11 de agosto de 2007

Global warming

Up until now I was refraining from writing on global warming, and I won't do so, but I found a slashdot comment, related to a finding that NASA's data on global warming had an error that was silently corrected that pretty much synthesises my thoughts on the matter:

There is no questioning of global warming. It's now a fact. The sun revolves around the earth. To suggest otherwise means you're an idiot.
Let's ignore that CO2 is not the largest part of our atmosphere, and something else (say methane) may be responsible. Let's ignore the fact we're coming off an ice age. Let's the history of "science facts" that the media has trumpeted in the last 40 years or so (remember when we would all die in a massive world-wide starvation as foretold in "The Population Bomb"?, the new ice age they said would come in the by the 80s? The mass extinction caused by DDT?) Let's ignore the fact that Mars is getting hotter too and that it seems to be the Sun's fault. How about that acid rain that would become a blight on the planet making it impossible to go outside while it was raining in the US? And where are those empty south american countries that lost so many trees the planet can't produce enough oxygen to supply all the people in the world.
Is the globe getting warmer? Seems like it. Is it the fault of humans? I wonder. Is it the fault of CO2? I wonder. I don't care if you want to reduce pollution and emissions and such. When I moved to my current location 9 years ago or so, the sky was clear. We now have plenty of smog. Asthma is going up in the US. There are plenty of reasons to do these kind of things. But no one talks about that any more. If we want to cut car exhaust, it's to stop the planet from warming, not so the air isn't brown. If we want to reduce power plant emissions it is to reduce the warming of the globe, not because the plant has been putting a fine layer of soot on everything downwind.
Global warming is the latest media boogeyman. I'm just sick of hearing about it. I'm sick of how it's the US's fault. China pollutes more than us now. Go bug them. Go help them stop burning so many coal blocks for heat. Go help them make cleaner cars affordable. Go help India. Go help Europe (which is getting close to our levels). Fight the BIG sources (that will only grow bigger). When a dam is leaking, you plug the BIG leak that will soon be letting out 20,000 gallons a minute, not 5 little holes that let a few gallons through per day.
I'm sick of this global warming stuff, and how I've basically never seen it questioned in the mass media (except by other people who question it and immediately get called morons for questioning).
Global warming, as it is discussed in the US, seems more like a religion than anything else to me at this point.
Can you give me a good reason why the number from a government scientist who's report was used to "prove" global warming and then later complained he was censored for his actions being disproved shouldn't be reported just as big as the original story?
Remember kids. Call the president a child molester, that's page one. Print the retraction (if at all), that's page 37b in tiny type 6 months later between an ad for Hardee's and Mission Impossible 12.

Amén.

2 de agosto de 2007

Platero y tú

Voy a acabar borracho.


¡Pero qué buenos que son!

Parece que esto se está convirtiendo en un videolog, prometo algo más de texto para la próxima :-)
 
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