Do we fix the roof if it's not raining?

Question

Decades ago NASA's James Hansen was called an alarmist when he appeared before Congress, offered his calculations, and showed that global warming had begun and was "changing the climate now."

Global climate change appears to be challenging our psychological capacitiy to deal with hard news.

If 95% of the world's best, most experienced experts in child well-being were to tell you that your child was under lethal attack -- and with dramatic signs already visible if you only look -- would you say, "I think I'll wait until the other five experts are convinced before I do anything about it?"

Psychologists explain that denial is an inevitable and natural first reaction to such news. We don't want to think we've had such a horrible effect on an entire planet any more than a child wants to believe it can hurt its nurturing parent.

So are we going to fix the roof with your help, or are you going to be left standing out in the rain?

Answer 1

Why don't you pay me thousands of dollars and I will come over and fix your heater thermostat.  You may think it works just fine, but I am here hysterically whining that it is broke, that you broke it, you and your democrat fat cats, and that it is warming at one degree per century.  How dare you allow that.  You must pay me thousands of dollars and put me in office so I can fix all thermostats.  Together we can fix this problem but first send me the money.  We will all die if we become a degree hotter.   Do you kind of get the point of how alarmism looks to sensible people.

Answer 2

You've hit the root cause of the denial.

I've been beating this drum for 35 years and nothing really changes.  So long as there is no proximate, immediate danger the warning signs are ignored and those who dare to say the emperor has no clothes are stigmatized as Chicken Little’s.

It's an easy strategy for the vested interests to follow because the psychology so clearly supports it.

The trouble is, the right goes too far and declares that anyone who questions the status quo to be, to put it mildly, subversive.  

They are using the environmental issue as a wedge to further their own political and social agenda.

This is what I really have a problem with and post here to debunk.

On a practical level it's divisive and counterproductive.  On an intellectual level it's disgusting and morally repugnant.  

If the greens get their way we get more of a tilt to social democracy.

If the reactionary forces get their way we bury our heads in the sand and ride this thing right to the rapture.

For the future of all of us, vote progressive.

This is just starting.  Global Warming is just one symptom of a larger problem.

Answer 3

Not if it doesn't need fixing, or if the "fix" is either worse than the leak or doesn't actually exist.

Answer 4

i'm ready!

<salutes, trips over tool box, falls in puddle>

Answer 5

It is typically much easier to fix the roof if it isn't raining - I agree with you.  A vocal (figuratively speaking)  minority who have very little education in natural sciences continue to spread misinformation.  Glad you are with the majority.

Answer 6

As the REM lyrics go, "...I'll take the rain."

Answer 7

Amy L.,

What are you personally doing?

I've commuted to work by bicycle about 225 days per year since 2002. I've reduced my natural gas and electricity use, and trimmed my use of water. I recycle almost everything.

I'm not doing any of this because of global warming, I'm doing it because it makes sense for me. In fact, I challenge you to prove that any of my efforts have had any positive effect on the reduction of global warming.

Much as you said to Jello that  the month of April isn't proof of anything, I would put to you that our data regarding global weather is so miniscule as to be nearly worhtless. We have no records beyond about 150 years ago, and this plant is billions of years old.

I'm behind your drive to change, it's the right thing to do, but get off your pulpit and quit lecturing, because you've got no more hard evidence than anyone else.

Answer 8

Nothing wrong with fixing the roof while the sun shines. But dammit, look around. IT AIN'T RAINING!!!

Answer 9

You patch a roof when it rains, you FIX it after the storm is over.  AGW is taxing/regulating people based on the claim the rain is our fault and we need to stop it (in this analogy).

Answer 10

am reading the comments you been getting and am saddened to see, that the large majority of people  following the same line of thought...."am ok, whats the problem?"

Did we get so short sighted and me me me focused over the years, that we dont see that the weather is changing?

There is snow where there was  none before, floods or fields parched and cant grow a thing. Earth quakes, tornadoes are happening more often, more fierce, the ice caps are melting faster then they ever did.

Something as simple as the tropical fruit and vegetables in the stores, not looking as healthy as it once did.

But i guess those on potato chips and coke diet cowboys making fun of chicken little would not know a thing about that. They will scream blue murder only when the world be so dry, we cant grow potatoes to supply their tater chips

Answer 11

Here's where your logic is faulty.  It does rain, so the roof would need fixing.  

Dr. Stephen Hawkings says that it will be raining sulfuric acid.  Your logic would say that we should develop roofs to protect us from this rain.  However no matter how smart Dr. Hawkings is, it will never rain sulfuric acid.

NASA just came out with April climate data.  April was a FULL 1 degree BELOW average.  Since "global warming" is about the panic that the climate was 0.5 degrees above average, we dropped a full 1.5 degrees.  

Global warming just isn't happening.  It's the Y2K panic of the 21st century.

Answer 12

Oh, so next strategy is to stop the rain...  I get it, alarmists are finally realizing that their global warming culprit is atmospheric moisture and not CO2, which is merely 1 2500th of our atmospheric makeup.  So, the kool-aid is starting to wear off and you are jumping to the next fear mongering campaign.  Good

Answer 13

Chicken little, has been saying "the sky is falling" for many years now, and its still up there.

Profits and scholars wise men and scientists have been predicting the end of mankind since the beginning of mankind, and we are still here.

The very first time the phrase "Global Warming" was seen in a news paper was in 1890.

So you can start preparing for the end, but I'm gonna live my life.

Answer 14

GW or AGW is a media driven political issue.

More than 30 years ago political scientist Anthony Downs discerned what he called the “issue-attention cycle,” a five-stage process by which the public and especially the news media grow alarmed over an issue, agitate for action, generate piles of scary headlines, and then begin to draw back as we come to recognize that the problem has been exaggerated or misconceived, and the price tag for action comes in. While Downs thought that the issue-attention cycle for the environment would last longer than most issues, it appears the mother-of-all-environmental scares -- global warming -- is following his model and is going to begin to fade like other environmental alarms of the past such as the population bomb and the “we’re running out of everything” scares.

AGW or GW people don't live in MN, we still have ice on the lakes here.  Fishing opener is this weekend.  Ice out this year is SO-o late that we are breaking ice out records from over 100 years ago.   Latest spring on record, snowed just a couple of days ago.

In MN, GW and AGW is a joke.  Even the biggest newspaper in Minneapolis did a survey amongst it's subscribers, 73% don't believe in AGW or GW.  And MN is very liberal...