Is global warming just another case of the left crying wolf?

Question

Doesn't this erode at society's ability to react to a real catastrophic situation?

Answer 1

Well obviously not.  Except for the neocons who make up their "facts" as they go, there is equal concern by both the Right and the Left.  If you go back a hundred years, there was much more concern on the part of the Conservative Right about the environment than by the Left.  Global Warming (called the Greenhouse Effect then) had been identified, proven and described, but was way down the list of concerns.  Conserving resources and using them frugally and wisely has always been a Core Value of the political Right, and the defining value of Conservatism.  The philosophy applies to all kinds of resources, including natural resources.  Theodore Roosevelt was the first world leader to point out the criticality of the environment in relation to a sound economy and National Security.  The defining value of the Liberal Left has always been to favor liberal use of resources, applying them reactively to problems and situations as they arise.

How ironic it is today, to witness the neocons rabidly advocating liberal policies that out-Left the Left in their demands for flat-out balls-to-the-wall conspicuous consumption before a world that is already going without.

How ironic it is today to see the Left joining with the Conservative Right to demand responsible use of finite resources owned in common by all.

Answer 2

I think what really erodes at society is the left in general.  It is amazing how consistently wrong they are.  There must be something in the human psyche that causes a large percentage of people to need drama in their lives and or to need a cause.  Global warming is a minor problem that is exaggerated to a ridiculous extent and the benefits are always ignored or downplayed..

Answer 3

The key to gaining power over the lives of other people is to invent a crisis, scare the bejesus out of people, offer them a solution then look like a hero when the problem solves itself.  It worked for the DDT scare of the 1960s, the global cooling scare of the 1970s, the acid rain scare of the 1980s and the Y2K scare of the 1990s.  Global warming is the scare du jour for this decade and when people realize it's bogus then someone will come along in 2010 to invent another "crisis" for us to panic about.

Answer 4

Yeah, people sure bought into it quickly didn't they?  The theory has "only" been around for a little over 100 years.  People need to let scientific theories sit around at least 1/2 a millennium before accepting them, no matter how much evidence there is to support them.

Just like the Roman Catholic church waited from the early 17th century until 1992 to officially accept that radical Galileo's idea that the earth wasn't stationary, we need to sit around another 2 or 3 hundred years (just to be sure) before doing anything to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We don't want to rush into anything just because a few hundred (or thousand) scientists from all around the world tell us we should.

Answer 5

Yes it is. They left always do things like that.

Answer 6

Remember the color coded "terror alerts" we had a few years ago.  Almost everyday there was a terror alert and it was either pale orange to bright red depending on the severity. The problem is, they popped up so often it became a joke as well as being so non-specific.  "there is a terror alert somewhere."  Okay, where, so I can avoid it.

Global warming is the same thing, another attempt at scaring the public.

Answer 7

Yeah, just like with their silly Round Earth Theory and Heliocentrism. What a joke/government scam.

EDIT: I never said "the gods of consensus" were always right/wrong, same with the skeptics. But in your question referred to the left. Copernicus, Galileo, etc. were liberals in their day. By the way, the consensus opinion back in the day was formed by religious zealots, not scientists. It's irresponsible to compare the religious zealots to AGW skeptics.

EDIT2: AGW proponents are religious zealots? Proof/evidence? Would be appreciated.

Answer 8

check the San Fransisco bay records from the last 50 years and you will see that global warming is BS

Answer 9

Yes, they cried wolf about leaded gasoline exhaust, asbestos, smoking, mercury in foods, ..... being bad for people.   Why are they so concerned about others????

Answer 10

No, not even close.

The situation is so far from a political one that both Republican and Democrat former EPA heads have gone on record against Bush and the current EPA:

Ex-heads of EPA blast Bush on global warming

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10913795

The gradual advancement of science on CO2 science over the past 100+ years is summarized in detail by a physicist on this site:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.h...

The 750°K temperature of Venus, with its atmosphere of 90% carbon dioxide, is strong evidence supporting greenhouse gas theory.

http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Mar1996/p...

It was determined last year that Greenland is melting much faster than scientists (including last year's IPCC report) predicted:

"Instead of sea levels rising by about 40 centimetres, as the IPCC predicts in one of its computer forecasts, the true rise might be as great as several metres by 2100. That is why, they say, planet Earth today is in 'imminent peril.'"

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserve...

"Ground-based surface temperature data shows that the rate of warming in the Arctic from 1981 to 2001 is eight times larger than the rate of Arctic warming over the last 100 years. There have also been some remarkable seasonal changes. Arctic spring, summer, and autumn have each warmed, lengthening the seasons when sea ice melts from 10 to 17 days per decade."

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/eart...

New Research Confirms Antarctic Thaw Fears - Spiegel Online

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk...

"...the Pine Island Glacier has shrunk by an average of 3.8 centimeters annually over the past 4,700 years. But the Smith and Pope glaciers have only lost 2.3 centimeters of their thickness annually during the past 14,500 years. Satellite measurements taken between 1992 and 1996, though, show a loss of 1.6 meters in thickness per year on the Pine Island Glacier -- a figure that represents 42 times the average melt of the past 4,700 years."

It is fascinating to see the unsupported and illogical arguments that can gain traction among people grasping for something reasonable-sounding to cling to to base their denial on, no matter how shallow the support and how faulty the reasoning is.  Don't let your lack of links to anything at all, let alone something credible, stop you from posting a stream of nonsense on the Internet.

Answer 11

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur...