If I never hear another word about global warming, it will be too soon. To me, this constant back and forth about climate change is the most intellectually bankrupt exercise of all time. I don’t care if 99.9% of scientists think that man-made global warming is a reality, and I don’t care what percentage of the populace at large doesn’t believe a word of it. The entire argument strikes me as the worst sort of red herring, and the people who believe in global warming are just feeding a machine of counter-productive idiocy.
The only reason I can imagine that anyone would even care whether or not global warming is real is because they want to stop the behaviors that are causing it to happen. As long as they allow the argument to be framed on these terms, though, they are making it impossible for themselves. If you say, “Pollution and carbon emissions are causing global warming” and a polluter or a carbon emitter doesn’t believe you, they will just ignore you and continue on their merry way. If the people running the companies doing all the polluting aren’t convinced by broad scientific concensus, what are they ever going to be convinced by? More importantly, if the people who are putting the policymakers in office don’t even possess the scientific literacy to understand your data, much less arrive at an informed conclusion about it, what is the point of beating this drum for years on end? As more and more scientists make it clear that, in their mind, global warming caused by human beings is an undeniable truth… what? Nothing has happened, and nothing is going to happen.
By talking about pollution and carbon emissions in the framework of global warming, we have allowed the burden of proof to be shifted to a place it never should have been. Why should scientists have to prove to the public that pollution and carbon emissions are raising global temperature averages? Let’s assume for a second that pretty much every living scientist is just totally wrong, or a politically-motivated liar, and that human activity has made absolutely no difference whatsoever in terms of average temperatures or ice cap depletion. Does that automatically make it an awesome idea to pump toxic chemicals into the water supply or to fill the air with dense concentrations of chemical gasses?
Instead of continuing to prop up this system wherein, if you can’t convince the public at large that factories and automobiles and all the other industries we engage in that introduce megatons of chemicals and gasses into the environment, then they have no reason to stop doing it, how about we switch the burden of proof to the other side? Instead of trying the same old thing that hasn’t worked for decades, why don’t we ask these people to name one single positive outcome for public health and safety that could ever arise from the way we do things now? If the scientific community just leaned back on their lab stools and said, “Fine, then, we’ll drop the whole issue if you can tell us a single imaginable scenario in which chemical runoff and carbon dioxide overproduction are going to make you or your children healthier,” what possible response could there be? The only possible reply I can think of is, “Well, if we do this, it’s going to kill jobs!” To those people I say: this country has been bleeding jobs for at least 25 years while also pumping poison into the environment, so why should we keep pumping poison into the environment when it has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that it isn’t going to keep jobs in the US anyway? Furthermore, it has been proven time and time again that one of the most effective methods of job creation is infrastructure development. If anything, trying to install more environmentally responsible industries would create an entire class of jobs that doesn’t currently exist while also making this country a safer and healthier place to live.
People love nothing more than being contrary, and they hate nothing more than being told what to do by someone else, especially someone else who is smarter and more accomplished than they will ever be. If a scientist, or Al Gore, or whoever, tells some random voter in the Midwest that they need to start voting in such a way as to cut this stuff down, it is abundantly clear that their reaction will be to bristle at the condescension inherent in that kind of edict. If we ask that person, though, to give their ideas on how pollution and unchecked emissions and lack of regulation could possibly be of benefit to mankind, they are not going to be able to think of a single thing to say and they are also going to be more likely to listen because they are being engaged in a discourse instead of preached down to from the lofty halls of academia. Instead of concentrating on how right we are because we believe in climate change, how about we start concentrating on the best way to actually do something about it?
Am I the only person who is tired of Dr. Pepper and their nonsensical marketing campaigns? I’ll ignore their obviously ridiculous assertion that they have created a diet soda that tastes like anything besides mouth cancer and self-loathing, and instead concentrate on the absurd notion that a can of Dr. Pepper is somehow a magical conglomeration of 23 delicious flavors. Really, guys? I’ve had a Dr. Pepper or two in my time, so I’m willing to admit that it has slightly more flavors than an ordinary soda. I can see cherry, and vanilla, and high fructose corn syrup. Unless you count early onset diabetes and tooth decay as flavors, that still leaves 20.
