Two years ago I wrote an article on global warming. Since then, if you look through a gigantic magnifying glass, you'd notice that little has changed on our planet. Here's the article:
David Marsh, April 6, 2007
LOS ANGELES, California – The deadly cyclone that tore through the island of Madagascar last month affecting more than 130,000 people was caused by global warming, claims a local scientist --
The BBC’s green bashing documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” which aired last month in Great Britain is now causing a flash storm in the United States --
No doubt you see the connection in the two headlines. But is the connection real? The divisive debate on global warming is one of the most puzzling and mind boggling I have ever experienced. Temperature anomalies aside, from my eyes our world does not look remotely as clean and lovely as it did 35 years ago. Back then as a kid I remember swimming in the glorious French Mediterranean, and the sea looked and felt nothing like it does today, oily and green. The night skies were alive with millions of clear bright twinkling stars, the air in the city still smelled of trees and flowers, not nausea inducing gas fumes, and the Antarctic was a continent of ice. So I know first hand that the planet has changed significantly over these years. It’s been polluted, and the polluting continues. You don’t need to be a scientist to figure out that our planet is reeling from pollution, you just need to use your God-given commonsense.
Most of us pick up our news intake in mini bytes, a few minutes at the computer, another few flipping TV channels, a conversation at the water cooler. Not surprisingly, truths, falsehoods and rumors spread fast. After the BBC aired their documentary on global warming lies, many of my friends and colleagues were quick to point out that the documentary had presented a solid and sensible argument debunking the entire the global warming theory. For a moment I too began to think of the possibility of global warming as nothing but a hoax of enormous proportions. Was Al Gore’s documentary “Inconvenient Truth” slanted? Just months prior, after watching Gore's film, I pretty much had thought to myself, well, that’s it, game over. But now the BBC had presented other theories and facts on the subject, and it seemed that everywhere I turned others were decrying global warming. I listened to scathing counters by the likes of CNN’s Glenn Beck and journalist Robert Tracinski who wrote a post “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” in which he slams certain media outlets for calling carbon dioxide a pollutant, and my thinking of doom and gloom began to soften, which arguably might be a good thing.
But the oceans still look ugly, I reminded myself. The stars in the night sky are still concealed by blankets of smog, and the debunkers of global warming tend to make people forget these things. "What about your own eyes, what do you see?" I told my colleagues. "What about commonsense?" My point is that the debunkers make us lose sight of what we really observe on our planet, so much so that when the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their latest findings on Global warming, almost every person I spoke to about the report, and it wasn’t a few, laughed it off. These people, it seems, would rather drown in our polluted cities or maybe die of thirst in them rather than entertain the notion that our planet is conveying some sort of message.
Let’s play the devil’s advocate for a moment. Let’s say the IPCC is wrong, and the changes in our climate are temporary and very normal, a view akin to the stance of the BBC documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Governments will spend fortunes needlessly implementing environmental changes, many industries will be forced to conform to the new paradigm or fold, people will have to curb their environmental onslaught, new clean power inventions will overtake the old systems, the skies and oceans will take on a cleaner look and feel, and smog and fuel stinking streets will become memories of the past. What a terrible thought, huh?
Though technically correct with his commentary on what carbon dioxide is, journalist Robert Tracinski and others of like mind who decry global warming activism, are guilty of making millions of Americans lethargically indifferent to environmental pollution, which, rightly or wrongly, is locked hand in hand with global warming. Keeping the status quo is not a good thing. Debunking the hundreds or thousands of climatology scientists who are 90% certain that human produced carbon gases are contributing to global climatic changes is not a positive thing. Perhaps, in a court of law, these scientists who believe in global warming would lose, failing to prove their case by 10% of reasonable doubt. But does the world really want to let global warming go free, which really means letting polluters go free? Can humanity afford to guess with our future? Surely it makes more sense to err on the side of caution, even if the climate concerns are overstated and even though the clean up and conservation will cost billions. Is it better to spend billions on the war machine or the clean machine?
What really amazes me is why there are so many outspoken voices against global warming awareness from individuals without any deep-rooted knowledge on the subject, without any vested interest in industries that produce vast quantities of pollution such as the automotive industry, the oil and chemical industries, etc. To the millions of plain, hardworking people in America who believe wholeheartedly that global warming is hyped to the hilt, not so bad, a liberal minded ploy, all I can say is this: Are you ready to bet your life on it, and the lives of your children and grandchildren? How sure are you that we are not on the verge of massive species extinction and what makes you think man is exempt?
While some scientific/media reports paint an alarming picture of our future on this planet, and others make light of those reports, and while the political posts use each viewpoint at whim, bending and distorting the facts, you would be hard pressed to find a practicing, employed scientist who rejects with complete and absolute conviction the notion of man’s involvement in global warming. Even Dr. John Christy, one of the leading climatologists in America, most notably recognized for his outspoken contrary opinions on some global warming issues, has publicly stated that, “It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the atmosphere and sending quantities of greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate change hasn't been increased in the past century.”
As the climate debate rages on, as fierce as the weather in the southern hemisphere this year, we seem to lose perspective of one of the core values of the green movement: loving the earth. Even if carbon dioxide is not the cause of global warming, pollution from industry, cars, boats and planes definitely affects all living things on our planet, and not in a positive way. So the bottom line is this: If commonsense tells you that global warming awareness will lead to planetary respect, maybe you’d like to pass on this message of hope and change. If, on the other hand, you don’t feel we should err on the side of caution, feel free to e-mail me why we should carry on as normal, and by all means pick up my novel “Into the Abyss,” not so much about global warming as global respect.
David Marsh is a novelist and freelance writer in Los Angeles. You can reach him at davidm617@aol.comThe BBC documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” a counter to Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” aired in Britain in March and briefly appeared on Google video. Last month’s Madagascan cyclone, hardly mentioned in the American press, was just one in a series of cyclones that marked one of the worst cyclone seasons on record.
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