BLOG

Why I Believe in Global Warming

Perhaps the better question is why don’t you believe in it? To be fair, most everyone agrees that the earth is getting warmer. The real question is: Is global warming the result, partial result or not a result of human activity? Increasingly, scientific evidence is showing a connection between human activity and global warming. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence that global warming is manmade, why do so many intelligent people still disagree?

The phrase global warming itself has embedded in many people the perception that a warmer earth will mean warmer weather. When that doesn’t happen, the other side screams “I told you so!” The models NEVER predicted that. What they predicted as a consequence was that weather would become more extreme. Overall, it has.

Some might argue that while it is evident the weather has become more extreme, this is not a product of global warming…weather has always been fickle. True enough, but when you have concrete scientific studies (hundreds of studies at that), virtually all of which arrive at the same conclusion AND the predicted outcome appears to be occurring, the fickle weather argument weakens considerably.

We’re all thieves at heart even though we say we aren’t. Think tragedy of the commons (and global warming is one of the biggest) – are we acting in what we think is our best interest now with no regard for the destruction that will follow? We’ll pay for the steel, labor, engineering and design because we have to, not because we want to. Nobody wants to pay to remediate the carbon or whatever else we’re producing that’s causing harm, especially if it’s harm to someone else. To use the most often quoted political phrase of the year, we’ll kick the can down the road.