Sunday, January 26, 2014

Everything's fine, global warming is a myth.

I find that kind of discourse amusing. Amusing as in, it makes me want to skin a dog alive. Just because the most alarmist, extreme predictions (Arctic ice cap being completely melted in 2014 anyone?) were way off doesn't mean it suddenly doesn't exist. I can accept the notion of global warming not being observable to the same extent everywhere, but just personal experience, if nothing else, is enough to tell me that it's for real. Our winters are much warmer than they were when I was a kid, and even back then they were warmer than when my parents were kids themselves. I don't even need exact numbers to tell you that, which is scary.

What's especially sad is that the anti-global warming discourse lacks any kind of scientific rigor. Studies that show it exists are somehow always false because of this and that, yet studies that show it don't are always perfectly executed and thorough. As I said at the beginning, the opposite point of view isn't really excusable either - it's far more likely that the truth isn't as catastrophic as worst-case scenarios would have you believe, but not as encouraging as the other end of the spectrum suggests.

I was amused, a few years ago, to find out that the fossil fuel industry actually buys advertisement space/time in the United States, especially during the electoral season. I guarantee you this shit would never fly in Canada (or at least in Quebec), it would be an enormous scandal. And the fossil fuel industries know this, so they resort to alternate means of propaganda. For example, they have so-called "editorialists" write in major newspapers to try and discredit the notion of global warming. They're quite easy to identify: they only ever write on global warming, and nothing else, as if they had some sort of unholy fixation on the subject. Almost as if they were incapable of talking about current events, and had no opinion on anything but that. It's a lot more subtle than just saying "hi, I'm big oil, buy my shit", but anyone with a keen enough eye can detect these bullshit salesmen.

And that's yet another reason why you yourselves have to make a bit of critical thinking, and not let anyone spoonfeed you "truths" - one way or the other.

5 comments:

  1. I'm sick of it myself. In America, it's to the point where the biggest campaign contributors by far are giant corporations trying to get people elected that won't enforce regulations or seek alternate energy plans. Plus, I believe a bill was just passed that eliminates campaign contribution limits, and corporations essentially got to vote on the bill because they bought off many of the politicians. It's one giant circle that constantly increases corporate profits while screwing over citizens.

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  2. Thanks for this sentiment, Slowflake.

    When I was a kid, winters were consistently cold. Now they're more erratic. Right now we've been hit by freezing rain, polar winds, snow, strange warm days with rain, and now arctic air. It feels like we had an early winter this year, since it snowed in December (you know, when it's supposed to?) Back in the day snow was guaranteed in November, but now it usually starts in January and drags on longer than it should, like time shifted by a month.

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    1. It's exactly the same here, except it doesn't drag on any longer. But yeah, back in those days you could kiss your lawn goodbye as early as early November. Nowadays, though... we just got a full week where the temperature was around five degrees Celsius. A full week of temperatures ABOVE ZERO. IN JANUARY. It used to be that sometime we might get one day of this before going back to -15 the next day, but not anymore.

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  3. It's especially horrible here in Southern California
    Smog around 1 miles of LA is horrible and I have asthma
    and also there's oil drillers and fossil fuel plans freaking EVERYWHERE evern one was next to a target
    so much facepalm

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  4. The weather in the UK's been very odd over the last few years - every other winter has been far colder than usual and last summer was absolutely boiling.

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