Our planet is in dire peril, we are running out of fossil fuels, the ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, there is an alarming amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, our ozone layer in depleted, the "hockey stick" theory of earth's temperature (which is debunked in one of the links at the end of this blog), and we are killing off species left and right. I was also informed that a recent study came out in which 100% (that's right, 100%) of scientists agree that global warming is real.
That's not exactly what I found.
My side is as follows. Humans are incapable, outside of detonating multiple, high-yield nuclear warheads, of messing out our planet in such a short amount of time. The Earth is not some fragile little glass ball floating through the comfort of a nice, soft, downy, space blanket. We have lived through ice ages and thaws, massive catastrophic meteor hits, super-volcano eruptions nearly destroying all life on Earth (please check out the Yellowstone Caldera for more info), earthquakes, tsunamis, and all sorts of mean nasty, and might I add, natural, stuff.
I further assert that in fact the "Green" movement is nothing more than a ploy to gain power and money. Al Gore was a mediocre politician until he furthered the religion of environmentalism and picked himself up a Nobel Prize. On my way to work today I heard yet another in the series of Alstate insurance ads urging us to go with Alstate because of how "Green" they are, books are sold by the millions about the environment, auto-makers make "green cars" that really aren't nearly as green as they would have you believe (Prius
The worse off people can make the environment sound the more money they make. Pure and simple. Greenpeace, one of the most destructive organizations towards the environment known to man, and exists solely by scaring people into giving money to their cause. They do everything they can to stop new nuclear power plants or anything else that would actually help the environment. They claim that they want to end our reliance on oil but in actuality they are trying to stop us from doing anything about it.
Case in point: They claim that nuclear power is dangerous and dirty. They lobby to stop the new construction of nuclear power plants, they send frogmen to disable nuke ships, and they continue with the rhetoric of Nuclear power is the worst form of energy. They also don't want us to use oil based fuels so pretty much they want us to ship our good over seas by wind and sail. In fact nuclear energy is the one of the cleanest forms of energy there is. It's not dangerous either, despite what the environmentalists tell you. They love to bring up Three Mile Island as a great tragedy and failure of nuclear power when in fact not one person died from it. Chernobyl is an example of what happens when a Communist country that can't afford to feed it's people puts Homer Simpson in charge of a reactor. That indeed is the only real example of any major problem in the history of nuclear power.
Much of Europe is indeed powered by nuclear energy yet in America we are continually told it is a bad thing and are prohibited from exploring it as a way to get safe and clean energy. There is another group that benefits from Greenpeace's war against nuke power and that is the oil industry. In fact when you boil it right down, almost everything Greenpeace and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) do jives very well with the oil companies and it would not surprise me if there was money being funneled in from the oil companies to the green groups through back channels. If you drill in ANWAR all of a sudden there is more oil and the price drops. Open a nuke plant and all of a sudden the price of oil drops. Convenient eh?
My friend is convinced that if we stop using oil all will be well. In fact the economic repercussions globally would be devastating. Millions of people from oil execs, tanker sailors, truck drivers, refinery workers, and gas station attendants would be out of the job. My friend brought up a town in Vermont or someplace that started making shoes then the shoe company closed so they started making something else and were successful. To them that meant that the impact of them losing their jobs would be minimal because they would all find something else to do. This is not a town of 5000, this is a global industry of millions where many people spent years in school learning about nothing but oil. The world economy would tumble if you all of a sudden stopped using oil.
Believe me I want nothing more than to not have to use oil anymore but I don't see it happening any time soon. I have never been one to just jump willy-nilly into anything. I love protection of species and the beautiful lands we have here in America. I would love it if people would stop clear cutting the rain forests. But, trying to guilt millions of people into believing some half cocked science is not my style. Here are some resources if you are interested in learning about something other than an "inconvenient truth".
For a brief explanation of the Yellowstone Caldera and what it has done and will do again please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
Take a real look at the Prius
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cars/what-car-nuts-really-think-of-the-prius-hybrid-electric-322186.php?autoplay=true
For a realistic view of the greenhouse effect and global warming please see
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={D7A01AEE-CECF-48F9-A7B3-A675E9C8F39B}
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/moregw.htm
http://www.look-to-the-skies.com/global_warming.htm
An interesting set of resources
http://sermons.trbc.org/20070225_11AM.html
Find out why the "hockey stick" is broken
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
