entire wrong.  There are bits of truth here. The "Greenpeace founder" is right: There are many on the political left whose main goals are gaining power and influence -- just like on the right side of the "aisle".

I have personally read many articles by "scientists" (anyone can call themselves that -- at least until they are actively discredited by the scientific community) drawing rediculous links to global warming.  Years ago, the ruin of every ancient city uncovered was blamed on "an asteroid event".  These days they blame such things on "climate change".  What happened to the civilizations on Easter Island?  Climate change! (I've seen articles literally blaming the downfall of Incan/Mayan civilizations on climate change.)

I suspect this has to do with some researchers with "flexible" moral structures willing to tag onto whatever the political/scientific/social hotbutton of the day is in order to win funding for their pet project.  I'm not sure how many real scientists are biasing their information in bids for power.. but there are many people posing as scientists who are willing to pump the media for the chance at a few bucks.


However

However, this doesn't mean that global warming isn't a real and present threat.

Just because the Koch brothers declare global warming is a hoax doesn't mean it isn't real.  It also doesn't mean that everyone on the right of the ideological scale agrees with them.  Finding several dozen "Liberals" who think Global Warming is a hoax would likewise be interesting, but not compelling.

We're in the middle of a potentially decades-long drought here in the West.  When a rainstorm blows through, no-one says, "See -- there's no drought, its raining!"

Likewise, just because the South got freezing weather, it doesn't mean global warming isn't happening.

Re: Solar Activity
There happens to be little to no scientific evidence to pin our change in climate to "solar activity".
But does Conservative ideology blaming Global Warming on solar activity mean that "The Right" (whoever that is) concedes that Global Warming is real... just not "our fault"?


Even if it is not "our fault", wouldn't it behoove us to attempt to counteract it?

Burning Millions of Years of Forests
I view our situation as the following thought experiment:
Think of the cataclysmic events that are recorded in the fossil record.  There are several events from mega-volcanoes and at least one (probably more) from giant meteor strikes (one of the events "killed the dinosaurs").  Those events alone weren't enough to kill 90% of life on earth.  But they were catastrophic enough to fill the atmosphere with enough particles to filter the sunlight enough to kill the plants... and hence life on earth.

Imagine, if over a million years, we let all the plant matter on earth regrow, then burned it all -- and repeated this for a million years, no one would argue that the CO2 released in that millions-of-years series of events would not be enough to alter our climate.

Yet that's what we've been doing over the last 50 years.  When we burn fossil fuels, we're combusting carbon from millions upon millions of years worth of condensed plant material.



Puny Humans
It's comforting to think that we humans are still so puny that we can't affect the ecology of the entire planet, but time and time again we have.  To wit:

- We wiped out the *billions* of passenger pigeons -- down to the last bird... with relatively primitive technology -- in less than 100 years.

- We took decimated bison populations estimated at 60 million creatures down to ~700 in little more time it took us to build a railroad.  Those numbers were killed primarily by rifle -- one at a time.

- In a single decade, we turned the American midwest into a near lifeless dustbowl.  (http://capita.wustl.edu/namaerosol/Dust%20Bowl%20map.htm)  So much of the American midwest had gone to ruin that single, giant storms would leave 1/4" layers of midwest soil on ships in New York City harbor.

- China today has pollution levels *20* times higher than the UN recommends as the maximum pollution allowable for humans.  China is *literally* concerned that their food supply is in jeopardy due to decreased photosythesis in their field crops. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/26/pollution_in_china_having_nuclear_winter_impact_on_crops/)  Note: The original link is from a government-censored *CHINESE newspaper*.  Let that sink in a moment.  China has been downplaying this for years, so one can only imagine what the *real* situation is like.

Here's an idea of how much land we're talking about:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2478300/Pictured-Nasa-satellite-images-reveal-terrifying-extent-Chinas-air-pollution.html

The pollution in China has really only been building up since American manufacturing moved there in the last 20 years or so.


Summary:
To stand around and deny all the evidence rolling in is foolhardy -- no matter how comfortable it is to console ourselves there's no problem or that humans could not be the cause of it.