{"id":52,"date":"2006-06-13T03:46:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-13T03:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2006\/06\/13\/earth-in-the-balance\/"},"modified":"2006-06-13T03:46:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-13T03:46:00","slug":"earth-in-the-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2006\/06\/13\/earth-in-the-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth in the Balance?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Click<\/a>So what about<\/i> global warming, anyway? Is it real? Or is it just a trumped-up card in the “pollution is bad, dependence on foreign oil is really<\/em> bad” litany? Have you had enough rhetorical questions? Or should I go on?<\/p>\n

It may be a dead horse, but Al’s beating it again, and regardless what you think, it deserves critical thought, so I’ll give you a few useful linky-doodles to explore, and I’ll share my opinion.<\/p>\n

Al’s got a new movie called An Inconvenient Truth<\/i><\/a> that revisits his arguments from Earth in the Balance<\/i><\/a>, and it’s sweeping theaters across the nation.<\/p>\n

Almost simultaneously, Michael Shermer’s Skeptics Society<\/a> hosted a weekend seminar called The Environmental Wars<\/a>, with guest speakers like John Stossel and Michael Crichton who agree to disagree with global warming. There’s lots of information and debate over on DeSmogBlog<\/a>, and The Commons<\/a>, and this article from PasdenaWeekly<\/i><\/a>. Please read and think and draw your own conclusions.<\/p>\n

As for myself, it seems to me that there is a fair amount of incontrovertible evidence that greenhouse gasses are on the rise, that on-average, global temperatures are on the rise, and other indicators point to a global-warming trend that is a real and serious phenomenon to be reckoned with. I’m also fond of the title of the new book and movie – it seems to me that there’s a kind of “reverse Occam’s Razor<\/a>,” in that it makes a lot more sense to me that the neo-cons and others with a stake in an oil-based economy would like to see global warming as crackpot worry-mongering, whereas, I can’t really see any self-serving advantage to saying we should protect the environment, cut down on energy waste, reduce pollution, and cut our dependence on foreign oil. <\/p>\n

Shouldn’t we do all that regardless? Nonetheless, here are some competing views:<\/p>\n