Sunday, July 01, 2007

Response to Another Brainwashed, Poorly Thought-Out, Anti-Environmental Website


The site globalwarminghysteria.com (I can't even justify linking the site) is an anti-climate change and anti-environmental website similar to Junkscience.com (sponsored by Fox News, of course) that is so clearly manipulating and misinterpreting it's data that you can't help but laugh as you read through it. As I've seen more and more of these types of websites, it's amazing how similar their arguments are. They tend to make fun of people rather than actually supporting an argument with facts. They try to undermine a person's credibility rather than presenting credible data to contradict them. They pick and choose facts to support their arguments without putting them in context or telling you the whole story. As a start, the most common attempt at debunking climate change is the "natural variation" argument, that there has always been a natural cycle and isn't out of the ordinary. The flaw in this argument is that they always look back only a few thousand years. Just a cursory glance at the graph from the EPA above, over 400 thousand years, makes it painfully obvious that we are far beyond any "natural fluctuation" in our current CO2 emissions. And although CO2 is only one of the many greenhouse gases, as far as scientists can tell it is the one that humans are most responsible for and can be attributed to climate change. I urge the naysayers to look at data concerning global warming with an open, scientifically oriented mind and I urge hard core environmentalists to avoid manipulating data to make points, no matter how important. It undermines the credibility of our arguments.

This is my response to it's post calling John Ashton hypocritical for flying to other countries to persuade them to decrease their CO2 use:

You're looking at this very one-sidedly. In order to educate others and spread the message of conservation and climate change, resources must be utilized. By criticizing Gore for his flights and his family home's energy use and Ashton for his flights to persuade others to decrease CO2 emissions, you are highlighting your lack of understanding in the process of change. At this point, we must conserve where we can, yet current systems force us to use resources as a means to an end. Eventually there will be better, less energy-intensive methods of travel and doing this type of work, but at this time, flying to destinations to educate and bargain are their only options.
Reading through your site and your "ten myths of global warming", it is obvious that you are being led by anti-environmentalist propaganda and have a poor grasp of many concepts. The statements in your "myths" are as warped as some extremist environmentalist claims. It is true and unfortunate that scare-mongering and distortion of data is occurring on the environmentalist front as well, which does undermine credibility at times and opens the movement to your type of poorly thought out criticism.
In general, however, the preponderance of scientific data shows that human activity on this planet is causing climate change and unless we act, we can look forward to unprecedented natural disasters and human suffering. If we step back, and with an open mind, look at the data that has been collected this is an inevitable conclusion. Nothing can be said 100% certainty and we know that models are flawed and need to be constantly revised as new data is recorded, but to ignore the threat just because we cannot "prove" some of these extrapolated theories is utter stupidity. We as humans need to act upon our best research in order to prevent widespread disaster, energy shortages, famine, floods and droughts. Instead of being part of the problem, you could be a part of the solution. I urge you to educate yourself on both the strengths and flaws involved with scientific method, avoid political entanglements, and take an objective, unbiased look at the data at hand and your opinion will surely change.

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